Reading 2001. Friday 24^th – Sunday 26^th

Thursday morning....

We decided to leave on Thursday, to ensure us a good camping spot i.e. not 10 miles from the entrance like we were last year and not neighbouring the toilets like we were last year.

In the morning we had to collect our GCSE results. This meant Thursday night could go one of two ways: we’d be celebrating or drowning our sorrows. Either way, the result was unanimous - we were gonna get wasted.

 I got 9 A’s, Fanny got a D (amongst other results).

We then went home again, decided we’d best pack really, what with having to leave in an hour.
3 hours, a traffic jam and a game of “guess which other cars are going to Reading festival” later and we arrive.
Now I’m carry a back pack that was brought in Jesus times and has seen several car boots since, this things as big as me and if you turn it up it doubles up as a zimmer frame. And it was fucking heavy.

It started pissing it down as soon as soon as Fanny, Laura, Nat and I (Schmid) set foot out of the car.
If you’ve been in a stuffy car for over 3 hours and then it starts raining you’re bound to get pretty narky with each other. An argument sparked off over who was going to carry the lightest and most convenient part of the tent. I obviously won, with the argument “It’s my tent, therefore I get first pickings on what I carry”. Laura lost and ended up with the tent poles, which she moaned about the whole trek.

Our great plan to arrive early and get a good spot fell flat on its arse. We even had to walk past our spot we got the year before when arriving on the Friday. All feeling very gutted about our campsite, we set up our tents. Only Fanny and I didn’t know how to set ours up (so it would actually stand. Upright. For 5 minutes. With out us holding it). Eventually we made it stand; however I wouldn’t call the position ‘upright’, but it did.

We met up with lots of friends in Reading and on Thursday night we went to the nearby club to ‘celebrate’. Our friend ‘Lube’ had to take the celebrating that one step further and brought 6 ‘legal high’ pills. An hour later and you’ve never seen sick come out so fast in your life.

This is Laura and Holly boogying away, at the club. King Adora did a sign in, so I met the lads and got my top signed.

To get rid of unwanted attention Laura and I had to pretend to be lesbians.

  This is us on Friday in a tents trying to escape the sun. Anna is a firm believer in the ‘who ever smelt it dealt it’ theory.
Whereas Holly argues ‘who ever said the rhyme, done the crime’.Fanny’s only concern is looking sexy for the camera. We end the debate by all agreeing it was Laura in the neighbouring tent.

Walking around watching bands and shopping is hungry work. For two nights in a row we had a Chinese and if I never see a Chinese meal again in my life then that’s FINE BY ME.

We sat down outside the shops and ate on the streets, people actually walked past and called as ‘tramps’!

Later that night we met up with the Becky Jago camp and sat around the fire and with the assistance of Dave we got even more out of it. There was the usual nighttimes constant bellowing of ‘BOLLOCKS’ and ‘TIMMEH’ between different tents and campsites but Dave managed to start off his very own ‘BATTYRAM’ chant. Then we would stumble back to our tents at some silly time in the morning.           

Fanny always woke up last.

WARNING: Don’t pass out on the grass for any longer than 5 minutes. Grass seed enters the brain through the ear and instantly begins to sprout. The grass grows towards the light entering your nostrils and the results as you can imagine are not pretty.

  See, when I pass out I cover my ear with my hands, thus stopping invading grass seeds making a fool of me.

 Fanny later discovered her embarrassing grass problem, well I guess she was bound to start asking questions after 5 different groups of people walk past her tent pointing and laughing. After spending many painful hours with a pair of tweezers and not budging an inch until the last blade was gone we went back into the festival.

Fanny then decided to have a go at bungee jumping* off the crane (the crane was named Mike). Although you probably can’t see it, there definitely was a bungee rope attached to her.

 *Not actually Fanny bungee jumping.

On the last morning it rained & rained & rained some more. A group of people went to the local super markets to stock up on food. Food at Reading Festival is fucking expensive, and the price of a bottle of water is £2, which just takes the piss, but it was the hottest Reading in 10 years and if you’ve been in a mosh pit for 2 hours watching Rancid you’ll pay anything for a bottle of water. I stayed at the tent and listened to Holly’s stereo. I would have thought the others would return bringing crisps, chocolate and drinks. Well you know what thought did don’t ya? Did they return with something practical and edible? Did they hell! They brought me LARD. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love lard as much as the next person, but what the fuck? I’m hungry, thirsty and over dressed. What was I supposed to do with it? Get naked, smear it all over my body and run around the campsite? Well it was far too early in the morning to do that.

This is Lube watching A System Of A Down (that’s right, we actually saw a few bands when we went to this 3 day music festival!!!) she is wearing a bright yellow poncho. If you ever get the pleasure of meeting the lovely Lube, I must warn you not to trust a word she says. I’ve never met someone who makes up so many bullshit stories. She also has a nasty habit of leaving her knickers in the most embarrassing places - including over the aerial of her form tutors car.
            On the final night me and a few others decided to experiment with the ‘Legal Highs’ Reading had to offer. We brought some fuck off sized capsules that are supposed to have an LSD effect, ‘take 2 every hour’. Well, I’ve never taken LSD before; but I don’t think it’s supposed to make you feel painstakingly sick. We all watched the headlining act Eminem & D12 together, only I was laying down thinking just how far I’d like to ram these legal highs up Eminem’s cockhole. Little did we know that Lube had been standing there taking these capsules like there’s no tomorrow during Eminem’s set. She took 12 in two hours. By the end of the set she couldn’t move her tongue to talk, but of course she had great difficulty telling us this “zye zan’t zoove zie zon”. Her pupils (that have now turned to the size of golf balls) were a dead give away to what she’d been up to.
I no longer feel like chucking my guts up, which is nice. We bump into Bury’s Glamour Queen Jooles and end up going back to her campsite to help them finish off their booze, they had tons and didn’t fancy carrying it home tomorrow– we were merely doing them a favour. We managed to ‘star spot’ Jack from Antihero (interviewed in this issue) and he too ended up coming back to “help” Jooles with her excess drink problem.
Lube by this time was hallucinating; we were all fucking scared she was going to die. She seemed happy enough though, but shivering, so we went back to the tents. By the last night I had caught some lurgee and couldn’t sleep very well because I was shivering so much, I had also drunk loads and by this stage all the toilets had been vandalised and were in no fit state to use (most of them were now horizontal), so I had to pee out side our tent. Luckily no one saw.

In the morning we packed our bags and went home.

 Bend over Glastonbury 2002, we’re ready for ya BITCH.