THE Green Man turned 15 this year and before being ritually set alight and disappearing in a puff of smoke in the early hours of Monday morning, he decided to do what any self-respecting teenager would - throw a massive party.

And so last weekend hordes of the great unwashed swarmed like a stampede of designer welly wearing beasts with foppish hairstyles and outlandish clothes to the stately splendour of Crickhowell’s Glanusk Park for the world famous Green Man festival.

Nestled amongst the misty, mystic mountains there was the usual staple diet of whimsical Welsh weather, eclectic music, half-baked druids, half-cooked burgers, full strength cider, and good vibrations.

Naturally when you’re catering for over 20,000 visitors and offering thousands of performances spread across a myriad of different stages, being green doesn’t come all that easy. That many festival goers demand a lot of feeding, watering, and for sanity’s sake - sanitation.

They may be a necessity, but row after row of unsightly green cubicles lined up, with who knows what ungodly terror lurking within can be something of a blot on the landscape.

Yet such is the Green Man’s gentle art of festival organising and prevailing atmosphere of dazed pacifism, the toilets are usually in pretty good nick, and there’s absolutely no chance of aforesaid toilets being tipped, or set on fire in twisted homage to time-honoured festival traditions of old.

Likewise there’s also no bottles of urine, or worse still, supermarket bags containing excrement that are then thrown like some sort of deranged statement into a make-shift shanty town of garishly coloured tents.

As music festivals go, it’s all pretty civilized. What the Green Man does have a lot of is recycling bins and litter pickers. Nearly everywhere you turn there’s a handy container ready to receive whatever plastic, glass, or aluminum you feel like discarding.

And for all other refuse there’s an army of eager litter pickers ready to keep the lush surrounds of Glanusk Park clean, green, and as pristine as a dream.

Which means that the sprawling fields which host the Green Man are picture perfect to roam, when the sun is high in the sky and the whiskey’s sitting pretty in your hand.

Yet the Green Man isn’t all about wandering like a cloud from bar to bar as you attempt to work your way through the hundreds of different local ciders and ales on offer.

Nor is it all about riding high on the big wheel, unwinding in the Nature Nurture corner, unlocking the secrets of the universe in Einstein’s Garden, chewing the cud and shooting the breeze in Babbling Tongues, or contemplating how many rain clouds can form before they make a shower.

The Green Man is also about the music too.

From obscure bands to those you’ve never heard off, the Green Man’s set-list is no Glastonbury, but then again, the Green Man has always been about the joy of discovering new music rather than the boredom of watching established acts go through the motions.

Best of all there’s no Ed Sheeran lurking in the wings waiting to pounce and make a fellow discard his plastic pint of Growler in disgust and cry, “Please no!”

All three Mountain Stage headliners brought something unique to the table. From the synthesized sound and shriek of Future Islands on Friday to the bombastic rock of Ryan Adams in all his double denim glory and extended guitar solos on Saturday.

Yet it was Sunday night headliner PJ Harvey who stole the show for many with her pantomime drama and slightly hysterical theatrics.

By a simple quirk of fate, the Green Man may have the initials GM, but thankfully the dude who shares the same skin tone as the incredible hulk continues to plough his own furrow and make a point of sowing seeds that are a long way from being genetically modified.

Make no mistake, the Green man attracts large crowds of people, but strolling around the charming and meticulously laid-out site is like taking a walk around a super-sized philanthropic village. The pace is relaxed, the manners refined, and the mood is civil.

For all its success, the Green Man, unlike many of its counterparts, has resisted the deadly lures of complete and crass commercialization.

And as per usual this year, the elemental god forgot to turn off the shower, pull back the curtain of cloud and plug in the sun for the duration. Hence rain was also a frequent guest, but the wet stuff falling from the skies couldn’t prevent this party from going out with a bang. Quite literally! As is custom, the host with the most was ritually set alight and burnt to a crisp by a fire-breathing dragon, before fireworks were sent sky high to give the gathered assembled one last bang for their buck.