Week 35 – Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th
August – Reading Festival – Richfield Avenue, Reading - £200
Reading Festival –
Sunday
“Well, we didn’t get much reading done at that festival. . .”
Sandro’s statement ignored the fact that Salazar had made
good progress through Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban but he was right
in that I’d barely touched my copy of Twilight. As well as reading less than we’d
expected, we’d also drunk less, with over a crate and a half still available
for our final day.
With our wallets bleeding money at the expensive bars and
food stalls we decided to risk rectal examination, and attempted to smuggle some
cans into the arena. Salazar led the way, with her handbag full of cans, and
breezed through the barriers without attracting the attention of the keen-eyed
security staff.
I followed in her wake, trembling. I finally understood how Howard
Marks and Han Solo had felt all those years ago. The inner pockets of my jacket
were full of contraband and I could feel the eyes of the security staff on me. My
palms were sweaty, my knees were weak and my arms were heavy. There was vomit
on my sweater already, was it my mom’s spaghetti? No. On the surface though, I
was calm and ready and I smiled innocently as I passed through undetected.
I’d done it! A warm thrill passed through me. I was elated
and encouraged, until I released I’d wet myself. If I could get away with this
with only yellow shorts for my trouble, perhaps I could get away with more
ambitious crimes. Murder, maybe. I’d never liked that Sandro fellow. . .
Speaking of Sandro, where was he? He’d been behind me with his pockets stuffed
with cans before the barrier, but when I turned he was nowhere to be seen.
My worst fears were confirmed when he phoned me moments
later.
“They got me,” I heard through muffled tears. “They’ve done terrible
things!”
“Never mind that,” I said sympathetically, “did they
confiscate the beers?”
“No,” Sandro replied “I’m gonna go for a walk and down them.”
“How many have you got?” I asked.
“Uh, four or five,” he said.
“Ok. See you in two minutes.”
-------
Of course, not even
Sandro would down four or five cans in two minutes on a Sunday morning so it
was a little while before we saw him again. The weather was pretty nice so Sal
and I went for a sit down on the grass outside the Festival Republic Stage
where Dutch Uncles were playing. We nervously
looked around at the security presence and decided against opening our cans.
Sal must have been
the only person that weekend to pick up a plastic cup without the intention to
earn 10p, instead clandestinely sneaking to the toilets to clean and fill it with
the contents of one of her cans. You have to admire how seriously we were
taking this. When she returned triumphantly we looked around to see a couple of
fellow smugglers sipping on cans without a care in the world.
‘Fools,’ I thought to myself.
‘It’s people like them who get innocents kicked out,’ so I reported them to
the nearest steward who ejected them from the arena.
The avuncular Sandro
arrived in time to see Little Comets
who were delightful, even if they didn’t play ‘Adultery’. Sandro and I headed on to the NME tent to enjoy Chapel Club, and Sal joined us after
being put off Tim Minchin by a massive crowd and Tim's ginger wig.
-------
We caught a glimpse of Warpaint
but decided food was more important and then made for the front of the Main
Stage for our festival favourites Friendly
Fires. At the end of their familiar yet fresh set the football scores were
announced from the stage and it was revealed that Man Utd had beaten Arsenal
8-2. Of course, any genuine football fan would already have known this, but the
announcement inspired the thousands of diehard United fans present to squeal
and cheer their delight.
We retreated further back to see the less lively but more interesting
and influential Interpol, whose set
wasn’t spectacular but simmered nicely with singles like ‘Evil’, ‘The Heinrich Manoeuvre’ , and ‘C’mere’ and came to the boil inevitably with ‘Slow Hands’ before they finished with their first single ‘Obstacle 1’. By now we were out of cans
which meant I reluctantly went to the bar, only to be ID’d once again.
“Do you know who I am!?” I asked modestly.
“No,” the bar girl whose face mercifully wasn’t covered in
glitter replied.
“What do you mean ‘No’? It says right there on my
provisional driver’s license.”
Next up, Elbow played
their perfectly measured festival set list, with Guy Garvey pulling the crowd’s
strings as expertly as he’d done at Glastonbury.
On the previous two occasions I’ve seen them there’s been a rendition of ‘Happy birthday’ and it was back again, this time for bassist Pete
Turner, although it was Salazar’s birthday the next day so she claimed it as
her own.
-------
Sunday’s headliners
and the band chosen to close the festival were Muse. Fortunately, they’re
fairly good at this sort of thing and their set was phenomenal. From the songs
to the lights and the visuals on the big screen, they eclipsed everything that
had gone before them in style. Opening with the classic ‘New Born’ they played Origin
of Symmetry in full (in order) a decade after it was originally released.
That meant ‘Bliss’, ‘Space Dementia’ ‘Hyper Music’ ‘Citizen
Erased’ and ‘Feeling Good’ plus
the early use of ‘Plug in Baby’ which
is usually reserved for much later. Amazingly, that was only half their set. Sadly
there was nothing from Showbiz but
they played some of the best of Absolution,
Black Holes and Revelations and The
Resistance.
Starting with ‘Uprising’ they then set the muddy dance
floor alight with ‘Supermassive Black Hole’, and ignited
mass moshing to ‘Hysteria’ and ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ . After almost every song I expected the end but
they seemed to go on and on, to my delight each time, except when they played Undisclosed Desires. The equally recent ‘Resistance’ was an improvement and ‘Starlight’ more so before an intro
cover of ‘House of the Rising Sun’ bled
into the fabulous and aptly named ‘Time
is Running Out’.
I was then reminded
of the amazing Eddie Spaghetti, when a rendition of Morricone’s ‘Man with a Harmonica’ preceded the epic ‘Knights of Cydonia’ to finish a set
which was comfortably one of the highlights of the year so far.
-------
Satisfied with the musical conclusion to our weekend, we now
only had one priority: to stop our tent being burned down. With nothing else
worth sticking around for (there was a silent disco but it seemed quiet) we thankfully
found our still standing tent and cracked open a few cans.
We’d seen some appalling antics over the weekend and spent
the last hours of the night criticising all those pesky kids who looked like
they’d been having more fun than us. In truth, while there were plenty of
idiots about, there were also lots of very nice folk present.
Sadly, negativity can stick in your head sometimes. Growing
up with Sandro, my ears have become accustomed to some pretty colourful
language so that wasn’t a problem, but there did seem to be more than the
average number of people who had no consideration for others, which was the
crucial thing for me. Be a dickhead amongst your own group by all means, but
pissing on other people’s tents or trying to nick stuff qualifies you for
castration in my book.
-------
We woke on the
morning of Sal’s birthday with her looking forward to the gift of packing up the
tent and driving us home. Some nutters were already in full flow, destroying
gazebos and tents with poles and bats, while a group of teens were practising
the worst pulling technique I’ve ever seen (and I roll with Cousin Bish).
The alpha male of
their group was delighting his friends with shouts of “Show us your C*nt!”, “Get
your tits out!” and the like. Initially I was worried that they were calling to
me, but in fact their shouts were aimed at a group of girls sat about thirty
yards away. More confusingly still, the girls were giggling and eventually
invited him over to sit with them.
Who says romance is
dead?
I just don’t
understand kids these days. Maybe twenty four is old after all. Hey, at least
it’s not twenty five. Happy Birthday Salazar.
-------
August
30-5 - Wibidi - ✓
6-12 – Alice Russell - ✓
13-19 – Brother Steve - ✓
20-26 - Reading - ✓
27-2 - Reading - ✓
No comments:
Post a Comment