Unlike most festivals, Glasto is not a separate arena and campsite. It is one very large field in a clay valley of the West Country. A land with mystical legends, Arthurian links, and mud. In the previous year, 1998, the festival had become infamous for mud. On the preceding Wednesday and Thursady to that year it rained in the West Country relentlessly. By Friday the entire site, because of the clay, had become a mud bath. Knee deep in some places with sticky, hard to walk in mud (remember people: this is normally a farm). I had such big expectations for the weather in 1999 that I was sure it would hold and the weekend would be glorious.

We arrived on Wednesday (everyone goes early to get with the vibe) and the sunshine was scorching, particularly for me with my reddish hair and fair skin. Right through to Thursday the weather remained this way, and then it happened. The night before the opener the heavens opened. And when I say opened, I mean opened. Leaking tents, the works. I awoke on Friday morning to the sound of rain and ventured into the outside world. I can sense it now, the smell of dead fires, and the hum of activity in the surrounding tents and fields.

I looked down the hill to the main stage (called the Pyramid) and all I could see was the light reflecting off what looked like water. Yes the rain had come, and unlike the year before where there were two days before the start of the music for the water to subside, this time it was there. A glorious river of mud and water through the campsite. Knee-deep.

I have never, in my life experienced anything like it. For the next three days we were all walking through knee-deep water to watch bands, going to buy and thinking I need a boat. I watched Rocket From the Crypt in it. It was mental. I took a pill and went to the dance tent and raved for 12 hours straight with water and mud coming down on head and seeping into my boots. But the best was yet to come.

The dance tent, which is where I think I spent most of the weekend, was so bad after the first night that the organizer decided that the only solution was to suck the water out of it. The idea was to use the machine that sucks the shit out of the portable toilets to suck up the excess water and mud. Good in theory huh? Unfortunately when they did this it was just after a toilet run, and someone, accidently put the machine on blow! Yes that's right, about two tonne of human excrement sprayed into a tent that could hold 20,000. No more Dance tent for day two. Time for more drugs.

I don't remember much after that; the weekend became a blur. I remember seeing naked people dancing on tents, and I remember taking part in some kind of hippy type ritual around a stone circle with a bunch of drug-fuelled city brokers, but apart from that I don't know who I saw. I just remember the smell of the dance tent, the come-down after it all, and of course, the mud.