For instance, consider:
1. I have what appears to be the 'flu.
2. My dissertation is still not done. It is now almost certainly an automatic failure.
3. I have been given an urgent exercise at work which involves answering a number of inane questions about 1380 of our properties. After procrastinating for some time on the task I was informed that £600 million was riding on my doing the task.
4. My girlfriend is going to Edinburgh for four years on Friday.
Still, can't complain. Mainly for my own (future) benefit, here's a brief description of the Reading Festival. I apologise immensely for the random use of bold, but The Morning Star did it in their write-up too!
Reading 2005
So on Thursday August 25th I had another blood test at Guys and then we set off for Paddington Station. My company for this journey was of course Hester who seemed immsensely stressed by the whole affair. I was confronted by a number of questions.
'What if we can't set up our tent anywhere?
'What if our tent is robbed by chiefs?'
'What if someone shits in our tent?'
I was confused by all of these worries and found it difficult to respond in a logical manner. All I could do is try to assure her that crime was probably lower in Reading than it is in Camberwell, that there would be adequate space I'm sure, and that, well...I had the defecation angle covered and I apologise in advance.
A short journey by train later and we had arrived. This was my first festival although almost identical to what I had imagined. As I have written previously I am interested in clubs and other ways where people segregate themselves voluntarily. The festival deal seemed to be clubbing on a much larger scale - which got me wondering. A good proportion of the people there must have been from London (or the surrounding area). So why are London rock clubs so sparsely populated at times? There must have been 60,000 people at Reading, yet even the busiest London clubs fail to attract more than a couple of hundred at a time. Hell, at The Dome or Xplosive I've been present where less than 50 people have been present.
Still, that aside here we were. Surrounded by a demographic curiosity - a bizarre, affluent refugee camp which must have been 95% young, middle class and white. And 100% alcoholic and presumably fairly like-minded. This was not lost on others. When we eventually pitched up our tent I overheard the following from our neighbour :
Yeah Maria Blakestone in Year 11 is pretty good looking but she's a bitch...But look around here...we're surrounded by so many girls who have the same interests as us...who like the same bands and everything....and they're fit.
...pause...
I'm SO having a wank when I get home.
To which someone else could be heard to utter the obvious retort : 'You're waiting 'till then?!'
The economy of such a place was similarly curious. The notion that it was perfectly reasonable to charge £2 for a small drink or £4 for a baked potato seemed to be instilled in the minds of the stalls which meant various trips to Reading Town Centre to raid the local Sainsbury's.
The first night (Thursday) for some reason I thought it was appropriate to drink half a litre of vodka and then follow it up with various other drinks. We went to the Frog Club night in the hall which was fun (I think, I don't really remember) but we happened to bump into Larry who gave us some speed and sold us a couple of pills. The rest of the night went without note (I think it was mainly Indie stuff - I think someone from Razorlight was Guest DJ) and we trumbled home.
Friday I tried to avoid drinking at all since I felt like death from the night before. The sun stayed out and dried out the ground (which on Thursday had been a muddy swamp) so my boots weren't totally destroyed. My feet did however start to hurt like hell so I arrived on the (genius) idea of covering my feet in half a roll of tissue paper and then gaffer taping the fuck out of them. Needless to say it worked well and my feet were fine for the rest of the weekend.
On Friday we saw The Dropkick Murphy's (who were brilliant), Graham Coxon who was OK, The Killers who were dire and The Pixies who were excellent (possibly the best performance of the festival). I watched a few other bands, but in my semi-hungover state I couldn't really work out what I thought of a lot of the bands.
I mean, obviously DIY 4eva!! and all that, but I don't know if I 'get' why a lot of these bands actually existing. Do bands get together and say 'Yeah, we'll release an album which will be totally mediocre. We'll bully our friends and family to come to our gigs, and they'll be reasonably enthusiastic but no-one else will really care one way or another!'. But perhaps I'm missing something, I suspect so. Anyway, that basically summed up my thoughts about a lot of the acts who were playing.
Indeed, on Saturday morning I overheard a conversation from outside the tent which summed up an instance of this.
Girl 1 : Who are playing today?
Girl 2 : Um...Kings of Leon are on later.
Girl 1 : Oh? Are they any good?
Girl 2 : They're OK. They're not bad....it's just they're....well...meh.
Quite. Saturday involved more drinking, taking an unnecessary amount of Ritalin (which led to repeated philosophising during the middle of shitty punk acts) and then Hester finding a bag of weed in the middle of a field. Musically speaking since Transplants cancelled the Main Stage was dominated by more 'indie' acts, so I spent quite a long time at the Radio 1 'Lock Up' tent where I heard in particular Anti-Flag, Rise Against and Bad Religion. We also saw a bit of Juliette Lewis' theatrics but she basically did seem to be warbling while jumping around in her underwear. Hester went off with a couple of her friends at a couple of points to watch some awful Indie dross (I think I saw the beginning of Babyshambles for some reason) while I tried desperately getting drunk. It was to no avail, I was immune to the booze. Damnit. The end the day we watched Foo Fighters who were largely rather bland.
That was Saturday, I think we went and smoked some weed with some random people at their tents, but I can't be sure.
Sunday was what I was waiting for, simply because NOFX were playing. In the early afternoon we saw Art Brut who were vaguely amusing, but the lead singer seemed to think he was in a punk band as he kept trying to angrily shout instead of singing and on an indie band I'm not sure that worked.
Still, NOFX didn't disappoint, they were everything I had hoped for. They played a fair selection of their better songs and combined it with making a mistake during every single song (I think Fat Mike actually forgot the lyrics completely at one stage, I couldn't tell) and the usual banter like insulting the English and getting a guy up on stage to play the Bugle. Followed by inciting some flag burning. They played everyone else off the stage (except maybe the Pixies), in my opinion (but of course I would say that). Apparently Iron Maiden were brilliant but we missed most of that and I wasn't in the mood for too much metal. Marilyn Manson was mildly amusing, but that was that musically for Sunday. There were various other bands but none worth speaking of.
Sunday night I managed to get drunk and then because I ran out of money / booze I ended up taking the pill I had bought on Thursday. Obviously a single pill at this point had almost zero effect, until we combined it with some weed later that night. At this point the whole thing became strangely hallucinogenic to the point where our walk from Hayleigha and Joel's campsite (who we had bumped into) to our tent became unbelievably terrifying (at one point someone stopped us and shouted abuse for a good five minutes, but I'm not sure if that actually happened or not). Huge fun though.
Overall, it was tiring but fun. I may go again next year, although I ended up spending a stupid amount of money. And much to my chagrin, I got sunburnt. Being away from London was kind of strange though, I think it was only the second time I hadn't gone to Slimelight on Saturday night in the last 10-11 weeks."
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