It all went swimmingly

All anyone could do was doggy-paddle up to the Craft Field and see if, among the hand-made dreamcatchers and didgeridoos, anyone was building an ark.

Finally, at lunchtime, the deluge ceased and the festival proper began. The ubiquitous gluey brown soup under- and overfoot meant that trying to keep to a timetable of bands was as pointless as trying to persuade the naked man in the Healing Field to put his trousers back on, but there were treats to stumble upon everywhere.

Unfortunate trio Blackbud were spotted playing a sweet acoustic set in a corner by a fence after the rain put paid to their early Other Stage slot. The Subways made up for their Friday morning cancellation by playing their explosive, raw power pop on the John Peel Stage on Saturday. Festival organiser Michael Eavis showed great foresight when they won his new bands contest last year.

The John Peel Stage was a great place to be all weekend. Having had its name changed from the New Bands Tent following the Glastonbury stalwart's death, every act payed tribute as they played beside a banner reading: "Teenage dreams so hard to beat."

Newcastle's Maximo Park played a strong set of angular art rock there, and Sri Lankan dancehall diva M.I.A. offered a break from all the men with guitars with her Day-Glo visuals and bouncy electronica. The Magic Numbers were met with an extraordinary reception there, frequently finding themselves unable to carry on because of the constant cheering.

There was less worthy hype surrounding the appearance of Babyshambles on the Other Stage, not least because of singer Pete Doherty's rumoured on-site marriage to Kate Moss. At close quarters, his stumbling, incoherent performing style is doubtless exhilarating, but from this distance his iconic status looked very shaky.

At one point Doherty dived into the crowd, an ongoing theme of the festival. Brian Wilson's keyboard player did it with a surfboard, and Kaiser Chiefs' Ricky Wilson went one better and did it with an inflatable dinosaur. Playing beneath an appropriately brown banner that read: "Everything is brilliant at Glastonbury", the Chiefs' feelgood slot made the crowd forget about trenchfoot for a few glorious moments.

Despite all the clever bands playing such as Bloc Party and Interpol, Glastonbury is about field-filling anthems, and The Killers had one of those in All These Things That I've Done. The White Stripes did, too - Seven Nation Army - but although their set was extraordinarily accomplished, and Jack White played his guitar as though it were a fifth limb, he lacked the humanity to unite the thousands.

Coldplay were the men for the job. Chris Martin was so eager to please he
even played Can't Get You Out of My Head for the absent Kylie and wrote "Michael Eavis" on his knees.

Too many ballads caused the attention to wander but the fireworks during epic closer Fix You provided one of Glastonbury's great moments, so it's fitting that Martin should have the last word with the improvised couplet he inserted into Politik: "Give me mud up to my knees/The best festival in history".

Glastonbury Festival