Last night, we managed to have a test run at putting up the tent we have borrowed for next weekends Glastonbury festival. After initially doing it completely the wrong way and wasting about 20 minutes, we started from scratch and up it went, in a pleasingly easy manner. The inflatable mattress fits inside perfectly and the battery operated pump makes that whole inflation thing a walk in the park.

The first time I went to Glastonbury, several friends and I borrowed a tent from a friend of ours. In those days tents weren’t the straightforward things that they are today, so when we reached the plot of land where we set to make camp, we were dismayed to not only be met with falling rain but also with a mass of poles which we had no idea how to fit together. The rain continued to fall, the daylight gave way to darkness and we got no nearer working out a way of assembling the tent. Eventually one of the gang said “Why don’t we just make some sort of structure and then just throw the canvas over it for the evening.” It seemed like a reasonable call, so we joined various bits together, and came up with a frame that was about 20 feet long but only about 2 feet wide! Useless!! Luckily, in those days you could still park your car next to your tent, so we decided to sleep in the cars and listen to the sound of the rain. When we awoke the next morning, it all seemed blindingly obvious and we managed to erect the tent in about 15 minutes. Mind you, the heavy rain and a leaky roof meant that for the rest of the weekend, we had a very damp no mans land along the middle of our fortunately huge tent.