Snapshot: My daughters’ first Glastonbury festival

The last time I went to the Glastonbury festival was in 1990 when the Cure were headlining on the Saturday night – I remember this because they played their song 10.15 Saturday Night at … 10.15pm on a Saturday night. But then again, for a while my friends and I were convinced that an entirely not-at-all-similar-looking group called African Head Charge were the Cure until we realised our mistake (don’t ask and I won’t tell).

My friend Matt and I went straight from the festival to the south of France to go grape-picking, but we had neglected to bring a) any money or b) a map, and made it as far as Paris before heading home. It was all a bit edgy that year. In fact, Michael Eavis decided not to have the festival the following year because of some violent clashes with security.

So I was slightly reluctant about going this year, not least because my girlfriend and I had never been with our children before. I was staggered by how vast the site was and could see that it might be difficult to negotiate the crowds with our two daughters. We bought a red-and-black bike trailer that doubles as a buggy – which my daughters, aged eight and three, called the Ladybug. Both of them jumped in when they were tired of walking and, although we navigated the stony paths without a puncture, we were undone when a nut came off. Luckily, someone kindly rustled up a fix involving a piece of wire and we were off again.

While there were quite a few excellent dedicated children’s areas – Greenpeace, KidzField (although usually I avoid anything that spells “kids” with a z) and the Green Fields – why would anyone go to Glastonbury and hang out there? No, the whole point as we saw it was to take the girls to see the stuff we liked and intersperse it with things they would like – which in practice meant mixing Napalm Death (our eight-year-old could only take three songs before saying, “Daddy, my heart hurts. Can we go?”) with Basil Brush (seemingly the only child entertainer from the 70s to have avoided imprisonment – “boom boom!”).

The usual routine went out of the window, replaced by bedtime at 1am, chocolate doughnuts for breakfast and listening to Shaun Keaveny swear a lot. There was also the panicky moment when we got stuck with our trailer in the middle of a heaving crowd watching the Foo Fighters and had to escape to the fringes. People were so friendly as they cleared a path for us, high-fiving our girls as they were lifted through. The next day I came across a note stuck in the window of a double-decker bus (just as there are now more Tory MPs than pandas in Scotland, so there are more old Routemaster buses in Glastonbury than London) that read, “I can’t decide whether to be a good example – or a horrible warning.” That pretty much sums up how I feel about parenting generally.

One of the bands I really wanted my elder daughter to see with me was Ride, but the only shoegazing she ended up doing was at my feet while she slept during the middle of it. But I roused her enough for the final song so that she could hear me gently singing the words to Vapour Trail to her: “And all my time is yours as much as mine / We never have enough time to show our love.” But at Glastonbury, we did.

Chris Hall

Playlist: The night I didn’t get in to see Sugar

Hoover Dam by Sugar

“Standing on the edge / of the Hoover Dam, / I’m on the centreline, / right between two states of mind.”

I moved to Leicester in 1992, knowing no one. The first night there, I went to the Princess Charlotte to see Sugar, an offshoot of Hüsker Dü – a band I felt were fantastically obscure. I’d heard a copy of a copy of a cassette once, a cassette that appeared to have a jazz album playing along with Hüsker Dü. I arrived at the Charlotte expecting a majestic temple of indie-dom. It was a pub with a dark, damp, cold back room. I loved it. However, on this night, Sugar had sold out the venue and I stood outside and listened. I had failed to notice that grunge had arrived and music I liked was actually popular. Sugar mainman Bob Mould appeared on Steve Wright in the Afternoon. What was the world coming to?

The first gig I saw inside the Charlotte was Dumpy’s Rusty Nuts. This was not a sellout, but I had no problems getting to the bar and it featured an interesting tuba solo.

I bought Sugar’s Copper Blue album and love it to this day. The standout track is Hoover Dam, which has always made me feel better, more confident and happy. I can picture Bob Mould standing on the edge of the Hoover Dam. Not me, I’m not very keen on heights. The Princess Charlotte will always be my favourite music venue. I went on a pilgrimage to see it a few years ago and it had been turned into flats. I’ll always remember that dark, damp, cold back room. I never did get to see Sugar. I was on an archaeological dig in the Czech Republic when they returned to Leicester. They were the best band I never saw.

I loved my two years in Leicester. I was so pleased many years later that Richard III’s bones and Claudio Ranieri turned up to transform the city’s fortunes.

John Hutchin

We love to eat: My grandad’s beetroot salad

Ingredients
½ British round lettuce
4 radishes
¼ cucumber
2 spring onions
1 ripe tomato
Approximately ½ jar of sliced pickled beetroot
1 tbsp of malt vinegar
1 tsp of granulated sugar

Give the lettuce a good soak in cold water and then finely chop it. Place it in a large bowl. Chop the radish, cucumber, spring onions and tomato into bite-size chunks and throw them into the bowl. Finely chop the sliced betroot into small squares before adding it to the bowl. Add the malt vinegar and sugar. Mix everything together. Serve with tinned fish, such as salmon, or any meat of your choice.

My grandad has always loved beetroot, especially when it is pickled. Even when he was in the army and was deployed in Malaya and Singapore, he always got his hands on it. It reminded him of home. When he spent time with his fellow soldiers, they often made this deliciously simple salad.

Everyone in the family has tried it at some point over the years. Usually when it was too hot to cook and when my mother craved salads. Even my younger sister, who was never keen on beetroot, has fallen in love with it. Oozing with bright summer colours and full of sweet, tangy flavours, it refreshes us on a hot day. It will for ever remind me of spending long, lazy days at my grandparents’ house. Having tea in the kitchen, hearing the birds sing outside, and the smell of mint gently whisking its way from the garden path and into the kitchen. Sadly, the mint plant didn’t stay, but my grandad’s beetroot salad is still going strong.

Samina Bhatti

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