Glastonbury – The Art of Camping

The Art of Camping tour

To launch my camping book The Art of Camping: The History and Practice of Sleeping Under the Stars, I will be performing at various festivals throughout the summer.

The talk will range from obscure camping cults to the best way to make pancakes over a campfire. There will be diversions on camping etiquette and the role of camping in alternative culture. We will address what to do in case of rain, sex, or loss of faith.

Campers around campfire illustration from The Art of Camping — Illustration by Paul Blow

I will be compering and reading at The Free University of Glastonbury in The Park area of the festival, and extolling why we must camp at Port Eliot and Camp Bestival. In August, I am doing a joint event at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with Tom Hodgkinson (How To Be Idle and the forthcoming Brave Old World: A Practical Guide to Husbandry, or the Fine Art of Looking After Yourself). I will add events as and when they are confirmed to the feed below. And if any festival organisers or literary campsite owners want to bring my rolling camping talk to their event or site, you can contact me via the comments section of any post, the About page at the bottom of this page or twitter on @MDeAbaitua.

Glastonbury – 10 Things to Consider When Taking Children to a Festival

Glastonbury is many things to many different people. To the hippies in the Green Field, Glastonbury is a space for spiritual enlightenment. To the kids moshing around in the mud before the Pyramid stage, Glastonbury is a chance to get wasted and listen to bands. To my son, Glastonbury is a tractor-and-lorry convention. To me, Glastonbury is a challenge to my Dadness. The logistics involved in getting in and out of the festival with the minimum of delay, camping with three young children, and coming out of the experience with all limbs and offspring intact requires the kind of fortitude, foresight, judgement and brute physical strength that constitute Dadness.

I have camped at Glastonbury for two consecutive years with my three children and will do so again this year. I have some insights to share with other Dads who might consider attempting the festival with their children:

1) Camp high
As a performer, I camped backstage at the Park, on a high pitch overlooking the festival, close to the fence. The effort involved in hauling the gear uphill was offset by the relative peace and quiet of the spot throughout the festival. If I was going there as a common-or-garden Dad punter, I would aim far away and high.

2) Take a wheelbarrow or trolley
Hauling your gear from car to site is a difficult and unpleasant experience if you’ve got a big family tent and all the extra beds and sleeping bags that come with children. Glastonbury has metal reinforced pathways that are wide and hard enough to take a large trolley or barrow. The walk from car to campsite for me was about half an hour. I had to make two trips. I would struggle to carry my tent more than ten minutes on my back. Keep a tight rein on the amount of gear you are taking. Take some rope to secure your gear to the barrow and some string to tie all the sleeping bags and mats together.

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3) Cooking
I never used to cook at festivals but these days finances mean we have to bring all our food with us. So what to take? We live off a big home-cooked chicken pie and sausage rolls, large jars of homemade pesto with bags of pasta, and a bag of croissants. You can’t wash up easily at Glastonbury, and you don’t want to lug a coolbox there, so I avoid meat and food that requires anything more complex than heating a pan of water. Don’t stop off at Tescos on your way there, as then you will have to carry thin shopping bags across the festival.

4) Kids’ field
Bugaboo hell. None of the parents we travelled with enjoyed the kids’ field. First of all, who wants to sit around watching their children do stuff? Secondly, children aren’t going to learn to juggle in the hour or two you spend there. I’d rather see family experiences more integrated with the festival such as…

5) House of Fairy Tales
Established by artists Deborah Curtis and Gavin Turk, the House of Fairy Tales is “a child-centred artist led project which draws on an extensive team of artists, performers, writers, educationalists, designers, musicians, film makers, dreamers and philosophers to create magical, parallel worlds where learning is play and play is directed learning.” The people at the House of Fairy Tales are one highlight of Glastonbury and my three children get thoroughly involved. Last year Doctor Who himself, Matt Smith, dropped by and was photographed with all the kids.The House of Fairy Tales is located in the Park area.

6) The Park
Established by Emily Eavis in 2007, the Park is ideal for Dads. The bar is not so packed, the stage is full of interesting and alternative acts (all the bands I want to see – in Glastonbury 2011, that’s James Blake, Tame Impala, John Grant), and you are well out of the maddening throng. Also the Free University of Glastonbury is in the Park area – I am talking about the history and meaning of camping there on Sunday at 1pm.

7) But what about the headliners?
I didn’t see any of the big acts. I’ve been in those crowds without kids. I couldn’t face them with small children. One of the consequences of taking kids with you is that you are excused Must Seeing the Must See events. I wouldn’t cross the road to watch Bono sing, never mind jostle for position amongst thousands of other people. Free yourself of festival fret – that feeling that something better is happening somewhere else and you must trudge off to see it.

8) You sound like a really dull man
I am speaking only from the Dad perspective here, from that portion within me concerned with the logistics of shifting a family around. But it’s a fair comment.

9) When should Dads arrive at Glastonbury, and when should they leave?
Judging arrival and departure is the real trick. Over the last few years, because of the recession and the poor rate of exchange with the euro, many people take Glastonbury as their holiday. This skews the usual traffic patterns, with lots of people arriving on a Wednesday. I aim to arrive around 11am on Thursday morning. and have never any problems and barely any delay. We leave on Sunday about 4-5pm and likewise there is no queue. To put that in perspective, my mate spent six hours in the car park on Monday. Six hours! Fortunately he did not have his children with him

10) Buggy?
We went for two backpacks in which to haul the children around, each packed up with wet and hot weather gear. Just don’t take a buggy that runs on casters, as I saw a lot of Dads digging the mud and grass out from the wheels. My reasoning is that a buggy will struggle in the really deep Glasto mud. The last two years have been dry. But it won’t always be so.

Why Glastonbury is like Star Wars

Why do people tell stories about Glastonbury but not about The Big Chill?

The Big Chill lacks drama. As the name suggests, it has no narrative arc.

The layout of the Glastonbury camp is a narrative arc. If the festival-goer travels that arc, they will fashion their own individual myth. Miss out on one of these plot points, one of these locations in the camp, and they will not have a Glastonbury story.

The myth of the festival follows the hero’s journey as set down by Joseph Campbell in his study of comparative mythology, the Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Campbell’s ur-plot was famously used by George Lucas for Star Wars and has since acted as scaffold for a thousand Hollywood blockbusters. Likewise, each stage of the hero’s journey as identified by Campbell is inscribed in the Glastonbury campsite and accompanying rituals.

How so, exactly?

The hero’s journey must pass from the known land into the unknown. It begins with the call to adventure. In Star Wars, this is the moment Luke Skywalker, an ordinary farm boy, receives a holographic message from Princess Leia via R2D2. In Glastonbury, the call to adventure comes when the humble farm boy or social media consultant receives their ticket.

Once the call to adventure is accepted, then the hero grasps the supernatural aid. A lightsaber for Luke Skywalker, Excalibur for King Arthur, the lyre for Orpheus’ descent into the underworld. I may sound like Super Hans from Peep Show when I say this, but it cannot be avoided: in the Glastonbury myth that supernatural aid is drugs.

It is worth taking a brief detour to discuss what drugs are for.

Drugs are bound up with rites of passage. In some traditional cultures, psychoactives such as ibogaine or yage are employed in a ritual that turns a boy into a man. In the modern Western civilisation, intoxication is a rite of passage, the first drink, the first cigarette, the first spliff.

The wide array of drugs provide an assault course which individual psyches must conquer and emerge battered and repentant at the other end. Drugs catalyse the most basic narrative of rise and fall, up and down. Because I do not take drugs, I do not have Glastonbury stories, and the failure to fully mount the myth is why my account of the festival is so boring.

The next stage in the hero’s journey is the threshold and the mentor. In Star Wars, the mentor is obviously Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it is Obi-Wan who introduces Luke to the ways of the Force. The Force and the galaxy beyond Tatooine are the unknown through which Luke must journey. The threshold is the cantina of Mos Eisley, a borderland or liminal space populated by weird and wonderful creatures. He requires the help of his mentor to survive these creatures and to enter the unknown of outer space.

(By the way, the sooner someone recreates Mos Eisley cantina in Glastonbury, the better).

At Glastonbury, the musicians are the mentors. Their performances are judged on how successfully they fulfil the role as mentor in the arc. That is why a successful Glastonbury performance is unique to the camp, because it has to play its role in the yearning for personal myth. The stars and the music are invested with the wisdom of the unknown. They instruct the crowd in the ways of the Force: or, in the case of rock music, a collection of romantic myths concerning derangement of the senses, sexual exploration, and mass catharsis through loss of self.

The faces of the Glastonbury crowd as they seek rapture in the moment, suspending rationality, coasting on pure emotion, is the face of Luke Skywalker as he feels the Force.

The music takes the Glastonbury hero across the threshold.
Then they must faces the challenges and temptations of the unknown.
Otherwise known as Bez’s Acid House.
Or Club Dada. Or Trash City. Or the Rabbit Hole.

The Glastonbury hero will set off into these challenges with friends but temptations will ensure he or she loses everyone along the way. After all, Luke Skywalker loses Han Solo to the temptation of paying off Jabba the Hut. Luke’s fellow pilots are picked off one by one, and he must face the “big bad”. Alone, Luke Skywalker skims the valley of the Death Star, pursued by Darth Vadar, trying to pop a bomb in a ventilation shaft.

I don’t know what Glastonbury experience corresponds to this encounter. The narrative pattern of myth requires an abyss. We all have our abyss. Our four-in-the-morning hollowing out. These after-dark areas of Glastonbury exist so that you can experience the abyss. If you do not face the abyss, you will not have a Glastonbury story.

After this encounter, the hero heads out for transformation and atonement. This is the area of Glastonbury known as the Green Fields, and it is here that all Glastonbury stories should end. Dawn rising, the hero weary but changed by their adventure, bringing back some scrap of knowledge for civilisation, even if that knowledge is just a story about a really weird night.

So when people talk about the unique atmosphere of Glastonbury, or a Glastonbury spirit that makes it different from all other festivals, what I believe they are actually identifying is the mythological potential of the campsite, through which they can realise through their own hero’s journey.

Matthew De Abaitua is performing at the Free University of Glastonbury in the Park area on Sunday at 1pm. He will talk about his new book The Art of Camping and he might speak of this matter, or not; it’s possible that he will never mention this again.

Laughing my head off around the campfire

It had been years since I laughed so hard. There were four of us around a campfire set on a hill overlooking Glastonbury festival. It was Saturday night and the vale was a constellation echoing with music, a party that our small children precluded us from attending.

Luke had foraged wooden stakes for fuel; they were laid flat upon the long, dry grass, their tips aflame in the fire pit. As the stakes burned, he got up and adjusted their length. It was not the safest of arrangements; the edges of the pit smouldered as the fire spread along the stake, and visitors tripped over them in the dark. But he seemed to know what he was doing. For the weekend, he was the keeper of the flame.

The conversation turned to meat. Rupert had been to St John’s Market in Liverpool and watched a man auction off bags of assorted meats. Five quid a bag. Ten quid for a bigger bag. No indication of the contents. Just meats, a variety thereof. Cath remembered the tripe and tongue stall at St John’s. Then Luke mentioned the grill steaks advert that made a grand claim of their “pocket of juice”. Other processed burgers lacked this pouch of indeterminate fluid. They were dry. The design flaw of high fat content was made into a point of differentiation and that was why I was laughing, at the thought of all the meetings and money that had gone into marketing the advantage of a “pocket of juice”.

We talked about the impossibility of cooking a frozen chicken kiev, and the experimental fillings foisted upon us by Findus pancakes, then it branched out to the cheese dartboard, with its alternating sections of Cheddar, Edam, Red Leicester, Lancashire, Cheshire cheese and a Baby Bell for a bullseye. Assorted cheeses. Various cheeses.

There was a bottle of brandy, and then the bottle was empty. More people arrived to sit around the campfire and tell tales of their adventures in the festival below. A bottle of Jaegermeister was produced, medicinal and tacky. I spoke of the women’s clothing shop in Lewes were the clothes are made entirely of felt: stiff brightly-coloured felt dresses, felt blouses, felt shoes. Hooded felt capes accessorised with a dream catcher and a large amulet.

“What’s it called?” asked Luke.

“Felt Up,” I replied.

I laughed so much that the next day I had the clear, light sense of well-being that comes after taking a swim or a long walk.

Earlier that afternoon, I had interviewed Peter Hook on stage at the Free University of Glastonbury. Our conversation was mainly about the Hacienda, the club in Manchester that he had invested enormous amounts of money in, and saw nothing in return. His book How Not To Run A Club is a conversational wander through the mistakes that were made at the Hacienda.

“You were losing twenty thousand pounds a week,” I asked him, “why did you carry on with the club?”

“Because I was having a good time,” he replied. The club was somewhere to be with his mates; for all the losses, the pull of having somewhere to go to where he could hang out with friends and have a drink was too strong.

Peter Hook had the Hacienda. I have a campfire.

How to pitch a tent – Glastonbury

How to pitch a tent at Glastonbury — The serried ranks of tents at Glastonbury

We are heading to Glastonbury again this year. Math will be compering talks at the Free University of Glastonbury on the Saturday, 11am-2pm. Guests will include John Niven, Rob Chapman discussing Syd Barrett, and Joy Division and New Order bassist Peter Hook. The weather forecast for Glastonbury weekend is good, and Math is hard at work prepping for the festival. Here is his tip for pitching your tent at Glasto:

Pitching a tent at a festival

Since it is likely you will be returning to the tent at night and in a state of confusion, making the tent easy to find is your first concern. Some people make flags with distinctive homemade patterns. I can still recall the “horse, hand, star” crest used by my friends twenty years ago. Etch the flag with strips of fluorescent material. Others will pitch the tent in a memorable location, near to a thoroughfare or at the very back of the field. I disagree with this approach. The edges of the field, whether it be hedge or fence, will invariably become an improvised urinal – or worse – over the course of the weekend. And thoroughfares are absolutely to be avoided, as confused people are likely to blunder off the walkway into camp.

At a festival, the tent is only for sleeping in. Camp serves no other purpose. The enemy of sleep is noise. Camp as far away from the dance tent as possible, and steer clear of fellow campers bearing acoustic guitars or bongos, or indeed any individual who looks susceptible to paranoia, as nothing disturbs a good night’s sleep like a conspiracy theory concerning aircraft contrails and chemicals being sprayed over the city. Worse case scenario is a paranoid musician.

10 tips for camping with kids (part 2)

Go back to 10 tips for camping with kids (part 1)

6. Transport
With one baby and one toddler, one of my big questions was how to lug the kids around while we were out and about. The buggy takes up most of our boot space and can be a pain at Glastonbury or other festivals, with the mud and the crowds. We take two Bushbaby backpacks, one like this and a larger one like this, which are more flexible when it comes to rural walks and use up less space in the car. Before we had the car, the buggy was essential for balancing the tent or the cool bag upon; in fact the buggies used to take so much punishment, the axle snapped on one in Cornwall.

7. Which campsite?
I’ve done the full range: festivals, campsites with launderettes and shower rooms and ones with composting toilets and a single cold tap. If you know what to expect then you can plan ahead. Sites with shops mean you can always get snacks and fresh milk, which is convenient, but you may be sacrificing other things like having an open fire. Festivals sell lots of gloopy food and beer but are shy of grocery shops and so you will have to take supplies, at least for baba.
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8. Hygiene
Babies don’t like showers, nor do toddlers. Little babies can be bathed in sinks if there are plugs; otherwise a collapsible bucket filled with warm water and a sponge is your best bet. If you take your toddler into the shower don’t expect it to be a refreshing, relaxing experience. It won’t be for you, your child or any other campers in the shower block. A couple of days without a bath won’t do them any harm.

9. Illness
Always unfortunate in a tent, one holiday resulted in Matthew losing a filling on some Spaghetti Vongole and Alice, then 18 months old getting conjunctivitis. A basic first aid kit along with Calpol, ibuprofen for kids and adults, a light burns kit and insect repellent is a must.
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10. Nappies
I have always worked on needing an average of four per day per child and a few extra on top. Sites vary and some will expect you to take your rubbish home with you; come prepared with nappy sacks and bin liners.