Blogger Nickie Omer blogs from the Glastonbury 2011 music festival.
The sun has come out at Glastonbury and suddenly the weary crowd who've been trying to enjoy themselves - despite the shocking weather, have something to smile about.
For the 180,000 festival goers, Friday was a struggle from stage to stage through thick mud and torrential downpours.
We gave
up at midnight, deciding sleep was preferable to battling the elements.
Earlier in the evening at a bar we overheard one punter saying, "It was Morrissey who brought the rain", and onstage the singer's mood certainly fit the weather.
"I know you're all here to see U2 so i'll sing as quickly as I can".
That elicited a chorus of boos from the audience and then the former Smiths frontman went through the motions, cutting many of his songs short and performing fewer than a handful of hits, including the sobering 'Meat Is Murder' - a statement song that was possibly lost on a crowd of people who wanted a party, rather than politics.
Glastonbury though, has always been a politically slanted festival.
On Friday headliners U2 were targeted by an outfit protesting against their tax status.
A six metre inflatable banner that said "U pay your tax 2", was swiftly removed by security staff. Radiohead were the not so secret surprise guests on the small Park Stage playing mostly new songs to a packed crowd.
Today (overnight) we sat on bales of hay in the drying mud and read the paper to the sound of Nicolas Jaar, a New Yorker who specialises in "organic electronic" music - the James Blake and Mount Kimbie way of doing things.
Then we saw 'The Kills' - Kate Moss's fiance Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart, playing dirty blues just as the clouds disappeared and the glorious sun emerged. That, with a crisp pint of beer, is what Glastonbury is all about.
Saturday
Mud, mud everywhere. A sticky, squelchy, ankle-deep mass of nastiness, it traps gumboots, ejecting their wearers into the muck and coating them in a brown goo they're not likely to be fully rid of until their next proper shower on Monday.
It isn't surprising that Glastonbury is a mud bath this year. It's one of the things the festival is known for and why everyone who goes, knows they need to bring gumboots.
Heavy rain on Wednesday night and Thursday morning quickly turned the hard ground into a muddy pit and the weather's been a bit iffy ever since - a few showers, grey, cold at night.
I'm painting a grim picture I know, but as long as you have a full length plastic poncho with the aforementioned gumboots and good balance, the music cancels out the hardships.
We saw Kiwi band The Naked and Famous today (Friday).
They performed on the 'Other' stage - the biggest stage at Glastonbury after the Pyramid stage. That's a pretty big deal in my book. The crowd was large and loved them. We bumped into Tiki Taane and Shapeshifter too, fresh from a very late night performance that saw long queues of people trying to get in.
As I write this, I'm sitting on a hill watching a helicopter circle above. It's probably carrying Beyonce or Bono. They're the festival headliners, along with Coldplay.
Up next for us today is Warpaint. They're a four piece all-girl rock group from LA , then Morissey who I've been wanting to see forever and Queens of the Stone Age too.
I have my trusty yellow raincoat and a lovely bottle of NZ sauvignon blanc decanted into plastic (no bottles at Glastonbury) and I'm really hoping that mud behaves itself.
