I’m sitting up in The Park, my own special area at the festival, amid a crew of stonemasons, carpenters and creative masterminds; everyone is flat out right now as the countdown begins until the gates open. My favourite moments this week have been sitting up here at the very top of the festival site, watching the sun go down. It smacks me in the face every year just what a vast and sprawling creative explosion this farm has become.

I know the Brigadoon comparison has been used before, but it is staggering how much energy and love is going into the build-up for a huge gathering that will be dismantled within 120 hours of its creation. That’s one of the things that adds to the complete happenstance of Glastonbury.

It’s magic!

Another of my favourite places to go in the last few fevered days is the Permaculture café, one of the hidden treasures of the Green Fields. It is completely run on solar power, and food is made from plants and vegetables grown on the doorstep (and tended all year). They even have a mud and grass roof on the shelter that is used for growing salad leaves. A haven of peace in a quiet and creative area that’s been around since I was a child.

It can sometimes be a bit overwhelming to think of how much history these fields have seen. A story of bands and battles of some sort or another running right back to the 1970s. It gives my dad tremendous energy, and I hope I have inherited some of that enthusiasm too.

Politically speaking, we have put artists on this year that we feel are running along parallel lines of belief and world views. And that is big news for us. Bruce Springsteen is the second headliner in a row to be a Barack Obama supporter. With Neil Young, we are just overjoyed to have been able to book him after all these years. And it’s great to have the re-formed Blur really ready to go for it on Sunday night.

Anyone going on about the significance of the ages of the acts we have on is talking crap.

The social commitment of Glastonbury is something I deem to be of paramount importance. What we can deliver and ask makes it worthwhile. Ever since we managed to get the festival to break even we’ve been donating money to charity – it was £2 million last year to a whole host of local, national and international causes.

As the clock ticks nearer to Wednesday morning and the gates opening at last, all the speculation and debate and rumour rumbles on. We’re sometimes amazed at what people manage to find to write about us. But whatever they do say, nothing can stop the great rolling magical mishmash that is Glastonbury.

In the middle of all the non-stop phone ringing, tiny last-minute demands and ridiculous adjustments of machinery and equipment everywhere, I’m sitting quietly in The Park, writing my copy for The Times. There is nowhere quite like it anywhere in the world.

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