Glastonbury Festival 2008

A little break from my usual spiritual and incoherent ramblings for a little resume of my time at Glastonbury 2008. Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't brave enough to pitch my tent for the entire weekend, no, I was a local lightweight, and I went on a Sunday ticket! One of the great things about living close to Glastonbury is that one can take advantage of the festival buses that take us locals to the festival just for the day. I had 14 wonderful hours there, and it was great!



So here I am, your sensible host for this mini tour of the festival! As you can see, I am indeed the sensible and somewhat deep person who usually writes on this blog! Haha! If you ever doubted I had the ability to chill and let my hair down, this picture, I am sure, will remove any doubt!

One of the things that I love about Glastonbury Festival is the stuff that happens away from the main stages. I enjoy some of the music, but the Healing and Green Fields are where one will find the heart of the festival, in my opinion. It's worth going just to experience the energy of these fields.

In the Healing Field was this wonderful man who ran a 'laughter workshop' and it was just great! He took us through belly, chest, and head laughter, through to rolling on the floor laughing, devotional laughter and lots of other kinds! This brief video I have made shows you the part where people had to lay on the ground with their head on someone's stomach, and 'feel' the laughter, which of course spread the laughter along the line! I dare you to watch this and not laugh!



As I said, one of the things I love about the festival is the impromptu things that happen. One can be just walking along when suddenly something just 'happens' that one could never have planned or envisaged! One of the highlights for me in this respect for me was The Pink Band.



This isn't the best of pictures, but hopefully it captures something of the moment. The Pink Band were this bunch of extraordinary talented people who just appeared, playing brass music with gusto and, as you can see, just got the crowd dancing, no matter where they appeared! They just threw their heart and soul into their music and the cheers from the audience showed just how much we all appreciated it. Wonderful stuff!



As well as just happening by a band of people dressed in pink and performing an assortment of brass music, one may just happen upon three mermaids. All perfectly normal at Glastonbury Festival!



Of course it's the toilets that grab a large number of the headlines at Glastonbury Festival, and this picture really makes me laugh! Some of the toilets have no roof (probably to let the smell out!) but they also have no 'bottoms' as it were, so one can see rows of feet, as people are getting busy with what comes naturally! So funny!



The festival is wonderful experience for loads of reasons. It has a special energy, and in an odd way this picture of the flags sums something of that up. People, all different, yet going in the same direction, going with the flow, being themselves, respecting each other, showing their true colours, no personal agendas, just happy 'being'. I love it.



Musically, one of the highlights for me this year was the irrepressible Eddy Grant. Again, we just happened upon him. Nothing planned, we were just walking past the Jazz Stage and there he was, and he was brilliant! I think I must have danced, non-stop, for about an hour! I danced with these good people - no idea who they are, never seen them before, I'll probably never see them again, but they were great fun!



And The Green Man watched over all these proceedings, with a huge smile on his face as humanity simply had fun together and revelled in being together.

What a great way to spend 14 hours! I can't begin to explain just how quickly those hours shot by. One would be forgiven for thinking that there must have been 'down time' or 'bored time' within those hours, but no, not a bit of it! I was on the go the whole time and it seemed that no sooner were we being bussed in that it was time to be bussed out!

Quite amazing!