Glastonbury crowds defy mud
Updated on 23 June 2007
There's music - and massive amounts of mud. Torrential rain has again turned the fields of Glastonbury into the now-traditional sea of churned dirt.
But the conditions have failed to dampen the spirits of more than 170,000 festival-goers, who've spent the day enjoying performances from acts such as Lily Allen and Dirty Pretty Things.
Iggy Pop is playing Glastonbury tonight. Perhaps, it should've been Muddy Waters, but he's long, long dead. The fields of Worthy Farm were spread out this morning in a passable imitation of the Mississippi Delta. It's been like that for 24 hours or more.
Festival-goers have lived through it all before - mud and rain, it's traditional at Glastonbury. Remember it rained at Woodstock too, all those years ago.
It rained - more heavily - during the last festival in 2005. And they improved the drainage system so it wouldn't flood in quite the same way.
The mud is still the colour and consistency as the curry sauce served on the chips here - but it's merely ankle deep. In good old English boating weather, the Glastonbury crowd - 170,000 strong - just muck in.
On a brighter, commercial note, the trade in Wellington boots has been brisk. Millets - with two shops on site - reports that business is up 50 per cent. They've sold some 5,000 pairs of Wellies and hundreds of tents and waterproofs.
Later tonight, the headline act is The Killers, who come from the desert - Las Vegas, Nevada. What are they going to make of Glastonbury?
The singer Will Young, who's hanging out from the comfort of a Winnebago, has reached a startling conclusion - June is the wrong month for Glastonbury. Perhaps it should be moved to August, or something?
