It’s been two days since the glorious Reading Festival and i’m sad i’ve left the trashy ground and glorious sunshine. I’m bored so i’ve decided to write a detailed account of the wonderfulness that is the Carling Reading Festival. (Plus my friend Boosh is doing a Leeds one and we said we’d exchange.)

Wednesday -Early entry.

So, three festival virgins began their journey to Reading. Jodie Rowan, Hannah Glazier and myself clambered stuff into Hannah’s mothers car and took our position for the two hour drive, which wasn’t bad. Our friend Emma was supposed to be coming with us but due to a viral infection she couldn’t :(. So it kinda started on a bum note.

We arrived at our destination, after a last stop at a Macdonalds- at what we thought would be the last flushing toliet we would ever see, and were dropped at the orange drop off point at Reading Festy.
Unloading all of our stuff, we realised that maybe it was an extremely bad idea to tell our other friends that we would gladly set up camp for them. The amount of stuff we had was far too much and it resulted in many a bruise later.
We queued for about 4 hours for the boat to take us on a five minute journey over the river, which hopefully pointed out to the festival organisers to just build a damn bridge and be done with it! After another hour we’d managed to drag our belongings in rallys to a place in Yellow camp. In the rain, it seemed like the worst day ever. Aching and yurning for drinks, we set up three tents rather clumsily and due to tiredness gave up on the fourth tent.
We made brief friends with our neighbours, one who lent us a hench torch and another called Rob who loved Uffie and Jamie T.
Our first experience of long drop toliets wasn’t half as bad as we expected. Just don’t smell or look down, however this was only day 1.
Later on in the evening, i met some friends off of the wonderful world of space, My Space, who were awesome. Then it was off to wristband exchange and to beddie byes.

Thursday.
Today, after a rather rough cold nights sleep. I found myself waking up to people arriving into the festival grounds trying to find a spot to camp. I realised this was the actual day the festival opens, and we had our special early tickets yesterday.
Festival antics commenced and i found myself just surrounded by loons singing and chanting ‘Bollocks’ at random points. I began to felt even more included when i noticed a guy singing the spice girls at 9 in the morning.
My friend alex left his kag in a bag in our camp the night before so as i deliered it back to him at the meeting point -a big tree- i showed our other friends where we were camping so they could settle in. All was good:) but i just wanted the music to start already!

Friday
Music time!
I woke up with a huge smile on my face, a really boiling smile which was provoked by the heat in our saunamatic tent. I really want that to be a word. It was as if milk had met cookies, the festival weather was upon us and god dammit was it to stay.
Most of us wanted to charge our phones, so we awaited the arena gates to open. Excitement much!
The first band i saw at Reading were The Pipettes, who braved the main stage first. They were awesome, i underestimated how well they perform. Gossip were on later, after we had a wee snackage at camp, and Beth Ditto gave us a rather naked performance, whilst keeping an amazing voice.
I was unfortunately completed cream crackered so i went back to camp for a snooze.
I went back later for the two headliners on the main stage. Kings of Leon were amazing, by far the best solid rock band at festival, churning out hits like no other band and playing so tight it makes Michael Jacksons trousers look like Madness’s baggy ones. I was missing my boyfriend extremely at this point as we’d seen kings of leon together last month.
The actual headliner Razorlight, were average. Amazing light show but performance wise-nothing special.
After using the flushing arena toliets for the last time before it shut, we got a ikkle bit of food and headed back to camp for a while.
Later we explored the crazy campsites, full of people with signs saying ‘will dance for beer’ and angry mobs. There was a fairground with other activities and it was all just very overwhelming. All these people to get completely fucked for 4 days straight.

Saturday
Another steamy morning at camp Krechie. My hair was starting to get gradually worse and my arms were beginning to burn. So not a good day appearence wise but an amazing day music wise.
I started off my day with Good Shoes at the NME stage. They are kind of a local band so it was important really to go and support them. Amazing stuff too, definately not dissapointing.
We were in search of a bit of relaxation so we went to see The Shins, would i’d been looking forward to seeing for an extremely long time. I wish they did a longer set because i feel they didnt give the crowd enough to prove themselves. Asides that, fabulous summer music.
After some rice and noodles back at base, my favourite evening of the festival began. The best line up.
Bloc Party
Arcade Fire
Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I was a bit pissed off however at the sound pa during Bloc Party, they were definately not loud enough and Kele’s voice couldn’t project enough. Grr. Other than that, truly ace band.
Arcade Fire were my favourite band of the weekend due to the following reasons.
They were consistent in the quality of their performance.
The sound was delivered extremely well through all 9 plus instruments.
Stage design was fun and interesting and amazing once it got darker.
The songs just felt so great in the summery breeze and the atmosphere had the crowd smiling.
ahhh, *wants to go back*.
Red hot chili peppers headlined, and dispite alot of people saying they improvised too much, i thought they were great. It’s excatly what you expect from a live performance, not just a recite of album tracks. That would be pointless. They perform so well as a band, and i thnk people were kinda just following the glitch at the beginning after anthony tripped.

Sunday
Last day :(
To be honest, i was looking forward to this day the least, but i was open to anything. It was experiment time for me. In the afternoon i went to see a comedian Simon Amstell at the alternative tent then
my friends wanted to see The Maccabees, Fall out Boy, Kate Nash and Jamie T before the headliners later.
The Maccabees are now my new favourite indie band, what a great set. Fall out boy were disgraceful in my opinion, due to there obsessive covers of R kelly’s ignition, and a really badly done version of MJ’S Beat it. Clashing with Kate Nash in the smallest tent possible for the amount of people who wanted to get in, i felt she was cheated. Fall out boy were being shit on the main stage and she was being amazing in some tiny crap tent.
Jamie T surprised me. I thought he was really really clever, and i’m surprised he had such a big crowd.

Later on after a much, we went to see CSS. Who managed to make me dance through the whole set. Jodie and i began to do routines and we were’nt even drunk, just hyper on electro.
After a long queue for the toliets, Hannah, her sister and her friend and i headed off to see Smashing Pumpkins headline the main stage on a very chilly night.
Just amazing.
I can’t really say much else really.

The final night was madness, people setting stuff alight, tribal banging on bins, gladiator fights and explosions. Crazy, and scary and the same time, i tried to stay at camp as much as possible for the sake of keeping alive!

Monday Morning
I woke up rather earlyish due to the noise of people blowing up gas canisters in their tents and a fire engine going past our camp. So i followed it, as you do. Maaassive fires everywhere made me think that you couldn’t get away with anything like this outside Reading. It was really odd. My gang decided to leave later on because of the huge rush of people trying to get out, which was wise actually cause we got home pretty swiftly later.
I found a working glow sword on the floor that i decided to keep due to them costing about 10 pound the night before.
We hiked to Reading station about 3 oclock to find not a huge queue at all for tickets, working toliets, cash machines that don’t charge you two pounds to use them, and an arrange of nice places to eat. I settled for a vegtable pasty and an iced latte which went down so well on the way back to London.

I love Reading.
Best time of my life so far.