A friend posts a picture for us; pint in hand, lightly toasted by a warm sun - Is that the pyramid stage in the background?
There is something gloriously pagan about golden light glinting off the hills of Glastonbury.
There is something ingloriously pagan about the green goblin of jealousy squatting on my soul.
My friend says he’s waiting for Paul McCartney.
There is no evidence of wellies in the photo although I know he is a keen gardener. I’d have wished him a decent filthy traditional Glastonbury mud bath…. But the weather gods smile on him.
If marriage is about moving from the hurly burly of the chaise longue to the deep comfort of the double bed, then we have ditched our festival-going wellies for the comfort of the sofa and the remote control.
At least the queue for the toilet is short and it won’t look like a scene from Trainspotting because you cleaned it yourself.
But seeing the joyous crowds at Glastonbury made the isolation of the last two years all the more real.
We’ve been living life at the far end of a long-distance lens.
At the weekend, we watched the oldies but goldies down with the kids at Glastonbury…
We stayed up late to watch Paul McCartney – it was way past my bedtime, never mind his.
“Do you think he might be wearing a corset to stand so straight,” I asked.
“He’s 80,” said my fellow sofa-bound festival goer, “He’s still got it.”
When the crowd sang him happy birthday, he seemed taken by surprise.
When John Lennon appeared on screen and it felt like they sang together it was eerily good.
And when the crowd sang along – that easy to and fro of voices; that sense of communion - it brought home what we have all missed.
At heart, we are social animals, we need each other.
I catch myself forgetting how time has passed.
Noel Gallagher has aged well… but then he’s still younger than us.
Even little Greta Thunberg, the child climate activist, has grown up.
Her face looks slimmer and she looks wiser… still out to change the world, but at 19, recognising that is no easy goal.
And that sea of young women perched on people’s shoulders, waving their arms, men crowd surfing – all human life and some is there at Glastonbury.
Cut down a tree and you can tell its age by counting the circles on the trunk.
Ask someone to tell you who sang “Jump!” and you can carbon date them reliably by whose version comes to mind.
If they come up with Van Halen (Guilty your honour) then that elusive state pension is not too far off.
But we’re in good company… Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan.
The first festivals I remember in Ireland were at Slane.
I never went and it was Pope John Paul II’s fault.
He cured me of open air, crowded events.
First was the bus ride through Ireland - mile upon mile of yellow gorse - and averting our eyes when the boys got out for a pee.
Penance was a night spent sleeping on a hard concrete floor in a school in the middle of Ireland.
Then a dawn start and a trek over the cold hills of Galway to be met by a faraway stage and two men - Eamon Casey and Michael Cleary…. who turned out to be fathers in more than the clerical sense … whipping up the crowd as the papal helicopter made its slow descent.
It was a kind of youth festival, I suppose, but it was bone chilling in the open air, I crossed my legs to avoid public toilets and, yes, it was standing room only.
Since then, I’ve been to great concerts - Queen at the RDS; Leonard Cohen at the stadium near Harold’s Cross and Elton John who is memorable because he tossed carnations into the crowd and a fella nearly broke my arm to get one for his girlfriend.
My wilted Elton carnation is now lost between the leaves of a forgotten book.
As I’ve never been to a festival, maybe it’s time to lay the ghost of Galway 1979.
This year’s Glastonbury put me in the notion.
As long as I get a tent at the top of the hill, not the bottom; as long as the sun shines like this year and as long as I never ever come close to a Trainspotting toilet.
