So the summer solstice is marked, once again, by a Brown Glastonbury. The by-now familiar sights of cidered twentysomethings, swimming in a lake of brown soup, seems to be as sure a fixture on the June news as hats at Ascot.

While those not on the festival site might conclude that a Brown Glastonbury is nothing short of a humanitarian disaster, the reality is different. No-one really minds a Brown Glastonbury. They simply drink more. It also allows that most satisfying of British pastimes – hour-long conversations about the weather – to take part on a mass scale.

Of course, a great deal of this Blitz-like spirit is down to the message getting through that, no matter the forecast, YOU ALWAYS TAKE WELLINGTONS TO GLASTONBURY.

Indeed, the only person I saw inappropriately dressed was Michael Eavis – old grandpa Glastonbury himself. During Gogol Bordello’s set, he wore a porous-looking anorak, accessoried with a sweat-shirt wrapped around his head. Still, I suppose when you have a whole house on site, the odd deluge is neither here nor there.

BACKGROUND

• Glastonbury squelches to life

• Big Brother comes to Glastonbury

• Police on watch as Glastonbury fills up

• 'Mudbath ahoy' for Glastonbury

• Stella's vests set to rock Glastonbury

Going down a storm at Glasto

Kicking off our Glastonbury special, the Killers tell Sophie Heawood how a Venice tornado prepared them for Worthy Farm

Glastonbury 2007

One wonders if a cull of career-conscious indie rock bands such as The Killers might benefit future line-ups

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The moral high-ground of the event was surely claimed by the Loo Keeper, up in the Green Kidz Field. Armed only with a “Loo Keeper” hat and a toilet brush, the Loo Keeper’s sacred duty is to keep odifer-ous, lurching, digestively excessive adults from the only two Portaloos reserved for children.

“People can get quite arsey,” the Loo Keeper said, keeping guard over her much-coveted zip-up bag of toilet-rolls. “They’ ll say things like ‘But these are the only clean toilets!’ And I’ll reply ‘Yes, that’s because I keep people like you out of them.’ ” Stella McCartney turned up at 4.30pm on Friday, wearing one of her own creations, knowingly designed to look like a cannibalised bin-bag.

A long-time Glastonbury attender, McCartney had designed an exclusive £30 Oxfam T-shirt, being exclusively sold in her exclusive “Stella” shop, in the Park field. I exclusively ran after her, shouting “Stella!”, to ask if she’d visited her festival shop. She said no. I asked her what bands she was planning to see. She said: “All of them.” I realised I had nothing else to ask, except “Will you be my friend?”, so I ran away.

Down by the Jazz Stage, the Brothers cider-makers have been banned from selling their bottles of 7 per cent “festival strength” brew by the council, presumably because of the semicircle of unconscious customers no more than 50 yards from the stall.

At every festival, there are those who prosper. The Festival Cameras stall has started a sideline in umbrellas, and is shifting between 100 and 200 an hour. The Millets stall is selling 12 pairs of Wellingtons a minute. “Canny” operators sold them at a reported £60 mark-up outside the perimeter fence. Maybe they sold a pair at “American prices” to Kevin Spacey, who turned up on Friday, saying that he was “delighted” to not be recognised. Except he had been, by me.

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