Glastonbury/ Prep

The Minx's research into portable bedding paid dividend's last night and we both slept well on our bed, improvised from a couple of inflatable beds, a mattress topper and a couple of sheets.

We made an earlyish start and headed down into the festival to look for coffee and breakfast. The first bands we wanted to see were't playing until the evening and I hadn't realised the extent to which the festival infrastructure would still be being assembled today. All the food stalls and bars were up and running, though, so we weren't wanting for anything in that department :-)

It was fun just wandering 'round and watching stages being assembled before retreating to the tipi for an afternoon nap before we went down to the brand new Wow stage in the part of the festival's geography called Silver Hayes, which is where a lot of the 'dance' stuff happens. The first band we saw was called New Build and consisted of guys from Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem plus a live percussionist. The music was good - sounding exactly like Hot Chip with a live percussionist, funnily enough - although the sound mix was pretty irritating, at least for me. I really don't like this dance mixing where the drums and bass synths are too high in the mix.

Next up was East India Youth, whom we've seen before. However, unfortunately for him, it was at this point that the Wow stage's teething troubles started and the first half of the allocated time for the gig was spent with increasingly surgical unplugging and replugging of cables to little avail. Exchanges between the stage and desk became more heated until, suddenly, everything appeared to be working and we were treated to just four songs, including a beautiful rendition of 'Heaven, how long', which was sung with a real ache and marred only by the mix.

After that, we were done for the evening and headed back out to find another drink and then wander around the festival grounds.