The Trustagrarian

Recently relocated from a Holland Park townhouse to a tumbledown farm on the outskirts of Dartmoor, Edward — Eddie — the Trustagrarian is looking forward to the festival season very much indeed, as he’ll finally get the chance to give his Jermyn Street tweeds and Haggarts cap a decent airing. Once found waving £50 notes and hammering on the door of the Pimm’s bus at 3am, the Trustagrarian is now too busy selling his own organic ice cream on site — at £4.50 a pop — to be able to take part in any hedonistic late-night endeavours.

The Old Stager

Martin is the curator of his own rock’n’roll museum. Sadly, Martin is the only ever visitor. Neatly annotated, double-bagged and stored in his specially strengthened loft, the brightly coloured detritus of nearly 40 years of festivals marks the epochal events in the Old Stager’s life. Seventy-two hours without sleep?

Been there. Entire camping kit stolen by roustabout crusties? Oh, yeah. Limp attained during the turf war up the front for Wishbone Ash at Bickershaw in ’72? Definitely. Nothing fazes the Old Stager.

The Newbie

While the rest of the festival crowd struggle with tents and wonder whether there is any fresh water, the Newbie can be seen wearing a pair of brand-new Havaianas flip-flops and wheeling a bright-pink suitcase across the main arena in search of somewhere to plug in her hair straighteners. Inured to the realities of festival life by a diet of Channel 4 infomercials and gossip-mag photoshoots, the Newbie still believes that it is possible to survive a weekend avoiding the Kaiser Chiefs and sheltering from the elements in a £30 tent with your sanity, footwear and pedicure intact.

The Perfect Family

Like a Boden catalogue come to glorious, apple-cheeked life, the Perfect Family have piled down from Dulwich Village in their Volvo XC90. Their plan for the weekend is to hang out around the beautifully erected tent and gazebo area while enjoying home-made sausages cooked on the portable Weber. Dad’s brought some cider he sourced from a wonderful old chap with his own press down in Somerset, while Mum has the complete new-season set of Cath Kidston and Orla Kiely homewares to enjoy. Might make it into the arena to “catch some awesome bands” if the jigsaw timetable permits.

The Student

That student festival checklist in full: slab of room-temperature lager from Aldi; 200 Fortuna cigarettes, left over from last summer; iPod nano stuffed with Chris Moyles’s podcasts and illegally downloaded Klaxons records; Lolcats T-shirt; jeans that fit only if you wear them underneath the buttocks; a £10 note; ruined trainers. That’s it. For 60 hours.

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