Trying to get Glastonbury tickets these days is bloody exhausting.
Not physically exhausting, obviously. You’re sat on a sofa in your pants staring at a laptop.
But spiritually?
Ruined.
You prepare like you’re launching a small military operation.
Laptop charged. Phone charged. Registration numbers copied somewhere safe. Postcodes checked. Everyone warned not to touch the Wi-Fi. Multiple people in multiple houses all desperately trying to get through.
Then the sale opens.
And absolutely nothing happens.
You stare at a little screen.
2 bars
2 bars
3 bars.
Somebody on a WhatsApp group says they’ve got further.
They haven’t.
Someone else says, “I’ve got 9 bars!”
Suddenly everyone is emotionally invested in a tiny green line moving across a screen.
Then, inevitably, the message arrives.
SOLD OUT.
And somewhere in Surrey, someone who has never been to a festival before and “quite likes Coldplay” has apparently bought six tickets while making a cup of tea.
Meanwhile I look about 14 years older than I did twenty minutes previously.
It was all so much easier when we first went in 1994.
Back then you could pretty much wander into HMV a couple of days before the festival and buy a ticket.
Honestly.
Just walk into a shop.
“Two for Glastonbury please.”
“Certainly sir.”
Done.
No registration.
No photo ID.
No pre-sale nerves.
No discussions about which browser is fastest.
No team of six people spread across three counties coordinating an assault on a ticketing website.
You bought a ticket in a record shop.
Like buying a CD.
And, of course, sometimes we didn’t even bother doing that.
Sometimes the ticketing process went something like this:
Thursday night, shall we go to Glastonbury?
Drive to Pilton. ( pay a fiver to park the car in somebodies garden)
Drink cider.
Find fence.
Climb fence.
Attend festival.
Simple.
Efficient.
Almost elegant. ( once me and Mrs Haphazrd didn’t even take a tent)
Now obviously I’m aware this probably isn’t the sort of thing the festival wants celebrated these days.
But.
It was a different world.
And 90s Glastonbury really did feel like a different world.
No smartphones.
No location sharing.
No WhatsApp.
If you lost your mates, you didn’t send them your pin.
You just didn’t see them again for nine hours.
You’d arrange to meet somebody “by the cider bus at about eight”, then arrive at 8:45 and discover approximately 11,000 people standing near a cider bus.
That was your navigation system.
Sometimes you’d eventually bump into your mates by complete accident at 2am.
Sometimes you’d make entirely new mates instead.
Both were acceptable outcomes.
I don’t suppose I can really complain about my Glastonbury record.
I’ve been at least 12 times.
I think.
Honestly, it’s a bit of a blur.
There was 1994, plenty through the rest of the 90s, then 2000.
And 2000 was something else.
Absolute madness.
The official attendance was one thing, but it’s estimated that somewhere around 100,000 extra people got onto the site without tickets.
And yes.
We were probably among them.
Allegedly.
The whole place was unbelievably overcrowded.
The fence was essentially treated as a minor inconvenience rather than a boundary.
People were everywhere.
Every path was rammed.
Every field was rammed.
Everywhere you looked there were more people arriving.
And despite all the nostalgia people have for those wild old Glastonburys, 2000 wasn’t actually that pleasant.
It had gone too far.
Too many people.
Too chaotic.
The festival couldn’t cope.
I remember thinking it had lost something.
So after that we gave Glastonbury a miss for quite a while.
Then sometime in the 2010s it dragged me back. ( Although in the much more civilised camper van fields )
Because it always does.
You tell yourself you’ve done Glastonbury.
You’ve seen the Pyramid Stage.
Seen the sun rise from the Stone Circle
You’ve trudged through ankle-deep mud.
You’ve queued for a toilet while questioning every decision that has led you to that moment.
You’ve woken up in a tent at 7am absolutely convinced you are dying.
You’ve eaten something from a vegan food stall at 1:30 in the morning and told everyone it was “possibly the best thing I’ve ever eaten”.
Worn a fake Tash to get in to NYC Downlow at 3 in the morning
Had your mind blown at Arcadia
Even taken the kids a few times
Good times
The last time we were in those fields was 2023.
And now I’ve had no luck for the last three ticket sales. 24,25,27 (26 was a fallow year)
Three attempts.
Three failures.
And each one feels more frustrating than the last.
Because the really annoying thing is you’re not even deciding whether to spend the money.
You’re practically begging them to take it.
“PLEASE LET ME GIVE NEARLY FIVE HUNDRED QUID.”
Computer says no.
That’s the bit that drives me mad.
I’m perfectly aware why Glastonbury changed.
After 2000 it had to.
The bigger fence came in.
Security changed.
Capacity had to be controlled.
The festival became safer and better organised.
All completely sensible.
But sensible isn’t always as much fun.
And sometimes, sitting there watching a loading bar crawl slowly across a screen, I do miss the days when Glastonbury planning consisted of:
“Have we got a tent?”
“Sort of.”
“Have we got beer?”
“Yes.”
“Have we got tickets?”
“…”
“Ah well. We’ll work it out.”
And we usually did.
That’s what I really miss.
Not just old Glastonbury.
Old festival life.
When nobody could contact you for four days.
When your mates disappeared into a crowd and you’d just assume they’d turn up eventually.
When the programme was your map.
When the railway track was your motorway.
When Lost Vagueness felt genuinely slightly dangerous.
When cider was warm, phones were useless and nobody had heard the phrase “dynamic ticketing”.
It was chaotic.
It was stupid.
Occasionally it was probably illegal.
And it was absolutely brilliant.
So yes, after 12-plus Glastonburys between 1994 and 2023, I know I’ve had a very good run.
Plenty of people would love to have been once.
We’ve been lucky enough to have decades of ridiculous memories from those fields.
Bands.
Friends.
Mud.
Rain.
Sunshine.
Cider.
Weed.
Terrible decisions.
Brilliant decisions.
And several nights/Mornings I probably couldn’t fully explain even if I tried.
But that doesn’t make missing out three times in a row any less annoying.
Because once Glastonbury gets under your skin, it never really leaves.
And every year, when June comes around and the BBC starts showing those aerial shots of Worthy Farm, there’s still a tiny part of me thinking:
I should be there.
So next year I’ll inevitably try again.
Laptop ready.
Registration number ready.
WhatsApp group ready.
Tiny green loading bar ready.
And if it all goes wrong again…
Well.
Somewhere inside me, the 1994 version is still looking at that fence and thinking:
“Didn’t used to be this bloody difficult.”
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