The Glastonbury Festival
The Fool - Myrna and Ruti sold their clothes at the festival
Myrna - Ruti and I, with our children, sold Fool clothes at the Glastonbury Festival and other Festivals in the 1980s.
Across this field of campers at the second ever Glastonbury festival, you can see the newly constructed Pyramid Stage, built by theatre designer Bill Harkin. *
History of The Glastonbury Festival
1970 – The muddy beginnings - Farmer Michael Eavis decides to hold a festival to pay off his overdraft. With tickets costing £1 and free milk provided, 1,500 people descend on Worthy Farm near Pilton in Somerset to watch sets from the likes of T Rex (standing in for The Kinks). Eavis is so enamoured with it he decides to continue.
1981 – Things gets political - The festival takes on a new political direction. Eavis's affiliation with CND attracts politically minded performers including New Order, Taj Mahal and Aswad. It is also the first Glastonbury to turn a profit. The Independent Gillian Orr
1970 – The muddy beginnings - Farmer Michael Eavis decides to hold a festival to pay off his overdraft. With tickets costing £1 and free milk provided, 1,500 people descend on Worthy Farm near Pilton in Somerset to watch sets from the likes of T Rex (standing in for The Kinks). Eavis is so enamoured with it he decides to continue.
1981 – Things gets political - The festival takes on a new political direction. Eavis's affiliation with CND attracts politically minded performers including New Order, Taj Mahal and Aswad. It is also the first Glastonbury to turn a profit. The Independent Gillian Orr
The Fool went to the 1986 Glastonbury Festival - Myrna's story written as it happened so long ago.
On the weekend of the summer solstice Ruti and I drove towards the Glastonbury Festival held on farmland.
We had been coming here for four years, our battered VW van crammed with 50 cm deep piles of women’s clothes from our own design label, The Fool, as well as rails, mirrors, bamboo to display the knitwear, and a huge fifteen foot tent we'd borrowed from our friend Michael. We were part of a familiar band of itinerant traders from all over Britain.
We drove through the checkpoint, confirmed we were who we said we were, and found ourselves a spot in the vast acreage of farmland.
Around us there were tents of all kinds. Most were simply polythene clipped to metal frames, marquees, a genuine Moroccan tent with a striped conical top, and several Red Indian tepees. Ruti and I tapped and tugged until our own 'monster', a spring-loaded affair, like a gigantic insect with a dark brown body, stood erect. We collapsed laughing. It was still very hot, the sky bright blue: I lazily changed into my turquoise' shorts.
A mosquito bit me on the fleshy part of my thigh. In a split second, the temperature changed became colder. A downpour of rain sent us all scurrying to our tents. From then on, the sky never closed and the downpour never ceased, day or night. Our brown tent became a sanctuary as well as the shop and sleeping quarters we had intended it to be. We sat in there that first evening, as aromatic smells drifted in. The Genuine Indian Curry marquee had set up opposite. Next to it was a Reggae tent with Rasta’s in outsized hats covering their dreadlocks. That night their heavy bass Reggae music, thudded into our sleeping bags until almost dawn. We snatched sleep between pauses.
We were woken by the Indian cook in his white overall and crochet hat: 'Hurry, hurry, hurry, curry, curry, curry, curry and rice very, very nice', he chanted as we ate breakfast. He didn't stop for most of the following four days. When we unzipped the front of the tent, we saw a curly-headed man, as amazed to see us as we him. It was Georgio from Wolverhampton a wholesale customer of ours. For years he had bought Fool clothes from us to sell in his shop. It could have been very embarrassing to find himself, out of the hundreds of randomly arranged stalls, opposite people selling identical clothes. But fortunately, he was only selling airbrushed T-shirts with film star faces. He was as wet and miserable as we were.
Despite the numbing cold, Ruti and I prepared to sell our clothes. We displayed the dresses, skirts and blouses around the tent like banners, and suspended the jumpers from bamboo sticks.
Even before the day's trading began, the ground was already murky. The grass had gone. it was almost mobile with tacky mud. To our right, a generator vibrated. A Mr. Kreemy van selling burgers and hot dogs parked right in front of one of the rows of open, cesspit toilets. People, unconcerned, about the stench were buying the food. The mosquito bite of the previous day was swelling abnormally. I decided to find the doctors on the site. The organisers of the festival had set up a room in the local farmer's house to serve as a surgery. When I arrived inching my way there wearing my pink plastic sandals, one doctor was attending the birth of a baby; another was setting broken bones and a third telling a distraught mother that her child had chicken pox. A small, intense looking man was also waiting to see the doctor. I overheard him give his first name, Lionel, and his address. Without thinking I blurted out an unlikely question: did he know our friend Michael? He did! I then found out that this Lionel, besides having constipation, was the knowledgeable record salesman Michael had known for years and had many times mentioned to Ruti and me. We had never set eyes on him before and yet it transpired he was to be next in line for Michael’s tent that we were now using. Out of thousands of people - what a place to find him. The doctor gave me some anti-histamine pills and I slid back to work with Ruti.
All the stalls, which, at the start of the Festival had appeared so random in their placement, now seemed part of some organic pattern. There were stalls selling rugs, 'Talking Drums' and jewellery. There was a 'Magical -Mystery' tent, second-hand and new clothes. If you were over eighteen and had two pounds minimum charge, you could have a tattoo done or your head shaved. And there was food, food to cater for every fad or fancy. I noticed, too, that traders had brought their microwaves, calor - gas ovens and fridges with them.
Ruti had been selling the clothes steadily, if unconventionally. The customers had to don brown paper bags over their mud-caked boots or shoes in order to try on our clothes. Many had to buy without trying them on at all. The conditions inside the tent were fast catching up with the squelch of the outside.
Ruti and I had no instant method of getting warm and dry, so we wore everything we had brought with us for the weekend. Each night we slept with our hats on, partly against the penetrating cold, but also to block out the noise of the bone shaking bass from those loudspeakers! During the day we would take turns to go out and buy hot drinks.
Yet something remarkable happened on this weekend. Everyone responded positively and uncomplainingly to those conditions, rained down on us from above.
By the next day, rich and poor alike, fancily dressed or tattered, were all in the same boat, trying to keep afloat. Many people had to go barefoot; they would only slip in the mud in boots or shoes. I watched someone place a Wellington-clad foot down into the squelch, sucking it in and then released it, leaving the boot in the mud and the stockinged foot wagging in the air.
A new fashion movement blossomed: a fashion of necessity. Black plastic bin bags became boots, socks, sleeveless coats, hats and capes. Crestfallen punks, cool Rasta’s in sunglasses, donned the new polythene collection. When two nattily-dressed men slithered to a stop outside the tent, the soles of their expensive new shoes detached from the uppers, Ruti and I had to improvise a way to keep their shoes from falling completely apart and also a means to hold their shoes onto their feet. We bound shoes, foot and all with strong masking tape. The relief at being able to move again made the sacrifice of their smartness worthwhile. All these imaginative adaptations to the bizarre conditions seemed, after a while, perfectly normal.
On the final day of the Festival all of us traders were bouncing ideas on how we were going to get off the site. Driving through the mud was obviously impossible; wheels would just skid.
We followed the criss-crossed furrows gouged by tractors towing vehicles up and down the hills to the information tent to see if the organisers of the Festival had worked out any evacuation plans. But one look showed us that help from this source was improbable. The tent was thick with mud and squalid with litter and empty cans. People slumped forlornly on the churned-up pea-soup ground. Drugged people and drunks stood about at tilted angles their clothing wet, sticky and brown.
We found an official wearing a badge, but she had no ideas either, though she'd heard a rumour that you could hitch a tow from a tractor in exchange for a substantial bribe.
We decided to try stopping the next tractor driver we saw and asking politely for a lift. It worked. During the one and only respite from the deluge, a friendly man waited while we quickly packed the few remaining unsold clothes and knitwear, pocketed the substantial takings and returned the 'brown monster' to its bag to await its next inhabitant, Lionel. We clambered into our van, waving ‘au revoir’ to friends still stranded in their tents, who'd be stuck there for a few more days.
As we reached the exit a plaintive lament drifted to our ears. A fitting finale: the Genuine Indian Curry man's call croaked slowly and feebly like an old fashioned gramophone player that needed winding up, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry, curry, curry, curry, curry and rice, very, very nice!'
Within a week the land here would be cleared of people and litter. The grass would star to grow again. The itinerant caravan of traders would be on the road on their way to another festival. Ruti and I would be setting up a stall as usual in some London market. Myrna
We had been coming here for four years, our battered VW van crammed with 50 cm deep piles of women’s clothes from our own design label, The Fool, as well as rails, mirrors, bamboo to display the knitwear, and a huge fifteen foot tent we'd borrowed from our friend Michael. We were part of a familiar band of itinerant traders from all over Britain.
We drove through the checkpoint, confirmed we were who we said we were, and found ourselves a spot in the vast acreage of farmland.
Around us there were tents of all kinds. Most were simply polythene clipped to metal frames, marquees, a genuine Moroccan tent with a striped conical top, and several Red Indian tepees. Ruti and I tapped and tugged until our own 'monster', a spring-loaded affair, like a gigantic insect with a dark brown body, stood erect. We collapsed laughing. It was still very hot, the sky bright blue: I lazily changed into my turquoise' shorts.
A mosquito bit me on the fleshy part of my thigh. In a split second, the temperature changed became colder. A downpour of rain sent us all scurrying to our tents. From then on, the sky never closed and the downpour never ceased, day or night. Our brown tent became a sanctuary as well as the shop and sleeping quarters we had intended it to be. We sat in there that first evening, as aromatic smells drifted in. The Genuine Indian Curry marquee had set up opposite. Next to it was a Reggae tent with Rasta’s in outsized hats covering their dreadlocks. That night their heavy bass Reggae music, thudded into our sleeping bags until almost dawn. We snatched sleep between pauses.
We were woken by the Indian cook in his white overall and crochet hat: 'Hurry, hurry, hurry, curry, curry, curry, curry and rice very, very nice', he chanted as we ate breakfast. He didn't stop for most of the following four days. When we unzipped the front of the tent, we saw a curly-headed man, as amazed to see us as we him. It was Georgio from Wolverhampton a wholesale customer of ours. For years he had bought Fool clothes from us to sell in his shop. It could have been very embarrassing to find himself, out of the hundreds of randomly arranged stalls, opposite people selling identical clothes. But fortunately, he was only selling airbrushed T-shirts with film star faces. He was as wet and miserable as we were.
Despite the numbing cold, Ruti and I prepared to sell our clothes. We displayed the dresses, skirts and blouses around the tent like banners, and suspended the jumpers from bamboo sticks.
Even before the day's trading began, the ground was already murky. The grass had gone. it was almost mobile with tacky mud. To our right, a generator vibrated. A Mr. Kreemy van selling burgers and hot dogs parked right in front of one of the rows of open, cesspit toilets. People, unconcerned, about the stench were buying the food. The mosquito bite of the previous day was swelling abnormally. I decided to find the doctors on the site. The organisers of the festival had set up a room in the local farmer's house to serve as a surgery. When I arrived inching my way there wearing my pink plastic sandals, one doctor was attending the birth of a baby; another was setting broken bones and a third telling a distraught mother that her child had chicken pox. A small, intense looking man was also waiting to see the doctor. I overheard him give his first name, Lionel, and his address. Without thinking I blurted out an unlikely question: did he know our friend Michael? He did! I then found out that this Lionel, besides having constipation, was the knowledgeable record salesman Michael had known for years and had many times mentioned to Ruti and me. We had never set eyes on him before and yet it transpired he was to be next in line for Michael’s tent that we were now using. Out of thousands of people - what a place to find him. The doctor gave me some anti-histamine pills and I slid back to work with Ruti.
All the stalls, which, at the start of the Festival had appeared so random in their placement, now seemed part of some organic pattern. There were stalls selling rugs, 'Talking Drums' and jewellery. There was a 'Magical -Mystery' tent, second-hand and new clothes. If you were over eighteen and had two pounds minimum charge, you could have a tattoo done or your head shaved. And there was food, food to cater for every fad or fancy. I noticed, too, that traders had brought their microwaves, calor - gas ovens and fridges with them.
Ruti had been selling the clothes steadily, if unconventionally. The customers had to don brown paper bags over their mud-caked boots or shoes in order to try on our clothes. Many had to buy without trying them on at all. The conditions inside the tent were fast catching up with the squelch of the outside.
Ruti and I had no instant method of getting warm and dry, so we wore everything we had brought with us for the weekend. Each night we slept with our hats on, partly against the penetrating cold, but also to block out the noise of the bone shaking bass from those loudspeakers! During the day we would take turns to go out and buy hot drinks.
Yet something remarkable happened on this weekend. Everyone responded positively and uncomplainingly to those conditions, rained down on us from above.
By the next day, rich and poor alike, fancily dressed or tattered, were all in the same boat, trying to keep afloat. Many people had to go barefoot; they would only slip in the mud in boots or shoes. I watched someone place a Wellington-clad foot down into the squelch, sucking it in and then released it, leaving the boot in the mud and the stockinged foot wagging in the air.
A new fashion movement blossomed: a fashion of necessity. Black plastic bin bags became boots, socks, sleeveless coats, hats and capes. Crestfallen punks, cool Rasta’s in sunglasses, donned the new polythene collection. When two nattily-dressed men slithered to a stop outside the tent, the soles of their expensive new shoes detached from the uppers, Ruti and I had to improvise a way to keep their shoes from falling completely apart and also a means to hold their shoes onto their feet. We bound shoes, foot and all with strong masking tape. The relief at being able to move again made the sacrifice of their smartness worthwhile. All these imaginative adaptations to the bizarre conditions seemed, after a while, perfectly normal.
On the final day of the Festival all of us traders were bouncing ideas on how we were going to get off the site. Driving through the mud was obviously impossible; wheels would just skid.
We followed the criss-crossed furrows gouged by tractors towing vehicles up and down the hills to the information tent to see if the organisers of the Festival had worked out any evacuation plans. But one look showed us that help from this source was improbable. The tent was thick with mud and squalid with litter and empty cans. People slumped forlornly on the churned-up pea-soup ground. Drugged people and drunks stood about at tilted angles their clothing wet, sticky and brown.
We found an official wearing a badge, but she had no ideas either, though she'd heard a rumour that you could hitch a tow from a tractor in exchange for a substantial bribe.
We decided to try stopping the next tractor driver we saw and asking politely for a lift. It worked. During the one and only respite from the deluge, a friendly man waited while we quickly packed the few remaining unsold clothes and knitwear, pocketed the substantial takings and returned the 'brown monster' to its bag to await its next inhabitant, Lionel. We clambered into our van, waving ‘au revoir’ to friends still stranded in their tents, who'd be stuck there for a few more days.
As we reached the exit a plaintive lament drifted to our ears. A fitting finale: the Genuine Indian Curry man's call croaked slowly and feebly like an old fashioned gramophone player that needed winding up, 'Hurry, hurry, hurry, curry, curry, curry, curry and rice, very, very nice!'
Within a week the land here would be cleared of people and litter. The grass would star to grow again. The itinerant caravan of traders would be on the road on their way to another festival. Ruti and I would be setting up a stall as usual in some London market. Myrna
* The stills on this page are taken from Britain on Film Footage courtesy of South West Film and Television Archive.
