Signs that you've overdone it:

• You're naked and body-painted from the ankles up
• People start calling you 'Moon of Orion' and you love it
• You mix the dance tent up with your own tent and camp down for the night next to a massive speaker stack
• You arrange to meet friends outside the recovery tent
• You're in there shouting 'More maestro!' when anyone leaves the stage

Signs that you're under-doing it:

• You're up at day-break, clear-headed and hungry
• After the final act, you head for your tent and tuck up
• Friends keep asking you to look after their valuables
• You spend more time under the showers than in front of the stage
• You keep phoning home just to find out how things are

Always in the pocket:

• Money (cold hard cash if you can. Guard credit cards with your life)
• Sun-block (it might help urge the rain away)
• Plastic bag (useful should rain hat/pillow/shoe protector things get muddy)
• Condoms (useful should rain hat/pillow/shoe protector things get muddy)
• Mobile phone

Festivalgoers to avoid:

• People who don't blink, ever
• People who reek of patchouli, including their children
• People with dark glasses and earpieces
• People in Take That T-shirts
• People who stride about shouting: "Jesus says this is all wrong!"

Festivalgoers to seek out:

• Naked mud wrestlers (because it isn't big or clever, unless someone else is doing it)
• Your mates (six hours wandering by yourself can get lonely)
• People who live in tepees (from a distance. Don't go in, you'll never come out)
• Bar staff that recognise your thirst and like you
• Backstage security that look the other way for the price of a pint

Ways to ensure people think you're a twat:

• Wear a jester's hat (Do we even need to mention this?)
• Sling handfuls of mud at passers-by
• Rope off a 20 metre-squared area round your tent for "privacy" reasons
• Smile smugly from the VIP area at the great unwashed
• Talk ridiculously loudly into your phone about how you've just been hanging out with your great mate Beth Ditto/Rob da Bank/Faris Badwan etc

Updated: 04/05/2010