The next morning was grey and, almost unbelievably - put-a-jumper-on-cold, as if the weather were trying to make a comment on what had happened to Alex the previous night. It was still difficult to believe that such a fantastic day had gone so horribly wrong. Not for the last time that summer, a phrase from, of all places, an Enid Blyton book, kept running through my head. It was a chapter title from a Famous Five story - "A lovely day… with a horrid end". I don’t know why that phrase came to me, but it did. However, I did also think if the venerable Ms. Blyton had been writing this story instead of one about Julian, Dick, George, Anne, and Timmy the dog, she might well have replaced the word ‘horrid’ with the words ‘fucking’ and ‘shit’.

Alex had been sat in the tent, just chilling out, resting his weary legs, listening to the sound of Oasis playing in the distance, and not doing anything of any great importance, when two men had forced their way through the opening, thrust a knife in his face, and demanded he cough up all the money he had. He didn’t have much – we were at Glastonbury, for fuck’s sake, not on a shopping trip to Tiffany’s – but they took the lot, and told him not to leave the tent, or… a wave of the knife spoke more eloquently than any threat could. Then the two men left. No, not men – there’s not really a word that I can use to describe them, but "men" is certainly too good for two sub-human, cowardly scumbags who would rob a disabled guy in a tent of a few measly quid. I genuinely hope that they are dead, that it was a painful and pitiless death, and they’re now both rotting in hell.

Scared shitless, and understandably so, Alex remained in the tent until the rest of us got back. We were all stunned, concerned, and suddenly scared ourselves. But we were angry too, and a bit sickened – the feelings that threatened to erupt at the end of the last paragraph are an echo eleven years later of what certainly Steve, and I, and probably Kate too, felt when we found out what had happened. I imagine that we ranted and raged a bit, as was our wont, but Alex didn’t. He was too pale, too quiet, in something very like shock. Recognising this, but being unsure of how to deal with it, the rest of us tried to talk about other things, bring a bit of normality back to things – or as normal as things can be in a tent in a dark field surrounded by thousands of people. We asked him if he wanted to get the police involved, but he said that he didn’t. Eventually, when it came to the time for sleep, we all just slept in the bigger tent, the one that had initially just been for Alex and me. It was a squeeze, but it felt like the right thing to do, for Alex, and also for the rest of us. Fear makes companions of us all, so I guess the next logical step is that it makes bedfellows of companions.

Despite the cold, the morning was something of a relief, and the shock of what happened, and perhaps the horror too, had faded for all of us, even a little for Alex, although not much. He hadn’t slept very well, if at all, and said he wanted to go home, right then, at that moment. I didn’t blame him, but looking back I equally don’t apportion any blame to myself or the others for trying to persuade him to stay for at least another day, which we did, and which he did. We said we’d all stick together, that he’d never be alone, and that we’d see some of the bands that were the main reason the whole festival existed. We argued that if he went home, then the two wankers who had robbed him would have won, and that he shouldn’t let them. I think his agreement was more to please us than a representation of his true feelings, but I think he was glad he stuck around. Anna came and saw us again, in the morning, which pleased him. In the afternoon, we all saw the Boo Radleys and the Lightning Seeds, two bands who, without ever being in our all time list of favourites, held a place in our hearts, or certainly in mine and Steve’s, and I have memories of seeing Jamiroquai too, but that might have been the previous day, and in any case we were so far away that Jay Kay was almost indistinguishable from the massive didgeridoo that one of the band was playing. Steve and Kate took a long walk around the festival site, checking out the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the strangeness. Kate and Alex went to see Orbital – or maybe we all did… I have no memory of them though – which cheered Alex up a great deal, because he was a big fan of theirs. And then, it was time for Pulp.

It should have been the Stone Roses. Maybe the whole of Glastonbury would have been different it they’d been there, as if somehow John Squire falling off his bike and breaking his arm sent some strange ripple down the astral plane and changed the course of the festival for us, as if his bad luck coursed down some branch of the cosmos and ultimately ended up with us. It’s unlikely, yes, because we didn’t do anything differently to how we would have if the Roses had been able to perform. But from the moment we heard that they weren’t going to be there, Glastonbury had something of a bad sign over it, and although there were good bits, good times, good moments throughout the weekend, there was a persisting feeling that someone, somewhere, really didn’t want us to have a good time there. The Roses’ no-show. The traumas of the journey down. My pill that turned out to be the bitterest I ever had to swallow at five pounds for what was merely an aspirin. Alex getting robbed at knifepoint. Maybe it was God. Maybe it was Satan. Maybe it was Liz. Maybe it was all just a big, bad coincidence.

Pulp weren’t the Roses, but they were bloody good. It was certainly the gig that, along with the "Common People" single of a month earlier, launched them from the indie second division to the pop mainstream. They closed a triumphant gig with it, and I can still hear Jarvis Cocker deliberately elongating the words as he introduced it – "Coh-monn Peee-pull…" The crowd at the Pyramid stage went as crazy as they did all weekend for that song, and so did we. We weren’t anywhere near the front like we had been for Oasis, mindful of our pact to all stick together we were further back and away to the left, but we still loved it, and certainly for me, it was a vindication of Alex’s decision to stay, and it went a long way to make the day, and the whole damn trip, worthwhile. When we got back to the tent, all of us, even Alex, felt a lot better about Glastonbury, and although he still said he would prefer to go home the following day rather than Monday, I think that he would have been persuaded to stay for the Sunday as well, if circumstances hadn’t once again conspired against us. Because as we slept that night, once again all together in the bigger of our two tents, some bastards came along and stole the other one.

Steve was the first to wake up that morning, and so he was the first to notice that something was fundamentally different from the previous night.

The other tent was gone. And so were all the things in it.

My old acoustic guitar, which Steve can be seen playing in a photograph in the previous instalment of this series, had also been in the tent, and it was the only thing of mine that was taken. I’d had it for a couple of years, and it was, to be honest, a piece of shit. Its strings were a hybrid of the original nylon ones and a couple of steel ones that had come from my electric one, which at the time was in storage either at Burton Street or at my parents. The fret-board on the acoustic was in something of a state, particularly at the end of the neck by the tuning keys, after it had been rained on during an eventful outdoor concert at school I’d performed at during the sixth form back in 1993, and it had never really played very well since, particularly if one were attempting root position chords. It was cheaply made, and cheaply treated, and even if I had given it something of the respect it deserved, it wouldn’t have been worth anything at all financially. I described it on the day we found it had been pinched as my "battered, worthless old sod of a guitar." However, it had been with me for a few years, and it had enough sentimental value to make me feel sick at it being taken. There was more, of course. Steve’s cigarettes had gone – we had both bought a carton of two hundred prior to the festival, and his were gone. Some of Steve and Kate’s clothes had gone. A chair which had been stashed in the tent was gone – in fact, it seemed as if the thieves had simply pulled up the guy ropes and taken the tent and its contents like a huge shopping bag. In some ways, we had been lucky that when we all bunked in together, Steve and Kate had kept their money, and the keys to the van, with them, rather than leaving them in the other tent, and other personal ephemera such as our meagre food supplies, toiletries, and our communal diary had stayed with us in the main tent.

It was almost surreal looking at the square of flattened grass where the second tent had been, trying to think back to the night before – had any of us heard anything, or anyone, at any point in the small hours? But it was pointless to even try and think – this was Glastonbury, the festival that never sleeps, and there were always people walking past, voices drifting across the campsite, strange sounds echoing around the tents and camp fires. Even if we had awoken and heard the tent being stolen, we would probably not have registered what was happening, and covered our heads and tried to get back to sleep.

This time, we did involve the police, but even before Steve trekked to the other side of the festival site to report the tent, and its contents, as stolen, we knew it was mainly futile, a token gesture. The material things that had gone we were unlikely to be able to get back, and in any case there was something that the thieves had taken that couldn’t be written down on an inventory and given to the police. More than anything, the last vestige of faith and belief in the value of this trip to Glastonbury had gone, and that was the greatest loss of them all. It was the final end, and when Alex said he was definitely going home that day, I immediately concurred with him. I suddenly wanted to be back in Loughborough, back in civilisation, or whatever passed for it back there. It didn’t take long for Steve and Kate to agree, although I think out of all of us, Steve wanted to stay more than he let on at the time. But the group decision had been made – it was time to go home. While Steve was reporting the crime, the rest of us packed up our remaining tent, and our other stuff, and carried it to the car park. I retrieved the key to Alex’s Metro from my boot, and we loaded it up in readiness for the journey. When Steve got back, he and Kate gathered all their stuff and went off to find the van, which was parked some distance from the Nugget-mobile, and we agreed to meet at the Michaelwood services on the M5 for coffee – Alex in particular was very tired, and was concerned about driving all the way back without something to keep him awake. As Alex put the car into gear and started the slow drive over the grass towards the exit, I cast one last look at Glastonbury. The weather that day was back to how it had been the first few days, sunny, warm, and generally appealing. But appearances are famously deceptive, and I’d seen enough of the dark underbelly of Glastonbury to be fooled by it.

The first part of the journey home wasn’t much fun - Alex was just concentrating on staying awake as he drove, and I was lost in thoughts of the festival, and of the past, and the future, and God knows what else. I don’t know how Steve and Kate were feeling in the van in front of us, but for us, the sheer disappointment of what Glastonbury had turned out to be permeated throughout the car as we drove up the M5. Fortunately, when we stopped at the strangely picturesque Michaelwood service station - was in the middle of a wood, and now in memory has taken on something of the appearance of how the Hockenheim racing circuit in Germany used to be, with the concrete strand of motorway contrasting with the green woodland – things got better. We had a coffee, got something to eat, lost a few quid on the fruit machines, and the sheer normality of it all improved our moods considerably. We said goodbye to Kate and Steve once again, and said we’d see them back at home – the van was considerably faster than the Nugget-mobile, so it was obvious that we’d lose them on the journey home proper.

The rest of the return leg of our voyage was uneventful, and I spent some of this long, thinking time to consider that this day could prove to be the turning point of 1995 - as if not just me but all of us were leaving behind the bad things that had happened to us, and looking forward to brighter days in the summer months to come. Not just the horrible experiences that had blighted the weekend in Somerset, but the bad things that had occurred in the months prior to it. It was, I rationalised, the end of one part of our lives, and the beginning of another. There had been good times amid the bad before, and hopefully we could accentuate the positives and make it a really good summer. In many ways we did, and the story sure as hell isn’t over yet.

However, the shadow cast by the dark side of Glastonbury stayed with us a lot longer than I recognised at the time, particularly for Alex, who had suffered more than any of us, and I wish now that I’d noticed how badly it had affected him. He didn’t talk about it very much, so I didn’t ask, and for a while everything was pretty much okay, but a year later, when our friendship group fell apart, and things went wrong for all of us, it was the memory of being mugged at Glastonbury that loomed large in Alex’s mind and caused him a great deal of pain. I wish I’d known, and not been so wrapped up in my own problems that I couldn’t see that I wasn’t the only one hurting. But by then, it was already too late, and it has taken many years for things that should have been articulated at the time to be spoken, and for issues to be resolved. If they even have. I’m not sure.

That evening, we reconvened at the Griffin for a drink. It seemed strangely incongruous being back in our old watering hole. The familiarity of the surroundings and the people gave a strange, dream-like quality to the events of the weekend for me, as if they were something I’d only heard about, rather than actually experienced. The feeling increased when we saw Madeleine, my ex-girlfriend, who expressed surprise that we were back, and that she was looking forward to watching Elastica and the Cure on the television highlights of the festival later on, and that she couldn’t believe we’d come home early. And, for a few moments, I felt the same. Despite everything, I was struck by a feeling of intensely clear regret – why had we wimped out, let the bad guys win, and come home and not stayed for the last night? I couldn’t believe that I was back at home whilst Glastonbury was still going on, and that only a few hours ago, I’d actually been there. But it was a momentary feeling, the kind that flashes brightly like the head of a lit match, and then burns away to nothing, and it was gone as soon as Madeleine had moved off to join whoever she was with, leaving Alex, Steve, and I to ourselves. When we got back to Alex’s later on, we watched some footage of that night’s performances, and although it was weird, and we all felt that "we were there only this morning" feeling, I didn’t experience it with the bitter clarity of "what if" I had in the pub with Madeleine, and had no regrets about coming home at all. I still don’t. We’d done Glastonbury, and it had done us. I think we can call it a draw.