captainricebox

I went in around 4pm and other than the dog handler, who was clearly power tripping, everyone was fairly chill. I think after 2 hours of solid checking people on a whim and not finding anything, maybe they'd lost some of their vigor. I doubt you'd get much out of complaining, although the searches were filmed, so you never know. My feeling is, unless you could prove the handlers were either targeting people or straight making sh*t up, there's little that can be done.

Anyone else get sniffed out by one of the dogs yesterday? Seemed to be loads of people going for extra searches. Felt more like the dog was thrust at me, and the signal was nothing more than them sniffing me, which I've had plenty of times before and not had it called a signal.

Am sat out in my garden. Sounds like someone's playing a Muse CD on MSW.

Despite my lack of fomo for this year I was tempted by a couple of half price tickets for Saturday, just because it's right here and I know I can just get drunk and party. I really hope they make amends next year. Whomever is managing this mess this year is clearly nothing but financially driven and lost sight of what Reading was, treating it like some other city festival. Weekend tickets are twice what the relative price given inflation was when I first went, and the lineup back then had bands with at least one and often multiple albums opening most of the stages. I get the album business and stream have changed things since then, but really? How are kids meant to be paying for that if you're relying on The Killers to hold it all together?

No, the only way into the site from the south is via the red or green entrances. To get to white you either need to walk down that posh road in caversham, or enter way out to the north and drive down the roads. You can technically walk from red or green to white, but only through the campsite. There used to be an entrance into Orange campsite until 2013, but that's a long time ago. I guess in short, that temporary bridge is in the site and you can't get to it from the tilehurst end .

I've had friends go when they were pregnant. They turned out to be quite useful for some of their friends as they didn't have their camping seat checked for booze, because security just assumed they wouldn't be trying to sneak alcohol into the arena.

Had a great time in general, but had non-stop issues with the payment. The account didn't link, so had to get that fixed. Then the auto top up got turned off by merging accounts, so had to go to a bar to use wi-fi, then when the auto top up was on it frequently didn't actually top up. Twice had to go back to places to pay for food they'd given me. Anything costing over £20 causes issues because even if auto top up is working, it needs to go below £20 to trigger. Got chatting to a guy in a queue one morning, who was working on the payment system. Apparently he had had to spend all evening working because they kept having issues, so missed everything.

When do we find out what's on before Girl In Red?

Main Stage sound is always rubbish except for a few headliners. Extra frustrating that the Radio One stage isn't there this year, as that generally sounds good.

Can hear the MSW (soundcheck) a lot more clearly from my house than anything usually sounds.

Don Broco at 2:30pm on the Lock Up, then

might they open the Introducing stage?

In recent years they've nearly always had 12 acts per day, including one "secret set", usually from a band that's already due to play later in the day. The stage usually starts around 12pm although once it started closer to 11am, as they had 13 acts playing, and is finished by 8pm (8:30pm in 2017). There's never normally such big gaps.

I guess that would make much more sense than having him clash with Liam.

Sorry if there's already a thread for this, but given the line up has been pretty up in the air, I've been unwilling to commit. For me it's Ashnikko, Wargasm and Mabel Kennyhoopla, Sigrid and Loathe Girl In Red, Holly Humberstone and Biffy

For absolutely no reason i was hoping Everything Everything would be on before Girl In Red, bit it's gonna be Jake Bugg, isn't it 😞

It looked like it still hadn't been put up, when I was looking at of the top of the tents/stages from the distance of Tilehurst Road earlier, so I couldn't tell for sure, but I'm slightly nervous the Lock Up/Pit/FR stage might be a bit small for some of acts playing.

I hope the Jake Bugg isn't contagious 😏 I'm really sorry.

Testing only would definitely be safer, but it would also be politically dreadful for vaccination uptake, as it would effectively level being double vaxxed with having none at all. Thankfully the maths around efficacy of the vaccination in the UK is holding up in practice, and while i didn't think it was fair opening up before anyone below about the age of 38 could possibly have double vax levels of protection, thankfully severe levels of covid are very much down. I appreciate there's still the big unknown about long covid, but I'm not sure how we can get beyond that with the level of public opinion manipulation we face everywhere. My main fear is people faking tests. Not sure if that's a valid fear or not. I just hope people are honest.

There's probably a larger gap between tthe band and the audience at a festival show, even on the smaller stages. Also, on exclusive appearances of bands at festivals, which I think was mentioned a page or two back: If a band isn't billed, then it isn't a selling point for the festival, so it can't impact sales for any other gig/festival. Basically it won't necessarily stop a band doing a surprise gig elsewhere.