The real clincher came when the woman with the yellow flouro, sleep-stressed face and walkie-talkie burst into tears after spending five emotional and futile minutes contacting at least two separate radio networks to get the Word on how a recently arrived punter – e.g. me – could go about the simple business of purchasing a ticket to get into the site in the first place.

I felt sorry for, rather than angry with her; she had that unmistakable soldiered-out look of someone who's had way to big a job for almost anyone's shoulders to be able to carry dumped right on her head, like a metric-tonne sack full of what I later found out was strewn across the entire site, due to an overflown slurry-pit somewhere in the vicinity. More than half the security had walked off the job already, supposedly due to the lack of facilities laid on for their staff. It pretty much set the scene for the next thirty-six hours, to tell the truth.

I was already working out what I'd be spending the £100 entrance-fee on later that night, when a couple of already bedraggled dressed-to-party girls staggered arm-in-arm down from the main enclosed arena and told me that is was all – officially, according to the local council - over with and cancelled.

I hopscotched across the already savagely tractor-rutted path to the party towards the car park, where my mates had only just pulled-up, to tell them the good news after their hour long struggle to get through the steaming, petrol-guzzling queue for the festival site, wondering at the sheer lack of any steel mesh on the ground, and the management's obvious faith in the weather being good for whole of that long weekend. A friend who'd been on site since Tuesday later told me that it'd been heavily showering on-and-off since he'd got there, and in no fit state for any but the thickest or fittest since at least early Thursday morning. Never the kind of people to let small details like that stop us, we grabbed our tents and chattels and set off for the highest, driest slope we could find to get our Base Camp established – we'd already heard the words 'climatological emergency' and 'Official Disaster Zone' being bandied about by punters and staff like something out of an Al Gore Halloween Special: definitely time to show some car-park party spirit.

Not that there was anything else we'd have been able to to do for the next thirty-six hours, anyway: the main area was closed and thigh deep in slurried mud, but people were still arriving in droves, despite a BBC announcement that it was all definitely, for certainly, and officially cancelled. The Sunrise Official Website (the phonelines were out) was still advising people not to leave home, and if they had, to make sure they'd packed some wellies. Then, about half past six, the skies really opened up... Like they say, the worst disasters are usually at least partially man-made.

Well, it turned out that we'd probably picked the best place in Somerset to get stuck – and I mean stuck – in; not so far away, people were being air-lifted from the roofs of their cars, and two major road arteries were as blocked and flooded as a Glaswegian chip-shop addicts'. The nearby RAF and Royal Navy air bases were putting on a better show than any of the sound systems were, at least until later that Thursday night.

It was rough, but we'd seen rougher that actually worked for a full weekend, or even longer. It can be done - the Battle of the Somme went on for months, but at least they'd had more than one burger van in the car-park for the duration; it was lack of planning, co-ordination (of effort, as well as interests) and plain joined-up thinking that really killed the weekend – the entire site was, after all, set in a shallow, natural clay-lined bowl in the middle of the Somerset Levels... and rain does happen. One chemically optimistic lady had even got through to one of the remaining staffs' mobile numbers the next day, and suggested to all and sundry that everybody should have held hands in a ring, thought positive thoughts, and made it all well and working again: probably good advice, but a tad fucking late, I thought.

At least the lucky few in the main area, and those keen enough to wade through thigh deep liquid mud, human and animal faeces, Ribena slurry, and gods knows what other (hopefully organic) toxins in the pitch black after midnight managed to have a, and I quote, 'Bangin' Time'. The rest of us saturated plebs and those with non-disposable children to guard had to make do with making our own fun while helping to expand the nitrous oxide hole in the ionosphere for the environment, or something. About the only people to turn a profit outside of the charmed circle were the early-morning tent-robbers, who made a roaring trade, from what I heard and lost.

There was a lot of talk about greed, hubris, overextension, and almost suicidal levels of hoping for the best that night and next (thankfully dry) morning – there was even talk of a Gypsy's curse on the enterprise, laid the year before. Friday morning, the remaining staff and site-stewards whipped-up more environmental angst than Gordon Brown on a bad day in order to clear the site.

The rainstorm disaster they eagerly predicted for Friday noon had already happened – I'm sure the tale of the too-tripped-out-to-drive punter being told to 'grit his teeth and just go for it' was apocryphal, or a vile lie to start with. Even though we'd had a good, bracing, drugged-up adventure holiday, and could probably have gone on for days, we knew it was time to leave, get dry and maybe get checked-out for Weil's disease. Instead of waiting for a tractor to pull us out of its self-created quagmire, we manhandled our cannily-parked motor up and over the muddy ridge, hit firm ground, and got the Hell out of there.

The re-fund situation is still a bit... fluid, as of this piece going to pixels. There was on-site talk of insurance covering that tricky little question, as well as Acts of God and going out of business, but only time – and a lot of pressure from disappointedly and possibly traumatised punters – will tell in the end. Personally, not having paid in any conventional way, and having had a laugh myself, I couldn't give a monkey's, but seeing as this entire gig was billed as a safe, (non-Manson) family experience, rather than a 12-hour Underground/Underwater techno Bangorama, I can only feel sympathetic for all the poor punters who (eventually) left feeling slightly 'had'. I'm sure there's a lesson in all this, somewhere, but I'm buggered if I can figure out what it was...

©Copyright Reverend Sven 2008