The Reading Festival Diaries - Vol 1

A/N: These are real events and emotions of mine so plot changes may not be very possible at all. I would like some help with tone, flow and getting my emotions across etc. I'm also just very excited to tell you all about this :-)

Oh and I am aware that some of the swearing is technically unnecessary. It's a tone thing.

Volume 1 - Arctic Monkeys

I shove my hat down a little further over my ears because it's ten to ten at night and bloody freezing. It's an Arctic Monkeys hat - blue and fluffy and with a little bobble on top. Guilt is hovering around me though, since I probably don't know more than six or seven of their songs.

Well, You Me At Six didn't sell hats, okay?

I think I'm excited. I know they'll be great to dance to and with the tight packed crowd squeezing around me like bleating sheep in a pen, it's gonna be wild. I'm just scared that even in the pitch black someone is going to see that I don't know the words and call me a hipster for wearing merch of a band I'm not a true fan of.

Voices around me knit together to form a blanket of noise that masks the silence created by the absence of music. I'm alone - my parents are away up the back somewhere. I don't mind. In fact, when I saw All Time Low in February, I got separated from my friends and ended up having the time of my life with a bunch of strangers.

The difference I suppose is that Alex Gaskarth, All Time Low's singer, would a be lot more understanding about me not knowing his songs - not that that's the case. There are about six or seven All Time Low songs that I don't know. Alex Turner, the Arctic Monkeys singer, however, is notorious for being 'a bit of a dick'. I don't even want to think about the judging glare he would give me if he knew I was such a faker.

I'm beginning to think that maybe he's more than just a bit dickish and is now leaving us all hanging because he can't be bothered dragging himself out of his tour bus. I mean, that's like Axl Rose levels of selfishness. No, nobody is as big-headed as Axl Rose.

And then, when I'm thinking that all is lost and we might as well turn around and go home, the lights go down.

The Arctic Monkeys finally saunter on stage and they are only a few minutes late. I guess they're entitled to that. They are rockstars after all. Then I spot him.

Alex Turner. The screens quickly swing around the band then cling desperately to him. His nose is sharper than I'd ever imagined and his dark, slicked back hair is almost jet black from all the hair gel. His black leather jacket is essentially rockstar uniform and even wide open it clings to his form. His plain white button down and grey dress trousers, however, look more like school uniform. 

Christ! I'd heard he was hot but bloody hell.

I don't even here the first strum of the guitar. The crowd pick up the riff of 'Do I Wanna Know' - riff of the century, in my opinion.

Du-nu de num. Du-nu du de nu, de num, de nu-ne dum. Du-nu du ne dum.

Then we go again and once more, still never letting up enough to even hear the guitar. It's not like we need to. We've all heard it enough times to know exactly what it sounds like.

Alex starts singing. The crowd gasps collectively as it hits us all simultaneously that this is the Arctic Monkeys. One of this generation's most important British bands are standing on a stage playing for us. They are here for our benefit. Yeah, they're being broadcast on television but the crowd is so alive and three-dimensional that I doubt they're even thinking about that.

Finally they get to the chorus and I can join in with the words. Mind you, for a long time I thought the words 'crawling back to you' were 'calling Doctor Who'. I'd blame Alex's Northern accent but I'm Scottish so I guess I don't really have a leg to stand on in that department. Then they're back to the verse and I end up just smiling really wide so I look too star-struck to remember the words.

Oh good Lord.

The song gets to an instrumental and Alex takes the opportunity to thrust his hips. Why? Why does he insist on doing this? He must know that his very prescence melts the insides of teenage girls. He really does not have to do that. He knows how attractive he is and he's just milking it. The narcissist. Or he's just observant.

The show hurtles foward, roaring through songs. The crowd moshes around - not just a mosh pit; we're a mosh crowd. It's like a baby's shaking us in a giant rattle. Then, like the bullet train arriving at a station, the momentum thunders to a stop and the band are silent. The crowd is still going mental. We're screaming our love at them and the screen pings to Alex grinning at us.

"This is a song from our first album - 'Whatever You Say I Am That's What I'm Not'," Alex announces gleefully.

That's the name of the album, in case you're unfamiliar. The song we were all waiting for would come next.

"It's called I ... " he begins, leaving us clinging desperately to him, terrified that he'll fly away. Then his voice turns musical and he sings the rest of the title, "Bet That You Look Good On The Dance Floor!"

I don't know if any one song has ever saved my night more than this one. By now I had a stitch and not knowing the words was beginning to drive me crazy. I was seriously considering trying to get out of the crowd and watch from afar. Maybe I could find a raised knell in the field and I'd be able to see him in the flesh, rather than peering over the heads of the crowds to get a view of the big screen at  side of the stage.

"Stop makin' the eyes at me, I'll stop makin' the eyes at you." I can hear Alex's smirk in his voice. I don't even need to see him and he's destroying my ability to think straight.

The last time this song saved my night was at a Halloween disco when it was one of two songs I recognised throughout the entire night. For just a moment I thought that the night would get better. It didn't. This song and the fact that I was dressed up as a Hobbit remain its only redeeming features. But this song gave me hope and I stuck it out.

No way I'm going anywhere tonight. I  imagine Alex watching me go, calling me a weakling. I notice how far down his shirt is unbuttoned. He waggles his hips constantly, as if he's enticing me to stay with his effortless flow of cool.

About half an hour later a girl beside me asks someone, "How long do you think they'll be on for?"

Almost in reply, Alex Turner takes to the mic and announces, "Reading, I'm not good at goodbyes."

The chorus of elongated 'Nooooo's is deafening and I find that my voice is a part of it.

Alex continues, "But rest safe in the knowledge that ... I just wanna be yours, baby."

I look at him again. I jump as high as I can and find that I can see him in the flesh if I try my hardest. He moves so effortlessly and so gracefully that it's ridiculous. How is it fair that one man gets to be so smooth when I can't walk anywhere without my ankles cracking to announce me? I just want to be near him. I want to grab him, hold him and dance with him. I want to experience his movement first-hand. I want to waltz with him, dance the Gay Gordons with him, lean against him as he takes a moment in the middle of the show to comb his fucking hair.

They finish 'I Want To Be Yours' and saunter off to wait for their encore. They know it's coming. Even if the rest of the band are too modest to admit it, Alex's 'observance' will know that it's a given truth they're coming back out.

"We want more!" we chant.

In Scotland, we chant 'Here we, here we, here we fucking go!' I think I prefer that to the current words of the Reading Festival crowd. While 'We want more' demands that the band return to satisfy our desires, 'Here we fucking go' says we're fucking going whether you're here or not so if you want to be a part of it get your lazy arse back out here! In my head that's something Alex would say. And you know what, I might not know any of the words but I want to fucking go!

Of course, we do get more,  they do join us to fucking go.

And when they eventually leave every fibre of my being longs for them not to. I desperately cling to the fantasy that Alex will saunter back out and sway his hips some more. But he doesn't and the pain from my stomach reminds me it's there - and the pain in my feet too.

Later I am shuffling along the path back to the car amidst the drunken crowd of twenty-year-olds who are stumbling around in the night trying to find their tents. I could not be more miserable or in much more pain or hungrier - but one pleasant thought is holding me up.

I bet he looks fucking incredible on the dance floor.

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A/N: btw, I've since read a Clash interview with the Arctic Monkeys and Alex is nowhere near as 'dickish' as the media make him out to be. At least, not always...Seriously, somebody should give him a copy of the interview questions beforehand so that he's not rambling arrogantly for twenty minutes trying to form an answer.