Ah but here I am, not at Glastonbury. There’s a magic to this festival that I’ve not experienced since the turn of the century. Not experiencing it now the excitement of sitting here in what will be the green field is perhaps lost on me. But it’s the 30s and we’ve cycled all the way from Brambley Hedge with only a bag of tomatoes and a single service revolver between us. We’ve pitched up with oars for tent poles and just nearby as the photograph will attest, a sneer* of Swedes has done likewise. And golly, as anyone with shiny knees and a properly tangled jumper knows there’s none such fun as Swedes when there’s drinking to be done.
So here and for some days to come and what then have we learned so far of Glastonbury ’36?
The Green Shirts and their leader White Hawk are an inexhaustible supply of both early morning knee-jumps and important roughage. Free if you have an especially floppy green beret.
German travellers seeking brass rubbings are probably spies.
Judging by the number of confused women of upper middle years wandering about without purpose witches have yet to be invented.
Hawkwind are playing Sunday afternoon.
John Peel is more concerned with fox hunting.
That what you see isn’t the pyramid stage far away, that’s Aleistair Crowley in a hat (now wave hello).
Though up a hill, in a field and far from the nearest river hullabaloos can still plough by at 2am in motor launches loudly playing their gramophones.
Titty really is perfectly acceptable name for a girl.
Roger the boy is a term of address, not an invitation.
The rough young men with frayed collars managing to both call out and whisper to you at the same time are not looking for ‘Lord Numb’.
For the bourgeois of a morning then presently it is the Manchester Guardian.
*That really is the collective noun for the Swedish.
Yus and yus - no longer Glastonbury, and Swallows and Amazons too. It's as if you read my mind. The frightful Hullabaloos are likely doing middle-class holiday things at present - frightfully. I miss the green field, but I don't miss Crowley's hat. In the early years I used to cram down there with the hoi-polloi to see such as New Order, but it just got too hectic. What I love these days, at this time of year, is the late night BBC coverage - like it was Wimbledon or something - with the music presenters desperately trying to hold themselves together on camera.
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