Glastonbury Diary. Friday, Áine Cahill

We had a really stressful start to the trip. We arrived really late at Dublin Airport and nearly missed the plane! When we got to security, we had about five minutes to make it to the gate . We got there at 6:01am – and the gate was literally closing at five past.
We basically nearly cried and begged the security guy to let us through. He let us skip and we ran like Usain Bolt to the gate. It was nearly closing, but we made it. You can imagine he relief we felt!
I won’t say it was plain sailing from there, but we eventually made it to Glastonbury, arrived, got our passes and went to our dressing room. We were playing the Avalon Stage at 2:20pm. That’s pretty early in the day, but it was so cool, it was unbelievable. I played at Glastonbury last year as well, on the Bread & Roses Pub Stage – but the Avalon main stage was much bigger. I’d say there was about 700 people in the audience. It was probably my favorite gig at a festival ever.
This time around, we did another, shorter set on Bread & Roses later on. That was alright. It wasn't as good as our first one, but it was still nice to do.
Heading for Glastonbury, I had three acts that I wanted to see, but things don’t always work out at festivals. One was Dua Lipa on The John Peel Stage, but she was on the same time as our first set. Another one was Halsey, but – guess what? She was on the same time as our second set.
As it turned out, we caught Kris Kristofferson on the Pyramid Stage. We were just going to see the stage because two of the girls in the band had never been to Glastonbury and they just wanted to see it. So we just arrived in to his set. The second song that we were there for, Johnny Depp randomly appeared onstage and played guitar with him. It looked so random! He stayed on for about three or four songs… and we left when Johnny Depp left.
The only full set I caught was Lorde on The Other Stage. She was the third item on my list – and she was unreal. I loved it. The other highpoint for me was seeing Lianne La Havas, who was on after us on the Avalon Stage. She was so good. I think she was announced as a surprise act only a few days ago. But her voice was so on point, so smooth, and her range was crazy. She was doing bluesy/jazzy stuff. She was really cool.
The atmosphere was lovely, especially compared to last year which was all rain and muck. This year it was dry, summery and hot, which makes a huge difference.
You certainly won’t starve at Glastonbury. The food was amazing, as it always is. We had vegan noodles, but there’s everything there, from pizzas, burgers and chips to burritos, noodles and more exotic stuff.
What I love are the cool vintage shops, of which there’s loads. We went to a place – I can’t recall the name, but it was The Fairy something – and, before our set, we got our faces done up in glitter. It was really cool.
I was raging that we couldn’t stay on for the weekend, but we had to get back for our Sea Sessions show. Last year we stayed for the full seven days. But this time, it was just: arrive in the morning and fly home that night. It was a crazy atmosphere, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

(*) Aine Cahill plays the North Shore Stage at Sea Sessions, Bundoran, tomorrow night.