Festival Cocktails

Glastonbury, the ultimate British summer music festival occurs annually on what is usually a rainy weekend in late June. Dreadlocked folk, celebrities and the corporate hospitality brigade - get twisted, tented and probably muddy in the fields of Worthy Farm.

The rather fabulously named Athelstan Joseph Michael Eavis, CBE, hosted the first ever Glastonbury on his family's dairy farm the day after Jimi Hendrix died on Saturday 19th September 1970.

Originally called the Pilton Pop, Blues & Folk Festival, the following year Eavis renamed the event the Glastonbury Free Festival. That 1971 festival featured the first incarnation of the famous Pyramid Stage, a one-tenth replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, originally constructed from scaffolding and metal sheeting and positioned over a blind spring located by dowsing.

Today, though Eavis still plays some role, what was once an intimate hippie shindig has grown into a festival behemoth, with guaranteed coverage over national and even international press.

We are turning our thoughts Glastonburywards with the aid of a Magic Bus, a fruity little number named for the vehicle in which Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters drove across the United States. Or, since Glastonbury started the day after Jimi Hendrix died, perhaps a Jumping Jack Flash would be more appropriate.

The Isle Of Wight Festival

Before there was Glastonbury, there was The Isle Of Wight Festival and this festival continues to mark the start of the festival season, coming as it does usually a couple of weeks before Glastonbury.

Camping not your thing? (It is our idea of hell.) Eschew the Isle of Wight and turn to a White Lady, a perfectly balanced, very smooth classic cocktail.

The Reading Festival

Although it follows later in the year, on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday of the August bank holiday weekend, Reading is Britain's oldest popular music festival to still be running today. And it still draws an impressive list of acts - helped by it now running concurrently and linked to The Leeds Festival.

We're guessing that a Rock 'n' Rye would be apt for at least one of this years acts at the festival. It's an eminently rock 'n' roll combination based on the classic pairing of rye whiskey and rock candy.

And given the inevitable rain and mud at any British festival, then these cocktails are appropriately named:
Mudslide
Muddy Water

And finally, a drink from Harry Craddock's 1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book, a Loud Speaker cocktail.