Glastonbury 2019: Friday's best moments
A full 52 hours after the first festival-goers descended on Worthy Farm, the main stages finally opened. Queues snaked for water taps, after the festival banned single-use plastic on the site, and those who had celebrated early on Thursday night found themselves clamouring for shade.
But a sunny Glastonbury is a rare and marvellous thing. Wellies gather the dust that drifts on the wind as trainers tread dry grass. People lounge around, not quite believing their luck. And while it's ever so easy to rest up beneath the tree in front of the Pyramid Stage (providing you bagsied a spot) all afternoon, there's far more of the festival to discover than that. As organiser Michael Eavis explained in his talk at the Acoustic Stage, there's far more to Glastonbury than the music. Here's what we enjoyed best:
1. Having a wood-fired sauna in the back of a New Age Traveller’s bus in the Undleground field, where what’s left of the Traveller community stay during the festival. While in there I met a musician called Feline, who’s playing 17 gigs across various Glastonbury stages this weekend. He reckons it’s a world record. JH
2. Even those who have never been to Glastonbury have heard of the Rabbit Hole, the secretive, highly exclusive part of The Park where hedonism - even by Glastonbury's standards - cranks up a notch. Like the rather better-known Alice, I took a tumble last night. It wouldn't be in the spirit of things to challenge the Rabbit Hole's mystique, but believe the rumours about the hot tub. And a new addition for 2019, Funkingham Palace, is exactly as regal and disco-laden as it sounds. AV
3. George Ezra got the biggest singalong of the festival so far. He can come across as a bit of clean-cut, boy scout, cut-rate Ed Sheeran but in front of an audience his good cheer and lusty choruses are irresistible. They were made to be sung by 100,000 happy festival revellers. Let's see how Liam and Kylie compare. NMC
4. Craig Charles’s mammoth funk and soul DJ set in Shangri-La. It started at lunchtime, and very soon the anarcho-futuristic arena was packed with happy, sun-soaked revellers. JH
5. At the hottest Glastonbury ever, a demented old trumpeter in black suit and trilby played the Stripper theme for any passers by tempted to divest themselves of clothing. Several duly obliged. NMC
6. Pakoras in the Permaculture wood. A gladed and maze-like area at the bottom of the Green Futures field has been newly done up, revealing a wonderful hidden café selling home-made pakoras cooked over a wooden fire. It's also the only bit of Glastonbury that remains once the tents have been packed down, growing in-keeping with nature all year around. JH
7. After a near-unbearable scorcher of a day (suncream and field dust do not a happy combination make), everyone seemed to get a renewed burst of energy as the golden, throbbing sun sunk down beyond the Vale of Avalon. The skies looked golden, and all the sweat and sunburn turned, temporarily, to glitter, as people beetled towards the headliner of their choice. The sage opted for Stormzy. AV
8 . ABBA tribute band Bjorn Again were an unlikely delight opening the Pyramid stage, inspiring a mass outbreak of silly dancing and lusty singing along revellers dressed more colourfully than the band themselves, a feat that would once have seemed unthinkable. NMC
9. An intriguing insight that arose from a conversation with Glastonbury veteran James Hall was how, over the years, ticket-holders have become far more preoccupied with being decorative. "In the Nineties, everything was brown," James said, with more wist than one may believe possible. Not so now, when a heady combination of Instagram aesthetic, festival fashion and an improved effort in grooming (it is not uncommon to see women washing their hair under taps here) makes it near-impossible not to be more than four metres away from a sequin at any one time. The best - and possibly most concerning - effort yesterday was a man dressed head-to-toe in Sasquatch-style faux fur. I hope he's not in the medical tent, desperately dehydrated, right now. AV
10. There's often talk of "Glastonbury moments", those instances where music, atmosphere and magic collide in a way that could only happen down on the farm. But it is rarer to be present for a historical one. Last night, Stormzy took the Pyramid as his own platform and made use of every square metre. There were too many moving moments to list here, but to see the awe and pride on the rapper's face summed up how many people were feeling.