One morning at Glastonbury’s Stone Circle, my friend AJ pointed towards a crowd of revellers and said “Dalai Lama”. I laughed thinking it was some kind of offbeat joke.
“No,” he said, “it’s the actual Dalai Lama.”
“Sure,” I said. I never even turned around, it seemed simply too far-fetched that he would be at Glastonbury festival. The joke was on me though because it was the Dalai Lama. He was there meeting festivalgoers ahead of his speech later that morning. This is the anecdote I use to illustrate to people who’ve never been before why it feels as if anything might happen at Glastonbury festival. “It was the actual Dalai literal Lama. At 6am. In a field!!” They’re usually backing away slowly at this point.
Unexpected encounters, memorable weather and meeting up with old friends are just a few of the reasons my love of Glastonbury has only grown over the years. We’ve gone from arranging to meet up under a comedy sign to using the Official Glastonbury app, powered by Vodafone, to share everything from lineups to where to find the best bagels.
Glastonbury has been written about, filmed, mythologised, tweeted, TikToked and think-pieced to the point that every sentiment you reach for to describe how it makes you feel ends up sounding like a cliche. It simply can’t be helped. It is all the things people say: a ritual, a reunion, a sacred space where we remember who we once were and honour who we’ve become (and yes, also a fun, strange party in a field), so forgive me if I start to sound like a cliche because for me and my friends, the annual pilgrimage to Worthy Farm has become sacrosanct.
The year of the Dalai Lama was 2015, when we first made it a tradition. It wasn’t my first Glastonbury but that year about 25 of us got tickets – all friends from university who’d dispersed to different parts of the country after graduating and who were giddy to be reunited, finally. A few of us – my closest group and I – pooled £25 each and bought a tent off eBay; it was weighty, ancient and pitching it required the building knowhow of a trained architect and the patience of a monk. Ten years on, though, it has seen us through a lot.
It proved a haven in particular in 2016, the year of wild, torrential, biblical rain – if a tight fit. Our designated early arrivers had stomped through a sea of mud to reach our favoured site with it on their shoulders like a coffin.
It was also the year when the Brexit results were announced. I was awoken on Friday morning by my friend Jamie’s plaintive howls of: “We’re out, we’re out. The pound has crashed and David Cameron’s resigning.”
I remember sitting on the hill behind the Park stage during one of the brief pauses in the rain, looking out across the whole site, that classic view – the Ribbon Tower, the flags, the tents scattered like old confetti. We were in our mid-20s, had entered the jobs market in the middle of the great recession and were only just starting to feel that our careers might actually go somewhere. At least we’re here, we kept saying. At least we have this.
That night – soaked, cold, tempted to burrow into the tent and stay there – we ventured out to see Stormzy then Kano headline the Sonic stage in Silver Hayes. It was such a big performance, defiant, full of bravado, we couldn’t help but feel a renewed optimism. We hugged and screamed and danced. I left the set thinking that I would pay whatever it took, a hundred times over, to keep convening in this field, with these people, for as long as I possibly could.
And, mostly, we have. Over time, we’ve celebrated engagements there, house purchases, new jobs. We celebrated friends moving countries, and coming back. We celebrated surviving a global pandemic. Pressing pause on real life, for those few days, we get to live in a technicolour bubble where joy is easy and time bends. We laugh more. We listen harder. We dance like idiots. We cry when the sun sets behind the Pyramid stage on Sunday. We remember that, beneath the bills and burnout, we are still the same people who sang through the thunderstorms, arms flung around each other.
Connecting friends to the best of British summer
Vodafone has been connecting people to the places and things they love since 1984 – that’s why it is The Nation’s Network.
Vodafone will make sure friends stay connected during their time at the festival by powering the Official Glastonbury app, with features including live location sharing, reliable coverage and free Connect & Charge facilities.
In a new highlight for 2025, the app will even measure ticketholders’ step counts so that friends can compare who has covered the most ground. And Vodafone is upping the ante by matching the average festival-goer’s step count with donations of sims (to a max of 75,000) through its everyone.connected programme.
As children have come along we’ve managed to incorporate them to a degree: in 2023, for instance, when my friend Sophie was pregnant we turned her 12-week ultrasound scan into a flag. It had the words MEET US AT THE FETUS written across the bottom. The flag hung above our tent all weekend like a beacon of absurdity and love. (We’ve stopped short at bringing any of them along because, quite frankly, I don’t think any of us are brave enough.)
Last year, I had a three-month-old at home and watched from my sofa but I’m back this year. A little older, a little softer, just as devoted. I’ll be there with my boyfriend, my SPF50, Loop earplugs and the mild sense of dread that comes with being in your mid-30s and about to spend four nights on an inflatable mattress.
We’ve also downloaded the Official Glastonbury app and shared our lineups. The location-sharing feature might actually save us this year – no more frantic texts saying “by a flag” or “left of the big speaker” while squinting at a man in glitter hot pants who looks vaguely like your friend from behind. There’s something comforting about that – about being able to stay connected without stepping outside of the bubble. About knowing where your people are, even in the chaos. Because that’s what Glastonbury has always meant to us: not the headliners, not the hype, but the simple fact of being together, in a field, once a year. Still showing up. Still choosing each other.
And yes, I know, it’s all a bit of a cliche. But like most cliches, it only became one because it’s true.
Vodafone, connecting you to Glastonbury this summer
The Official Glastonbury 2025 app is available now! Download the free app, powered by Vodafone
