If you have never been to Glastonbury then you probably won't get it - it probably seems like just another music festival full of people trying too hard be 'alternative' in lots of mud. That's pretty much what I thought before I went for the first time. But I was wrong. Rather than try and explain why, I suggest you read Charlie Brooker's piece in today's Guardian here as he does a better job than I could ever do. So, in no particular order, my highlights and lowlights:

Highlights

• Local* band The Epstein getting the crowd on their feet in the Acoustic Tent at noon on Sunday (graveyard spot) with a storming set - despite 98% of the audience having never head of them (they won their slot through an unsigned bands talent competition).
  
• Alex Greenwald covering 'Just' during Mark Ronson's set on the John Peel stage - singing the last line hanging by one hand from a lighting gantry high above the stage (to the great irritation/concern of stage management) before dropping a good fifteen feet to the ground.
  
• Teaching the students next to me the best way** to drink cask strength Ardbeg during Arcade Fire's sumptuous set.
  
• Martha Wainwright in the Park
  
• Catching lots of random acts in the Trash Circus and Cabaret
  
• Eating chips with cheese at Lulu's looking out over the site just before three on Sunday morning before heading back to our tent.
  
• Our new tent keeping us perfectly dry and mud free.
  
• Drinking cask strength Ardbeg on an empty stomach first thing on Sunday morning***.
  

Lowlights

• Drinking cask strength Ardbeg on an empty stomach first thing on Sunday morning.
  
• Using a penknife to dig the ingrained mud out of the cuts in my knee.
  
• Falling over in the mud, pissed, in the dark, somewhere near the Other Stage creating the cuts mentioned in the above point.
  
• The bus from Oxford being one and a half hours late leaving which meant two hours sitting on the pavement at Gloucester Green and having to pitch our tent in the dark at 11pm on Wednesday night.
  
• The bus back to Oxford being more than one and half hours late (finally leaving at around 4.15am) which meant spending more than two hours standing out in the cold pouring rain (having previously got soaked taking down tent). The only help SeeTickets offered was begrudgingly handing out survival blankets around 4am when it became obvious that some people were displaying the early signs of hypothermia (this is not an exaggeration - some people didn't have waterproofs and were getting in a bad way - it was bloody cold last night).

Already looking forward to next year

* They have written a song about Port Meadow, that's how local.
** Take a good big mouthful, gently swill it around your mouth until your tongue goes numb and/or the pain gets too much then gently swallow.
***11.55