We hadn’t envisaged that the weather might be like this – lashing rain and blackened skies – nor that we would spend six hours queueing on the M62 for the turn-off to Hull. For much of the day, all we’d seen was Cars, Traffic and The Jam.

And we certainly hadn’t foreseen that confusion over the ticket-ordering which meant that we weren’t off to Tribeca, hipster festival of experimental music, after all, but Tribfest, advertised as the UK’s ‘second’ largest annual gathering of tribute acts.

By the time Darren had managed to pitch his tent in the driving rain and I’d settled into my yurt, the first day was nearly over, and we only just managed to catch the end of Phoney M murdering ‘Rasputin’.

Saturday July 28th

Pyramid Stage

I

think

he was

twenty-one

years of age /

when he went through

his pyramid stage. He did

not know what triggered that /

strange urge to be a ziggurat. He

reached his apex then had a seizure. /

I think about him to this day. Amazing Giza.

I feel like I’ve landed in one of those parallel worlds that Dylan sometimes talks about. Everything in it is the same as this world, only a little bit more rubbish. It rains here, only heavier. There is mud here, but it is gloopier. Instead of the Pyramid Stage, we have the Triangle Stage. And then, of course, there are the bands: Proxy Music, Fleetwood Mock, Mad Donna, The Velvet Underpants, Sample Minds, Punk Floyd, New Hors d’oeuvres, The Heebie Beegees.

The only noticeable improvement in this new world is that I live in a yurt. I found myself spending an increasing amount of time in it as the day wore on. Darren tells me that it’s not in the spirit of things, and I’m missing out on the authentic festival experience. Still, I couldn’t help but notice his look of envy when he visited my spacious accommodation – with its underfloor heating, Wi-Fi and shower-room – in the middle of the night, to tell me about the leak in his tent. Water had been pouring in for several hours, he said, and, judging by the state of him, it appeared it had.

But friendship knows no boundaries and so I sent him away with an old T-shirt of mine, having discovered it at the bottom of my suitcase, which was lying unpacked on the Egyptian cotton sheets of my spare bed.

Sunday July 29th

Everybody Yurts

When the day’s been long and the night,

The night chills you to the bone.

When you’re sure you’ve had enough

Of mudslides, well hang on.

Let your tent pegs go, let me please advise

That everybody yurts sometimes.

Sometimes standard camping’s wrong.

It’s only suited to the strong.

When the ground is hard as stone,

And it feels like ten below.

If you think you’ve had too much of this life, well hang on.