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If you’re anything like me this may be the first you’re hearing of Glasto being on this weekend (yes this weekend!)

Now, I get Glastonbury maybe isn’t as “cool” or punk or groundbreaking as it was many years ago, and that these days it may be full of champagne socialists and hipsters (that’s capitalism baby !). BUT I do reckon that it is still the single greatest music festival on god’s green earth.

This got me thinking! Although I have never been Glastonbury itself, I have been to Leeds Festival and Sziget Festival in Budapest. I may not be a festival fanatic but I sure know how to have fun at one. So, I thought I’d sit here in my highchair of hypocrisy and tell you exactly how to enjoy a festival that I’ve never been to. Enjoy!

So! It’s Thursday, none of the main stages are open, people are filling into the campsite, probably gonna be a pretty boring day right? WRONG !. From my experience at Leeds fest, the best night was actually the Thursday. There was a certain aura to the air of freedom. I had just finished my GCSE’S at 16 years of age and we had successfully sneaked an ungodly amount of alcohol into the campsite. In my mind, it was go time. Get that tent up QUICK, doesn’t matter if it’s abit dodgy looking. *Professional tip, keep your deckchairs close by whilst erecting (hehe) the tent. We turned our heads for 10 seconds and they had already been nicked. But that shall not dishearten you !

Once you’ve done all the boring errands (or chores as we call them in this country), get yo ass out there and explore the whole site. Make sure to embrace the feeling of freedom, open your mind and then I promise you that this first walk you will never forget (no matter how many substances enter your body over the next couple days). You might see loads of tits and dicks flying about, or you might see an old couple hand in hand with a woodstock ’69 t-shirt on and think “those are some cool motherfuckers”. I don’t know what you’ll see, that’s the beauty of it. But whatever you do see, embrace it. It might sound obvious, but some people forget. Some people only go to get off their heads and not remember any of it. Which is fine, you do you, I’m not one to judge. But whilst you sit there in a k-hole, I ask you to embrace it. Remember, there’s not many better places to have a k-hole than at Glastonbury.

Anyway, you’ve now taken a nice long walk around the site, embracing the scenery and familiarizing yourself with your surroundings… Now’s when the fun really starts, enough of that embracing shite.

Crack open a beer (or cider, or spark up a joint, or whatever your poison may be) and start drinking. And you should not stop drinking until the next morning. Just to be clear, I wouldn’t recommend drinking excessively every day of the weekend. But like I said, Thursday is where all the true fun happens. Have some drinks with the fellow campers around you, play some cards, exchange some stories, all that jazz. You’ll never know who or what you’ll come across. At Leeds, we got friendly with a bunch of scouse boys who were best mates with former Grimsby Town footballer, Jon Nolan. Crazy I know. I, as a Grimsby fan, was fascinated. We tried calling him. No answer. I still don’t know if they were BS’ing us.

There’s really not much advice I can give you for the next few hours. Just have fun. Simple as that really. Whatever fun is to you. Talk to people. Make sure to eat. Oh, and keep drinking !

Once it starts to get dark is when you can make your way to find some sort of DJ to help you through the rest of the night. At Leeds, there was only a few campsite stages set up, but I remember one felt like it was in a forest, it was cool. Glastonbury is different obviously. There’s hundreds of stages worth checking out on Thursday, and if you’re not in the business of just getting black-out drunk, then you could definitely just spend all day listening to great music.

Who knows what the rest of the night brings. Look at it as a precursor for what is to come over the next couple days. Anything could happen.

For example. Sziget Festival, Budapest. We had just driven through mainland Europe all the way to Hungary. Took us over a week after stopping off in Nuremburg and Rotterdam (and a couple more places I struggle to recall.) It was me and a mate, and my mum and dad (proper cool I know). My parents went off on their own in their fancy VIP camping, we were stuck sleeping on a tree stump about 50 meters from the main stage. Well ,trying to sleep should I say.

On this night in question, my mate ditched me for this older (not too much older i promise), cooler, european girl. There were no complaints from me. Lucky bastard. I was lost, all on my own, at a festival, in a foreign country, oh what to do! Honestly, I didn’t even realise he was gone, we’d already lost each other whilst watching Zedd (yeah that DJ you might remember from circa 2016). Nevertheless, I was still all on my own ! But luckily enough I came across this group of Irish guys we had met earlier that day…

We were in the resident interent cafe. Using the words interent and cafe for this little hut was a vast exaggeration. It was the first game of the Premier League season and we were eager to catch the highlights of Arsenal vs Liverpool (the one where Mane scored a beauty on his debut). In the same little hut were about 6 Irish guys watching what looked like a mixture of football and polo (without the horses). “What the bloody hell is that !” we exclaimed in the most English way possible. These Irish guys went on to explain it was Gaelic Football. Or hurling. One of the two. Having lived with at least one Irish person for 5 years now, I can assure you that I would have no problem identifying the sport these days, they really don’t talk about much else (kidding of course !). Anyway, you could say we built up a little rapport with these dudes.

So when I locked eyes with one of them whilst watching Zedd, I knew I had a night on my hands. We ran over to each other, arms open, slow motion, with a rom-com soundtrack accompanying us. I may be over-exaggerating a tad but you get my drift. I wish I could tell you a story of how me and these Irish guys had a Bilbo Baggins like adventure, but truth be told I can’t really remember the rest of that night. Apart from being lifted on someone’s shoulders at some point, and then falling off. All I remember thinking is “Oh this is 100% better than being with a cool european girl, no doubt.” I still tell myself that to this day. I do remember later on seeing my mate who had previously ditched me. He was flustered. His face as red as his lips, and his lips nearly falling off his face with how big his smile was. I knew what had been going on instantly. But I still struggle to believe he had as much fun as I did that night. I’m probably wrong.

Why did I just spill out that random anecdote? Because that is what can happen to YOU on the Thursday at Glastonbury. The rest of the weekend you might be too busy nerding out over music, or not wanting to get too messy, or curing a non-stop hangover, or looking after your mate with a non-stop hangover. But like I said, Thursday is your chance to create some stories for YOU.

You might find yourself on your own, embrace it. You might find yourself outside of your comfort zone, embrace it. You might never have a night like this again, so embrace it.

The most simple thing of bumping into a group of guys you met earlier, may just turn out to be the best night of your life. Or it will at least feel like it at the time. And that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

Tune into the Jukebox tomorrow for a guide to Friday at Glastonbury, and on Friday for a guide to Saturday at Glastonbury and so on so on. I do plan on them being more based on what is actually going on this year at Glasto, I’ve got a whole itinerary of who I would go see n everything. But we’ll see, I might just veer off into some random anecdote again.

Until next time. Ciao for now.