Glastonbury Festival is celebrating its 50 year anniversary in 2022. My novel Pompey & Circumstance has a chapter relating to the very memorable Glastonbury 1990:
Chapter 32
“Do you want to come to Glastonbury with us Katie?” JJ called to ask. She was going with Simon and his brother Luke. Luke was a ‘traveller’ and lived in a truck under a flyover somewhere near Shepherd’s Bush. The site was full of other liked-minded folk and they created an ‘alternative lifestyle’ as a commune. All the luxuries and constraints of normal society were dispensed with; Luke would use an old wok “to piss and shit in”.
Glastonbury festival, unlike its pioneer Woodstock, was ticket-only entry and eye-wateringly expensive. 1990 marked the 20th Anniversary and to ‘celebrate’ they’d put the fee up by a tenner to a whopping £38 (nearly a week’s rent Katie thought). No brotherly-love here. JJ explained that they would be going with Luke and staying on his truck in the traveller’s field which was free. Free! (there was some brotherly-love after all). Katie checked the dates and noticed that the festival started on the last day of term.
“I’ll drive us up” Jinx said “and we’ll meet them there”
“There’s no room for both of you to sleep in Luke’s truck but he says he’s got a 2-man tent you can use, you’ll have to bring sleeping bags”
Jinx had been given vague instructions to park up in the ‘big field’ and then ask someone to show them the traveller’s area. It was pelting down with rain and the cars were bumper-to-bumper on the final stretch of narrow winding lane. The festival site was much larger than they had envisioned and seemed impossible to navigate but they found the right zone and walked about looking for Luke’s truck which neither of them had ever seen before.
“It’s Army green” JJ said but there were a lot of ‘Army green’ trucks. Suddenly they heard a familiar voice.
“Katie! Katie!”
There was JJ standing on the back of a lorry waving frantically. At last! The rain had ebbed and Luke was rolling out a large barrel and setting up some kind of stall in front of his ‘pitch’.
“Luke’s selling scrumpy for a quid” said Simon as Luke threw down a tent at Katie’s feet.
“You can set up just there” he said pointing to a small patch of balding earth, “There’s a mallet in the cockpit, better hurry up before it starts to rain again.”
Jinx and Katie began to erect the tent. Simon had been setting up speakers and suddenly loud house music pumped out, the brothers seemed to enjoy being the only people in their area who were playing hip-hop instead of the de riguer Doors or Stones. Katie didn’t think much of the line-up but noticed that Hawkwind were playing, maybe some of the Welsh theatre hippies would be there too (would Nick Turner be wearing his sunglasses in this rain?) They all headed off to the Main Stage Simon and JJ were both eager to see The Cure. The walk there took them through rows of falafel stalls and kaftan-clad women selling tie-dyed t-shirts and ethnic jewellery. Hundreds of expectant festival-goers stomped laboriously along muddy paths heading for the zenith, heads bowed against the biting wind and burgeoning rain all looking like a Lowry painting. They couldn’t see much from the back and the view was further obscured by people sporting Robert Smith hairstyles. Simon was excitable and singing along to all the songs.
“Let’s go to the World Stage” Simon suggested so they all followed him there (he had been before of course). This was far more enjoyable as you could actually see and hear the acts and even have bit of a dance, an African band was playing and it was impossible not to move along to the beat of the music. By now Katie and Jinx had got their bearings and figured they knew the way back to the tent, Katie was freezing and needed to get her coat. They bought some scrumpy from Luke who was chatting to a bloke called Seb “I’ve got some acid if you want to try it” Seb leaned in and whispered into Jinx’s ear. Luke raised his eyebrows and swigged back on his drink. Katie and Jinx threw caution to the wind and agreed. They walked away from the throng and stood by a stile under a tree. Seb brought out three tiny squares of paper and laid them in his palm. He dabbed his index finger onto one of them and popped it onto his tongue, Katie and Jinx followed suit. Nothing was instant but it slowly crept up, as they wandered around all the lights began to appear more enhanced so too the voices of passing people. They found their way into a marquee pumping with hypnotic acid-house tunes (how appropriate), they mingled in with the mob of sweaty revellers and all bobbed away mute for hours. Katie had lost all sense of time and place but noticed that dawn was breaking. They left the still-humming tent and began to explore the perimeter pathways, they didn’t want to sleep and had now begun an endless chattering conversation, Seb was going on about ‘symmetry’. They stopped by a bush to pee and Jinx held up her hand to the branches and watched in amazement as her fingers all grew long and then retracted. Soaked and cold they noticed the car park up ahead so got inside for some shelter. The rain was trickling down the windscreen and they all gazed at each droplet making its way down. Their trance-like state magnified everything and made it more exaggerated; it was all so ‘phenomenal’. They stirred from a sleep which could have lasted two minutes or two hours, neither knew, and wandered back to find the others. The sun had already risen.
“Where have you been?” JJ was curious rather than worried. “We all thought you were knackered and asleep in the tent.”
The whole day was clouded in a mental and physical torpor, Katie just followed the others and obeyed orders, every so often she would hear her name being called but turned round to nothing. The acute paranoia lasted the entire weekend and continued in a much milder vein for several months. Standing again at the back of the Main Stage masses they watched Adamski and The Happy Mondays (you’re twisting my melon man), it was all a noisy blur and people were jumping up and down, Katie just went along with it all smiling benignly to anyone who looked at her. Simon offered to make some pasta on Luke’s camping stove and they trundled back down to their ‘home’. At the entrance to their area there was a ‘World Cup Tent’. It wasn’t actually a tent but a makeshift bar under a tarpaulin held up with long sticks. A small colour TV was balanced on one end and a couple of blokes were standing in front of the screen watching Germany play The Netherlands. They sat outside Luke’s truck and he let them drink his scrumpy free of charge, he was still playing the same Deep Heat 4 tape over and over again. That night Katie and Jinx slept in the little ridge tent, it was extremely uncomfortable with no ground sheet and no cushioning, clumps of earth poking into their backs.
In the morning they both started to feel ‘normal’ again, the foggy haze had lifted.
“Bloody hell. Not sure I want to do that again” said Jinx
“How long do you think this paranoia is going to last? I keep hearing voices”
“Do you?”
“Don’t you?”
“Serves you both bloody right. Acid? Fuck me” said Simon
“Who wants breakfast?” shouted Luke from the back of the truck.
The rain had stayed off and everyone was ready to properly enjoy the last day of the festival. Simon cooked and Luke made tea in a huge iron pot (thankfully not a wok). Simon was staying on with his brother to pack up the site and both were travelling back to London together on Monday afternoon. Katie and Jinx were leaving early Monday morning and JJ asked for a lift back to Pompey.
As events turned out, the three of them had made rather a lucky escape. It all ‘kicked-off’ that afternoon and there was an almighty brawl between the travellers and the security guards. Some of their number had been accused of ‘looting’ as the stages and stalls where being packed up, then a drunk guy got lippy and was taken away by police but word got round that he was beaten up. This enraged some of the more aggressive members and they sought ‘revenge’. Things turned nasty and a full-on armed battle ensued, trucks were driven into other cars and through fences, and poles were rammed though windscreens, people were bloodied and it was by sheer luck that nobody was killed. The travellers heavily outnumbered the security guards who had to beat a retreat, the ‘underdogs’ had won but it was a pyrrhic victory; the festival was cancelled and when it resumed in 1992 the travellers were no longer allowed their free field.
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