MY EYES hurt. My ears hurt. My head hurts. My body clock is cocked-up and I think I’ve got dysentery.

I’ve just experienced the madness that is Glastonbury for the first time — and I loved every muddy minute.

First things first — the toilets. Yes, everything you’ve ever heard about how vile they are is totally true.

There are two types of loo at Glasto. There are the normal portable loos that look like the Tardis (with the trade name which I’m not allowed to use or we might get sued, but cleverly takes the two words portable and loo, and squashes them up to make a new, short word).

As I’m not allowed to use that word, I’m going to call them Portapoos.

There are row after row of Portapoos lined up in ranks around the main stages like an invading army descending the hillside.

There were so many that at first I thought that nice Mr Eavis had got us one each.

And for the first half-day or so the Portapoos seemed the civilised choice… especially when you compared them to the alternative, which were basically giant tanks with toilet cubicles suspended above them. Let’s call these the Tankipoos.

The Tankipoos are painted green metal. And some have big daisies painted on them as if this may help disguise the overpoweringly putrid smell. It doesn’t. Not at all. They are disgusting. But by the second day the Portapoos are all backed up and I have no choice.

To get to the Tankipoo you have to climb up rickety metal steps and open the green metal door and at first glance they look like a normal toilet, with a seat and everything.

In one way I am relieved that I don’t have stand up and look down the hole into the tank. But it’s tricky going to the toilet without looking, breathing in or out, or making any physical contact with the seat.

A friend bought a She-Pee off the internet (it’s a sort of funnel which enables woman to pee while standing upright). But she wet herself twice and gave up.

I used five packets of wet wipes in as many days (and showered once, in the communal Greenpeace solar showers).

Next — the music.

We had one organised day, when we numbered one to eight the bands we wanted to see, and must have walked 10 miles doing it. That day ended right in the middle of 100,000 people watching Bruce Springsteen for more than two and a half hours. It was a truly wonderful experience.

And then we had a day where we wandered lazily around and trusted to synchronicity and everything just worked out perfectly.

We started in the hippy Green Fields and walked up to the Stone Circle. From the distance we could see people letting off paper candle balloons. Every time one floated prettily into the air, a tremendous roar gradually built and spread around the whole festival site.

It looked mellow and chilled out from the distance. But when we got there, I was fascinated as we had to step our way through thousands of young teenagers breathing in balloons filled with gas (out of silver canisters that looked like the ones from a soda siphon).

We ended up dancing to a brilliant band (no idea who) in Trash City until 3am.

And we had one wasted, hungover day when we slipped around in the mud and missed half the bands we wanted to see because we didn’t have the energy to rush around.

And then there was MJ day. It was about 10.30pm on Thursday when a wide-eyed teenager came up and earnestly asked ‘Is it true? Is Michael Jackson really dead?’

We laughed. What a great rumour to spread at Glastonbury.

But we could hear Michael Jackson music thumping out somewhere in the distance and the girl looked distressed and insisted that she had to know if it was true and for some reason she decided that we were the people who had to help her.

I’ve no idea why, because she admitted that she wasn’t even a fan. But that’s the other big thing about Glasto.

There’s this huge hippy vibe. Everybody’s nice all of the time. Wasted and drunk and off their heads and smelly some times — but still nice.

Even the security guards. On the outside they look just as fierce and surly and aggressive as ordinary security guards. But if you ask them for directions, they’re all sweet and helpful and overly protective like big daddy bunny rabbits.

So we stood in the middle of one of the packed metal walkways and asked everybody if they’d heard that Michael Jackson was dead. And within two or three minutes we’d confirmed it was true.

He’d died of a heart attack, which was strange, because the Glasto grapevine seemed to be more efficient than the real news gathering media out in the real world, which took another 12 hours to confirm the story.

As I went to sleep in my tent that night it was fascinating to listen in to all the conversations and hear news being spread the old-fashioned way, from tent to tent, by word of mouth.

That’s the other thing about camping at Glastonbury. You are squashed so close together (imagine the entire population of Torbay all camping together at Cockington) that you can hear hundreds of conversations as you try to sleep at night.

I’m not quite sure why being at Glastonbury when Michael Jackson died had such significance, but it did. Apparently within 24 hours they were selling T-shirts with the slogan ‘I was at Glasto 09 when Michael Jackson died’ or an even more tasteless ‘Jackson Four’ logo.

Suddenly every sound stage was playing his music and remembering the artist before his gradual disintegration into Wacko Jacko.

Over the next three days dozens of diverse acts paid their own musical tributes, all describing how they’d grown up listening to Michael Jackson and trying to emulate his sound and dance moves.

Poignantly the final scheduled event on the main Glastonbury programme was a tribute disco to mark the 50th anniversary of the Tamla Motown label where The Jackson Five started their musical career (with barely-more-than-a-baby, little brother Michael already stealing the show).

The Queen’s Head tent filled with thousands of jubilant festival goers, all determined to celebrate our last few Glastonbury hours and Motown’s 50th birthday and Michael Jackson’s early music in proper party style. We danced and sang ourselves hoarse.

And then we had to take the tent down in a thunder and lightning storm.

I’d packed my coat earlier in the day and was wearing shorts and wellies and got so wet that you could see my pink spotty knickers through my shorts.

But the good news was that we got to the car before the crowds (nobody else was stupid enough to take their tent down in the rain) and got off site with only a half-hour traffic queue.

It was a weird and wonderful experience. And I’m hoping to go back next year.