In 1998 I was fortunate enough to perform at The Glastonbury Festival as a stilt walker. This was the first seriously big festival that we had done and personally I was really up for it.

We had been booked to perform as Stiltmartians two 11foot tall uv orange faceless martians who had just naively landed on the earth as tourists and happened to end up at the festival.

Now, most walkabout acts stayed in the designated theatre field, but as we had to work 3hours a day we decided that instead of some easy half hour slots we would go for a wander around the site and take our act to the rest of the festival goers and not just the ones who wandered into the theatre area.

I must note here that on the day of our arrival we had to perform and I had also got up at 3am to drive from Kent so had a little help from a broken pill and more of it got consumed on arrival just to keep me going so by the time I got on to the stilts I'd had about 1/2 of a little 'un but over such a period as not to really notice any effect although I was very up for it.

Anyway, out we stride in the golden sunshine in to the mellee of people. Two giant orange aliens in the unreal world of Glastonbury.

Once we had found our way out of the theatre field after lots of playing with random people and photos being taken, we strode up an avenue of stalls with people either ignoring us (amazing how the human brain can ignore 2 large orange things walking towards them, but it can) or taking pics.
Suddenly I saw 4 lads who seemed to be having problems with gravity and needing each other's help for general walking and staying upright. When they saw us they stopped, wobbled gently as a group and looked questioningly at each other. The penny dropped and we both realised they were all trippin.

We froze on the spot, turned slowly and looked right at them, they looked back in disbelief and then at each other, we moved very slowly extending our arm and stretched towards them.
From their expressions they didn't have a clue what they were seeing and as I've experiance acid myself and know it's wonders we worked it for about a minute before waving goodbye and then disappeared into the melee as the guys melted into a pool of giggles on the floor.

For me this was one of the best moments of Glasto as I knew we had given them something extra special for their trip.

After 3 of 4 hours we strode back into camp and I was flying on the exhilleration of what we had done that day plus I think the the half helped me flow a bit more.

Over that festival I learnt to run on stilts after being chased by a very scary women on stilts dressed as a vagina .
Kim fell down a hole & broke his stilts so the next day we had the ground martian.
The following day the running and ground martian came in handy as we had a running (literally) battle with 3 guys who where off ther tits and trying to take me down, they failed after Kim took 2 of them out and I turned round and chased the other screaming abuse.... (was out character but I have my limits).

Please if you ever see stiltwalkers don't be a bastard and grab the stilts or try too kick them off as it's gonna hurt either or both of you.