CLUB . . . your high NRG life mentor for a fitter happier you ( est. 2003 )

The music believe or not is coming from a human beatboxer.

Now I am less tired, and at work, here is a more in depth report on the Glastonbury 2010 festival.

In order to beat the queues we decided to leave at 5AM so at 5AM I picked up Rich and Gary and we set off. We arrived in the Glastonbury vicinity at 7:30AM and then hit the queue, we queued for several hours slowly inching forwards through outlying towns and villages.

Eventually we arrived, treked several miles from the car park onto the site and found a really nice camping area amongst a lot of OAPs. I had bought a Gazebo from Argos to provide some shelter in the rain but there had been a mess up in their warehouse and rather than the 1.5M x 1.5M gazebo I had ordered I got a 3M x 3M one instead. It was pretty huge and came in very useful during the hot mornings.

I've no recollection at all of what we did in the evening on Wednesday, I think we wandered about for a bit and had an early night.

Thursday, it was too hot to sleep in the tent after 8AM so we arose early and proceeded to walk almost completely around the site visiting all the new(ish) areas and zones they've bolted on around the place and spending a lot of time by the Brothers Cider Bar at the Jazz World Stage. We watched some rehearsals for some kind of outdoor theatre/circus show and tried to get close to a stage spurting huge plumes of fire from various large orifices. Unfortunately we were beaten back by the crowds.

Friday, up early again Rich & Gary went off to watch Rolf Harris on the main stage whilst I went to watch The Magic Numbers on the other stage a little while later. Having set up my chair in a relatively spacious area near my appointed rendevous with the other two I was a little surprised at the huge amount of people who suddenly appeared in time for the Stranglers. They began with Waltz In Black and then Nice And Sleazy, they were very good.

After the Stranglers we commenced wandering about looking for somewhere to escape the cruel heat of the Sun. We ended up at "Bills Big Round Up" with Billy Bragg in the Leftfield. In his spare time Bill sends guitars out to prisons so the thieving prison scum can learn to play them. He had 3 former prisoners with him on the stage and they basically each took turns to tell us a little about themselves and then sing a song. Luckily this meant Bill stayed largely silent himself. In general the prisoners were pretty good, the crowds favourite song seemed to be one which went into quite a lot of graphic details and was entitled "I'd like to fuck your Girlfriend".

After Bill had finished we headed off the the theatre and caberet areas, there we found a nice empty tent where we were enthralled by a piece of theatrical art involving a bed, some puppets, a large blanket monster and a girl who kept climbing out of the bed and walking about as if in a trance. There was no speaking, or any indication of what was going on but the girl was quite fit so it was worth watching just to see if she'd appear again. Following that we watched a representation of mental illness using the medium of dance. We know that's what it was about because it said so in a review we read the following day. At the time I thought it was about mice because the dancers had a set of mouse ears they were swapping with each other and richard thought it was about fox hunting because the ginger dancer was a pretty foxy chick.

After this brief exposure to culture we stayed on to watch Norman Lovett who is otherwise known as Holly off of Red Dwarf. At this point the tent was more or less empty except for some people who had brought in crying babies, much to Normans annoyance, or people wandering through on their way to somewhere else, much to Normans annoyance, or just waiting until they had to go and watch something else, much to Normans annoyance. Normans act seems to revolve around a collection of plastic bags and shower caps he has collected over the years. He demonstrated how if you drop them they gently float back down to earth - he finds this relaxing. Then we watched an amusing plate spinning man who Rich says he has seen in the British Oak.

We then went off to the little fields around Shangri-La and spent the rest of the evening there. I twisted my ankle and was unable to walk properly. We watched the Trans Global Underground who were very good, DJ Beenieman on the huge fire breathing ( WOW! ) stage. The flames that shoot out are amazingly impressive and DJ Beenieman was good too. After this we wandered around Shangri-La, which is a huge venue but didn't really stop for very long to watch anything. Then we went to The Park but everywhere was way too packed ( probably because Thom Yorke had been there earlier and people hadn't left ).

Saturday, another scorcher. We started off by seeing the Phenomenal Handclap Band on the Jazz Stage who were very good, a very sunshiny sounding lot. I had got bored of wine after the 3 litres of I had drunk on the previous day so brought out some Rum to drink instead. I had a quick sip of it neat to start with and decided it would be best enjoyed on ice with a mixer rather than neat. This would have to wait until later on in the day.

Next we ended up in the comedy tent watching Marcus Brigstock and some others basically reading out extracts from the days papers in an entertaining manner. Marcus was so hot he had taken his shirt off which led, during the closing questions from the audience section to the very worrying possibility that the entire audience might get naked. When asked why the other panelists weren't going to take their shirts off/get naked one of them said he'd be perfectly happy to take his clothes of at the same rate as the questioner. Of course he thought no one would take him up on that, for around 2 seconds until someone did get all their kit of and stand up and wave to him. Luckily time ran out before anyone could progress the idea of everyone getting naked so when the next act came on they would be derailed by the awful spectacle awaiting them.

We arrived on the Pyramid stage in time to watch most of Seasick Steve who was, as usual, very good. I discovered that the 24 hour shops sell cups of ice so was enjoying a nice refreshing rum and coke. We hung around for the next band - The Dead Weather who were quite good in a sort of you don't have to pay much attention to them sort of a way. A man came and sold us some Vodka jellies. I wanted to see Jerry Dammers Special AKA Ska/Jazz orchestra so, despite some protests from the others that they wanted to watch Shakira instead we headed off the the Jazz World stage via a recuperating rest near the Acoustic tent. I bought some more ice and my hand must have slipped whilst pouring the rum because there wasn't an awful lot of room for any coke in the glass afterwards. I thought it still tasted mainly of coke, the others didn't agree and had to be forced into drinking any at all.

Because I had confused Jerry Dammers with Nevile Staples the Ska was more Jazzy than Ska'ie. It started off impressively enough with a massive orchestra pumping out a ska beat but unfortunatley it didn't really take off much from there or speed up at all so when Gary & Rich went to watch the football in a nearby bar it wasn't too much longer before I gave up and decided to go and watch Dreadzone instead.

Gary & Rich preferred to watch the football so I arranged to meet them later and went to watch Dreadzone. Dreadzone appear to have been a bit busy lately and written a load of new songs, they were very good and I had as much of a dance as I could burdened as I was with a camping chair and numerous bottles of Rum and Coke to contend with.

Immediatley after Dreadzone I met up with Rich who said he'd just bumped into Hellbastard. We dashed off to find Hellbastard who was himself dashing off to meet his friends at the Pet Shop Boys. We decided to watch the Pet Shop Boys too and met up with a girl and some other people Hellbastard was with. At this point I'd more or less ran out of coke so the remainder of the Rum formed a tasty 70% rum 30% coke mixture. Once again this tasted fine to me.

The Pet Shop boys were really good, amazingly. They appear to have reworked their extensive back catalouge into extended dance floor stompers. Everyone was singing along to almost everything. It's possible that accepting goes on the cigarettes Hellbastard was smoking had something, a lot, to do with this perception. After this we said our goodbyes to Hellbastard and his friends and headed off to the Park where there was some chance of seeing a bass extravaganza with Peter Hook, Jah Wobble and someone else. We must have missed that so instead we went to the Silent Disco which was enormous fun. By the time we left there it was late so we went to the top of the hill from where there is an amazing view of the whole festival and had a sit down before heading off home and to bed.

Sunday, blazingly hot. I wasn't feeling all that well and for some reason had a sore throat. Gary went off to wait by the football screen to assure himself of a decent viewing position. Rich & I went off for a wander to the dance area. We aimlessly wandered about there and then decieded to watch Ade Edmonson and his band at the other end of the site. Whilst walking past the pyramid stage Rich disappeared completely so I continued alone to the Avalon stage. As I walked the sun beat down mercilessly and I was feeling less and less well. When I arrived the tent was packed with people watching the preceding act and there was no shade to speak of whatsoever. I spent half an hour trying to laze about but was really feeling dodgy so I decided to go back to the tent and get some rest under the gazebo.

From the tent I could hear the football, it didn't seem to be going all that well. Rich turned up at some point and then later on Gary. We headed off to watch Jack Johnson ( Gary wanted to watch him ) who was really unutterably dull. Then we got a drink, and I started to feel better, and went to meet Hellbastard in time for Faithless. We were quite late at the meeting point and he wasn't there so we navigated our way through the crowd for a bit to get in a good position. Faithless were quite good but I think it wasn't really dark enough, I wasn't really drunk enough and the stage wasn't really loud enough where we were standing to really kick off properly.

Then we wandered for a bit, saw the end of the Alabama 3 and went back to the dance area where we wandered randomly between the stages. Apparently this behaviour is suspicious because we were jumped by a dozen security guards convinced we were king pin drug dealers. Having convinced them this wasn't the case we watched the end of Ash in the John Peel tent and then went home to bed.

Monday. Another hot day. I felt absolutely awful and had a cold as well as a sore throat. We packed up and got to the car park for around 9:30 where there were no queues whatsover and we drove straight out and back to Birmingham where I nearly killed us all and several other innocent motorists by accidentally jumping the red light at the M5 exit roundabout in Rubery. Luckily the other drivers passed this impromptu alertness and brake test and avoided hitting me. We got home, I went to bed. Got up again briefly to go round my parents for some tea and then back to bed again.

Today I don't feel too bad, other than not wanting to be at work that much.

The word on the street seems to be that the LCD Soundsystem were amazing.

I can't believe Joe made me miss Shakira for this:

I am getting out the house quickly before anyone at work decides to phone about all the horrible things that look like they're happening ( judging by the panicing e-mails I can read on their webmail ).

I think first of all I am going to have a haircut and then I am going to Go Outdoors ! in Coventry to buy a sleeping bag, yet another air bed, and a comfortable portable camping chair, and a gazebo.

What would you prefer to listen to on the journey down the hippy town ?

There is a choice between:

Scooter
Status Quo
Scooter vs Status Quo
Radiohead
Or Coldplay

This is great. Scooter come across a mad scientist who has created a woman. They shout a lot. The scientist agrees to minuatrise them and inject them into the woman where they shout a lot. Then they come back and go back to normal size and shout a lot.

BBC weather forecast extends to Thursday now. Wed & Thur bright, sunny, 23 degrees no rain. Hurrah !