Reading Festival 1998

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A kind of patchy photo diary of John's Reading 98 festival weekend. I think this was the second time I'd been. This was in the days before I (or anyone else really) had a digital camera, so these were taken with a very cheap standard sort of camera, and then scanned in. The original scans seem to have got lost, so in a rare fit of enthusiasm, in August 2003, I found the original photos and scanned them in again. As a result, there's also more pictures here now than there were before.

[Either Thursday or Friday]
General lolling about the campsite.

[Friday sometime, probably]
My friend Alison, who I seem to have lost touch with. Ho, hum.

[Friday night]
A rather half hearted attempt at a fire.

[Saturday morning ish]
Leon emmerges from his tent.

[Saturday sometime]
Andy, Leon and James walk meaningfully along towards somewhere or other. Errr.

[Saturday afternoon]
Leon enjoying (?) some festival food. Looks a bit curry like to me.

[Early Sunday morning]
Some police officers kindly agree to appear in a photograph.

[Sunday morning c. 6am]
The soup tent, me and Leon taking full advantage of its 24 hour opening (whilst drunk). Couldn't possibly have survived the festival without this, even though there appeared to be a slight reduction in the quality of soups on offer since last year (a rather inferior vegetable soup replaced last years surprisingly nice tomato soup). Still the thought was there, and not being one to knock a charitable organisation trying to do a good turn, a round of applause has to go out to the Salvation Army. Note the bloke in the Coal Chamber top. Conclusion: even weird metal types like soup in the morning.

[Sunday morning, maybe about 7am]
The entrance to the festival. Not that busy this time of day.

[Slightly later Sunday morning]
Wandering into town, I think I wanted to take a picture of mine and Leon's shadows, but not sure.

[Sunday morning c. 8:30am]
Some random people me and Leon met whilst walking into town on the Sunday morning, having been drinking all night, pictured here in Reading station. I think they found us a bit worrying, although we were probably very drunk so it was fair enough really. Not really sure what their names are though (answers on a postcard??).

[Sunday Morning c. 9am]
This picture is actually probably illegal or something, as we were told soon after that you aren't actually allowed to take photos inside MacDonalds, or at least the branch on Friar Street Reading. No notices on the door, or behind the counter, you're just supposed to somehow know this completely obvious fact. Funny that really isn't it?? What about all those childrens parties. You're not telling me there isn't a single photographic record of any gleeful child wearing a Ronald MacDonald party hat and tucking into his or her Chicken MacNuggets?? Or maybe they were hiding some deeper darker secret, like the fact that they'd shut the toilets, which is, if I'm not mistaken, definitely contravening MacDonalds regulations, if not some laws about eating establishments. The bouncer's (yes, thats right they had bouncers) reasoning is that people from the festival were using them- well weren't they also making tens of thousands of pounds of extra profits from people from the festival??? so lets get this straight, they're perfectly happy to take thousands and thousands of pounds extra profits, but won't even consider the small extra effort of cleaning that such a large crowd of any nature would create. Fascists, bloody fascists.

[Sunday Morning c. 9:30am]
Consequently to the above, Leon was unable to finish his Egg McMuffin, and collapsed on the streets of Reading in a fit of starvation. Note myself and Leon then proceeded to the off licence where we sat outside until it opened at 10am and then bought more beer. All in all a 24 hour drinking session spanning saturday 2pm to sunday 2pm, after which I passed out, woke up a bit later and was then sick. Oops.

[Monday Morning on the way home]
The aftermath of festival goers having demonstrated their respect for the excellent facilities provided by the organisers.