The Waterboys - Glastonbury Festival Day Three, Pilton - Sunday 24th June 2007

Glastonbury came to a strange (not to mention premature) end for me. With a flight to catch the following day, I had always had no intention of getting caught in the general slow crush to get off site at the end of the festival - and had intended to be off site by 6pm Sunday. This would have meant missing only bands I'd seen before anyway, and also would have meant the significant bonus of missing the Manic Street Preachers. But it didn't quite work out like that.

My plan was to take the tent down in the morning, lock all my stuff up somewhere, then go to watch bands for the afternoon, before leaving at 6. But, yet another mid-morning rain shower made it impossible to take the tent down for an extra couple of hours, also meaning that I missed sets by The Holloways, The Enemy and The Sunshine Underground. Eventually I managed to pack up, and headed for a property lockup, to keep my stuff until it was time to go.

Unfortunately, there was a full hour-long queue to put things into the lockup, and the prospect of another hour-long wait to get stuff back again later. Being 2pm, and needing to leave at 6pm anyway, the prospect of 2 hours in a queue was not appealing. Neither was the prospect of walking around with several stone in weight on my back. So, with the station transfer buses temptingly just around the corner, I left the site, and headed back to London - on a surprisingly full train. I was home, on hard, non-muddy ground by 6:00.

Before leaving, and whilst waiting to be able to pack my tent away, I did hear The Waterboys play their third set of the festival (after headlining 2 different stages on the Friday and Saturday), this time on the Pyramid Stage. I (like many others II suspect) only really know them for Fisherman's Blues, and The Whole Of The Moon, and I swear there were at least 3 occasions in the set when I thought the former was starting, only for it to be a false alarm. It did get played eventually, towards the end of the set, and jolly good it was too. It turned out to be the last song I heard played at this year's festival.

So, after a massive band marathon on the Friday, my Glastonbury kind of started to fizzle out after Maximo Park on Saturday evening, and eventually ended with a whimper. A great weekend, hampered significantly by the rain and mud. Having been a couple of times before, I knew what to expect from the weather, but it is still a shame the extent to which it dictates the mood and activities of the entire festival - it can turn the site from grass into a quagmire in an hour. I'll definitely aim to go back though, just hoping for less (or no) rain next time!