Glastonbury Day Two: Diabetes, Solange and Sneaking Onto the Pyramid Stage

It’s at about this point in the weekend that the emotional gulf between people at Glastonbury and people at home starts to widen. I’m writing this as the dulcet tones of Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara waft other from the West Holts stage. The sun is shining, the Tuborg is flowing, everyone is covered in glitter and bare skin, snogging strangers covered in filth and just banging on about how great everything is. You’re sat at home planning where you’re going to get take-out from while you read the blog of a drunk, stinking hippy who you reckon has got a bit carried away. IDK, I guess you have to be here.

Friday morning begins with Haim on the Pyramid stage. The front nine rows are all teenage girls, sweeping their bum-length locks with Californian abandon, like sisters in a pagan cult. I fear that Haim’s inadvertent legacy may be creating the next generation of Stevie Nickses, coked up to the nines and lost in a fantasy world of felt and free love.

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Speaking of which, Florence Welch is next to me. At one point she puts me in a headlock and started doing twirls around me in a peach velvet cape (I don’t, like, know her or anything). We dance like elfin children raised by Green party voters for a bit, with her taking occasional breaks to get on people’s shoulders and shout the bassist’s name “ESTE! ESTE! ESTE! ESTE! ESTE! ESTE!” until she waved back.

A bit later, Este, a sufferer of diabetes, almost collapsed and had to be walked off stage. She returned, white as a sheet, and had to play the next song sitting down. She looked like she was about to faint throughout the rest of the set, yet somehow managed bass parts, drum solos and three part harmonies.

After they came off stage and she’d had a lie down she said, “they didn’t know whether I had too high blood pressure or too low and they couldn’t take a test out on stage, so they were bringing out sugary drinks and insulin but I didn’t know which I needed so I just had to power through. I have no idea how I did it, I kept thinking I was about to faint in front of 25,000 people.”

After all that dramz, I head off to see Solange on The Park stage. Her live show is one of the sexiest things you’ll ever see; all slinking choreography, dapper attire and slow, breathy harmonies. Dev Hynes doesn’t play with her anymore, he’s too busy producing Britney Spears’ new album with William Orbit (not a joke), but she has got a few new guys who look strikingly like Dev Hynes at various points in his musical trajectory (shout out to you, Test icicles era Dev on guitar). The set closes with “Sandcastle Disco”, aka the most joyous song ever to come out of a Knowles’ mouth, and “Losing You” which causes a mass, woefully out-of-tune, singalong.

At about this point there are a few blackouts in my memory. But at some point I was actually on the Pyramid stage, which felt pretty great. Don’t really know how I resisted the urge to take all my clothes off and belly flop on to a security guard tbh.

Also FLORENCE UPDATE: I see her again briefly backstage, crawling around on all fours and shouting things.

Despite my best talcum powder efforts, my perineum has come to resemble a Zimbabwean minefield so I head back for a bit to change my clothes and mix a fresh batch of Ting and Sainsbury’s dark rum. It’s then time to head out for Chic.

With Nile Rodgers having a new lease of life after being drafted in as Daft Punk’s guitarist in residence, the West Holts stage is busier than I think it’s ever been Glastonbury. When he arrives on stage, dressed in a white suit with long black braids – the devil barely in disguise – and launches straight into Everybody Dance everyone loses their nut. It’s a weird set, because so many of the songs they play, seem like covers, until you realise Rodgers had a hand in all of them. They do Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” and a bit of Duran Duran’s “Notorious”, both of which he produced. They even do early 00s euro-dance hit “Lady” by Modjo which takes its sample from Chic’s “Soup For One”. It sort of makes Chic like the greatest wedding band in history, even they are technically playing all their own songs. Alas they don’t manage a version of “Get Lucky” but they do play it off a CD at the end and dance round a bit so what more do you want.

That’s it for Friday then, I’ll leave you with this picture of me and Danielle Haim attempting to recreate a Lana Del Rey photoshoot.