Leaving Reading Festival last year was a real low point for myself and Meg. We had embraced the mud, the toilets, the overall grossness of festival camping and were not quite ready to let it go for another year. Alas, the rules meant we had to leave and spend the next year counting down the days until we could return. The line-up didn't even bother us - it could have been the worst line-up ever and we'd still go. Half way through the year though, Fall Out Boy came back from the murky hell of hiatus and like I had been joking about for quite sometime announced they were playing Reading Festival.
Our countdown was with a new sense of complete and utter fangirl level excitedness.
As per usual I left everything until last minute which meant a mad dash to find my clothes and haphazardly shoving them in my bag. Climbing into a car that was bigger than I expected but still too small, we were off up the giant hill out of my village trying to convince Elly that Reading's not really THAT bad. Then we hit the motorway. And the car just couldn't take it. There was little to no acceleration. Trundling along until we could turn off and head back the other way we lost an hour of travel time heading back to Elly's house to steal her dad's Galaxy. A mob attack from her two adorable Labradors and eventually we were away - again, and this time with enough room to spread out.
At around 8 that night we parked the car and loaded up with our stuff to trek and find a place to camp. Having had a good spot last year just 5 minutes walk from the arena, we couldn't help but be a little annoyed at Elly and Lauren's lack of stamina and ending up just under the bridge - which for anyone who has been before you know is miles away from the arena. Sigh. Coming a day early meant there was only us and two other groups of people in our field which seemed bizarre but it didn't stop us from getting reasonably drunk and putting sugar on our chips instead of salt.
The next day plan was to do the 'short walk' to Tesco to stock up on food and good ol' vodka so leaving Lauren behind we set off on Thursday morning to discover it was not a short walk. Reading Festival website tells lies. It took us an hour to walk there in the blazing heat with green car park campers going towards Reading and early birds like us trying to walk away from it to get to Tesco. It was a beautiful moment when we could see the front doors and we took to the shelves like we had been starved for months not a mere 15 hours. Exhausted we stopped at the cafe and I wolfed down chips, beans and a mango Costa iced drink before beginning the dreaded walk back. With bags that weighed about the same as us it took 2 and half hours to get back and I popped a vein in my finger thus resulting in a dead finger (it's still dead fyi).
We arrived back in more pain than I think ever before and spent the rest of the day lying around half dead from the pain, half dead from the level of alcohol consumption that followed the trip from hell. It was to our amusement every time we heard other people say things like 'we're just gonna pop to Tesco.' No, sir. I don't think you are.
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