Blog
Missing Summer in Winter
Written by Jodie Bryant
Last summer was GCSE summer for me, which if you’ve experienced will know is the longest and bestest summer of all time. One of the things that made it so great was finally going to the infamous Reading festival.
Now I know it’s not quite Glastonbury, but I’m working towards it.
Reading was like… so so amazing and I think that I was definitely one of the lucky ones with my experience. I wasn’t sick or taken to the camp hospital and my 2 man pop up tent costing me a tenner (no joke) was bigger than Olivia’s 40 quid ‘real’ tent for three HA.
Reading is the place where I was first introduced to Jake Bugg and also realised that standing at the front at festivals isn’t usually a good idea. Olivia will back me up on that as we were both almost crushed to death at the front of Azealia Banks. We remained the last 2 standing as the other people watching with us got carried out of the crowd…
Going to a ‘proper’ festival was just really cool and I loved the MAJORITY of people I saw there. There are some crazy people too…which makes you feel more comfortable with who you are while you’re there. It’s great to just have four days to do what you want and especially because I liked a majority of the music there, it was really quite ideal.
My top 3 acts would be – Foster the People, The Black Keys and Two Door Cinema Club. The whole experience also taught me a LOT for further festival life. For example…it gets so so so so cold at night. And when all you’ve got is a hoodie and leggings to sleep in…you feel like your gonna die. I also learnt that its really not a fashion parade (Olivia may differ in opinion on this as she looked great every day), but by the last day when my hair had nearly turned into dreadlocks and I hid my eyes with the sunglasses I’d (thankfully) brought with me.
So it was all a new experience which is probably why I liked it so much. It was definitely a highlight of my summer and just makes me want to be at festivals all the time.