This weekend I met a wizard, and he granted me a wish.

If you’re wondering how I knew he was a wizard.. he had a big beard.  And was sat in a boat.  In a tree.  With a fishing rod.  Attached to a basket full of wishes.  One of which was mine.  See! a wizard..

Every so often he’d reel in the basket, and grant some of the wishes by reading them out over his megaphone.  Mine was one of the ones he granted.



An unusual occurrence you might think, but not all *that* unusual.. in Glastonbury.

For yes, this weekend I was in Glastonbury, with the wind, the rain, the mud, and my first experience of festival toilets.  And I had SUCH a great time!

Saw loads of cool bands, comedians, movies, the wizard, and a magician.  Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen, The Kooks, The Killers, Bjork, Mika, The Who, KT Tunstel, The Frutelis, Babyshambles, The Kaiser Chiefs, The Gossip, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Shirley Bassey, Chas n Dave.. plus various others I wandered past and caught a quick song or two.

but some of the highlights were the stuff away from the main stages:

The Tent

Emma was kind enough to let me share her tent, so I didn’t have to pitch my own.  Which was handy because by the time I arrived all the good spots had gone.  Also I don’t own a tent.

At Glastonbury the “good spots” are the ones near the top of a hill.. any hill.  The tents at the bottom *will* get bogged down in mud and water.

Our camp had one unexpected side effect tho.. being on a slope, with a shiny sleeping bag, meant that every morning I’d wake up on the opposite side to where I went to sleep.  Most nights I’d wake up 3 or 4 times in the night, clamber my way back to the top of the tent, only to slide back down again when I fell asleep!

the weather

I was hoping for sun.  My plan for Glastonbury (my first festival) was to listen to the bands playing whilst i lay on the grass, towards the back of the crowds.  What happened instead was that I listened to the bands playing, whilst I stood in the mud, and the rain, and the wind.

Mud does seem to be the one thing everybody mentions first about Glastonbury, whether you were there, or just saw the pictures in the media.  And it was EVERYWHERE.

Two weeks before I went, I’d started keeping a close eye on the weather reports.  They all showed rain, and lots of it.  But that was fine, everybody knows how difficult it is to predict the weather two weeks in advance, or 10 days in advance, or a week, or 3 days, or..  It was when the forecast on the morning of the festival itself still showed rain that I finally accepted the mud warnings:



Personally, I think they underestimated, and the 4th image would be more accurate.  But.. it really didn’t matter.  The only real difference the mud made was that you had to wear wellies the whole time.  And you got dirtier.  And it took longer to walk places.  And you had to avoid the occasional mudswimmer wanting to hug you.



The mud did however provide me with one of the highlights of my Friday night..

the mud hole

By friday night the mud in most places was a good 8 inches deep, in some places the added water had made mud pools.

As I was wandering from the main stage towards the bar, I noticed a group of about 30 people stood in a semi circle around one such mud pool.  There was an obvious sense of excitement, so I went to look.

It turned out that in the middle of the mud pool, was a small pothole, about a foot deeper than the rest of the floor.  The semicircle of people were watching as unsuspecting innocents walked through the mudpool, tension grew as they neared the hole.. then erupted into either cheering if they fell in, or booing if they didn’t.

I saw my first person go down, loose his footing, and fall headlong into the mud.. and i was hooked.

The hole wasn’t very wide, so lots of people walked across the spot without falling in, which made it all the more exciting when somebody did.

I kept promising myself the next fall would be my last, then I’d go see a band or something.. but it was just too entertaining to walk away, I just wanted that one last fix…

After about the half hour, I was talking to the guys stood next to me, and we agreed what we really needed was a short person, wearing white, and carrying food or drink, the perfect victim.  And within a minute our wishes were answered, she fell in waist deep, mud splashed all over her white clothes, her tray of chips scattered all around and slowly sinking into the pool.  I decided it wouldn’t get better than that, and went to see Bjork.

I did feel slightly guilty later in the festival when Tammie texted me and mentioned 1000 people had suffered broken ankles and other injuries in the mud.. only *slightly* guilty tho!

my lack of moustache
After Bjork, I met up with my mate Paul from work.  We had a few drinks, went for a wander, and ended up in Trash City, described as:

Trash City is an intergalactic red-light district, straight from the pages of a 2000AD comic, where space pirates, bootleggers, illegal aliens and all the scum of the universe can come to party the night away.

I loved it there!  We queued for 15 minutes to get into a 1970’s New York nightclub, only to be turned away at the door because none of us had moustaches, which seemed such a great reason to be turned away that we didn’t mind.

So we went next door to a weird eastern european bar which was like something out of a horror movie, and then to a crazy Russian disco, both of which were weird but fantastic.

The next night, after my humiliation at the ‘World Record Attempt’ (see below), I found myself back in Trash City.  My mobile battery had long run out by now, so had no idea where anyone was, so was wandering round on my own.  I’d heard a rumour of somewhere I could source a fake moustache, so queued again for the 70’s nightclub.  While there I got talking to the group stood behind me in the queue, we were talking about the need for moustaches, and I offered to draw some on them using a permanent marker that I was still carrying after Bonnie lent it me at Decology.

See my handiwork here:


It didn’t occur to me at the time that.. as I learned at Decology when Nina wrote on my arm with the pen.. it takes a *lot* of scrubbing and a few days to get rid of this pen.. and that was in my house with ready access to hot shower, bath and lots of soap.. not at Glastonbury.. where you’re in a tent in a field with minimal supplies, and no running water.  Also it’s a lot easier to vigorously scrub an arm that your face..

I didn’t see her again after that night, altho I did keep a close eye out for a girl wearing permanent markered facial hair for the rest of the festival.. you’d think she’d be easy to spot!

I do know she was back at work in her office on Tuesday.. I hope she got most of it off!

the world record attempt

This is the bit of every blog where you get to share in my humiliation..

On Saturday night, following a secret Madness gig, match.com were going for a world record attempt for the worlds biggest kiss (or some similar wording), they wanted to get 30,000 people to kiss the person stood next to them.

As a (pending) world record holder already for being part of the worlds biggest ghost hunt, I decided that being in the Guiness Book of Records once is a good thing, twice would be better.

I left the Killers a few minutes before they finished and rushed (took 45 minutes) to the Lost Vagueness area to see Madness, followed by the record attempt. I missed Madness by 2 minutes, muttered a bit, and decided to leave.

As I walked past one of the clubs, they announced it was time for the attempt, so I wandered in, everyone was pairing up, a few singletons left over so I went to speak to a girl on her own. She saw me and came over to me. Countdown from 10 began.. she said “so we just kiss for 10 seconds?”, i nodded, the countdown continued.. at about 3, another girl walked over and started kissing the girl i was stood with… so for the world record attempt there was a room full of kissing people.. and me stood there in the middle of it all on my own just hoping for the mud to open and swallow me up..

I wouldn’t have mentioned this.. except that it seems hearing about my humiliation is the only reason some people come here!

bill bailey

On Sunday night after all the headline bands had finished, there was one show left, over on one of the circus stages Bill Bailey was doing a stand up routine.  It took a long time to get there, I got very muddy and very wet.. but he was ace!

Glastonbury was my first festival, I wasn’t sure what to expect, and was dreading the predicted mud.  Turns out, it was absolutely, positively fan..tastic!  It had all the things I like about cons, but with 180,000 people, loads and loads of top bands, a small towns worth of shops, stalls, takeaways, constant entertainment, loads of weird things to see and do, an oxygen bar, sensory deprivation room, massages, buffalo chili, crocodile, kangaroo and ostrich burgers, and of course, a wizard!

There is a photo that I think perfectly sums up a group of my friends, it’s from when we went to Rockworld for my birthday last year, and it’s basically us slumped on the floor in a drunken state.

I liked it so much, I commissioned Scruff, of off planetscruff.com to do it as a cartoon.

I love it!

Since i decided to lose some weight, I’ve drank nothing but vodka & diet coke.

Trouble is, vodka effects me differently from beer in two main ways

1) less calories, smaller belt size

2) it entirely wipes my memory of the night.

For the past 3 months, I pretty much don’t remember *anything* from 9pm onwards on a weekend (and sometimes weekday).

I used to dread looking at my phone in the mornings, and seeing texts I’d sent whilst drunk.  Now I pretty much rely on them to try to reconstruct my night.

Last week, after drinking in my local, I went back to a houseparty.  The only reason I know this is because in the morning I found a text I sent at 5am to a friend saying:

“Ok, am entirely lost on an estate somewhere, to get back to Swinton do I head towards or away from the sun?”

This weekend i was in Blackpool for a con, again don’t remember pretty much anything of Thursday to Sunday nights.  Which I don’t mind cos I seem to have been having fun, (other than getting banned from the con), but i *know* i’ve had conversations with people that I’d really like to remember.

It occured to me on saturday that a good thing to do, would be to use my mobile to record a video diary every hour or so, just saying what i’ve been doing for the past hour.  Then in the morning I could properly reconstruct my evening.  I also thought it would probably make funny enough viewing to post up here.  Unfortunately I got drunk and entirely forgot to do it every night since then.  It’s something I do intend to do, when I remember!

As usual was a good weekend, we went 80’s style again on the friday, and superheroes on the saturday.  Although am starting to think my Clark kent costume is a bit of a cop out!

pics can be found here

Am now busy scouring other peoples websites for additional photos of me I can use to reconstruct my weekend!

If you’re gonna get sacked, you might as well do it in style..

(the vagueness of this post is for ongoing legal reasons, and the need not to have anything too specific which could be googled by the people involved!)

A good friend of mine worked in a call centre of a well known satellite tv company.  After a particularly rude customer was.. particularly rude, my friend edited the computer system to change the customers first name to ‘Spaghetti’.

This wasn’t noticed until the customer received her copy of the company’s monthly magazine, address to ‘Mrs Spaghetti ******’.

My friend was sacked for gross misconduct, the customer on the other hand was sent cards, flowers, chocolate, and 2 years of free satellite tv!

due respect to [my friend] for a fantastically frivolous way to lose a job!

If only you’d changed my name before you left

I was staying at J’s house just before Christmas, we all had the usual heavily drunken night.

Woke up the next morning, all the windows and doors are covered so it was the kind of darkness that could have been 6am, or could have been 2pm.

Then a voice in my head said “It doesn’t even matter about that.  In my opinion it’s 8:39”

I thought that was a pretty strange thing for a voice in my head to say, but it was specific enough that it made me wonder.

J has 2 clocks in the room, both of which long ago stopped working.

So I dug out my phone and checked the time.

It was 8:38

A little weird, but disappointing, to be so close but still wrong. 

Just to be sure though.. I dialed the speaking clock

“At the third stroke the time will be eight, thirty nine and fifty seconds” ... !

There’s a voice in my head, and it knows stuff!