Spectacle

My teaching shift was 9.15-2. After I'd tuned the violins and rosined the bows it was still a bit quiet so I asked the cello teacher a couple of questions I had about playing cello then practised. I love the sound of the cello and, apart from the hassle of carrying round its size and weight, I think it would have been a better instrument for me than the violin. When I finish each session with the children here I encourage them to try as many instruments as they can before they decide what to learn. I tell them they'll find one instrument that they really love then they'll just want to play, and I'd rather they found it than chose the violin after one lesson. But there was one 10-year-old who came in starry-eyed this morning telling us he'd dreamed twice he could play the violin. He adored it, was totally absorbed and learnt very fast. It is his instrument.

Firstborn was on the same shift as me and afterwards we went to hear some music together, first a gig he'd found for me, Alogte Oho (which bizarrely I liked less well live than when I'd heard them recorded), then a 'backstage' gig by one of our teaching team, BexX. That introduced me to an aspect of Glastonbury I had no idea about: the crews running the stages are so numerous and have to spend so much time at base, that the 'green rooms' have their own small stages and (cheaper) bars, so there's a whole other festival going on behind the scenes.

I went on to hear Nitin Sawhney, an acquired taste that I have acquired.

Then was completely bemused as the Red Arrows flew over. This festival is full of huge contradictions: the promotion of itself as green but the huge numbers of diesel HGVs needed to set it up, the massive amounts of materials used for a very short event, the phenomenal car queues and local road-closures as people arrive, the amount of cooking on gas, the rubbish-strewn fields after every large gig (though the clear-up is impressively efficient). But why book the Red Arrows?

For the old-times'-sake of my inner folkie I went to hear a little of Ralph McTell's set but gave Judy Collins, in the same tent later, a miss as the recent recording I heard of her was sadly out of tune.

Instead I hiked to the Ribbon Tower 25 minutes away and queued to climb it. By complete coincidence, I reached the front of the queue as Coldplay was playing on the Pyramid stage so got to see their fireworks from above!

Then a rendezvous with Firstborn again for the Ayoub Sisters. I'd absolutely loved this violin/cello duo in advance and thought their three short sets were going to be the highlight of my festival. But they'd brought along a guitarist and an unsubtle drummer and the magic evaporated. We stayed for the full set but I was very disappointed.

Until last year, Glastonbury had a vast mechanical spider which this year, to lots of people's disappointment, has been replaced by a dragonfly. On my first couple of days here I watched it being built out of an old military helicopter and tonight Firstborn and I went to see its 'opening', a spectacle with lights, dance and a rather suspect 'mythic' story about Aboriginal peoples and caring for the future of the planet. More cognitive dissonance, as above, but I loved its laser-beam wings (extra).