LONDON -- It's difficult to sum up Glastonbury in just a day.
The george bataille eroticism and death explanationfestival is so impressively massive and varied that you couldn't come close to seeing everything it has to offer in a full week, let alone 24 hours.
SEE ALSO: 17 things I learned when I went to Glastonbury for the first time, on my ownStill, if you've never been before -- or if you've been but are curious to see how your experience measured up with someone else's -- I've recorded everything I did on the Friday in vague diary form below.
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8:00 a.m. -- Wake up, glug tepid water, cautiously emerge from tent to check weather.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable It's almost impossible to have a proper lie in at a festival. On the one hand you're horrendously tired from going to sleep at God knows what time the night before, but on the other hand you've got to contend with noise, bright morning sunshine or pounding rain, waking up either too hot or too cold, and other festival goers repeatedly tripping over your tent lines as they go stumbling past (something that will definitely happen even if you're camped in the remotest possible location).
For me at least, waking up in the morning was the most grim part of my festival day. You're sweaty, dirty, possibly hungover, and you know the closest you'll get to being clean again is some deodorant and a packet of baby wipes.
8:30 a.m. -- Brave the facilities.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Scratch my previous comment -- thisis the worst part of a festival day. I got pretty lucky at Glastonbury in that I had a press ticket, which meant I was camped in the private hospitality area. The toilets were decent, and there were showers.
While I was walking past another camping ground on Saturday morning, though, I saw a queue of over 50 people waiting to use the toilets.
9:00 a.m. -- Consume a hearty festival breakfast.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Sweet, sweet tinned food is the staple breakfast of any budget-conscious festival goer. If you combine a can of baked beans and sausages with some bread for dipping, you really can't go wrong.
9:30 a.m. -- Chat to people around the campsite.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The hours between waking up and heading to the main area for the first bands are usually taken up with sitting around the campsite, making plans for the day ahead and generally doing very little.
For me it was a bit different on Friday morning, because I was chatting to other festival goers about how they felt about the Brexit result (probably the absolute last thing they wanted me asking them about when they'd just emerged from their tents).
Still, everyone seemed happy to have a chat and -- as a general rule -- people at Glastonbury are very approachable.
10:30 a.m. -- Negotiate a tidal wave of mud.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The journey from my campsite to the Other Stage was a swampy one. After a few days of rain and the footsteps of tens of thousands of people trampling over the same bit of path, the grass quickly became replaced with an ocean of mud.
It only got worse throughout the day, too.
11:00 a.m. -- Mingle with the crowd around the Other Stage.
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At the Other Stage, workers were busy laying wood chippings in a fenced-off middle section directly in front of the stage. In the crowd, I got chatting to two other people who were there by themselves -- a middle-aged woman with dyed purple hair who was working in the Healing Fields on a massage stall, and a younger girl who'd broken off from her friends for a bit to come and see James.
They were both friendly and fun to chat to. The woman, it turned out, actually knew the lead singer Tim Booth -- they used to dance together when she was younger, and she was friends with Booth and his wife.
Later, when the band started, she went on ahead of us and made her way to the front. We caught a glimpse of her on the giant screen halfway through James' set, leaning over to touch Booth's hand as he walked down the front barrier to greet the crowd.
11:45 a.m. -- Dance to James.
Despite the intermittent rain, the crowd were lively for James. No one could match the lead singer's glorious dance moves, though.
1:00 p.m. -- Attempt to meet up with people.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Meeting up with people at Glastonbury is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. The crowds are so busy that it's hard to pick out friends, and intermittent signal/disappearing phone battery further complicates the issue.
I was planning to meet up with some friends at the Pyramid Stage for Skepta around 1 p.m., but after it didn't pan out I decided to go exploring instead.
1:30 p.m. -- Grab lunch on the go.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable As I wandered away from the Pyramid Stage, I grabbed some lunch from one of the many stalls dotted around the site. Food isn't exactly cheap at Glastonbury, but there's plenty to choose from.
1:45 p.m. -- Explore backstage.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Seeing as I had my hospitality wristband, I thought I might as well fill a bit of time by exploring the backstage area.
Sadly it wasn't swarming with celebs -- I had visions of making friends with Adele -- but there were a bunch of quiet bars and cafes in which to recharge.
2:30 p.m. -- Catch the end of Skepta.
Back out on the Pyramid Stage, Skepta was cheerfully entertaining a large crowd while ominous-looking black clouds drifted in overhead.
2:45 p.m. -- Get caught in the pelting rain.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable You never truly know the durability of your coat until you get caught in a downpour. Mine was "showerproof," as it turned out, which roughly translated to "useless in anything other than mild drizzle."
I ended up huddling beneath a stall with other drenched festival goers while I waited for the downpour to pass.
3:00 p.m. -- Recharge/dry off.
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After ducking back to my tent for a change of clothes (and for some shelter from the rain, which seemed to have decided it was going to do its best to ruin everyone's day), the sun finally re-emerged.
4:30 p.m. -- Catch Half Moon Run on the John Peel stage.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable One of the great things about Glastonbury is just how varied the music is. There aren't many places you'd be able to see James, Skepta and Half Moon Run back-to-back on the same afternoon.
6:00 p.m. -- Meet up with friends.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Using a handy green barrier outside the John Peel Stage as a landmark, I finally managed to find some friends. Going to see a few bands and exploring on your own is fine at Glastonbury, but it's also nice having some friendly faces to meet up with.
6:15 p.m. -- Watch Jack Garrett being awesome.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable My friend Adam, who's been to Glastonbury a few times before, saw Jack Garrett during a previous year with only a few hundred other people. Now the guy's pulling in a crowd of thousands.
One of the cool things about Glastonbury is the knack the festival has for finding -- and boosting -- new talent. Coldplay, Radiohead and Jack Garrett are all examples of artists who started out at smaller tents and worked their way up to bigger and bigger crowds.
7:15 p.m. -- Meet more people en route to the Pyramid Stage.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable En route to Foals we met up with more people, including the heroic man in the green suit pictured above. When I asked if I could grab a picture with him (I thought his outfit summed up the brilliantly random spirit of Glastonbury pretty well), he was only too happy to oblige.
7:45 p.m. -- Grab a hasty (but satisfying) dinner.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable In the hectic rush of moving between stages, it's sometimes easy to forget about dinner. If you're planning to stay up until the early hours, though, finding time to stuff down some food is pretty essential.
8:00 p.m. -- Watch Foals beneath a blue evening sky.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The crowd around the Pyramid Stage gets bigger and more lively as the headliner approaches -- even though we were quite a long way from the front for Foals, the atmosphere was still awesome.
9:15 p.m. -- Burrow deeper into the crowd, make some new friends.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable After Foals, some of our group broke off to go and see Disclosure. I stayed at the Pyramid Stage with four others, though, and we took advantage of the lull to forge our way closer to the stage.
The atmosphere in the crowd was brilliant -- everyone was super approachable and keen to chat as we waited for Muse.
10:15 p.m. -- Jump up and down to Muse.
If you can, it's worth getting near the front for at least one headliner. Muse were loud, colourful, and a hell of a lot of fun. Gigantic white balloons were launched into the crowd at one point, and towards the end of the set an avalanche of coloured streamers rained down from the sky.
11:45 p.m. -- Leave the Pyramid Stage. Walk past a man who claims he lost a tooth during the Muse set.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable As we left the crowd, we passed a man who was cheerfully exclaiming to his friends that his tooth had been knocked out during the set (OK, so he was probably joking, but in the darkness and the mayhem we couldn't be 100% sure).
12:00 a.m. -- Begin a slow, congested walk back to camp to recharge.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable The downside of being in the middle of the crowd for a headliner is that it takes absolutely ages to free yourself from the swarming throng after the band's finished.
It probably took us about 45 minutes to get back to my friend's campsite after Muse, even though it was only about half a mile away.
2:00 a.m. -- Collapse in a heap
In the interest of total disclosure, I didn't actually make it past 2:00 a.m. on Friday. My legs were aching, I'd nearly run out of energy and the prospect of crawling into my sleeping bag suddenly seemed more tempting to me than the busy trudge to the festival's packed southeast corner (the place where the majority of the post-headliner nightlife lives).
After hanging out at my friends' campsite for an hour or two, I broke off from them, bought some cheesy chips and retreated back to my tent in defeat.
For anyone who isn't a total lightweight, though, there's a hell of a lot going on in the early hours of the morning. Whether it's bars, clubs, dark rooms, weird games or wacky performances you're after, Glastonbury has plenty to choose from.
To finish, here's a (very) brief taste of Glastonbury's nightlife.
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