BRITAIN: Britain's Glastonbury festival, highlight of the UK's summer rock scene, lived up to its reputation for mud and mayhem when torrential rains brought chaos to the opening yesterday.
After days of relentless heat in Britain, the weather changed with a vengeance overnight. Thunderstorms lashed the festival, one of Europe's largest open-air music events, causing a nearby river to break its banks and forcing organisers to postpone the start.
Music fans, who had arrived earlier in the week wearing bikinis and shorts, were forced to don the familiar boots and waterproofs as rain turned the campsite - a farm in southwestern England - into a quagmire.
"It's a bit boggy for people to walk around," a festival spokeswoman said. She said the appalling weather had meant the first two performances had to be postponed.
Glastonbury, which began on farmer Michael Eavis's land in 1970, has grown from humble beginnings to become one of the biggest events in the British music calendar, attracting fans and bands from all over the world. It has also earned a reputation as one of Europe's muddiest events. Storms in 1997 and 1998 hit the annual three-day event especially hard.
Organisers say they have sold all 112,000 tickets and insisted spirits were high.
"No one's miserable, everyone's got a smile on their face," the spokeswoman said. Headline performers yesterday were scheduled to be US band the White Stripes, with Coldplay, New Order and Basement Jaxx playing over the weekend.