A quiet cider? Hmmmm...

I remember stumbling into Glastonbury for the first time at some point in 1984; we two vagabondian adventurers styling ourselves The New Moon Dance Band (aka The Newies) and heading for The Rifleman's where the landlord refused to sell me a pint of the local cider on account of my Geordie accent. The implication wasn't that I was too soft, just one had to work up to these things gradually. All I was bothered about was the accent; I couldn't believe people actually spoke like that in the real world, assuming Glastonbury to be the real world, but he seemed real enough to me even if he spoke like your archetypical yokel in a Two Ronnies sketch. Anyhoo, he served me a half and I supped it down to no ill effects, not least on the purse, as I recall it cost arounf 40p a pint back then. Delicious; in fact I doubted it contained any alcohol at all, and went for something stronger next time, like a bottle of Dog.

Scroll on a day or two; we'd fallen in with some merry travellers of the New Age camped up in an orchard someplace and enjoyed an odd time in benders which served as an education in New-Age culture which though seductive at first soon curdled into the instinctive revulsion I still feel some 26 years later. Thus all to The Rifleman's where by now my face was known to the landlord who was only too happy to serve me several pints of the stuff which basically meant that for an outlay of £1.20 I was three pints down and still convinced the stuff was essentially a soft drink with a pleasing fruity aftertaste. Then I stepped outside into the fresh air...

It was as if the entire universe embraced me in a synaptic explosion of full bodily orgasm, the upshot of which was that I flew up Glastonbury Tor and continued to float around the tower of St. Michael's whilst my companions huffed and puffed in my wake. Then I regaled them with The King of Ireland's Son in its 90-minute entirety before insisting they thread the Glastonbury Tor labyrinth in a merry dance with Raymond leading the merry throng with his pipe-and-tabor. Now, as with most things claimed about Glastonbury, the Tor Labyrinth doesn't actually exist, but let me tell you that it did that night – I could see it clear as day; the earth-energy as of a sacred serpent coiled in rings around the Mothering Pap of Ancient Avalon after which I remember nothing with any degree of clarity until the 25th of December 2007.

I'm sure Raymond could testify to all this, although being a more abstemious soul altogether I dare say he saw things a little differently to what I did. Needless to say I have not touched a drop of the stuff since, nor do I ever intend to.