‘Well, it’s just not Glastonbury, is it?’ said my daughter aggressively, when told that our yurt featured an actual bed, wardrobe with hangers and electric points, and hot showers just around the corner. Our excuse was this was my and my partner’s first Glastonbury and we had a combined age of 125. ‘Anyway, why are you there?’ she said. ‘These are not your people, these are my people.’
Not from what I could see. With headliners such as Diana Ross, the Pet Shop Boys and Sir Paul McCartney, Glastonbury today is more a singalong event for people born in the 1950s (my husband) or 1960s (me) than anyone within shouting distance of GCSEs. The point was inadvertently underlined by Helen, from Newcastle, a young woman whom I encountered queueing for the loo: ‘Nah, I’m not going to see John Lennon tonight,’ she announced airily. I stared at her. ‘Oh, sorry, I mean Paul Macca. You can tell I’m not really a fan.’
There is almost no commercial branding unless you count posters for a local cider brewery
This year it was the festival’s 50th birthday. Now the largest field-based festival in the world, Glasto began as a small music and arts event on Michael Eavis’s farm. Tickets were sent out if you sent Eavis a quid and an SAE. As befits something in its sixth decade, it is now formidably grown up. People riding on shoulders during the acts were not toddlers but grown women in sports bras. Quite a few people were hellbent on getting seriously drunk while wearing sequins. The Speakers Forum had moments from Ed Miliband and Chris Packham.
Rather like childbirth, or, dare I say it, the menopause, the reality of Glastonbury is way less shocking than its typical representation in the media.
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