SUTLS

We have just spent the weekend at the Reading Festival and I will attempt to roll up the whole three day experience into one piece of writing.

We arrived at our hotel late on Thursday night. I am too evolved to roll around in beer, piss and mud coated in shit. Because of this, I have given up camping there. I am not an overly hygienic person, but I prefer things to be free from death and decay. The following day was to begin in a difficult fashion. There were six of us in the festival. We had two bags. Joe was carrying one and my Mum had the other. Joe had the one with the three most essential items: food, water and top trumps. However, for some unknown reason, Joe and Vicki ended up stomping off. This left us for two whole hours with no means of survival. It was gruelling and there were times when fear got the better of Rowan, Lloyd and myself. Kingy was not with us at that point, but had heard about the lack of top trumps on the grape vine. He doesn't come for the music, he comes for the sport. The text message I got from him captured his anger and his arrival was just another thing to worry about.

joe eventually turned up and the natural order of things was restored. We ate melted kinder maxis and drank warm coke. It wasn't really worth the wait. We spent the majority of the first day hanging around the punk tent with all the other people who desperately wanted to be 16 again. All the actual 16 year olds were performing their vigil at the radio one tent, pushing their faces into the barrier and sweeping their fringes across their faces. The swirling torrent of unsightly straightened hair, flat peak caps under hooded tops and tight trousers or basketball shorts were waiting for the hideous spectacle of Enter Shikari. They no doubt had been since the festival was opened the previous day. Kids were way cooler when I was one.

The following morning, Lloyd decided to get high on E102, a yellow food colouring that both he and Joe are allergic to. Rowan thought it would be funny to feed him fizzy rainbow laces, but the results were worse than even he had expected as Lloyd teared the atmosphere apart with an unrivalled display of crudity and bad behaviour. We had no milk to force down his throat, which is the usual antidote, so we had to just grit our teeth and weather the storm.

Lloyd had also grown a moustache. It was not visible, which made us all doubt his claim. In order to prove it was real, he filled in between the three strands with black mascara. Reading was largely fooled and in awe of him. A girl in Waitrose asked if it was real. He said yes. She then turned to Rowan and asked if his eyebrows were real. In fairness, they do look equally improbable. He snappily asked if her face was real. She wasn't attractive, making Rowan's remark all the more cutting and she soon disappeared back to her hovel to hide amongst the filth and despair of the campsite.

Carling were offering poor people a incentive to keep the festival site clean. They rewarded money to those who returned pint cups back to the beer vans. I pitied the peasants dragging their way through the debris, especially when I noted people pissing into their empties and throwing them around. I also despised the grubby leeches for being so deprived that they were forced to suck loose change from other people's rubbish. Inventively, we started a chant to aim at the collecting parasites. It went: "Cups! Cups! Cups!" It only confused them.

Likewise, we invented a chant for the vodka jelly foot soldiers. It went "Vodka Jeeeeelllly!!!". Again, despite it's simplicity, it was largely met with confusion, though one vendor did give me a free vodka jelly as a panic reaction. It was foul and I gave it straight away after he had watched me pretending to be happy and left.

On the final day, a huge fat drunk Welshman was dancing to Fallout Boy and fell into the circle of chairs where we were all sat. He spilt his pint down me then rolled onto the people behind us. I jumped up and called him a fucking idiot, but he was too drunk to care. He just lay across the poor people behind us laughing and covering them with spit and alcohol. He must have been a good 17 stone. Everyone got angry and told him to leave, but he was ignorant and incapable. He tried to get up, then fell on us and spilled more drink. Words were exchnaged and things then got ugly. He squared up to Rowan because, amongst other things, Joe had said there was no point in him getting up as he'd be straight on the floor again. This was actually a reference to how drunk he was, but he took it as a threat. His equally large and generic mates squared up to us too. I got between everyone and tried to break it up, but in doing so, called him an embarrasment. At that point, it was most definately on. We were considerably outnumbered and massively outsized. Although it counted for little, we were younger and more sober and this was our only weapon.

We were going to rumble to "This Aint a Scene, It's an Arms Race." I still can't decide whether this would have been funny or not.

Despite being an idiot herself, the man's girlfriend managed to drag him away, though he and his friends kept trying to get back to us. We were ready though. I am good at top trumps and therefore strategies, and have been to University so am educated and intelligent. So I formulated the following plan:

If they came back to beat us up, or fell on us again, I was going to kick the man in his face (fly kick if necessary) then sprint through the crowd to the nearest security station whilst everybody pretended not to be with me. This would avoid a mass brawl. It was fool proof. I'm fairly quick and they were all middle aged oasis fans so there was no way this plan would not work.

Even my Mum said "Just make sure you have your mobile so we can find out where you get to". This was the seal of approval. Usually my mother doesn't even have to listen to what I say to follow it up with "Don't be so ridiculous".

However, our new friends, obviously intimidated by our physical presence, decided their life was in danger and fled. In hindsight, once we had all calmed down, we realised this was for the best as we would have had the shit kicked out of us. My fly kicks were not that impressive the last time I tried one in primary school and I've done nothing since then to improve them.

The festival ended with the Smashing Pumpkins. Everyone I was with hated them, but I didn't. I thrust off the shackles of maturity and responsibilty and in my mind, had greasy curtains again. They sang about the alienation and rage that spoke for MY generation. Being comfortably middle class, I never felt this. However, I listened to them when I was fifteen so can pretend they were saying things I probably should have been thinking, but could never put into words.

To be honest, I've never actually put any thought into their lyrics.

On the way out, we discovered that you got 10p for every pint cup you returned. I was angry to have turned my back on such an opportunity and thought of all the time I had wasted watching bands.