Kate and I decided that a good way to save money and finally get to the famous Glastonbury festival, was to work it. We spotted in TimeOut ways to do things for free, and this was one of them. This festival costs £100 for 3 days worth of festival and music. We thought it would be luck if they accepted us, but as it turned out, they didn't turn anyone away - so we weren't that special. We had to attend a health and safety lecture which they said was the first one they'd ever held in all the years of running Glastonbury. Very interesting. They said the training for Glastonbury was unique to other events held in England. We were there for the govt. requirement of safety stewards, crowd watching (density of crowds, crushing etc) but not control, trouble spotting, evacuation procedures and any general help to the public. Also, what requests by members of public to attend and not attend, for instance, reports of a suspicious package, someone with a weapon (firearms), or just good old beating one another up, we weren't to approach them. We had to get on the motorolas and get securtiy along. We weren't getting paid to do anything like that. Infact we weren't getting paid. The only report we HAD to attend to was a heart attack victim. They couldn't reiterate how important our own safety was, it came first, and then the public. Fair enough, I wasn't going to approach someone with a gun. After finishing, (and feeling really scared) we just had to wait a month for the festival to roll on.

The festival is held down in Glastonbury (funny enough), which is Somerset country. It's a sleepy little village most of the year, but swells to just over a hundred thousand people, enclosed in a huge perimeter fence. Years before this one, it was gathering up to quarter of a million. Every year before, it was tradition for another 150,000 to destroy the fence and enter free. My friend Hugh, is one of those that has help destroy the fence. The last one (in 2000) he said you get yourself to Bristol, then get on buses which would transport you out to the site. The bus he got on, an official asked how many people held a ticket, he said one person held their hand up. Then when you got there, you would follow crowds you know didn't have tickets (the whole bus), and when there was a break in the fence, and enough of you, the masses would charge for the collapsed fence and storm inside, and then the crowd would disperse very quickly. There were men that would stand at these collapsed parts of fence, and demand money off these "non paying" festival goers, and if you told them to get lost, they would (violently) not let you past. He beleived these guys were making hundreds of pounds in about 15 mins, and then you wouldn't see them again. The organisers had to prove they were serious to prevent this happening, so they built this new million pound fence, and for the first time in it's history, they handed over the event to Mean Fiddler to organise the security and running of the festival. If anything went wrong, the local council were going to shut it down and for it to not be held again. Glastonbury is the oldest and largest in the world, so it was vital it worked. The fence was supposed to keep them out, and it did. While on shift we heard about several attempts of people tryng to scale the wall, dig holes etc, but it was virtually impossible. The 3.5 metre high steel fence ran round the entire 4.5 mile perimeter of the 800-acre site, with some places another 2 foot of fencing bent out at a 45 degree angle, it went down one meter deep, and on the inside it had thick 45 degree supports that also went underground, and then finally, another smaller inside fence, which would basically trap them inside 2 fences.

We received our instructions in the post, and they needed us at the festival site 3 days before it opened (friday). The evening we arrived (after a train ride from Paddington to Bristol, then another hour and half on buses to the site) we we were given our instructions where to meet in the morning, for our shifts. It was pretty cool to see it empty, but this was the first time I'd ever been there, so I was unsure of the share size of it, without seeing people there to fill in all the paddocks. That night after pitching our tent, we took a wander around. There were lots of people around, from stall owners, stage crew, security, oxfam volunteers to the litter pickers.

Kate and I were in the A team, which was the BEST shift to be in. Every team was given a 3 x 8 hour shift. So for our roster, we practically had 2 shifts before the festival even started, and the last one, was the morning shift (starting at 6am finishing at 2pm), when not much else was going on. They placed us up at a far flung corner, which was one of the entrances for campervans and caravans. After the first day, when it seemed all of Britain turned up, it was practically dead at our post. The second and hardest shift was the 10pm - 6am, because it was freezing, they forgot to bring us coffee, we didn't have food, there were no heart attack victims to attend, no firearm weilding nuisences to avoid, nothing. Just a few cows. Absolutely NO action what-so-ever to keep us amused. The night just dragged on. So they pulled us out, and got Kate and I to do the coffee-run, over to the other posts where our Oxfam people were "hanging" out. It helped kill the boredom for a while, but you can only deliver so much coffee, and they can only drink so much. We wondered up to one of the main entrance gates at about 4am with our coffee pots and what was quite interesting was that people were still arriving. The site was pretty much full by now, so good luck to them to find something at that hour. Security staff had a few good stories about beatings, and muggings. There was even a rumour someone had died, but that was just a rumour. Amazing how these things spread. They also had a pile of engineering mag lights (the police batton size), that were empty of batteries. They said that if they found these on a person, they had to be confiscated, 'specially if they had no batteries, since these were seen to be weapons. I'm sure there are alot of security people out there somewhere in Scotland (because thats where they all seemed to have come from!) with a nice torch now. That's basically how exciting it got for us, which is fine by me. No nasty public to deal with. Did I mention what a long way it is from one side of the festival to the other, and back again. Just one more shift and the rest of the time was our own - brilliant!

As you may have gathered by now, Kate and I sampled the local brew quite a bit - it was delicious! It was on one of these occasions that we made our split decision to stay the final night when we were suppose to have caught the bus back to Bristol. But we were going to miss Pete Yorn and he was the only artist I really wanted to see. So that was that, we stayed, and I'm so glad we did, because it was probably the best night. After Pete Yorn, we got stuck at the dance tent. The headline that night was Rod Stewart and I wasn't to fussed on seeing him (though in hindsight, and not so many ciders, we probably should have), but oh well, we still had the best time.

Depending on what you were into, the line catered for most tastes. The main stage was more commercial (Coldplay, Stereophonics etc) and I'd actually seen alot of the major acts before, for example, Faithless, Ash, Roger Waters, The Charlatans, BRMC etc. But lucky for my shifts I was able to see the ones I really wanted, like The White Stripes, and The D4. The 'other stage' had more rock acts which were pretty much to my taste. We spent alot of time wandering around, which is really what it's all about. There are some wierd and wonderfull people, sights and sounds, drink and food to die for. They have, theatre, circus acts, comedians, childrens pantomime, street performers, a teepee city, small tent performers that may have only got 2 dozen people watching, yoga and other forms of self healing, wood carvers, indigenous performers, etc. And guess who probably was the most popular performer, Rolf Harris! They estimated he pulled over 80,000 people. I don't care what you say Kate, you just don't do 'Stairway to Heaven' on a wobble board (and yes he did play it - nooooo!).

The whole festival went very smooth for us, and the facilites were great. We were seperate from the public, with secured camping, hot showers and clean toilets. A food tent and bar, another huge tent that was a gathering point, that had DJ's play in at night. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I was standing next to Kate while she was watching Stereophonics, and this guy next to me, was soooo excited that he was seeing them, turned to me and said "I can't believe I'm seeing Stereophonics!". Straight away I knew he was a kiwi. I asked where in NZ he was from, and he blurted out "Devonport, Wynyard Street". Not even Auckland, straight to the x, y co-ordinates! I know NZ is a small place, but this makes it sound ridiculously small, for this is about a hundred yards away from where my mother was born and brought up, where we spent countless school and summer holidays with our grandparents and Aunty Val, around the corner at 5 Garden Tce. Then he went onto say he did a boat-building apprenticeship at the Dockyard, same time I was in the Navy! Small world huh, probably never crossed paths back home, but I had to stand next to him while he and Kate watched Stereophonics!

This last pic was taken the morning we (actually) left. I think we look pretty fresh (maybe a tad pale) considering the night we'd had before. We'd got to bed about 2 or 3 in the morning, had danced all night in the dance tent then went on over to watch 'Lord of the Rings' which as you all should know is about 3 hours long. It seemed most the festival came over and joined us. Perfect ending for a great night.

Glastonbury is something that everyone should do if you happen to be in England around June, it's the oldest and largest festival, in the world. So we felt pretty lucky to have worked it, let alone being there. Everyone treated us fairly well when they realised you were 'crew'. Work were pretty cool as well, when I explained how there was some transport mix up problem!!

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Next up on the agenda was The Reading Festival ("pronounced Red-ding"). Oxfam again were stewarding, and because I'd worked at Glastonbury, they asked us to all come back. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending how you look at it) Kate was away on a 5 week holiday around Europe. She even thought of cutting her trip short to come back for it. This time it was myself, and my two friends Stephen and Mary. They run 2 concurrent festivals over the same bank holiday weekend, one in Reading and the other in Leeds. Reading is only an hour away from London, so it was easy for us to get to. We packed up Marys' car, and arrived the night before it officially opened.

We'd not been told to turn up days before like Glastonbury, so we had to fight for space on the roads, with everyone else. When we arrived at the site, it was already full with punters, and so another tent city had erupted for 3 days of music. Luckily for us, we had seperate and free parking from the 'paying' public, right next to our camping site. We arrived fairly late, there wasn't much room to pitch a tent, but we found 3 nice little spots away from the generators, inbetween 2 marquees and no public foot traffic. The only people allowed to wander around our neck of the woods were oxfam and program sellers. Again we were kept well away from the public, with security, hotshowers AND flushing toilets. A short distance away was our food tent, and private bar, at cost price. This time, we were camped right next to the arena, with a huge fence seperating us from stall holders and then the public. At first I thought this was going to be noisy, but it's amazing what a few bushes on one side, the fence and stall holders on the otherside can do. It was very cosy.

That evening we were told what teams we were in (A and B) and where you will be posted. They try their best to put you in with your friends, and we were in the A team again, in The Evening Sessions tent. And AGAIN it was the best shift. This is when it dawned on me that it wasn't going to be like Glastonbury. Though you shouldn't compare the two, in a way it was better! It worked like this: 'A' team had 2 day and 1 night shift. 'B' Team had 2 night and 1 day shift. The first shift was us on friday, starting at 10am (public are let in at 12pm), finishing at 6pm. Then B team took over, and worked till 2am (but the music stopped at 12am, and security wouldn't let them go for another 2 hours). So because we were working inside the Arena, our working hours were during the performances, and amongst the whole thing!

They got us to turn up 2 hours before they let any of the public enter, so we had free reign of the arena for 2 hours. And to my delight, who happened to be doing their soundcheck? The Strokes!! And to my horror, I didn't have my camera - grrrr! So, I decided I had to overcome my nerves, walked up to the main stage, leaned on the railing, and with no-one else around me I spent the next 36mins 28sec's watching them. It was like they were playing it for me! I had already planned to go to Reading before I knew I would be working it, just for The Strokes. I couldn't have dreamed I would get it so good.

A few words from Stephen: I remember:
crazy young volunteer throwing up whilst being given the safety briefing by the scary scot...
smuggling in bottles of very strong vodka + coke and mary getting her's confiscated...
giggling about your parent's sexual habits in the bar... (I don't remember that! - Stace)
angus having the runs...
Jonesy falling asleep (again)...
Mary making friends with the brummie volunteer...
me making friends with everyone in the dance tent!...
circular moshing in the pouring pouring rain...
cardboard box 'coats' in the pouring pouring rain...
the pouring pouring rain....
Magic IQ reducing oxfam vests...
"no you can't climb up the tower; no not even for just a minute"
"I don't care if security haven't signed us off, everyone else is f*cking off and so am I"
mmm melon.....
does anyone wanna swap so I can see muse/foo fighters/slipknot (oops sorry about the last one)
my feet, legs, arms hurt, I am never doing this stupid stewarding again.  When is glastonbury?...... hehehe

(right) This is our last shift, sunday morning. I remebered my camera, but alas Slipknot weren't doing their warm up - what a shame! It's hard to believe, but this would be filled with 80,000 people in a couple of hours. At times I still expected to be told I couldn't just go anywhere, but we could. Friday was probably the most boring for music to listen to in our tent. It catered for lots of spotty skateboarders who had taken the day off school. Lots of red or green food-dyed hair (which obviously would be rinsed out for school on tuesday), girls with bright ribbons tied to knotty hair, baggy jeans belted just above the knees, and music straight out of Kerrang. There's actually nothing wrong with the music, it just got very boring set after set. Our only respite was when the kids started to climb the massive poles in the centre of the tent. Stephen and I had to squeeze our way into the crowd, (and again, when they saw the jackets the seas parted - amazing). We then spent the last 2 hours at these poles getting people down and to be a deterrent from climbing them again. There was allot of begging to let them climb the poles, some scarey moments of crowd pushing, sweaty smelly bodies, but otherwise that was about as exciting as it got for friday. Stephen and I knew we must be getting old, because the only band we recognised were The Vines.

Saturday evening was our only night shift. Lucky for us we were in the tent, for it poured down. The music had improved as well. This was more like the music 'us older kids' enjoyed. The main drawcard were Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (funny enough Stephen, myself and Mary had already seen them about 4 months before at The Forum in Kentish Town). The crowd were older, which meant no climbing up poles, pushing or generally crowding your personal space. I enjoyed saturday night very much. Even better news was when it was all over, security let us go just after midnight. The night before, the stewards weren't released till 2am - 2 hours after the arena had been shut down, and then do the first shift the next day. Poor B team.