To paraphrase Amy Winehouse, 'I cried a hundred times'. It was Glastonbury 2008. At the last minute, I had been assigned to cover the festival for this newspaper as I then lived not far away from Worthy Farm. 

And given I was known as 'Miss Fussy Pants' in the office, it was thought it would make a 'fun piece'.

I quickly purchased a ticket (£164; this summer it was nearly £400) and a tent, and took along my 11-year-old nephew as moral support/bodyguard.

His mother was so worried I'd lose him, I had to attach the little boy to my Maharishi combats ('It's a war zone') using her labrador's retractable dog lead.

I also packed a black bin bag, which I would use over the next three days to stand on – better that than the mud. (People took videos of me on my bin bag, ignoring a man dressed as a nun and a woman in a ballet tutu).

Arriving on site, attempting to erect the tent, a group of young men stood and watched, laughing. 'Let's put it on a gradient, Joe,' I said to my nephew, thinking the slope would act as a pillow, not realising I would later slide feet first out the flap.

We spent the next couple of days foraging for any food that wasn't falafel, shuffling along on pallets in a pungent queue, experiencing acute FOMO – fear of missing out – that something wonderful was happening elsewhere.

But finally, on Saturday afternoon, we found ourselves in the only place to be. Squished a few bodies from the front row, before us on the Pyramid stage was Amy Winehouse.

Unfortunately, she spent a large proportion of the shambolic, mumbling set arguing with a crowd member, prompting me to tell my nephew that 'I once saw Aretha Franklin live in New York: she was a real black woman with real problems.'

But the worst aspect of the whole festival experience was the young women who proceeded to sit on the shoulders of their long-suffering boyfriends, slap bang in front of us (one girl had her Uggs stolen from her long, brown, hairless limbs while up there. Karma).

'Good job you don't have a boyfriend,' my nephew told me sagely. 'You'd have weed on his head.'

And enough said about the loos, the better.

This Bank Holiday weekend sees a rash of music festivals: Notting Hill (I went once, never again), Shambala in Northants, Creamfields in Cheshire, Burning Man (in Nevada), Reading and Leeds (I've heard of Suki Waterhouse, but Amyl And The Sniffers?). 

It's the smugness I cannot stand about these events. The flags, the peace slogans, the food stall smell of burning, dead animals, the 'Serenity Field' when you feel nothing of the sort, given you can't remember where you parked the car. 

Young women at festivals are convinced a pair of Hunter wellies and narrow thighs will be their ticket to a carefree, interesting life full of laughter and love.

These days, I sometimes watch Glasto on the BBC and wonder how the audience knows all the lyrics to songs by bands I've never heard of. 

I cannot think of a single artist I would endure a festival again to see live, now that George Michael and Brian Wilson are dead. 

Yet my late brother used to dine out, his face lit up, on the time he hitch-hiked to the Isle of Wight to see Bob Dylan.

He would reminisce dreamily about how the spark from his joint set fire to the Afro of the young woman in front of him, causing much commotion. And I realise that's the point of these festivals.

You will forget, one day not at all soon, the cost, the mud and the Portaloos and be able to say to your children you were there when Amy Winehouse sang: 'We only said goodbye with words.' 

It's a line from her totemic hit Back To Black that I only appreciated three years later when she died.

I hope that our wild weekend in Somerset is lodged in my nephew's mind. That time he watched Winehouse, with his auntie who stood on a square of bin bag.

We hung around on the Sunday to catch Neil Diamond in the Legends slot, Joe hopping on one leg due to our self-imposed bathroom ban ('We're running low on Wet Ones') and me nudging him, saying: 'What a voice! What a song!'

We are sadly no longer in touch, me and the nephew. He's now hovering near 30 and I've no idea if he's married or happy. Did he grow tall and is he still blond?

When the Lionnesses won the Euros this summer, my hot tears as the crowd sang Sweet Caroline were not about joy because we had won: they were about nostalgia for what I'd lost.

Because that's why we go to festivals, isn't it? For the memories. To say, I was there, with you, and wasn't it wonderful.