Ah, Glastonbury. Have I ever been to a sunny and dry Glastonbury? I don’t think I have. The 1997 event was a mudbath – but 1998 wanted to double down and become even more of a swamp. One of our group, Craig, and his girlfriend vanished between Friday morning and Saturday morning – and we only found out after the festival that Craig had been evactuated from the site and taken home due to hypothermia! The funny thing is, neither ’97 or ’98 were the wettest Glastonbury’s I ever went to. I guess the moral of this is don’t go to Glastonbury if I’m going if you want some dry land and sun!

By Friday morning Delphine, Gideon, Fish and I had already been on site for a couple of days, having travelled down and pitched our tents on Wednesday. Wednesday had been fine – dry and sunny. Even Thursday had been really nice for the most part – although I have a picture of me walking past the Tee-pee field and the sky has turned BLACK – which was a hint of things to come.

The weather was deteriorating quickly and the heaven opened up as Thursday drew on, turning the green fields to mud, and flooding a number of areas. This was still as many people were arriving and pitching their tents, and before the first band had played their first note.

Friday morning came and the tent we’d pitched for Craig and Bridgette had their bags in, so they’d managed to arrive sometime over night. I’m not 100% sure I actually saw either of them at all at the festival – just their bags appeared and then they were never seen again until we got home on Monday, having been evacuated by St Johns Ambulance at somepoint on the Friday.

Our musical journey started on Friday morning on The Other Stage sometime after 10am with 60’s/70’s rock influenced Swedish band Soundtrack of Our Lives. They were pretty good. We then traipsed through the mud between stages to the main Pyramid stage to see My Life Story. I’d seen them in 1996 at Camden Palace and they weren’t really my thing, but Delphine liked them and had never seen them so we gradually sunk in the mud to watch them. They were, once again, pretty good live – but still just not really for me.

The next band we saw were an Irish glam-rock band called The Young Offenders, back on The Other Stage. I can’t remember much about them though. As the rain came down we retreated to one of the tents for shelter and caught the experimental Laika, with their blend of trip-hop, electronica, dub and jazz. I doubt I would have caught them if it hadn’t been for the rain but I really liked them.

We braved the rain again to get back to The Other Stage to see Rialto, an English indie/rock band that I quite liked. Their 1997 single “Monday Morning 5.19” had certainly been played quite a bit at home and they were one of the bands I really fancied catching.

It was back undercover, this time in the Dance Tent, for our next act – Fluke. I’d seen Fluke the previous summer at the V97 festival and they’d really impressed me so i was eager to see them again The rain had gradually been dampening my spirits throughout the day, but Fluke put on a good set.

The Lightning Seeds were really a warm-up act on the Pyramid Stage. Not for the next band (The Foo Fighters) but for the final Group G of the 1998 World Cup, taking place in France. England had won their first group match against Tunisia 1-0, but then lost 2-1 against Romania. Their final group game was against Columbia and it was a must-win match, with the winner joining Romania through to the knock out next stage of the tournament. To say that *a lot* of the festival seemed apprehensive about this match was an understatement. One of the fields had been commandered to show the match live and, I believe, one of the stages also ended up showing it on the big screens due to the demand. I think I read somewhere an interview after the festival by The Foo Fighters saying they hadn’t realised how the big a deal the World Cup was in England when they agreed to play their set at the same time as the match.

The Lightning Seeds aren’t really a band I like much. I find them a little dull, and certainly watching them in a torrential downpour wasn’t really improving my mood. They wrapped their set with a rousing rendition of “Three Lions” (which had been the official England Team song at the 96 Euro’s) and everyone then deserted the main stage in search of watching the footie.

I ended up watching it, in the pouring rain, in one of the fields on a big screen with several thousand others. It wasn’t only a do-or-die match for England’s World Cup campaign, but also a do-or-die game for the mood of the festival. The weather had been so bad that if we lost the match I really do think a lot of people would have just packed up and gone home. As it was England managed to win 2-0 and you could physically feel the change in atmosphere among the crowd. People were so high and happy and what had been a miserable and sodden mudbath became a joyous and celebratory mudbath! Never underestimate the benefits of relief ;p

I had arranged to meet Delphine at one of the tents (the days before mobile phones were everywhere) – where I think Portishead were supposed to be playing. But the days schedule had been totally thrown out of whack due to the weather that I don’t think they came until hours later. I did manage to find her and we caught a surprise set by The Jesus & Mary Chain which wrapped up our first day of music.