Camp Triangle

Post by: Roy
First year at Camp Triangle:

• Tuesday 4 Oct 2016 (8 years ago )

In 2007 I finally succumbed to years of nagging by my son Michael.  He thought that as I’d played guitar in rock bands for years and loved music off all sorts that I’d love Glastonbury; I took a lot of convincing.

Royal Albert Hall, Festival Hall, Wembley, The O2, Bush Hall, Dingwalls, Union Chapel, Half Moon, etc were more my kind of thing.  I’d never been to a festival anywhere, and I wasn’t sure that the wet and muddy Somerset fields would be a natural fit.  I was wrong! The first experience of pretty much anything is usually well remembered and that first Glasto was no exception.

Michael had managed to get us coach tickets, leaving from Basingstoke, about a half hour drive from my home in Farnborough.  When I saw what Michael was taking I thought he’d completely lost the plot and it seemed impossible to carry all the stuff, including a plastic sledge and a washing machine drum.  I tried, unsuccessfully, to get him to leave some of this stuff behind but he was adamant, and I was amazed that we managed to get it all into the luggage hold of the coach.  The sledge was a disaster but the fire drum was an inspiration, then and for future years.

Arriving at Glasto I would have been happy to camp anywhere, already pretty tired from carrying all my stuff, but Michael insisted that we head to Kidney Mead where he was meeting some people he had met in an on-line forum.  Camp Funk.

After walking for what seemed like hours Michael went on ahead to find the place while I sat on the grass and waited...and waited....till he finally arrived back to collect me and we made it to the camp site. Lots of people were there already and they all seemed very friendly and helpful.  I hadn’t camped since Michael was a toddler but many years in the military meant that I was pretty practical and I’d bought myself a pull-up tent, so it all seemed pretty easy to me.

My tent went up in seconds, to the amazement of others in the group who were still wrestling with theirs.  Little did we know that the following afternoon, in gale-force winds and torrential rain, my collapsible tent would do just that, collapse!  The poles had given way at the joins and everything folded inwards, with me inside. When I managed to extricate myself (ignoring the obvious laughs and comments) I had to go and buy another tent that took longer to erect but at least lasted the rest of the festival.

At my first Cider Bus meet, organised by Lucy (Luscious Lucy as she was then), we were all given sticky labels with our names in felt tip.  Mine said “Rubber Duckie’s Dad” as that was Michael’s name on the web chat room.  I was deeply honoured the following year to have qualified for a label with my own name on, maybe I’d passed a test.

As everyone who was there that year knows, it rained a lot and the mud was like nothing I could have imagined, in places welly-sucking gloop, in others, more like a smelly brown custard consistency.  The fire drum really came into its own in the evenings, there was lots of free firewood and we found all sorts of random people poping under our gazebos to admire (and get warm from) the fire.  One visitor (if I have the year right) was a very young Nyika who was working at the festival, looked about 12 years old, and very kindly brought biscuits to share with us while sheltering from the rain.

In spite of the rain and mud I found that I loved the place, and I spent lots of time at Acoustic and exploring Theatre & Circus, Avalon and other smaller stages, as well as Pyramid, Jazz/Word and Other.  It was like a wonderland, not just musically but in the wider sense of the word; everything was so vibrant and larger-than-life yet always approachable. Mr Eavis get’s it right.

From that first festival I’ve now done:

• 9 Glasto
• 7 Bearded Theory
• 7 Beautiful Days (with my daughter)
• 1 Alchemy

...and played (a less than starring part) in two Glastonbury World Cups where we were cruelly robbed on both occasions.

Finally, just a few words of gratitude for all the lovely people that I’ve met during my nine visits to Glastonbury.  I’ve always been made to feel very welcome despite being a different generation to pretty much everyone so my heartfelt thanks to one and all.