today

today i should have been woken by a rather stupidly early alarm after holding down discussions as to when Sel would be round to pick me up

it wouldn't have really mattered as the build up of excitement would have kept me awake and the momentum of the day would have kept me going until i finally retired to our tent in a field in Sommerset amidst the familiar smells of camp fires and bbqs



but not today

sadly, this is the first year that we have taken the decision not to go to Glastonbury



it wasn't a decision any of us took lightly, but after failing to actually get hold of tickets at the very first hurdle we were distraught, but slowly came to accept that perhaps 2011 just wasn't gonna be our year

it all seemed perhaps for the best, me and my girlfriend had bought a house and, useful as the deposit scheme is, it would all come at the wrong time, and as the ticket price has increased eash year, we would have struggled slightly with it leaving our now-joint account

and Sel was planning on doing some travelling this year and would be paying out a lot for that

we then took into account that, since they had split up, a couple of friends that we usually camp with would not be going this year, neither would their friend, and another couple that have joined us the past few years didn't manage to get tickets either

last year's Glastonbury, bathed in glorious sunshine for the whole time was a perfect way to leave it, we'd witnessed floods in our times going and we have had one particular wet and miserable weekend that nearly drove us to the edge of sanity (and led me and my girlfriend to give Benicassim a go)

but it felt like those years that we had stuck with the festival had really paid off, as 2010 saw us camped with more friends than we ever have before, we didn't have to suffer a single drop of rain, and the intense sunshine changed the whole dynamic of the usually soggy Sommerset bash

the temperature was up, high spirits were soaring and every single person battled dehydration as we rejoiced, caught up in the giddy throes of a laid back, serotonin enriched festival that England so rarely witnesses

so we bowed out on a high!


i know coverage shall be hard to avoid, and i've cringed everytime there is even so much of a mention of this year's glasto, completelly racked with jealousy and sentimentality for the good ol' days

i've tried to ignore the innevitable stage line-up reveals, and tried telling myself that Beyonce, Coldplay and U2 won't be much of a line-up anyway

but Glastonbury is so much more than just the headliners, and it is so much more than just the music.


my memories of times, good and the bad, at Glasto are innumerable, but i shall have to leave it to all of this years ticket holders to create their own unique take on Glastonbury 2011 as i sit at a desk typing out this blog, considering putting the tent up in our garden, instead of being sat in a car filled to bursting with all our kit, eagerly awaiting the sight of Stone Henge and the requisite stop-off at Countess Services

crystal clear

so who would have thought that Crystal Castles' influence would be so far (and commercially) reaching...

ok, so perhaps Shakira hasn't been inviting Beyonce round to her house so they could talk about boys, watch Pretty Woman and devise their own routines to Crystal Castles' songs as they dance around her bedroom with the album on repeat

but it's a possibility is all i'm saying

and i say this because after hearing Shakira's new track a few times as it picks up a bit of radio play i realised that perhaps the reason for my strange endearment to it was the fact that it reminded me of Crimewave, admittedly a Crimewave that scrubs up well and has cleaned under it's fingernails and quit smoking and hanging around in squats



ok, that was Crimewave, now feast your eyes (and ears, obviously) on She Wolf, featuring Shakira Shakira dancing like a mad woman in what could possibly be the inside of a major artery, doing a, erm, 'sexy' dance in a cage and rounding the whole thing off by dancing like a loon on the roof of a building...