Your Glasto Toilet Nightmares

United Kingdom | by Daniel Fahey29 June 2007

It happens every year - you have the time of your life.  You watch your favourite band perform the greatest set they’ll ever play, then you witness a collaboration that will never ever be repeated and then you go home exhausted and happy.  What’s the first thing you tell your friends when you’re back?  That’s right – your toilet experiences!

Faeces tales are now festival folk law.  From ‘Pop-Up Pirate’ who swims around the mess in the ‘long drops’, creeping up on unsuspecting folk above as they finish off their business, to the lady who excitedly excretes in empty tents - everybody has a defecation anecdote.  We asked a few on the messageboards to share their ‘shit’ stories with us from 2007.

Glastonbury is daunting enough for any first timers but nothing can prepare you for your first portaloo experience, even on the Wednesday, as Warmy Treehouse discovered: “I opened the door to find that someone had chosen to use a free Bag For Life to wipe their bum with and they’d left it in there, scrunched up, with loads of poo on it!” Well as Tesco say – ‘Every Little Helps’.

A heavy dosage of cider at a festival can be as helpful as eating a suitcase full of roughage when it comes to bowel movements and some don’t expect the excrement exit to arrive quite so rapidly.   Infinity Traveller overheard the aftermath of such a case: “When I was in one of the long drops I heard – ‘On my God!  Don’t touch the Seat!’  Swiftly followed by, ‘Ahh! Don’t touch your face, don’t touch your face!’”

REDWINEGIRL was caught short near the Pyramid Stage: “I was very very desperate [and] by the time my turn came round I was verging on pissing my pants.  But every time I used the toilets I heaved, so I needed to cover my nose with a baby wipe.  Upon entering the cesspit of death, I blanched, heaved and rapidly turned round to back out of the loo, only to remember I was going to wet my pants - it was do or die.  The reason for my sudden pallor - some dirty bastard had crapped all over the seat, the rim, the side of the loo, and then tried to wipe it off with a baby’s nappy before proceeding to throw it on the floor of the loo.”

‘She Pees’ were created to prevent such disasters.  Amfy saw them as a bit of a God send until she walked in to the ones by the Dance Village: “Incredibly, a ‘pee pit’ with boarding over it, was right inside the door as you went through!  I immediately skidded in the mud and fell in!  People were great at dragging me out very quickly - Bless them! I scraped all up my left leg but somehow managed to see the funny side!”

Using the toilets at Glastonbury is like making a good cup of tea – if you do everything in the correct order everything works out fine.  The trick with ‘long drops’ is looking above and below the door before you enter.  This tells you two things: 1) If the toilet is in use, and 2) What sort of disposal is the previous user releasing (if the wellies face the seat it’s usually a man pissing).  In you go Shelliminator… Oops she’s back out again: “I did the proper thing and looked above and below the door to make sure no one was in it.  I open the door and behind it is a girl with both feet on either side of the hole squatting.  I quickly said “sorry” and shut the door.  With ‘long drops’ - keep the feet there and hover if you have to but don't squat!”

Lest we forget that the celebrities wander around the site as well and when they need to go it can sometimes be a long way back to the backstage loos.  Take young Peaches Geldof for example she, “saw a guy with his head in a toilet.” Quite what they were doing in the loo together I’ll never know.

Yet our tales are not all full of disasters, some experiences are just shit and giggles as Lazarou Monkey Terror proudly explains: “It was such a good experience I gained almost an epiphany whilst calmly dropping the payload. A wave of higher enlightenment rushed to my head and though the door flung open to expose myself to the masses like some Carry On film - it didn't matter. A portal to universal truth and godhead had opened up in my anus and I have been changed all the better.”

Miss Oceania has the real secret to a pooing paradise: “Practise toilet karma - it works! I managed to avoid using any really bad ones all weekend by making sure I left the loo in the manner to which I would like to find it and lighting incense in most of them. Even the one portaloo I used on Friday afternoon was almost pristine and smelled quite lovely too, much to my surprise!”

VF has exposed the best ways to a better bog.  So clear your mind of all these awful toilet nightmares and remember to empty your intestines before you even turn up for that 'dream dump'...