My Glastonbury Adventure 2025: Part 3, 'Make Tea, Not War'.

Odele & Me backstage.

It was Wednesday morning at Glastonbury, the sun was shining, the gates were open, thousands of excited music fans were pouring onto Worthy Farm, and I felt better than James Brown!. I decided it was high time I took a long walk to one of my favourite places which has been in the same spot at Glasto since 1992. It is The Tiny Tea Tent. The people who run it are wonderful and some of them remember me from previous years. It is a great place to sit, have a cup of tea and just watch the world walk by. In past times I used to sit here and write a few postcards but couldn’t be bothered with that this year. 

If you sit outside the Tiny Tea Tent for long enough everyone you know at Glasto will walk by eventually. I got talking to these two Irish guys who were working at the Theatre & Circus Field. It was their first Glastonbury, so they were blown away by it. Then Bob from Nottingham strolled up, other people came and went, and three pleasant hours were wiled away until I decided to move on. Although the main stages didn’t open until Friday there was plenty to see, such as this Australian lady held aloft on a surfboard by four lifesavers while operating about six hula hoops. I bumped into Kate, Kellie, Heidi and Donna and we ended up in a crew bar where the New York Brass Band entertained us for a while (They aren’t really from New York!).

That evening, I met up with Peter, Helen, and their gang by the Ash tree at the back of the Pyramid field for the opening ceremony. Last year they had hundreds of drones flying about. This year they had a 1,000-voice choir of which Odele was one, acrobats, high wire performers and other acts. There were probably 50,000 people in the field, it might have been spectacular on the television, but it all fell a bit flat for me, the choir were un-miked so we couldn’t hear them from the back and couldn’t see much on the big screen. I went back to Tom’s before the end to avoid the rush. 

Opening Ceremony.

Back in Tom’s bar it was great to see Greta’s sister Berna who had just arrived from Dublin. Her journey here had been eventful and hilarious. She had taken a Uber taxi from Bristol airport, but it had dropped her at Gate A instead of miles away at Gate B where she had to pick up her wristbands before the cabin closed at midnight. She ended up getting a lift in the cab of one of those sludge gulping tanker lorries which empty the long drops. She made it in time, so all’s well that ends well.

Heidi Wins!

Thursday was to be a very eventful day for us. Firstly, I’ll tell you about Heidi being on Britain’s most popular radio show. The Vernon Kay show has an average of 6.73 million listeners every weekday morning. It includes a quiz called Ten To The Top in which two people compete against each other, and the one who gets the most answers right wins a smart speaker. They wanted two people who were both at Glastonbury to take part. Heidi applied and was chosen to compete live from our little encampment in Tom’s Field. She was competing against a lady who was camped in the northeast corner somewhere. Although it was Thursday, Heidi had to pretend it was Friday when the BBC Glastonbury coverage began. Heidi was nervous, but she scored 8 points, her opponent only got 2 answers right, so Heidi won! Brilliant. We had to wait until next day to hear Heidi broadcast on the radio.

As with last year I took a walk to the Peace Garden in Kings Meadow for the Peace Ceremony. Although it is nice to get away from the likes of that orange thing in Washington for a few days, everyone is still aware of the horrors going on in Gaza and elsewhere. Nothing has improved since last year. It was nice to see an Israeli and a Palestinian peace activist together on stage appealing for peace. There was also an opera singer from Ukraine who had joined the army, was seriously injured and was now working for peace. He sang Nessun Dorma. I listened from a bench under the shade of a tree and had a chat with a nice London Jewish lady called Debs who was running one of the bars at Glasto. We didn’t really agree about Gaza, but could discuss it without hating each other, which is always a good thing.

Hodmaddodery

After that interlude, I thought I’d go back to the tea tent for a sit down, but I had trouble getting there because it is opposite the Greenpeace Field where they have a death-defying huge slide. There was a girl on the top who had lost her nerve and couldn’t decide to slide or not. Everyone on the walkway stopped to watch, cheer, and encourage her to go. This created a people jam on the road, until finally to a huge cheer she slid, and the crowd dispersed, so I could get my cup of tea and a flapjack. The last few years it has been a tradition with me to go and see an old friend Tony Carter and his mate Steve who are a folk duo called Hodmaddodery and always play on Thursday at 2.00 on the bandstand in the Market Area. I was a bit late this year but caught the last three numbers which were The Well Below The Valley, a song about Down End in Bristol, and a Led Zeppelin song that I think is Bron-y-Aur. They are great, go and see them if you live near Bristol. I went back to base then for a rest because my first work shift was at 6.00. It was really nice to see my fellow Van Morrison fan friend Emer from Dublin who has also been on the recycling team for the past two years.

3 Bin Rats, Kate, Kellie, Me.

Our team all met at 5.30 at our camp and walked down to the Pyramid Stage backstage gate together. Kellie christened our team The Bin Rats. We were Kate (Our Leader), Me, Odele, Kellie, Donna, Russell, Julie, Heidi, Donna & Leon, and a nice couple from Liverpool called Spike and Sharon. The shift was only four hours until 10.00 and the time passed very quickly. There were various jobs to do and Odele and me had the task mainly of making sure the bins in the hospitality area didn’t overflow and change the bin liner bags when they were getting full. Also litter pick anything on the ground. After work ended, I was too tired to do anything else, so just had my first alcoholic drink of the day back at base. I was in bed by midnight. Tomorrow, six days after we arrived at Worthy Farm, the music at Glastonbury 2025 would finally begin!.

Photo by Andrew Allcock.

To Be Continued…………………………….