My Reading Festival Diary - One Day Like This.....

And so the amazing weekend that was is unfortuantely over!!  Me and my fiance went to the Reading Festival for two days and boy, what a time we had!  Now, before I write about our experience, I was asked by Company magazine to do a feature for them, entitled Bloggers in Boots about being at the festival. For those of you who dont know, (or cant remember!) I wrote a short piece on their website about being a festival virgin despite having gone to over 60 gigs!!  You can read my post on this here.  They loved what I wrote so asked me to blog for them which I have emailed to them and am now waiting for it to appear on their web site!  It pretty much is a photo diary so I will try not to repeat myself on here with the same things, but I have more free reign on my blog so am excited to tell you all about our Reading adventures!!

So me and Dean managed to get ourselves a day ticket for the Friday and Sunday, which also meant having to stay in a hotel for the weekend!!  I was so excited to be going as I didnt know what to expect!

We drove to Reading on the Friday morning and parked in a designated area then followed everyone else to catch the boat to the main site.

The boat ride took about 15 minutes and I was getting a bit of motion sickness which is unusual for me!

  But it was still a lovely start to our adventure as the views from the boat were lovely and everyone was in good spirits!

So when we arrived, we had the worst torrential rain and my lovely fiance Dean came in jeans and a t-shirt!!  Emergency ponchos bought and even then, it took him ten minutes to realise the sleeve was not the bit you put your head through!

In the meantime, I was nice and dry under my umbrella, hoodie, leggings and poncho!

Poncho Friends!!

The opening act at the main stage were The Architects who I had not heard of before but glad I have now as they were brilliant!  We met up with some friends to see Bring Me The Horizon, who Im not a huge fan of but they did put on an impressive show, climbing all over the scaffolding, crowd surfing and inviting a memeber of the audience up on stage to sing with them!! I was thoroughly entertained!!

The rain finally stopped but the mud kept flowing!  People were actually rolling around in the sludge, wrestling and play fighting!!  Not my cup of tea, but it was certainly enjoyable getting stuck in the mud and sliding all over the place!! It especially made it difficult to jump up and down to my favourite songs!

Watched the Deftones with good friends and saw them perform my favourite by them, Minerva.  The sun was shining so the ponchos came off and the suncream went on!!

This is moi, standing in front of the BBC3 studio where Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates do ther live links.  We could see them both getting their make up done ready in time for the show and as I walked away, Fearne Cotton got up and waved at us!!  There were only seven of us standing here so she made a point of waving to each of us! How lovely of her!!

OMG!!

Jared Leto and his band, 30 Seconds to Mars were on stage at sunset although I was a little disappointed by their show.  I was in the middle of the crowd and no one was singing along, (except for me wailing like a cat!) and  the sound was awful.  Although Im all ok for a sing song, Jared Leto left most of the singing to the crowd and when he did sing, his microphone was not on!  They played such hits as The Kill, Beautiful Lie, This Is War, and Kings and Queens but I was disappointed by the overall show.

Headlining act My Chemical Romance were terrific! Im a fan of their older stuff but they certainly know how to make a crowd dance and I had a party all on my own!!  Their encore was fab, coming out to We Will Rock You and when the guitar part came in, on walked Brian May!!  Fulfilling another dream of mine as Queen are one of my favourite bands and the crowd were shocked!  He remained on stage for MCRs song Welcome to the Black Parade and ended with fireworks and explosions!!

Saturday was a day of recovering in a luxury five star hotel! Forget camping in the mud, this was showering in the cleanest of showers and watching Pulp at Reading on the plasma tv with no one pushing or shoving!

Durng the day, me and Dean saw the sights, visiting the local shopping centre and dining out! In the evening we ordered room service,(as above!) whilst watching Dr Who and X Factor!

 Rock On!

Sunday, and the sun came out for us!  Back on the boat for our last day of festivalling and I was extremely excited about what the day had in store for us.

Whilst everyone else was nursing a hangover, and still in their camps, we arrived on site to dry, stinky mud! It was peaceful and we took the opportunity to get to the main stage to see the first act, We Are The Ocean open up the stage.

Whilst we were waiting for our bands to come on, we took he opportunity to do a bit of retail therapy on site.  There were many stalls selling clothes, jewellery, shoes, bags and merchandise and I took the time to try on some silly head gear!  It was very Camden-esque and I always love picking up something unique - in this case i found mself a pair of earrings with some offensive language written on guitar picks! Fabulous!

Me and Dean spent most of Sunday afternoon in the Alternative tent as I knew there would be a long queue to see Tim Minchin.  For an hour and a half, we were entertained by Steve Hughes and Jarred Christmas who were both hilarious and my jaw ached from laughing! Finally, Tim Minchin came out and the crowd went mad! I was only a few rows from the front and he was incredible!

Another highlight - watching Friendly Fires perform.  Me and Dean are huge fans so were excited about this.  The lead singer, Ed, is famous for his dancing which I cant even describe in words but lets say he makes "dad" dancing cool again!  He also has great fashion sense, sporting a Hawaiian shirt!  The crowd had an amazing time dancing, shaking their hulas and even when the rain came down, the atmosphere remained carnival-like.

The NME signing tent, where we met Friendly Fires after their set!  This was the biggest highlight for me, so cd in hand, the boys signed away and chatted to us about my hair, earrings, and seeing them in November!  We werent allowed to take pictures but I took a sneaky few when the security guard popped out and then I asked the lead singer for a cheeky picture which he agreed to...!

Hooray!

The sun was setting ready for the main headliners and Elbow were performing whilst I took this gorgeous picture.  Everyone was in good spirits and the air was romantic and pretty!! The band sang most of their hits from The Seldom Kid album including Grounds For Divorce and One Day Like This.

Muse were the main headiners and this would be my 6th time seeing them!  I was overly excited as they were playing their second (and best) album, Origin of Symmetry, in full!  I first saw Muse when they were doing their Hullabaloo tour so this was a big event for me too!  The set was based on the album art work and included pyro technics, bouncng balls and fireworks!  For the second half of the show, Muse played their biggest hits includig Uprising, Time Is Running Out and Starlight.  The crowd were awesome, jumping around, singing along and I even had a "mini mosh" during Knights of Cydonia, just because I hadnt done all weekend!

It was certainly a weekend we will never forget!  Despite the mud which didnt really bother me, I find it hard to pick a bad moment but the only downside was not seeing Nero in the dance tent.  Well, we did, but nearly got crushed in the process and Dean had to drag me out before my ribs broke!  Its certainly going to be hard to recover from all the amazing memories we collected in three days.  I leave you with some of the other pictures I took of the event, whilst I clean my wellies ready for next year!!