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Reporting on Glastonbury


Helen

Helen is a young journalist who started her career helping out on TheSite.org. She's now so good that she's writing for the official Glastonbury site. Want to know what the journalists get up to at Glasters? Read on...

Day one (22 June) - the arrival

Yesterday morning I arrived at the most covetable place to be this summer. Glastonbury is arguably the King of all the festivals, with music to suit all tastes, and people say that even if the line-up doesn't look that great then they still can't wait to go because the atmosphere is electric. This year I'm here for the first time - and the best thing? I've got a free ticket and backstage passes.

Well I say free, but actually I'm one of the shrewd people who has managed to get work here. I've bagged a job working on the official Glastonbury website writing reviews. In the past I have worked for the site's webmasters for free on other projects, so I guess the moral of the story is that volunteering really does pay off.

So far I have explored the weirdness that is Lost Vagueness, an area of the festival that I had never heard of that involves people dressing up in evening wear and a silver service restaurant. I've also visited the people who stay in teepees rather than tents. They are really impressive and apparently they don't have to pay to camp. I've also taken my first trip backstage to the bar at the acoustic tent - I can't stay there too long though because tomorrow I have a scary early morning meeting with the other editorial staff to find out my brief for the rest of the week. Wish me luck!

Day two (23 June) - settling in

Day two at Glastonbury and I've survived my first night of camping. I really didn't count on my tent-building abilities. I was shivering through the night but in the morning I had to get up really early because it was so hot. It's going to be a no-win situation I expect.

This morning I went to the team meeting and found out more about Glastonbury Interactive, which is the tent where I am writing from. We are working alongside the Culture Group in association with the charity Scope.  The area explores the use of digital arts and technology to exploit interactivity and will showcase a variety of interactive and live events. Scope is using the opportunity to raise awareness and change people's attitudes to the problems disabled people experience with travel and venue accessibility. One of the women is disabled herself and talked to us about her difficulties navigating un-even ground around the site.

Today I wrote my first stories for the website. Festival staff have been working like slaves on some really interesting projects. I interviewed two women who were working in the Healing field preparing a mural of a woman's face carrying a meditative symbol called a mandala. The amazing thing was they created the image using natural materials such as bark, berries and mud which they took two days to collect.

Later this afternoon I should find out exactly which bands I will get to review over the next couple of days. I'm expecting it to be a long, exciting, sleepless weekend - bring it on.

Day three (24 June)

And so the main event begins... with a thunderstorm! At about 4:30am I heard a light tapping on my tent roof, which gradually got louder and louder. All I kept thinking was: "Please don't let me feel the rain". By about 9am I decided that my tent was probably going to endure anything, so I put on my waterproof coat and my snazzy butterfly wellies and made my way to work. Incidentally my tent cost me £16 from Tesco, which I was really embarrassed about at first, but by the end of the weekend I was bragging about it to everyone.

Unfortunately because of the lightning, we had to shut down our power supply and spent the next few hours feeling very frustrated. We had just two things to write about - rain and mud.

Helen dressed up at Glastonbury

Helen gets into the Glastonbury spirit

Many of you have probably seen how bad the flooding was in some areas, and one of the classic photos was of a guy swimming (yes, swimming) back to his tent to pick up some Chas n Dave comics he had bought the day before. Despite the comedy of the situation I did feel very sorry for all the people caught badly in the storm.

Personally, I was feeling very gloomy because the night before I had been told that I wouldn't have a chance to interview anyone. Due to problems with organisation the editors were restricting press passes for those who really needed them, such as professional photographers and more experienced staff. I guess if I'd bumped into anyone famous, as other people seemed to be doing all the time, I could have attempted to blag an interview - but this time it just wasn't to be. I was hardly going to let the disappointment ruin my experience though. I'd got my ticket and I intended to make the most of it.

Despite the lack of interviews, I still got to review some excellent bands including The Undertones, The Thrills, 4 Poofs and a Piano  and The Killers. It was really rewarding to write reviews and then see them live on the website during the same day and great to be able to read other people's reviews of the bands I'd missed out on.

Day four (25 June)

Today the fields were nowhere near as water logged but the ground was sludgier than the contents of a toilet bowl after a night on the beers and a late-night kebab. There was no escaping it. This made getting from stage to stage a real effort, especially considering how spread out they are.

The exciting thing about Saturday was that I got to review The Coral, which is one of my favourite bands. The depressing thing was that I missed out on seeing Coldplay and Razorlight because I was asked to review Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel. To say I was gutted is an understatement.

With approximately 152,000 people at Glastonbury, there was a good chance that I was going to know of other people there, but what were the odds of me actually meeting any of them by chance? On my way to see KT Tunstall I bumped into an ex-boyfriend of mine who I had a relationship with when I was 17. It was such a strange experience, but I decided to spend some time with him. After KT had finished her performance, we went off to see a fantastic band in the Dance field called The Beat. Not only did they rock the dance stage, but Arjinan (my ex) is a phenomenal dancer so seeing him was entertainment in itself. Afterwards we agreed that we probably wouldn't be able to meet up again, but he said it had "made his day" to see me, and bumping into him had certainly brightened mine.

In the evening I went to a secret gig backstage in the Acoustic bar performed by a band called Alabama 3. Usually I would have taken advantage of people offering to buy me drinks left right and centre, but this time I was aware that the more beer I drank, the more visits I would have to make to the atrocities that are Glastonbury loos.

In the end some other journalists and I went on an adventure to the Stone Circle where people go to watch the sunrise. We stood watching a circle of people dancing, banging drums and even getting naked. I'm still none the wiser to quite what was going on, but it seemed to be symbolic of the freedom people feel at Glastonbury. It was also a reminder that you don't need to be at the Pyramid stage to see something amazing.

For the five days I was there I was able to forget all about ordinary life. One of the editors of the website said to me: "After you have been to Glastonbury, you can never really go back to normal, you take a piece of it with you."  I'm not sure yet if this will be true for me, but they said they'd like to invite me back in 2007, and I'm already excited.


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