It sounds obvious, and completely contrary to what I said last night, but on reflection one of the strangest things about Glastonbury's silent disco is how quiet it is. You imagine that the sound of hundreds of people leaping up and down and whooping would be loud even without the music, but in fact it doesn't amount to a hill of beans. What seems, over the top of the music, to be a deafening roar from the crowd turns out to be a mild rumble of encouragement.
People queued for up to an hour last night to get hold of a pair of headphones for the event. Once inside, the service failed for half an hour, but nobody was going to leave, having invested so much time to get in. The experience is undeniably odd, not least because the headsets have two channels, and there are two competing DJs at the front of the tent. This means that you can be shuffling around to the fade-out of the song you're dancing to, and find that the person next to you is jumping up and down and punching the air as his tune reaches a climax.
I knew it was time to leave when one of the DJs, who was either Dutch, or doing a comedy Dutch impersonation, asked "Ish anybody ready for some houshe mushic." The crowd roared its approval. Which is to say, half the crowd mumbled its assent. The rest were dancing to YMCA.
