Reading Festival.



This seems like an apt description- but I'm not going (ha! yes! double yes!) as I don't do outdoor things; mud and wellies and fields and camping and portaloo things and everything else vaguely music festival-esque I do not do.

Which is wonderful- I was bullied into going last year, but it falls just after my birthday this time round and I've begged off on the grounds that turning twenty is traumatic enough (I'll be in the pub drinking steadily for the week before and after) without being forced to wallow knee deep in mud with hairy sweaty people listening to music I have no interest in listening to and standing in a crowd I have no interest in standing in while the people around me sway slightly- whether due to heat stroke or the buffeting effect of wind- trying to see over people's heads, missing the best bit (ie last year when Maximo Park's wonderfully sexy frontman took his shirt off AND I MISSED IT), drinking alcohol I wouldn't normally drink but been driven to by the extremity of tediousness and being stood on by people wearing New Rocks or standing on people wearing sandals, going home with either rain scold or sunburn and having my worldly possessions (in this case one of my shoes and a tin of wine- yes! I know! tinned wine!) stolen.

The fact that last year I also made friends with a couple called Larry and Starling by dint of mistaking their tent for ours and engaging in a spot of drunken gatecrashing at 4am does not make up for the myriad short comings.

I'm so glad I'm not going you wouldn't believe.