Reading 2011....yeahhh, boyyyy!

       So, that time of year has come and gone and I am now counting down the days to the next one...my festival, my second home...Reading. This year, I was celebrating my fifth anniversary of working there, for the amazing CATs/Hotbox Events. And my, how the years have gone. It all started in 2006 - I arrived clueless and scared, but settled in with two really nice guys on my team, in awe of the people that were staff there already and how effortlessly cool they seemed.

       2007 - went there with two friends, both of which had never been there before, and still feeling clueless and scared but a bit less so, knowing I wasn't the only one.

       2008 - I was there on my own and feeling supremely confident about it. I knew people there, I knew my way around - it wasn't so scary any more. Got put on pretty much the best team in the world - the Helpful Arena Team...yep, that pretty much meant walking around the arena, seeing if anyone needed any help or sitting at our booth at the back by the NME Stage. Also meant seeing Feeder, Tenacious D, Metallica. Bloody good year.

       2009 - I was promoted to shift assistant, having received a glowing report from my shift supervisor from the previous year. Cue head expanding massively. Cue head rapidly deflating when I realised that meant me & my shift supervisor Rob had to walk around the entire site at least twice during an 8 hour shift. Highlights from that year: cutting through the arena on the Wednesday night shift - completely untouched - and then walking through the backstage area, seeing Mr "FUCKING READING 09!!!" on the same shift (basically, a skinhead in a pink dressing gown, shouting FUCKING READING 09!!!! and LotR quotes) and getting a lift back from Control with Fiona, the campsite manager, and actually going THROUGH the backstage area in her car, while there were numerous bands & celebs milling about. Low light? Doing my knee in whilst watching the Prodigy :( Bad times.

        2010 - promoted to paid staff! Office admin assistant, which basically meant entering tabard numbers into a spreadsheet, answering questions from the CATs and listening to kick-ass music on my manager's laptop...which I didn't realise I was allowed to do until the last day. I was so worried about fucking up and not being invited back that I daren't put a foot wrong.

       2011 - back to Reading, back as office admin and back in the place that I like to call home. Unfortunately this year, due to the arena being made bigger, we were shifted all the way over to White, after being in Yellow for the first four years...this was a Big Deal. White is basically the furthest place you can get to on-site. About a mile away from the arena - not a big deal, you think. No, not normally. But when you're trekking through ankle-deep mud and trying to avoid drunk, over-excited, 16 year old scene kids, it can take for-bloody-ever. Despite this, it was a good year, even if I only managed to see two acts - Frank Turner and my beloved Muse <3 Frank Turner has won my heart. To see a man so honest and so likeable in music nowadays is a rarity. I now absolutely adore him. Muse, I had to pull a few strings to see - I was meant to be working from 4pm to 1am, meaning I would've missed Muse completely. Now Amii, the lovely woman I job-share with, kindly offered to swap that part of the shift with me, sacrificing her want to see them for me.  And I will love her forever for that. Because Muse were phenomenal. They played Origin of Symmetry, my favourite Muse album, in it's entirety to celebrate it's 10th anniversary. And it was amazing. They then played their tried and tested crowd pleasers and, all in all, it was one of the best Muse shows I've ever seen. That was the last night, and I had to go back and work some more, in the freezing cold, listening to people having fun.

        I got home at 4:10 on Monday, aching all over, no doubt a little bit whiffy and extremely tired. I collapsed on the chair at home, thankful for soft furnishings and central heating and my TV, but also feeling extremely sad because Reading was over. And I will miss it terribly until next year. And who knows what that will bring.

A year older...

So, they wisdom comes with age, right? Wrong. I'm a year older and I don't feel any wiser.

My birthday was on Saturday, when I turned the grand old age of 23. It was a good day...for the most part. The morning was spent curled up in the bath, wishing the crippling pains that come with being a woman away. The afternoon was much better. I went to watch Bournemouth play and win 2-0, against one of the teams favoured for promotion. That was good. I then went out in the evening, with my best friends in the whole world and had an amazing night, full of dancing and drinking and random little chats. I then had a hangover that could fell a whole HERD of elephants, let alone a small one.

Anyway, back to my original point. Wisdom does not come with age. Just over a year ago, I met someone who turned out to be quite a big part of my life for a year and is no longer a part of my life at all. People close to me know who he is, became sick of hearing his name about 6 months ago, and dislike him for "wronging" me. Me? I don't dislike him. This is hard to say, but it was quite the opposite for a while. I won't go as far as saying I was in love with him, but it definitely heading that way. Now, I don't feel anything. Except for a bit lost.

I'm not going to go into details, into the whys and the wherefores, but all I can say is I'm not wiser about anything. I still can't work out men, I can't work out what goes on inside their heads. In fact, if anything? I'm pretty much more clueless than I did this time last year. No wiser. At all.

So, if any of you blokes reading this could give any input, that'd be great. Really. I know I can't tar you all with the same brush, but I need someone to prove to me that you aren't all bad.

*contented sigh*

I love that feeling when you listen to a band you absolutely adore for the first time in ages.

For me, tonight, that's Snow Patrol.

Say what you like about them, say they're boring, depressing. Yeah, say that and then go and listen to Chocolate - one of my favourite songs by them - and you will see just how wrong you are. It's uplifting and beautiful and Gary Lightbody's voice is just...gorgeous. 

I know this is going to sound corny, but they've got me through a lot - Final Straw damn near saved my life in 2004, when my cousin died. It made me think...if music can be this beautiful, there's got to be something worth living for.

Eyes Open is...well, I can't even think of the words to describe how this album makes me feel. Desperately sad, yet exhilarated would just about cover it, I think. Open Your Eyes is such a gorgeously sad song. You Could Be Happy breaks my heart every time I hear it. But Shut Your Eyes is full of hope and is just beautiful. You're All I Have puts a smile on my face whenever I hear those guitars crash in.

A Hundred Million Suns, whilst different from their early material, is just as good. It received mixed reviews however. Some extremely harsh, some glowing. This is one of my favourites of their five albums. It shows just how much they developed as a band and how they were able to take on other influences, yet leave their own unique stamp on the music.  Set Down Your Glass is so beautifully simple and so full of love (I've already decided it's going to be my first dance when I get married...my future husband doesn't get a say, the unlucky bastard). The Lightning Strike is just...incredible. A sixteen minute epic of gorgeous music. I adore it.

I adore their second album, When It's All Over We Still Have To Clear Up. I've only recently started to listen to it and I could honestly listen to it over and over again. Batten Down The Hatch, Make Love To Me Forever? Gorgeous songs, absolutely gorgeous.

That's pretty much all I can say about them. I adore them. And now, I'm going to leave you with my favourite song, the aforementioned Set Down Your Glass <3

"Just close your eyes

And count to five

Let's craft the only thing we know into surprise

Set down your glass

I painted this

To look like you and me forever as we're now

And I'm shaking then I'm still

When your eyes meet mine, I lose simple skills

Like to tell you all I want is now

You sing and I'm killed

I'm just not the same

As I was a year ago and each minute since then

My jumper tears as we take it off

And you say you'll sew me good as new

And I know you will

And I'm shaken then I'm still

When your eyes meet mine, I lose simple skills

Like to tell you all I want is now

And I'm shaken then I'm still

When your eyes meet mine, I lose simple skills

Like to tell you all I want is now"

Me, myself and Muse.

OK, so this idea was given to be yesterday by the epic @kase85 (or Gareth, if you want to use his real name *rolls eyes*). I don't often go on YouTube, but when I do, I always want to watch this video.

This is Muse at Reading Festival 2006. My first ever festival and the first time I ever saw, or even properly listened to, Muse. And as soon as they opened with Knights of Cydonia, I knew this was going to be a long and tortuous love affair ("Tortuous?", I hear you ask incredulously. Yes, tortuous. Being on your feet and getting buffeted about for eight hours can be extremely painful).

I was...in awe of Matt Bellamy. His talent, his stage presence, just everything about him, I loved. When I watch this video back, even after five years, it still always manages to give me tingles. That roar of recognition and joy that goes up from the crowd when he plays those first few bars always sends a delicious shiver up and down my spine. Because I was there. At the time, this was the only Muse song that I recognised and knew and loved and I was overjoyed to finally be able to sing my heart out to something. I liked being part of something that big.

Since that first performance, I've seen Muse four more times - Wembley in 2007, NIA in Birmingham in 2009, and at Glastonbury, then again at Wembley in 2010 - and each time I've seen them, I've fallen a little bit more in love with their music and them. Chris Wolstenholme is my bass idol - I mean, that opening riff to Hysteria has to be seen to be believed. Dom Howard is so wonderfully zany and such and incredible drummer. And Matt Bellamy...well, what more could I say about him? He's amazing.

Muse have been a massive part of my life - they've brought me together with people and got me through rough patches. And I will be eternally grateful for that.

What to do?

I am at a loss as at what to turn this blog into - after my Amy post, which I was pretty damn proud of, I can't think of anything to write.

You see, I have two passions in my life - music and football. And I want to combine the two - I don't want this blog to be all about the trials and tribulations about being an AFC Bournemouth fan (and let's be honest, this season is no doubt going to be full of them, as it always is). I don't want to write constantly about music, new bands, favourite bands, favourite songs. Because if you knew me, you'd know this: I hate listening to new bands, my favourite band of all time is Muse and my favourite song is....well, it's a toss-up between the Muse version of Feeling Good, Exogenesis Symphony Part 1, Time is Running Out, Unintended & Starlight (haha, I know...shut up). Yes, music does make me feel...euphoric and devastated and giddy all at the same time. But then so does football. I could easily compare the joy I, and many other Bournemouth fans, had when Danny Ings scored what should've been the winning goal at Huddersfield and effectively putting us in the play-off final to going to watch Muse at Wembley, with someone else who loves them as much as I do, and hearing them launch into Starlight and singing along with 90,000 other people.

I can't just...write. I can't go "Hey, this is the subject, this is what I want to say" and then...just do it. I mean, it has now taken me roughly and hour and three quarters to write this post because I keep on...deleting things and rewriting things. I don't have enough faith in my writing. I've been told I'm good. I just don't have the attention span to sit down and write something. I will get distracted by something. Facebook, Twitter, some other random social networking site. That's just me!

I'm gonna finish this now. Two hours on a blog post that's only 350-odd words long is depressing!