The steam is rising gently off the green fields of Oxfordshire and Berkshire as the 4.47 AM from Bristol speeds from Didcot and onto Reading. But for once I am not alone in my carriage and there is a strange smell.
I know that at Reading we will be joined by throngs of City folk heading into London. I will have to move my bags currently sprawled over three seats and the carriage will be filled with tap tap tap tap sounds as irrelevant messages are sent by one and all via blackberry and iPhone. For now I stare out of the window in relative peace, wondering why this land is so beautiful.
But I am not alone, the carriage is already a quarter full but it is not the normal crowd. Some have dyed hair, a few still flourish face paint, there is a vague muddy smell in the air. These are the middle aged revellers, done with their weekend of corporate faux festival life and a bit of weed at Glastonbury and scuttling back to the Smoke. A quick wash and a shower and they will be suited and booted and back in the world of respectability.
The banners at Glasto may be for Oxfam and Greenpeace, respectable and fashionable causes for ageing middle class deluded lefties, but it is money in the capitalist sense that drives the event. How far it has come from the original Glastonbury festival of 1914 – a gathering of utterly deluded left musicians and artists who viewed all money with contempt.
As an open anarcho-capitalist I have no problems with all the money that changes hands at Glasto. Profit is perfect and Greed is Good. It is just the pretence that money does not matter that stinks more than the muddy and painted accountants and lawyers who are my fellow traveller’s today.