It's the time of year again when Team NME, along with 100,000 of Britain's most excitable rock fans, load up on hiking gear, pear cider, and inadvisable jester hats.

It's Glastonbury Festival time, and yet the world's foremost outdoor rock event, over on Worthy Farm in Somerset, has found things difficult this year. After years of selling out in minutes and crashing computer systems, this time they've struggled to shift them all. Some narrow-minded people (and Noel Gallagher) have claimed this is something to do with the "controversial" booking of Jay-Z as Saturday night headliner. The fuss has become so ridiculous that Jigga himself was forced to speak out.

No, the real reason for people's reticence has been the hideous mud and rain that's plagued the fest for the past three years running.

Nowhere else on Earth can a little bit of rain mean the difference between the most overexcitable weekend of your life or a pit of mud and paranoia that still gives most of us who remember--er, last year--a chill to the pit of our very souls. Plenty of people have had enough, but that doesn't stop us going, because there's a special kind of magic on Worthy Farm that elements alone cannot muddy.

Nevertheless, this year, we were so determined to stop the quagmire that we called in the leaders of the Council Of British Druids to perform a special sundance to appease the Gods.

Here's how it went:

The good news is that so far the rain has stayed away, and almost all the tickets are gone. Team NME are about to set off to Somerset on our funbus, and we'll be pumping out up-to-the-minute news reports, massive picture galleries of the stars both on and off the stage, hourly blogs from untamed NME writers, and exclusive video reports from right there on site.

It's the next best thing to being there (and if it's muddy, it's actually better).