The rain it raineth every day on Glastonbury this year, which made walking the huge site more of a drag than usual - with either a foot of mud sucking at your soles or a sewage-like slick to splash through.
The truth is, it wasn't the best line-up either (rumour has it that Prince teased and wavered for so long that the Eavis family had to lock down the line-up without his Royal Purpleness, opting instead for Metallica). At one point, I perched on a bench between comedian John Bishop and Chris Moyles and wondered what Worthy Farm had come to. And yet, there's something about being in that weird makeshift city in the festival bubble that always feels pretty magic.
Random conversations over late night ice creams (and eavesdropping in the shower queue, as two scousers discussed how a woman who had taken ketamine the night before had slowly seized up, rigor mortis-like, until she was carried from the dance floor like a human armchair); the discovery of new bands (The War on Drugs) and the nostalgic, rather cheesy reunions with old ones - I don't know what I was expecting from de la Soul but it wasn't the panto-like singalongs to see whose side of the audience was the loudest. And best of all was the spectacular, kitsch keynote address from Dolly Parton, rootin and tootin the Benny Hill theme tune on her rhinestone-studded baby sax before belting out Islands in the Stream, 9 to 5 and the rest. Forget Prince, all hail the Queen of Country.
