With Glastonbury around the corner, which camp do you fall into? .

Festival season is predictably unpredictable. You’ll pack for glorious Festival No6 sunshine, only to end up sailing a deckchair along a river of mud while wearing a sarong. You’ll splash out £1,500 for a hedonistic blowout in the Bahamas at Fyre, only to spend the week eating soggy sandwiches while re-enacting Instagram’s answer to The Hunger Games.

There are, as we know, few certainties in life, besides death, taxes and the fact that the secret set you hike across the whole of Glastonbury to catch will inevitably be Biffy Clyro. Again. The not knowing is all part of the fun. Still, we can be sure of some things. While MR PORTER doesn’t have a crystal ball, you can bet your luxury yurt on the usual suspects putting in an appearance at festivals across the globe this summer. Here are the all too familiar faces you will see on your travels (or, even, staring back at you in the Portaloo mirrors).

Free Hugs Guy is a vision in an unbuttoned tie-dye shirt and novelty sunglasses, a throwback to Mr Shane Meadows’ This Is England series. Yes, he woke up like this, although he can’t remember when or where. Still, for some reason what he’s selling, they ain’t buying, which is a head-scratcher. Don’t they know these hugs are free? The cardboard “Free hugs” sign, he thinks, was a masterstroke. Definitely not too in your face. Maybe he’s not showing enough belly. Maybe he’s not caked in enough mud. With one sandal missing, he’s been standing there, for the past three hours, grinning in the drizzle, wondering idly if he can trade his remaining shoe for a taco. He’s been coming to the same festival, to see the same band, every year for the past 40 years. Your dad, if you can believe it, remembers this guy.

What looks to the untrained eye like three guys and two girls, kicking back and putting out plenty of chilled vibes, changes exponentially as an iPhone hovers into view, and faces fill the selfie frame like a hydra in a maxi skirt. This festival is not just for them, you see. It is for their followers. Well, it’s mostly for them, since they’ve been paid to be here by a welly, fake tan and beard oil company respectively, but pleasing the followers at the same time is a handy bonus. As fearless Coachella warriors – think bindis, feather headdresses and face paint applied back in the Winnebago – they take to the dance field as a pack. They’re into herbals, apparently, which sounds naughty but, in fact, means tea. Yes, they’re all young and beautiful, and yes, they’ve all hooked up with each other a bit, but no, they don’t go on about it. Unless you’re a TV producer. “You are a TV producer?” *dollar tongue emoji* “I’ve got this great idea for a documentary/reality show about, well, me.”

Oh yes, he’s back. Texting the fellas. BlackBerry in one hand, Junior’s sticky paw in the other. They said it couldn’t be done. They said you were out of the game, but when the Super Furry Animals T-shirt still (just about) fits, you just gotta wear it. Damn, son! “No, seriously. Damn, son, you’ve dropped your ice cream.” Those noise-cancelling headphones he keeps taking off were £400 – “Put them back on, Jago!” – and the toilet trips have been, er, challenging, especially when he nearly fell into seven shades of… Sure, these Wayfarers do a pretty good job of hiding the bags under Daddy Cool’s knackered eyes and, with the greatest respect to the British Museum, This. Is. Culture. “Isn’t it, Junior? Junior?” Oh, he’s fallen asleep again. Phew, now Dad can have a snooze, too. Thank God they have premium family camping. Nobody needs to know he missed Skepta.

If you won’t come to the mountain, babe, the mountain will come to you. You don’t know the mountain? Up here. He’s got two arms like tree trunks, so climb aboard. There’s a lot of mountain to go around. Look at that girl making herself at home on a second pair of shoulders, waving a novelty flag around like one of those human towers at a Spanish festival. This, she knows, is the fastest way to get on TV. Or better still, Facebook. “Somebody film me!” Your common or Secret Garden Party version of Atlas is a hit with the ladies, but none of them ever wants to meet for a falafel later. He will keep swaying to the music – or, possibly, the wind – as long as it keeps playing, in the hope that a rousing closing number such as Coldplay’s “Fix You” might inspire someone to dismount and not disappear. It’s lonely at the top.

The ticket was expensive, but that’s all they’re getting out of this smooth operator. He was born ready, he’ll die ready and he’ll be ready for all the days in between. Throw in a few more days if you want. He’ll be ready for those, too. Eight lunches, eight dinners and eight breakfasts, all in labelled Tupperware. That’s enough for this festival, right? Then an inflatable mattress, three torches, two raincoats, two snow coats, infra-red goggles, two camping chairs and two spare, a solar-powered two-way radio system, a humidifier, a dehumidifier, an eight-man tent, enough portable phone chargers to last the seven hours he’ll be at Sunfall in Brockwell Park, because, let’s face it, that phone is going to be blowing up with new friends and their locations. Weirdly, though, no one returns his WhatsApps when he suggests a reunion on London Fields in two weeks’ time. Maybe the phone’s on the blink after all this rain. How could he forget the waterproof phone pouch?

OK, so Jules works in publishing and Julia runs a super-successful vegan catering company (Saucy Peach) and yes, they are both, officially, Grown-Ups (house, car, mortgage – who’d have thought it?). But they still like to let their hair down. Julia picked out their wardrobe for Port Eliot after a busy day of pottering on Portobello Road: floral dress and daisy chain for her, waistcoat and brogues for him, with a jaunty top hat and an optional ponytail wig (for LOLZ). Still, they’re serious about the artisanal food stalls here (try this meze, Jules) and want the weekend to be a kind of holistic holiday where the soul is nourished with talks by popular philosophers, surrounded by eager, earnest faces, hungry for knowledge. Or just still hungry. That falafel wasn’t very filling. And it was really expensive.

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