Glastonbury on guard for ailing rockers
Glastonbury is on guard for veteran festival goers rocking and rolling .... even in wheelchairs.
For the older campers at Glastonbury age is just a number. But the festival’s medical team has had to confront the influx of veteran revellers by beefing up efforts to deal with heart attacks, strokes and type 2 diabetes.
Chris Howes, 70, the head of festival medical services, said that his team had brought in five more defibrillators this year to treat heart failure. Dr Howes, a former GP, said: “As time has gone on, the age profile has changed. We are seeing more elderly people with heart attacks, strokes, chronic chest diseases — all the sorts of things that in the early days we would never have seen, because everybody was south of 30.
“But now we see the whole profile from newborn babies to doddery old people like me.”
His team, which includes 800 staff and five emergency vehicles, also has a mobile imaging unit with an x-ray machine and ultrasound equipment. “It’s an insurance policy,” Dr Howes said. “It’s the sort of thing that when you do need it, you need it as quickly as possible.
There’s a lot of stuff that is put in place to deal with worst-case scenarios.
“We have had to adapt to be able to manage those sorts of conditions which in the early days we had never seen or provided for. We wouldn’t have thought of that 20 years ago.”
He estimated that roughly four heart attacks took place at the last festival, held in 2017 before the fallow year last year.
Other conditions afflicting the older campers include type 2 diabetes and those with kidney diseases requiring dialysis.
While Glastonbury does not share information about the ages of its festival-goers, Saga estimated that 15,000 over-50s attended in 2011, out of a total 170,000.
Wheelchairs for revellers
The festival has offered electric and manual wheelchairs to guests in advance, and laid on a shuttle bus from a disabled car park to a specially-designed campsite, as well as viewing platforms for disabled rockers.
Sue and Dennis Hussy, 68, from Essex, standing outside the Pyramid stage that will host headline acts such as the Killers, Janet Jackson and the Cure this week, said that they were excited for their first Glastonbury festival.
“There are people here in wheelchairs, I’ve got an artificial knee,” Ms Hussy said. “There’s a real mix of people. I was so pleased to get tickets.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Christine and the Queens, my husband is going to see some DJs. It all seems so welcoming and organised.”
Lola Williams, 80, a Glastonbury veteran, said: “It caters for absolutely everyone; kids and the over-100s. Nobody here seems to be naked in the fields with their shirts off, shouting ‘Acid! Acid!’ ”
Her partner Tracy, 54, joked: “I’m relieved there’s no mud, because I’d have to push her wheelchair through it.”
Sue Jago, 67, from nearby Mendip, who attended the first event in 1970, said she used to call her daughters to tell them to be careful when they went to the festival, and now they call her to say the same. “It’s a good place for everyone,” she said. “I always feel comfortable here. It’s very safe.”
This would certainly strike a chord with the festival’s founder Michael Eavis, 83, who greeted guests for the 36th event at the gates on Wednesday and declared: “Forty-nine years and still going strong.”
More than 200,000 people have been descending on Worthy Farm, turning 365 hectare in Pilton, Somerset, into one of the largest cities in the south of England.
Glastonbury has more than $AU18 million in cash reserves to deal with weather-related disasters, its latest accounts show, but the organisers are unlikely to need them with an “exceptional spell” of sunshine predicted by forecasters.
The festival sold 135,000 tickets at $245 each within 36 minutes last year, but the organisers have said it costs $72.5 million to stage and they need to sell out to break even.
Glastonbury’s latest accounts show that the organisers donated $3.8 million to charity in the year to the end of March last year, while they made a post-tax profit of $2.59 million.
The Met Office said that temperatures could reach 30C over the five-day event, as hot Saharan air blows over the country.
The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who addressed the crowd on the Pyramid stage in 2017 to the now-famous chant of “oh, Jeremy Corbyn”, will not be returning this year.
His admirer, the grime artist Stormzy, will be, though, headline on Friday night on the Pyramid stage.
The Times
Gaza plan a red line for Egypt and Jordan. Will it backfire on Trump?
Donald Trump’s threat to withdraw aid unless Egypt and Jordan accept Gazans is unlikely to sway them. They’ll simply look to rich Gulf countries or even China, a key investor, to bail them out.
Rushdie ‘attacker on a mission’
The man accused of a frenzied attack on Salman Rushdie ‘came dangerously close to committing murder’ in front of an audience of thousands, a court in upstate New York has been told.