I’m afraid that when I read that the posh glamping provider for wealthy Glastonbury fans was going into liquidation, I smirked. The company offered yurts that only look luxurious if you compare them with tents – with a beds, a sofa, a loo and a shower, as well as meals. Pretty basic, biatch. The only exclusive thing about it is that guests can access the hospitality area behind the Pyramid tent, like ageing groupies.
The company organising the liquidation sent emails to clients who had already paid for this year’s Glastonbury to say that no tickets had been bought so, oops, sorry. Wealthy customers complained vociferously to the media. One woman said that her father had paid £40,000 this year for three yurts and six hospitality tickets. I looked at properties in Pilton, the village near Shepton Mallet where the festival is held, and that’s about half the cost of a flat.
I find the idea of rich people slumming it down for a weekend amusing (‘darling, they don’t have halloumi and quinoa – only burgers’), but the thought of these people pretending to be festival-goers while actually living in what looks like a hotel room is rather nauseating. Note that the tickets also guarantee entrance to the VIP bar – Annabella and Justin may like to tell their cleaner that they went to Glastonbury, but of course, in reality, they would gag if they had to be with the hoi polloi. Using a filthy loo sodden with the excrement of a thousand festival-goers, with no loo roll or sink or soap? You’ve got to be kidding.
I have to own up to my own hatred of festivals. When I was 15, I went with my older sister to the Reading Festival and saw the Cure and the Police before they became popular (1979, if you must). We only stayed for the day, and it was exciting and fun. The next festival I went to was when I was 18. I was sent by the NME to cover Glastonbury with two other journalists and a photographer. The others managed to keep going for about 18 hours a day with the use of, er, synthetic dancing powder. I had insomnia for the entire weekend despite not taking anything stronger than the occasional voddie, and the stench of fatty, processed food fried in lard turned my stomach. I was also disturbed by the number of stoned middle-aged adults gazing with deadened eyes into the distance and muttering unintelligible things. There were more brazen hippies offering to read your fortune or ‘enhance your experience’ with some ‘natural’ substance or other. I don’t know why people fall for this – morphine, aspirin and digoxin are natural substances, but would you assume they’re safe to take recreationally?
The toilets represented a special and unique horror. There are no sewage pipes, so the shit of the tens of thousands of people over the weekend basically piles up under each stall. Getting to the loo involves trudging through about ten metres of brown sludge, which I told myself was mud. However, nowhere else was the mud so soft and stinky. I would imagine by the end of the festival, each of those filthy stalls would have been elevated by the hillock of raw poo beneath it. The toilet seat in each one was soaked with spray – people who have been drinking beer for three days generally don’t have great aim – and the single loo roll provided at the beginning of the festival was long gone. As for washing your hands, it didn’t even enter into the equation. It was just expel and go. Thank goodness the NME had booked us into hotel rooms in a nearby village. At least I lay wide awake on a bed.
I find the idea of rich people slumming it down for a weekend amusing
I did enjoy the music at a couple of subsequent festivals – T in the Park, where Daft Punk played a set that no one could keep still to, and the V Festival in 1997, where the Prodigy, Beck, Daft Punk (again) and the Propellerheads were on the bill. But I have never had the slightest desire to attempt to sleep at a festival site – going to the loo is traumatic enough. I hate crowds and noise and sweat and not being able to wash my hands or shower often. I don’t want to jostle and elbow my way to being served at a bar. The VIP area at places like Glastonbury is indeed a completely different story – about one tenth as many people, no pushing, loos with loo roll and sinks with soap, and band members sloping about. But you can’t see the bands from there. You can only hear them, and if that’s enough for the glamping company’s wealthy clientele, why didn’t they just stay at home and watch it from the sofa?
Obviously, I feel sorry for anyone who saved up thousands of pounds and lost it to a company that was careless enough to go bankrupt. The company’s registered address is an expansive £2 million Grade II-listed detached home outside Bath, so someone has done well. The woman whose father’s £40,000 has disappeared down the drain has said that she’ll buy another glamping experience to the festival instead. £80,000 for the chance to listen to a festival from a basic hotel room in a field or a bar behind the stages. I hope the free drinks and food are worth it. I will watch any bands I rate from the comfort of my bed, knowing that my en suite is well supplied with Cushelle and antibacterial soap.
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