"Snakeout!"
The Green Police man tucks his distinctive green vest into his green bobby's helmet and prepares to go undercover. His mission: to stop people polluting Glastonbury's streams and ditches by urinating in hedges. This time, he catches no one, though on our tour of duty we do make one "arrest".
When a Green Policeman spots a man weeing against a fence on the slope in front of the Pyramid stage, he leaps into action. Blowing his whistle, he scampers across the field with scant regard for tent pegs or guy ropes and confronts the malefactor with an arrest form. This blue slip warns him that repeat offences such as pissing where he oughtn't or dropping litter can get him thrown out of the festival, and barred in future years. If he's on the festival staff, he can get fired.
The evildoer looks suitably abashed, thanks the officer for pointing out to him the error of his ways, and wanders off, muttering about being "a bad person". In general, the response is very positive, with festivalgoers saluting the Green Police patrol, and asking to have their picture taken with them. Other police functions also accrue to the role; giving directions, telling the time, being objects of barely controlled lust to members of both sexes ...
After complaints from the Environment Agency about the effects of freestyle pissing on fish life in local rivers and streams, the festival has had to act, installing more loos, including women's urinals, and recruiting 100 volunteer Green Police to get the message out that weeing in a hedgerow is not as harmless as it may seem. The message is to use the loos, or if caught short to use a paper cup and put it in the compost bins around the site.
It appears to be working. This morning the Environment Agency announced that the festival had so far had no deleterious effect on the local river system.
"It seems like we've turned the tide," says the leader of the Green Police, using a perhaps unsettling metaphor considering the subject matter. A silver-haired woman, who is at once charming and driven, she comes across as an unlikely blend of Dame Edna and David Brent, and greets Toilet Watch with an affectionate kiss on the cheek.
"How many arrests did we make yesterday?" she asks her recruits, back at the Green Police precinct.
"Hundreds!" they all shout, except for one grumpy dissenter.
"Well, five or six, at least," he mutters. One suspects this isn't his calling.
The leader continues. There's been a complaint that an overzealous Green Policeman has been manhandling the villains. This isn't the way to do it. "We need to be a bit funny, use a bit of poetry and a bit of sexiness. Don't get into your ego, get into your ECO!"
To be honest, out on patrol, it's hard not to get a little carried away. Toilet Watch's squadron of student recruits (and one criminologist) confess to keeping an eye out for unwelcome willy-waving even when off duty.
"That hedge over there," says the patrol leader, "is beautiful."
Toilet Watch looks up; the hedge is indeed agreeably bucolic, but no more so than many other hedges in the Somerset countryside. Only a few minutes later does it occur to me that my mental dictionary is missing the following entry:
Beautiful: adj. (of hedges) allowing the possibility of catching people pissing when they shouldn't.
• This article was amended on 28 October 2009. The name of the leader of the Green Police was removed along with a description of an indivdual, intended to be humorous, which used language associated with mental health issues.
