Not Watching 'That Match' at Glastonbury

I don't like football. I'm not the sort of person who holds a contrarian position simply for the sake of it but I am genuinely uninterested in what is happening in South Africa's sporting arenas at the moment.

So when BBC Audio & Music production staff crowded into the Interactive OB truck at 3pm on Sunday, it was time to head out into the blinding sunshine.

I'd been working all weekend on the code which facilitates our live web-streaming. From 10am until after midnight each day, we offered video and audio of 6 Music's outside broadcast studio, lovely panoramic views of the Pyramid and Other stages and selected love performances. If you weren't at Glastonbury this year and wanted to watch Foals, Grizzly Bear, MGMT or LCD Soundsystem, you could do so at bbc.co.uk/glastonbury.

As clear as our 512kpbs stream of the Other stage is, I wanted to see Grizzly Bear in 3D, and gambled that the 90 minutes that the country was fixated on the game in Bloemfontein was a safe time to duck out. The BBC Interactive OB truck was rammed. Stepping over Jarvis Cocker's elongated legs, I made by way out into the 30 degree heat.

Hundreds of fans congregated at The Park stage where the game was showing on monster screens. It's rumoured that Emily Eavis was concerned about the effects of a possible English defeat. Would hundreds of bummed out supporters leak down Pennard Hill spilling bad vibes into the festival like an oil slick? For me, watching televised football while there's this much incredible music within 500 metres seems perverse. A colleague likened it to watching Prince last year at the O2 and seeing droves of people heading to buy hotdogs during Controversy.

I wasn't alone: there seemed to be awareness that everyone at the Other Stage was not only watching Grizzly Bear but also not doing something else. "How's the game?" asked Daniel Rossen. "I have no idea" Edward Droste replied dryly.

I was disconcerted for a moment to hear the 5live coverage booming from the Other Stage PA stacks, but it was only Christopher Bear holding a transistor to the mic, announcing England's defeat. "As night falls, England's World Cup dreams die," crackled the commentator's antique radio voice. Heading towards the Dance Village, I swam against a tide of crestfallen faces. It was a contrasting experience to arrive at the Wow stage as garage don Roska dropped tropical UK funky tunes, appropriately enough, from inside a day-glo pineapple.

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