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Make Your Own Glastonbury

Posted: 08/10/2012 00:00

I awoke Sunday morning to a storm of complaints on my Twitter timeline because nobody could get hold of Glastonbury tickets. With this in mind, I have drawn up the following tips to enable you to have your own Glastonbury in the comfort of your own home, saving you several hundreds of pounds and giving you EXACTLY the same experience.

1: Invite as many identically dressed "festival chic" girls around to your house as possible. You know the ones: Tousled hair that they've had done that way in a Toni and Guy, annoying headband, Topshop vest, patterned tights, denim shorts, Hunter wellies. All of them must talk loudly about how alternative they are and how Ed Sheeran "talks to their soul".

2: Stand in the rain for a few hours each day, surrounded by a gaggle of middle class teenagers that can't take their drugs.

3: Put MTV on your television, then position a series of giant flags in your eyeline. Or one of the aforementioned "festival chic" girls atop the shoulders of a male youth.

4: Make sure that everyone who attends your personal Glastonbury talks about every single moment as if it is as important as Hendrix playing at Woodstock. Even if it's Kylie Minogue.

5: For lunch every day, eat cous cous whilst sitting in a puddle and listening to Fearne Cotton talking about her tattoos on the radio whilst playing One Direction songs.

6: Allow a callow youth to steal all of your modern technology during one of the moments where you are eating cous cous, then loudly proclaim that you are enjoying being "freed from technology" whilst borrowing a phone from somebody else in order to cry at your mother and get her to sort out the insurance. Optionally, you can paint a mud stripe on your face as you do this.

7: Buy oregano from a Scouse youth and then smoke it in an overpriced bong that you bought from a vendor who definitely saw you coming.

8: Ensure that you can see a girl wearing a straw trilby at all times.

9: Spend ages talking up all the obscure acts that you've never really heard of (but ensure that you read up on them on the internet, plus download their biggest hit illegally to your iPhone) in the vain bid that nobody will notice that you really want to watch Rihanna.

10: Strum an acoustic guitar in order to mate with females (men only).

11: String together daisies and smear UV facepaint on yourself in order to mate with males (women only).

12: Pretend you know who Tony Christie is.

13: Take three aspirin (that you paid £30 for) and claim that you can "feel the rush" whilst pretending to like dubstep. In a tent.

14: Employ three youths to play the didgeridoo in your back yard whilst a naked hippy twirls around, proclaiming "that's the real sound of Glastonbury".

15: Lie in some mud in your back garden for three hours because you're blind drunk, then spend the next 20 years of your life telling everybody that you know that you had a spiritual experience.

Alternatively, ignore all of the above and simply go to another festival. They're all pretty much the same, rammed full of middle class kids that got dropped off by their parents, with twenty-something middle class groups insisting the insert-name-here festival used to be SO much cooler, and thirty-something middle class groups taking their godforsaken kids for their first "festival experience", like a circle of life with hummus.

Remember: Glastonbury was cool in the early 1970's, like Elton John. Now it's bloated, tired and corporate. Like Elton John.

 

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08:17 PM on 10/11/2012
Haha, didn't spot that!
04:03 PM on 10/08/2012
I disagree with a lot of this.

Firstly, Glastonbury, though more 'corporate' than before, also has endless volunteers working for charity partners over the site be it collecting money or raising awareness of issues that suddenly matter so much more when all that's around you is fields and countryside. From past experience, it sometimes takes people to have to be in that environment to think about things like that. As big of a shame as that is, it's still worthwhile.

People talk about the obscure acts that they discover because that part of the festival is real...for everyone that has a memorable moment in front of the main stage there's two that suddenly walk past a tent, hear something they like and pop in and get their eyes (and ears) opened.

And as for the 'godforsaken kids' comment, we're taking our daughter for the first time next year. This is not to show off, not for show but to show her that there's more to this world than television, 'supermodels', the x factor and celebrity. To show her that there can be magic in the world, through arts, music and, yes, people. To show her that thousands of people of all race, sex, orientation and background can be together and just have a good time together whilst being inspired and collecting memories that will last a lot longer than the amount of time spent getting a ticket.

Glastonbury is still 'cool'.
10:31 PM on 10/08/2012
Hint. The clue is in the by-line. "Comedian".