The most expensive part of going to Glastonbury is going there and buying a ticket. This can be easily eliminated by not going to Glastonbury and not buying a ticket. Once these piffling inconsequences are out of the way, you too can experience all the unity, all the magical uniqueness of the greatest festival on earth from the comfort of your own home. How so? Simply do like we say and recreate all its pleasures from stuff you can easily find around the house. Your mind is Glastonbury. Glastonbury is only ever in your mind. Never forget that.

• Get an eighth of a teaspoon of coffee, mix with some soapy lukewarm milk in a Styrofoam cup. Now throw £2.50 down the nearest drain.

• Get a hamburger patty. Jump on it. Throw it in last week's fry oil. Heat the oil gradually until the burger is entirely marinated. Grill until burnt. Now jump on it. Harder, man! Really put your back into it! Take two bites and throw £6 down the nearest drain.

• Go to your local post office at 11 AM on a Saturday morning. Queue for an hour, then when you get to the front, reward yourself with some warm lager, before returning to the back for another intense queuing session.

• Put your TV inside a triangular plinth at the bottom of your garden. Tune it to the Glastonbury coverage. Now turn the sound down to approximately the volume of a mouse coughing and stand about 800 meters back from it. Remember to give the thumbs up and cheer a lot when Tom Jones comes on, to show that you appreciate irony. For Amadou & Mariam: nod earnestly to show you're in touch with world music.

• Fill your bed with biscuit crumbs, chip packets, plastic bags, beer cans and a young alcoholic of the same gender who thinks it's their bed and is too drunk to be told otherwise.

• Grind your teeth for nine hours until they're little more than a clammy paste and your mouth feels like it’s been gang-raped by giant lizard people. Now throw £20 down the drain.

• Invite Nick Grimshaw and Annie Mac round to talk about how much they really really love Glastonbury and how everything's so special and amazing and all that, and how they really love new bands and how they've just seen this amazing new band called White Lies and they're really gonna be big and it's just a coming together of so many different people, that's what makes it so unique. Annie may have something to say about a new underground scene she's discovered called “doohbstep” at this point.

• Invite your neighbour round to shag his missus three feet away from you on the other side of a narrow nylon partition. Things she might like to cry out: “Harder!” “Faster!” “Slower!” “Not in there!” “Hurry up, the Prodigy are on in 20 minutes!”

• Complain that your home is “too white.”

• Complain that your home is “too middle class.”

• Complain that your home “isn't as good as last year.”

GAVIN HAYNES

Comments

one good thing about seeing amadou and miriam other than them being great musicians is no one in front of you ever blocks you sightline with a sign like the old scorpions videos.

Posted by: jigglebutt | 23/06/2009 at 17:23

take heed the advice of hippies and never forget that woodstock and the 60s were a state of mind, man.

Posted by: cero minero | 23/06/2009 at 17:26

let's make it easy. avoid festivals at all cost. even the good ones. at best you're going to get a short set by a band you like that sounds like ass with 100,000 of your closest friends. yuck.

Posted by: gregory | 23/06/2009 at 17:51