As festival goers trudged onto the Glastonbury site laden with beer cans and plastic bottles of vodka, their eyes nervously flicked from floor to sky. Did the heavy showers foretell a repeat of 2007, one of the festival's rainiest years, when some revellers reported symptoms of trench foot?

Luckily for us, they didn't. We got a good dose of Glastonbury's famous mud, but thankfully no tents were submerged this year. In fact, there was a cloudless sky on Sunday and temperatures so hot that sunstroke was a real threat, especially for those who'd been partying hard since Wednesday.

That's the weather out of the way. What about the music? The first act that really got us dancing was Wu-Tang Clan on Friday afternoon, when thousands defied the drizzle to bounce to Shimmy Shimmy Ya and other hip hop classics. The clan seemed in good spirits, although Method Man found time for an angry rant about UK Customs.

A touching moment followed when the 85-year-old BB King was helped to his chair before a tear-jerking set that showed he's still got more soul in his portly belly than is found in the average nation. Don't believe anyone who tells you he's past his best, this blues legend keeps improving with age.

We also loved the cheerful music of Paul Simon, particularly his Graceland-era songs, and the breathtaking percussion from his backing band.

However, the revelation of the weekend was James Blake. Not that his talent is undiscovered, of course. The mainstream press have been all over this dubstep crossover star like a rash. But the maturity and warmth of his live set on Saturday evening, just as the sun was setting, was mind-blowing. It proved that, for once, the hype is justified.

Also at the Park stage were Glastonbury's "special guests", which turned out to be Radiohead on Friday and Pulp the day after. Unfortunately the rain didn't stop before Thom York and crew took to the stage, leading to the amusing spectacle of several hundred people falling on their arses trying to climb the slippery hill to get a better view, to the delicate sounds of All I Need.

Of course, no one can see everything. We'd like to tell you about Primal Scream, Big Boi and Chase & Status, but we weren't there. Neither did we watch Breakage, Shy FX and the Ragga Twins, who played a late-night set in the surreal Shangri-La area on Saturday. Sadly, the place was jammed, "packed like sardines in a crushed tin box" as Radiohead might say, and with stewards predicting a two-hour wait, we went elsewhere.

This was a shame because Shangri-La – Glastonbury's "after-hours pleasure city" – is quite something: a weird Blade Runner-inspired complex designed by eccentric sci-fi fans and populated at 6am with more saucer-eyed zombies than you've seen since Night of the Living Dead.

Shangri-La is not the only late-night entertainment, though. Unlike some commercial festivals, where the punters are sent back to their tents when the bands finish, Glastonbury lets you come and go as you please throughout the night.

We particularly loved Arcadia, which is dominated by an enormous fire-spitting machine that looks like it could be a Martian invader from an HG Wells story. Decks are set up inside this monster and on Sunday we heard upfront drum & bass clang out while 20-foot flames seared the air and fire-breathing acrobats cartwheeled up and down the machine's arms.

Nearby they had a 50-foot tower block with a London tube train crashed into it and a club run by the sexually subversive Horse Meat Disco. Great disco-dancing fun, but take our advice: that babe you're ogling could well be a transvestite.

Some good news is that, according to our unscientific research, Glastonbury's infrastructure is getting better each year. Of course, if you're squeamish about toilets, this festival ain't for you. But if you're prepared for a bit of grime, you'll be OK. This is thanks mostly to Glastonbury's army of toilet cleaners, litter pickers and stewards, many of them volunteers, who keep the place clean.

The flip-side is that there is a fair amount of security around these days. Glastonbury certainly isn't a free for all. But we beg you not to complain too loudly about this or you'll sound like one of those old farts who say the festival was better back when crusty new-age hippies used to jump the fence and tent robberies were a daily occurrence.

We also found that mobile phones seemed a bit more reliable this time around, which is a change from years past when your phone would receive a backlog of messages as you're boarding the train home, usually reading like this: "Meet me at the stone circle", "I'm at the stone circle, where are you?" and "Mate, where the hell is my tent?".

The festival ended in a way that sums up what Glastonbury is all about: with an agonising scheduling clash that makes you curse the sheer abundance of good music on display, because there's no way to see more than a sliver of it.

The Streets went up against Queens of the Stone Age, Kool & the Gang and Mt Kimbie (plus Beyonce on the main stage). Picking just one was agony, but in the end we opted for Mike Skinner's "geezer garage" on grounds that recent interviews suggest The Streets is about to quit touring.

We didn't regret the choice. Though Skinner's hoarse voice was a bit hard to hear at points – clearly he'd been on it all weekend – his showmanship was top draw. At one point a female fan sat on a mate's shoulders to expose her breasts to the stage.

"This is what happens when you come to a Streets gig," declared Skinner, without losing a breath. Shortly afterwards, he took off his shirt, donned a sailor cap and asked the crowd: "Has anyone got any drugs left?"

A fitting end to a brilliant festival.

 

Related Links:

• Review: Glastonbury Festival 2010
• Magnetic Man - I Need Air
• Extalgic Festival 2011
• Love Saves The Day Festival Preview
• Urban Art Forms 2011 Review

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