Yesterday I woke up at nine am. I had been at the Reading Festival with my Mum and Rowan and Lloyd. It was the last day. My Mum likes going to Reading and has a reasonable taste in music for a Mum, but she worries that we don't want her hanging around. Apart from anything else, she can afford a hotel room that we all sleep in and we can't. She doesn't get checked on the way in to the festival. We do. She has money. We don't. I got out of bed and had a shower. I have been to the Reading Festival lots of times and only camped once. It was horrific. It is mainly full of idiot teenagers that have been let of the lead for the first time and can't handle the freedom and alcohol. That year, when I was trying miserably to sleep, one of their kind threw up against my tent right by where my head was. I stormed out with a stick ready to teach him to hold his drink better but he looked so pathetic, crying into his own vomit, that I just put my foot underneath him and rolled him away. These are the same people who spend £130 pounds to shout bollocks for three days solid hoping everyone else will join in or at least think they're cool. The sad thing is, most do.
We got up and had a proper breakfast buffet. We all smelt nice and ate til we were full. We also used toilets that didn't have shit smeared over every surface. We then cruised down to the festival site for midday. Another benefit of having a Mum with us is that a few years ago she charmed a unit owner right next to the site. We now have a life parking spot in the most convenient place in Reading. I can't imaging Rowan or Lloyd being able to do this. Stupid voices, thrusting your crotch and unkempt hair would not have persuaded Chas to let us park in his loading bay. As we drove along, we passed all the dirty peasants who were caked in their own filth and carrying crates of beer that they really looked like they didn't want. I would have pitied them if I wasn't so clean and well rested.
I smuggled my red bull and relentless in using my boxer shorts and went to watch a metal band called Mastodon. I quite enjoyed them. I then watched Killswitch Engage who were the most appalling form of entertainment I have ever seen. This includes hippies who twirl strings and play the guitar to campers who they mistakenly think want to hear acoustic versions of Teen Spirit or Basket Case. I also saw The Used at Reading a couple of years ago. Killswitch's thing was being offensive to their own fans and playing shit songs. I went to put my head in a woodchipper instead and enjoyed it a lot more.
I spent the rest of the day pretty much camping out in front of the main stage. I saw lots of crap emo music. I don't condone bands being bottled (I even felt sorry for 50 cent and Daphne and Celeste a few years back). But however much I tried, I could not help but feel a sense of justice as My Chemical Romance and their sterilised, vacuum packed teen angst received a pelting. "This ones for our army, all the outsiders who we represent." Yeah, well that ones for your head. Fuck off.
Kingy then showed up. He is a smuggling genius. He had a tube of Pringles (allowed) and when you opened it, there were crisps. However, underneath these, there was a can of Stella (forbidden). The security were keen and without my Mum, we would never have got most of our bottles and cans in. Matt received respect.
Kingy likes three things: the church, the landed gentry and the monarchy. He hates the working class and the term 'chill out'. This formed the basis for one of the festival highlights. His girlfriend had disappeared but had left her fold up chair set up. Some fat middle aged thug came and sat down on it. Now, Kingy freely admits to being a wimp and useless at fighting, but any feelings of impending doom were overridden by his hatred of commoners. Kingy told him and his mate to fuck off. The response was "Chill out man". This was like a red rag to a bull and the argument raged back and forth. They asked Matt if he was middle class. He said yes and proud. They asked Matt if he was spoiled as a child. He said "if by that you mean I had a chair to sit on, then yes." They told him they were working class. Kingy's face and eyes went red and he almost sucked his own teeth out. The big fat man in the heavy weight boxing t-shirt told Matt that he would like nothing better than to see him on the floor in a bloody pulp. They kept patting Kingy and shaking his hand and telling him to chill. Rowan, Lloyd and I wanted to help, but didn't know how so we laughed.
In the end, fatty turned to my Mum, who was also laughing and said "you're not offended by us sitting here are you?" Mum was diplomatic in her response. "No, but I think it would have been nice if you'd have asked first." He looked at her and said "Yes, you're right, I do apologise." He kissed her, shook Matt's hand and invited him to their campsite to party and drink, before they both disappeared. Matt sat there fuming about the working class trying to take things that they hadn't paid for. We then played Top Trumps to calm him down.
Matt Rowan and I are expects at sharks top trumps. Before playing this version, I'd always assumed top trumps was a silly game of chance, but now I know the truth. The trick is to memorise where the Whale Shark is in your opponents deck, if they have it, and try and take it out using a card with amazing global presence (for example the eagle ray or blue shark). There is not much else he can be beaten at. You also have to watch out for the Basking Shark (for its length mainly) and the spiny dogfish (for its maximum depth). We played a few games and each won a couple.
At one point I went to the toilet. The urinals were full of piss and sick and phlegm and other things I couldn't look at for long enough to identify. One drunken man who had seemingly spent the whole day hanging around the toilets (either that or we had synchronised bladders) tripped over whilst trying to get away from his mates who were persuading him to leave. He fell into a urinal, scraped his head down the backwall, bashed it into the lip at the front and then plunged face first straight into the cocktail of bodily fluids that had pooled up. He slithered to the floor laughing as the orange lumpy water ran down his face. It made me ill.
On the band side of things, Less Than Jake amazed the crowds with their ska punk tomfoolery and Placebo were good, despite technical difficulties. However, Pearl Jam headlined and blew everyone else away. They were better than Matt vs the peasants of Reading. Nobody I was with wanted to see them so I watched by myself. I wouldn't even class Pearl Jam as one of my all time favourites, but I have rarely witnessed a live spectacle like that. I left the arena and met up with the others who had been hunting for fast food. As a challenge, Lloyd had taken a picture of the inside a Reading toilet. That image has been burned into my retinas for good. Rowan went one step further and zoomed in to it. He still can't bring himself to talk about the horrors he saw.
We drove back to Nottingham and got home at about 4am. When I say we drove, I mean Mum drove and I slept. Despite the lack of bands I was desperate to see, it had been a good festival (with Muse, The Vines and Capdown being the best of the other days) and I had enjoyed lording it up over the people who don't have their Mum's hotel room to stay in.