The NME guide to recreating Glastonbury 2020 from your own home

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Weird, innit. Being at home. Friday night, Solstice weekend. You feel kinda restless. Itching to feel a squelch between your toes. Strange urge to shout ‘Alan!’. Expecting every passing bus to be dispensing cider, for some reason.

Yes, any other year, at this very moment, we’d all be cronking our twats off together in a field in Somerset to a DJ Dogburger set in the Arsehole Of Albion tent at Glastonbury. But in 2020 there’s a massive Somme-sized hole in all of our summer calendars. And even with the BBC providing a weekend of coverage from festivals in years gone by, we’re still bereft without the annual pilgrimage to Worthy Farm. Instead, follow these simple rules and enjoy your personal Glastonbury from the discomfort of your own utterly destroyed flat.

Perfecting the conditions

First of all, flood your bathroom. We understand buying in the required amount of compost, manure and congealed chip cartons to concoct an authentic Glasto Gloop is costly and inconvenient, so a simple three-inch layer of ground water will be enough to give you that encroaching-pneumonia-while-watching-Massive Attack feeling. Next, nail your loft shut – this will become important later. Then you need to sabotage your iPhone so that it can only receive calls for three minutes every hour and just slightly unplug the power supply to your internet connection – Twitter should be an erratic little bastard until Monday.

Designate your ‘areas’

Next, assign your Glasto Zones. If you’re ‘lucky’ enough to live with a budding musician – ideally one who both plays guitar and juggles – label their bedroom ‘Acoustic Stage’ and ‘Circus Field’, then lock them in for the weekend, you won’t be visiting either. Your fridge should be marked ‘Market’ and filled with Old Grouty’s Twigs’n’Foreskin Cider and fajitas made from dog food so old and rotten it might pass as ‘ostrich’. And if you really want to recreate the Glastonbury experience – lock your bathroom and spend the weekend shitting out of the window to recreate the longdrops.

Create the festival sites

What can’t you make with a pritt-stick, some cardboard and a handful of loorolls? Make like these FOMO-filled punters and create Glasto’s greatest sites out of materials from your recycling box.

Ready for the weekend #Glastonbury #Glastonbury2020 #GlastHomeBury @bbcglasto @TheGlastoThingy @GlastoFestFeed @glastonbury @emilyeavis @TheGlastoThingy pic.twitter.com/kNzgAxPl7x

— Dan (@danpinder_) June 25, 2020

If I hadn't have taken all the lockdown cardboard to the tip when it opened, I would have built a pyramid! Sticky back plastic and a bit of ribbon will have to do. #GlastoAtHome #Glastonbury2020 pic.twitter.com/WPhmFlsRam

— Stacy Ford (@woolenbullet) June 24, 2020

Soundchecking. Big weekend ahead. #Glastonbury2020 #GlastHomeBury #morethanabox pic.twitter.com/Ppd0cpgW9k

— Bruce McLachlan (@BruceMcLachlan) June 25, 2020

Stayed up until gone midnight glueing ribbons to a lemon squeezer and a pringles tube to make a mini ribbon tower. Think I’ve gone delirious in the heat. #GlastoAtHome #Glastonbury2020 @bbcglasto #radiohead pic.twitter.com/fdA1oXiQTL

— Susan Haigh (@FlickColby) June 25, 2020

Start your day right

To recreate the true quality of Glastonbury narcotics, convince a local shopkeeper to sell you a box of Paxo ‘hash’ for £30 an ounce. Skin up and smoke this while watching the sun come up on Friday morning, feverishly ‘popping’ the ‘legal high’ of a Haribo Fantasy Mix and any mushrooms you can find down the back of your cooker from that enthusiastic attempt at a bolognese in 2016. To make you feel as though you’re doing this in the Green Fields, put on a Chumbawamba album in the background and decorate your back bedroom with phallic sculptures made out of roadkill and thump away at a Tupperware ‘drum circle’ while offering you a ‘holistic massage’ – i.e. beating you about the head and body with an empty can of Special Brew. Serenity.

Discover 10 new bands

Having gawped at this year’s spectacular new features – ‘Block 9’ recreated by throwing an old train set at a giant Jenga, perhaps – the afternoon should be spent at your own John Peel Stage checking out the hottest new talent. If you need a place to start – check out the weekly NME new bangers playlist for some stone-cold-smashers from the most exciting up-and-coming artists. Alternatively, if you happen to live in Peckham, open your window and throw a stick down the street, you’ll hit 10 bands willing to play in your garden that day.

Fail to go to a secret Radiohead set

At 4.30pm, start a rumour with yourself that Radiohead are playing a secret gig in ten minutes in your loft. But you’ve nailed your loft shut! There’s no way in! Spend the next two hours scouring your erratic Twitter for reassuring reports that it was shite anyway.

‘Watch’ The Headliners

Come sundown, saw off the two top corners of your flatscreen, bung on a live video of your favourite massive heritage act and you’re practically at the Pyramid Stage. Although to fully live the Glasto dream you should first plant several flags directly in front of the screen, obliterating the view so it feels like you’re watching Stevie Wonder from the back of a Crusade. Alternatively – recreate the main stage out of cardboard, like Foals have:

Happy Glastonbury weekend! When life gives you lemons, build a pyramid stage out of cardboard, wrap it around your TV and watch from a tent in your living room. Stream our 2019 set today at 4pm https://t.co/aOx19F3xC3@bbcglasto @BBCiPlayer #glastonbury2020 #GlastoAtHome pic.twitter.com/hJzmahOAQj

— FOALS (@foals) June 26, 2020

Head To Shangri-La

Tough one, this. How to to re-live the nightly post-headliner Glastonbury ritual of heading up to the underground 26th century metropolis crushed full of mash-heads that is Shangri-La? Your best bet is, once suitably inebriated, to break into your nearest crèche at 2am and stamp the fuck out of all of the toy aeroplanes, rocket ships, Barbie nightclubs and Battlestar Galactica set-ups, while trying to torch everything by breathing fire using mouthfuls of vodka and a Zippo. If you make bail, repeat until Monday.

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