Building the Pyramid Stage

As it's probably my last chance ever, I came back to the Glasto site this morning to explore its varied vastness before it's too full of people to move. I've only once previously been in a festival before it started: I was setting up a bookstall the day before WOMAD opened and was fascinated when, overnight, all the access roads were closed and became non-places and all the empty spaces between became the festival, as if the site had turned itself inside out.

At the moment the 8km perimeter fence here contains uncountable small building sites. I don't know what will happen to the roads currently full of mobile cranes, fork lift trucks, articulated delivery lorries and 4-wheel drive vehicles pulling trailers piled with equipment, all carefully manoeuvring round corners designed to fit them, just. I'm very alert to anything with wheels and give it priority, the reverse of how I live my normal life, and it's hard to believe that all the work going on here will be complete in two days time.  Even the iconic Pyramid stage isn't ready yet.

As well as stage- and set-building, there's lots of smaller-scale creativity: seats in the shape of pentangles, willow sculptures, fences being erected and painted, scaffolding structures going up which will be decorated to create the entrances to different areas, signs being graffitied, a wooden phoenix being built which will be burnt as part of the opening ceremony. And so many people in hi-vis.

I was surprised to be allowed to wander around so freely. I was asked to leave only one of the 20 main 'areas'.