You don't forget your first Glastonbury. I shared a tent with four other blokes, the groundsheet smeared with Marmite after a king-size jar of the stuff shattered in my bag.

Each morning we woke up with our faces stuck to the canvas by this most adhesive of substances. Even now, the smell of yeast extract conjures memories of silly hats, smelly toilets and the sound of Osric Tentacles.

I seemed to spend half the time tripping over other people's tent pegs, wondering where I was and, late on the third night, stumbling into my tent to bed down for sleep - only to discover it wasn't my tent. Or that, if it was, it now had an angry Welshman living in it.

I rarely get round to festivals these days, and when I do, I'm a cautious day tripper. No more tents. No more Marmite. No more Welshmen. No more being hit in the face with flying bottles in the moshpit during Ned's Atomic Dustbin.

You call this the enfeeblement of age. Or you can attribute it to greater self-knowledge; I don't know why you need to be over thirty before you realise you prefer your own bed to a noisy campsite, but it seems you do.

There are plenty of reasons to stay away from Glastonbury. The reeking latrines and acres of mud evoke disturbing comparisons with the First World War. And at least the boys at Passchendaele didn't have to endure The Levellers.

And yet ...
Some of my most cherished memories of music involve festivals. Seeing The Verve at Glastonbury in 1993 was one of those transcendental moments that we always hope for whenever we go to a gig.

But they say Glastonbury has changed. An old school friend of mine who plays in the band British Sea Power reports, with some sadness, seeing the Glastonbury audience morph over recent years from a sea of young faces to one of middle-class couples in their forties.
That's what happens when you increase ticket prices to £150 and give top billing to Neil Diamond.

Fortunately you don't need a festival to experience the transcendental power of music, which will find you in the most banal circumstances.
The other week I was driving on a motorway at night, discussing with my wife our plans to replace the living room carpet, when Rufus Wainwright's version of Hallelujah came on the radio and reduced me to tears.
You'll be relieved to hear they were grown-up tears. I didn't start howling with anguish and driving into the crash barrier. But I was moved as surely as I had been watching the Verve in a Somerset field in 1993.

More so, in a way, because music can deepen with the passing of time.

"Maybe there is a God above / But all I've ever learned from love / Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you ..."

That line would not have had the same devastating power on my 17-year-old self.

Another advantage to getting older is that you finally get round to music that's been waiting for you.
And so, since I picked up a copy of Born In The USA the other week, I've realised that Bruce Springsteen is a songwriting genius who until recently I'd been too young to fully appreciate.

Best of all, I can enjoy him from the comfort of my own home, without developing trenchfoot, tripping over tent pegs or getting smeared in Marmite.