ELBOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Short version of today's commentary:

We went to the Reading Festival. We saw Elbow. They were FAB!!!

Long version of today's commentary:

(be warned, it's quite long, so it might be a good idea to put the kettle on now so you can have a cup of tea when you've finished!)

As was usual for a Sunday morning, we were woken by Smudge, who was screaming and scratching at the bedroom door. My plan had been to do some maths while the Wonderspouse cooked the pancakes, but when I went downstairs to sort out some spare video tape for the night's programmes, the telly wouldn't turn on.

After around 15-20 minutes of cajoling, swearing, bashing the remote on the floor (which made the batteries fall out), and jumping up and down in frustration, I eventually persuaded the thing to turn on. By this stage my mind was full of tellys, the impending conversion to digital, and how much money this was all going to cost - I decided that I would simply have to use the few pounds I've been trying to save in case the car breaks down to sort out tellys, recorders (videotape is now almost impossible to get, and way too expensive) and so on.

By this time, maths hour had evaporated, and I realised I really needed to pack my festival handbag so that we could leave the house at the appointed time in order to get to Reading and do a bit of browsing stalls and so on before Cage the Elephant's set mid-afternoon! I tidied up the boys' cage, packed my bag, didn't bother turning the computer on, and went downstairs for breakfast.

Not sure why I'd bothered turning the telly on. It was showing some sort of argument about immigration, which seemed to be bringing out the worst xenophobic tendencies of some of the participants. This made my stress levels, which were already pretty high, rocket to stratospheric levels.

Anyway, eventually, after finding all the cats, getting them all in, giving them some food to eat while we were out, getting wellies, socks, things to sit on, making sure we didn't have a phone that might get broken or nicked, taking just one bank card for emergency cash and petrol for the car, we set off for our long-looked-forward-to day at the Reading Festival!

We stopped and filled up with petrol, then drove on for around 10 miles. Then there was a banging noise, and after that, as we drove, a terrible crunching noise coming from the back left of the car. Just as I'd decided to spend the "car fund" on sorting the telly business out, the car seemed to be in trouble. My stress levels headed for the mesosphere! Of course, we didn't have a phone, or the AA card with us, and we were only driving to the most expensive event of the year we'd booked (basically our holiday for this year) which we really didn't want to miss, and we'd just fixed the parking ticket securely to the windscreen in readiness!

We pulled over, and couldn't see anything very noticeable, but the noise was pretty bad, so we then decided the best thing to do was to head to Scharwenka's, where at least (if the Scharwenkas were in) we might have access to help and a phone.

We pulled into Scharwenka's drive, and I was just heading to the door to see whether there were signs of life when the Wonderspouse, who had located the source of the noise (a piece of car, that then proceeded to fall off onto Scharwenka's drive) asked "Do you think this bit's important?". It didn't LOOK very important, but by this time I was beginning to lose the plot and Mrs Scharwenka had come to the door to see what on earth we were doing, showing up there on a Sunday morning and lying on their driveway peering at the underside of the car.

Scharwenka, as the "car expert" was fetched, and he established that the fallen bit was a support to stop the petrol hose from rubbing on the wheel. It was decided that it DID serve a fairly important function - protecting the hose and therefore (a) keeping the petrol in and (b) stopping a potential fire from starting! Hmmmm!

I sat on the drive and decided that somebody, somewhere, REALLY didn't want me to see Elbow! See my blip for 22nd March for the last time we were due to see them - and no, the sacrifice WASN'T worth it on that occasion - it turned out that the job which half-killed me never did become a worthwhile career, or solve all our financial problems, despite me trying as hard as I could to make it work.

Since I was being so useless, the Wonderspouse and Scharwenka started to work on the car. It was decided that, if the petrol hose could be secured in some way so that it didn't rub on anything, then we'd probably be OK to proceed to Reading. Scharwenka said he'd go as far as Reading with it temporarily fixed, but wouldn't take the car too much further afield.

So, Scharwenka fetched kit - decent hydraulic jack, polystyrene, bubble wrap, parcel tape, scissors, screwdriver, bit of rope, and so on. The Wonderspouse, uncharacteristically for him, became a temporary mechanic, and the two of them secured the hose to another bit of car, padding it with polystyrene and bubble wrap so it wouldn't rub. After half-an-hour or so, it was deemed secure. We washed our hands, borrowed Scharwenka's kit (in case we needed to repeat the repair en route to or from Reading) and set off again!

The rest of the journey was smooth. As smooth as I could possibly make it, in order to minimise the probability of the repair failing. We parked up on a not-too-muddy bit of car park, donned our wellies, and set off up the towpath towards the festival site!

It was at this point that we encountered the only unpleasantness and aggression of our festival experience - two coots on the river were laying into each other and making the most fearful din. We recalled one of our ornithologically minded friends or family telling us that they were pretty mean birds!

Once through wristband exchange and onto the site, we finally started to relax. We collected programmes, smelled food from the stalls, and headed straight to the NME tent where we were in perfect time to hear the start of Cage the Elephant's set!

Slowly, the hassles of the morning started to disappear and festival mood took over! We got lunch (burger & chips for him, noodles for me), browsed stalls and merch (getting ourselves just the t-shirts we'd hoped for, but nothing else), called in at the Lock Up Stage to see Off!, then went back to the NME stage to see the start of Warpaint's set, which was fab!

We dragged ourselves away from Warpaint because we wanted to see a band called Ham Sandwich, who were on the BBC Introducing stage. They were great fun, and their fans waved bits of cardboard saying "f*ck egg mayo" and "f*ck BLT"!!! When their set ended we went back to the NME stage (via a donut stall to get a bag of donuts) to see Panic! At the Disco - great stuff, and absolutely packed out! While there, we also stood behind a man wearing a hoodie from Reading 2005, and had great fun seeing how bands had progressed or disappeared from the ether since then!!!

At that point our plans changed somewhat. We had decided to catch a few minutes of the film of Nirvana live at Reading in 1992, which they were showing in the Alternative tent, before going to see Interpol's set on the Main stage.

No disrespect to Interpol, but we never made their set. The Alternative tent was PACKED, and the fact that Nirvana were there only on screens, and not, obviously, in person, seemed to be irrelevant to the crowd. Everyone sang. Even people who were only tiny children back in '94, when Kurt Cobain put the gun to his head at the tragically young age of 27, sang along with every word. The atmosphere was absolutely extraordinary, and only the need to get supper before Elbow appeared on the Main stage eventually dragged us away. Rather surreally, one member of the crowd held up a carved wooden meerkat throughout the entire film - this is the sort of thing that happens at festivals, which is one reason why I like them so much.

Then it was "giant Yorkshire pudding with pork, stuffing, mash & apple sauce" time! Delicious supper, washed down with a can of Relentless each - didn't want to nod off!

And, finally, we got to see Elbow! And they were every bit as fabulous as we'd hoped for. Guy Garvey was wonderful with the crowd, the set contained all the favourites. Everyone sang, the sun gradually went down during the set, and the whole thing was full of festival magic. I snuggled up to the Wonderspouse in one of my very rare romantic moments, and danced in my wellies! Very occasionally, there are moments in life where I know that I AM happy NOW - not that I'm working towards something satisfying (often the case) or that I'm trying to "sort stuff out" or that I will be relieved if it all works out OK - this was one of those moments!

As soon as Elbow finished, and the last notes of "One Day Like This" died away, we hurtled over to the NME tent to catch the end of The Streets - literally! Mike Skinner is moving on to other projects after giving us some fantastic stuff with The Streets. Lovely to see him and hear him one last time!

And then, a great tide of people went back to the Main stage for Muse's headline set. It was a very different set from the one we'd heard when they were touring "The Resistance" - the recent "hits" didn't start until 45 minutes into the set, and our energy was fading fast by then. However, "Uprising", "Supermassive Black Hole" and "Hysteria" (especially the close-ups of Chris Wolstenholme's fingers during "Hysteria") made me a very happy Muse fan indeed!!!

At that point we decided to move away from the stage and eventually off the site, and started the walk back to the car. My feet and knees were beginning to give way by this stage, and the relief when I got my wellies off was unbelievable. After another can of Relentless, we drove home, where I drank wine & mojito, had a bath, and conked out in bed at about 3am!

We decided to worry about what to do about the car tomorrow!

I went to sleep very grateful that I wasn't in a tent in the mud!

And dreaming of Elbow!

By the way, the photo was taken on my extremely cheap, almost-disposable, camera. I don't take my best camera to festivals etc. in case they get damaged - although yesterday everyone we came across was careful, polite, and I could have taken almost anything with me and it would have been fine - however, having once had my handbag taken, I tend to err on the side of caution these days!

(now go and make yourself a cup of tea if you've managed to read all that and if the kettle isn't cold by now!!!)