In the camper van, nobody is stirring. I head over to the next field and buy myself a bacon and egg bap with a mug of tea. The tea tastes disgusting, made with heavily fluoridated water, but the bap is brilliant. I ring my mate Rob over in the family field but fail to get through. So I head into the site and catch the end of the midday headliner on the main stage, Status Quo. In 1973 I had a ticket to see Status Quo and somebody nicked it from me (I know who, but there are libel laws). Thirty six years later, here they are playing ‘You’re In The Army Now’, which is a miserably bad song. Still, I get to hear them…

Slow start to the day. Pyclet and banana for breakfast, then to the Pyramid stage to see the brilliant desert blues boogie of Tinariwen, a Malian band I’ve seen three times before. It’s quiet at the front, so we discover that there’s a dividing, safety wall to hold in the first thousand or so people (what, at a Bruce show, is called ‘the pit’, or at Beyonce ‘the golden circle’). You can only access it from the front sides. This information will come in handy later. Tinariwen are as good as ever, perfectly suited to coming round on a sunny afternoon. My siblings go and crash on the grass to listen, but I stay near the very front, swaying slightly to the hypnotic, buzzy rhythms.…

The rain puts paid to our going out early. Fran conjures up tea and bacon sarnies before we head into the festival, through plenty of big puddles, wearing wellies. There are new stages since I was last here – the Queen’s Head, which is mostly a disco, and ‘Dirty Boots’ where bands play every hour but are not listed in the programme. You have to check the blackboard. We head up to the John Peel stage to see Fucked Up (I fancied a bit of Regina Spektor first but was outvoted – it’s a longish haul to what used to be the New Bands stage). They make a lot of noise. Their frontman is a very shouty exhibitionist. He entertains the crowd in every possible…

The plan is to set off around eleven but we’re on Belbin time (soon to be Glasto time). I’m with sister, Fran (+ her partner, Chris: his first Glasto), and my youngest brother, Rich. They’ve driven over from Sheffield. The four of us set off at one, following the official route suggested for camper vans (Fran and Chris have just bought a 26 year old Hymer). While waiting, I’ve read a Twitter friend’s account – it took nine hours for him to do the last 25 miles. So we’re amazed when, six hours and one pitstop later, we get in to field E11 with no queuing whatsoever. We have a drink, meet the neighbours, put up the awning and tent. And then it starts to…

I’ve met Barry a few times but this was my first visit to his house. And, while I knew his fine poetry, I’d never read any of his novels, until the Shoestring reissue of his second, ‘Joseph Winter’s Patronage’, which I finished on the train journey to London. It’s a terrific, absorbing novel, fast moving, multi-viewpoint, beautifully written, about the rage and passions of old age, all the more remarkable given that Barry was only in his early thirties when he wrote it. The novel is dedicated ‘To Bryan’, the remarkable experimental novelist BS Johnson. For a time, Barry lived in a building (pictured above) in the square where he now lives, which was later occupied by BSJ. Nearby, a few years later, Barry was…