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.
No comments:
Post a Comment