Glastonbury rain

'Just thought I'd throw in my tuppence worth (Glastonbury denies reports rapper Jay-Z is to pull out, April 14).  There is another far more pragmatic reason that I and quite a few of my white middle-class friends aren't going to Glastonbury this year.  It's not the lineup.  There's always a hoo-ha about this year's lineup: "You should've been here last year, it was so much better last year".  I wouldn't mind seeing Jay-Z.  He's got to be better than Oasis at Glastonbury 2004, headlining Friday night.  My mum with a ukelele would've been better than Oasis at Glastonbury 2004.  And I quite like them.  No, I'll give you a clue.  It pissed down in 2004.  It pissed down in 2005.  Only once, but the torrent was biblical.  And it just pissed down the whole pissing time in pissing 2007.  I'm 40 this year and the gamble is just too much.  GlaxoSmithKline themselves couldn't produce a stimulant stimulating enough to artificially make me forget the pissing horror of three pissing days cold and wet in a pissing field'

- Justin Missingham, letter to the editor, Guardian, 19 April 2008