It's taken a bit of time to get this review together, and here I am finally starting the chronological account on 19th September 2006, quite a while after the event. However, I have continuously been compiling notes and am able to present a review with more detail than ever before. As I've felt this lengthy memoir of the background and journey to the festival is of so little interest to anyone except myself, fellow festival attendees and anybody who may be stalking me, I've decided to include it on a separate page. You have been warned... If you want to skip ahead to the music go back to the main menu!

The adventure started way back in April. Nick came over to my house and we were on the Internet for over an hour pounding away trying to get tickets for Ali and us. Mean Fiddler exhibited gross incompetence in saying on their website that tickets were going on sale 30 minutes earlier than what they were. Nick did most of the donkey work and was simultaneously ringing up NME while we were trying to get several sites to load. I was continuously expressing my disgust that Mean Fiddler's website had crashed in the afternoon under the weight of casual browsers checking them out, and that after all this time they should know to expect this and increase their bandwidth! The line-up was also announced on the day but I don't remember taking much interest so I guess it was fully in line with NME's predictions. After closing down a few browser windows and almost giving up hope we looked at the NME page and we'd finally accessed the site! We followed a very unclear link and hit away again and again to get from steps 1-100 until finally we were given a confirmation number!! Naturally we went straight to the pub to celebrate, and learned afterwards tickets had sold out in an hour and we were barely in the nick of time. We eagerly started to think of some "classic" chants, such as "he throws a mardy when the tent falls down" and "I bet that you look good on the camp site", none of which we utilised at the festival. An email came through a day or two later to confirm our success, but the tickets themselves didn't arrive until the week of the festival so our minds were never fully at rest. Apparently they didn't want to give the touts enough time to counterfeit them, so I guess there was a method to this madness.

I was determined that things must go perfectly this time around, so went through endless checklists of what to take and what not to. Ultimately this was a success, as I seemed to take more yet use up less space, but this was partly due to the knowledge that a Sainsbury's was on site so I didn't have to worry about taking much food or drink. We also met up in advance to discuss the plan (namely, travel there by train as early as we could agree to) and to buy stuff such as lanterns, and had set up the tent months before that to test it out. I also printed off running orders from the official site so we were able to scribble down all our plans (and then do something else!). I had packed my bags a full week in advance anticipating a busy week of work and a full month ahead of time had started work on four ninety minute cassettes to provide the soundtrack of the festival. Most of the tapes were taken up by the obvious (greatest moments by mainly Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand and Libertines-related acts), plus lots of songs I barely knew by other bands that were playing and a few more random cuts I'll explain elsewhere. I even insisted that Nick took the brightly coloured hat that had given us so much fun at V2001, although we barely gave it a glance once we got there.

On the day I found myself more relaxed then ever, knowing that every ounce of preparation had been undertook, and set out to get to the station. My backpack proved so much better on my back that I didn't even take it off when sitting or waiting, and even though my bags were relatively light my dad helped me carry them. I met Nick at Wolverhampton station (who had somehow got everything in one bag), and we were unfortunately delayed by Ali's late arrival, getting on the 10:40 train. Ali had somehow taken even less than us both, and I remarked how sleek his packing was. I believe that considering I had my sleeping bag and a proper pillow in my bag that I wasn't as heavily laden as I looked, and in fact I even had several empty pockets. I withdrew £100 as my weekend budget and had decided to survive without a phone, very strictly adhering to my plan of taking nothing valuable at all (which made the thought of a Scouser stealing all my cheap "valuables" doubly unbearable, as it wouldn't help them and would massively hit me). The train was OK, if too busy. We received the baffling looks of contempt you always seem to get from morons when you're doing something amazing, and I wanted to beat the hell out of some kid who whined at us for being in the way in the aisle when we'd gone to great lengths to not obstruct anyone. After a stop or two we claimed seats of our own and I reluctantly stowed away my baggage (yet never took my eyes off it!) and we kept our heads down to avoid the people (with no heavy loads) whining about seat reservations, when they all seemed to have been cancelled anyway!

As we approached Reading the train went past the site and we got to gasp in awe at the stages already set up and groan with mild annoyance that the campsite looked so full already. The walk there from the station was longer than I'd hoped but seems difficult to moan about when you consider that other festivals are in the middle of nowhere. I'd predicted correctly we'd be able to follow a stream of festival goers to the site and coped quite well with the walk, despite knocking my own glasses off somehow. We walked past endless shops and street vendors, and I wondered if Reading has any life beyond this amazing festival. I felt contempt for the "people" touting tickets who'd made this festival sell out so fast, and expressed a genuine desire to go round and shoot them all, or at least give them a good slap! There were also a few T-shirt vendors, including one maniac who had T-shirts for dozens of bands but had decided not to produce a Reading 2006 top! However, I still respect this as providing a good service, whereas there is no defending the touts, or the lazy sods who would queue for ages to catch a bus rather than bothering to walk like us. We were respectively shocked and delighted that the site was so busy so early in the day (before 1pm) and also that the organisers put Leeds into the shade by somehow keeping the crowd moving at the entrance. There was an onsite (two storey) temporary police station, which was encouraging, but the total lack of searching on the way in was simultaneously great and worrying. We walked deeper and deeper into the site and I took the opportunity to say "I told you so" that we should have set out earlier. We felt very envious of the people who'd already pitched their tents and were now relaxing or strolling out to stock up on beer, and couldn't comprehend that so early in the day it looked like there were no pitches big enough to hold our tent and that some people had already pitched amongst the trees!

After walking forever and resisting the shouts to abandon my plan to choose a top quality pitch to improve our weekend, we eventually settled on a large patch of ground a couple of tents length away from the road. We dumped our stuff (I was still worrying about theft even though we had travelled quite far from Liverpool) and got about the business of setting up the tent. This proved a relatively simple task thanks to our extensive experience. A good ten minutes after starting work, a dopey girl came up to us and had the audacity to ask questioningly if we were setting up our tent here and that she was "saving" the space. As she'd shown the nerve to not warn us the moment we arrived, instead watching us set up and not saying anything, I wasn't going to give up the pitch without a fistfight!! But Ali (playing the role of Tent Supervisor) defused the situation by saying we'd park the tent in a convenient space a bit further back which is probably what we'd had done anyway. I couldn't believe the fuss made when I suggested we made the slight bit of effort of twisting the tent round to face away from the road, pointing out it would give us far more privacy, but was vindicated in the end as our spot proved excellent. Any closer to the arena would have felt too chaotic, and the "quiet" campsite across the River Thames just sounded too boring. We also discovered we had set up on a 100% flat pitch with no lumps, and the only moan possible was that we had to walk too far to get the water.

We were very relieved to get into the tent, and I made no objection to being designated piggy in the middle, and took it as a compliment that I was the centre of attention. I scoffed some chilled meat and pondered over the wonder of the festival site. Such an expanse of flat land so near the town centre just seemed to good to be true, as it looked too scummy to be parkland and too grassy to be farmland: It seems impossible to envisage it as anything other than a campsite for festivals! Nick took the beautifully cheesy photograph of me with my ticket you can see above, knowing full well that we'd always been made to surrender them in the past at Carling Weekenders. After a bit of a breather we went out to the wristband exchange, feeling a surge of pride that we had proper Reading tickets, whereas many others had cheap booking agency versions. Although there was a massive queue for wristbands, the organisers deserve knighthoods for putting on enough people so that it would move fast. We were naturally made to surrender tickets but in return got soft wristbands. After a few days on my wrist I had no doubt that these were prettier, more comfortable and equally durable: I pity the poor guy who somehow manages to lose it, as you know it must happen! We then ventured to Sainsbury's, which was further away than I'd been led to believe. We passed the now-traditional two-cash-machines-for-100,000-people and the stall where you can swap warm for ice cool Carling (nice thought, shame about the drink). We also passed a row of shops I never properly bothered to visit and a rather cool-but-pointless van featuring computer arcades from EA Games.

I couldn't resist the official vendors selling running orders and programmes, but was a bit disappointed the programme wasn't A4 sized as normal. I barely glanced at the programme until I got home, as this was just a souvenir, although I did wear the running order around my neck under my top, largely to use as a double check that my printed list of running times were accurate, which it was. We got a bit lost finding it, going down roads with no other festival goers, but upon reaching Sainsbury's it became clear that we weren't the only people who'd had this thought. Although it was a bit chaotic we didn't have too much trouble. I purchased a bowl (details later!), a local newspaper (that proved very little happens in Reading), food (sausage rolls, cakes and prawn crackers) and beer (some top quality Old Speckled Hen and some cheaper bitters). We carried everything back and started to settle down in the tent. To demonstrate my festival pedigree I was wearing my Leeds 2000 t-shirt. Although I had a few people respectfully admiring all the bands who'd played, I also had a heckle of "wrong festival!" It was around teatime now so we visited our local food van. My first adventure with Reading food was quite successful and pretty much everything continued in this manner, without the slightest whimper of food poisoning rearing its head! Sitting in the tent, I discovered that my shoulder bag had inadvertently been packed with such soft belongings that it could act as a comfortable chair. I had some chocolate courtesy of Ali, and briefly showed off the compass I'd brought along, which proved quite useless!

My first impression of the site was sheer awe. There was a choice of food stores, ice cream men, late evening entertainment going on in the arena (although we didn't bother venturing in there for any of it), a welfare tent and even a store offering free replacement batteries! Although I heard that there were less stewards than in the previous year, I thought there were plenty and even the police were on the beat, enjoying a free festival, although I never saw them in the arena. The toilets were slightly less awe-inspiring though. Possibly as a fault of the Leeds festival rioters, the portaloos were gone and there were just some raised cubicles around four feet off the crowd. No prizes for guessing what that four feet was going to get filled with, and I can't quite believe that they didn't think of emptying it, although this gave me lots of "hilarious" jokes such as talking about "getting a spoon" and such. At previous festivals I've always gone to hell with my system and avoided the toilets, but this time I decided on a change of approach and didn't shy away from them. Although at times the smell made you gag, and some people thought that they were the most disgusting things ever, they went to a lot of effort to keep the seats clean therefore I'd rate them far higher than portaloos, but I pity the festival amateurs who pitched their tents right next to them! There was a "Lynx Manwash" onsite which apparently was a conveyor belt thing where they cleaned you, but this had absurd queues and didn't seem worth the fuss, although I heard Peaches Geldof was here and used the lady showers.

We took things easy for the rest of the night. I felt pleased that we very happy to giggle and talk, rather than worrying about making friends with our neighbours. Our tent entrance was sort-of facing no-one making socialising difficult, but I appreciated the privacy. Nick made a brief attempt to talk to our neighbours, who apparently invited us outside, but as they were "sitting looking bored and not talking" Ali and I were happy to stay put, and Nick agreed that they just seemed too damn boring to bother with. I had four cans of beer in my bag and had purchased at least eight more earlier in the day, and got through quite a lot of them. Many thanks to Nick for bringing a stereo with decent sound quality, and getting me into Jacqueline by Franz Ferdinand, which I never realised had such a lovely build-up. We also heard my Arctic Monkeys hits cassette and started setting down our plans for who we'd be seeing on Friday. As the sun went down, we turned on our hugely effective lantern and the atmosphere changed. The excitement levels became unbearable and you could just sense the most amazing buzz around the site, which never again felt as exciting as this first rush. Somehow the people kept coming in late into the night and cramming their tents into the few remaining spaces, yet the site barely looked any busier when we'd arrived. Luckily for us nobody pitched on our porch, partly because our neighbours had been burning our beer cans on their nearby camp fire.

We eventually grew sleepy by drinking (and due to a pretty long day) and rather than trying to prolong the night for no reason wisely decided to retire for the evening and save some energy for the days ahead. I remained extremely paranoid about theft and kept my bags inside my tent rather than throwing them onto the porch as we usually do. I had actually contemplated bringing a blindfold to help me sleep through the bright mornings, but scrapped the plan when I was advised it would be relentlessly "pinged." The weather forecast hinted at a fairly mild weekend with possible rain but I had still taken gloves remembering how cold it could get at night. I also had earplugs but found that they made things freakishly silent and were rather uncomfortable so kept taking them out. I believe I fell asleep in pretty much a dozy drunken daze, and didn't even bother changing my clothes. Although of course you didn't need to know that right, or much of what I've said so far? But nobody's reading this anyway so it doesn't matter. But now even I am impatient to start writing about all the exciting musical experiences I enjoyed, and Friday was I feel a very satisfying start.