On Friday evening, I was trying to juggle the watching of the cricket with the watching of the Olympics and packing for the V festival. I decided to add a fourth form of entertainment into the mixture by checking my e-mail. Amongst the offers for porn, Viagra and cheap software sat my Embrace newsletter.
Well, imagine my slack-jawed response and ten minutes of giddy dancing when I found out that my beloved Embrace boys were to be replacing Jet at the festival. Holy shit, I thought I was gonna burst from how hyper it made me.

We got to the festival quite early and I think we were all surprised at how easy it was to get onto the site. One mild alarm was that some cars were being stopped and a sniffer dog was being set upon them. As we approached, Marie pointed out that she still had a magic cake from Liam's birthday in her bag (I was amazed she hadn't eaten them all on that night). We made it past the sniffer dogs, but just in case, Marie lobbed the cake out of the window, where it landed in the mouth of a red squirrel.
Ho ho, I jest of course, the squirrel was actually grey; red squirrels having been all bummed to death by their horny grey cousins. Damn Yankees, coming here and bum-loving our squirrels to death!
There were a lot of cars in the car park, yet I was disappointed in my search for a 25. I did however find one the next morning. I also have a 26, 27 and 28 from work to go with it. 999 here I come!
Idiot.

I was last at the V festival in 1999, where I spent most of it on my own as Dave from work who I went with is into his ambient dance and acid house fuck with a lemon. And I'm not.
It was nice to see that the site looks virtually identical, with the stages, fairground and stalls pretty much all in the same places as they were 5 years ago. V still has it's large townie contingent, who seem intent on drinking themselves stupid and then glaring at anyone who isn't of their ilk, yet there's no more bother at V than at any other festival. I just wonder why somebody would pay 50-100 quid to sit in a field strewn with rubbish to drink over-expensive lager if you had no interest in seeing any of the music going on. Can't you do that at home?
Or are you looking for new people to fight, rather than the same old domestic battery competition? Answers on a postcard titled "Ireallyneedtowashmyfaceandstopdrinkingasitobviouslydoesntmakemehappy" to the usual address please.
It saddens me anyway at the way drunk melty-faced men leer at girls, and glare at other men, looking for the fabled "fight or a fuck". Seeing the look in their eyes, I think "fight or a rape" may be more appropriate for some of them.
Being the coward I am though, the only arguments/confrontations I got into over the weekend were..
- A battle to be in front of a girl (who looked like Nostradamus from TMWRNJ) in the booze queue because she pushed in front of me. I won. Ha! … Sorry.
- Standing hard on the calf of an ignorant teenage lad who pushed past me whilst watching The Pixies.
Yeah, you tell them Glenn. I'm surprised I didn't knock an ice-cream out of a young child's hand, or chuck a one-legged mans crutches over a wall.
Actually, that reminds me. Whilst we were waiting outside on the Sunday (for the fucking jobsworth gate-people to actually let us in) there were several bunches of lads who decided that they didn't need to queue because 'hey, they liked fighting'. Some were stood behind us, parading themselves in front of ladies who would obviously be impressed by a man with fighting scars, and a face that looked like it had been beaten with a shovel, cut open, had shit poured in, and then sown back together by a man with severe Alzheimer's. They were also hilariously taking the shit out of a guy with one leg. I hope he couldn't hear what they were saying, yet I could and it made me want to slit their fucking scum throats.
Hang on,
*takes valium*

That's better.
Anyway, we wandered around for a bit and then sat on the grass near where Goldie Lookin Chain were playing. I wanted to hear the lyrics but it was kinda hard to make them out over people jabbering away, I didn't really have any interest in hearing the actual music. They seem quite amusing boys though.
The first band we saw properly was Snow Patrol. They are obviously such sweet boys that there was a massive amount of goodwill between them and the crowd. They seemed to still be stunned about all that has happened to them this year. After years of slogging hard and releasing relatively unsuccessful records, Run has catapulted them into the sort of bracket where at 2pm on the Saturday of a festival they find themselves playing on the main stage in front of 30,000 people, instead of playing to about 100 in the new band tent they are more accustomed to.
It was really sweet. To hear 30,000 people singing along to a nice song whilst the sun shines overhead is a great way to spend an August afternoon.
We spent a few minutes afterwards looking at the police and their sniffer dog. Whenever anyone who looked like they may take drugs tramped through the site entrance from the campsite, the police bloke with the dog would stop them, the dog would have a sniff and if it detected anything would then sit down. People who were suspected then had their names taken. It was quite interesting to watch, especially trying to guess what people would be stopped. It was invariably men, and those who looked either a bit hippyish, or a bit 'Goldie Lookin Chain'. I also felt it was typically twatty of the pigs; to search people for drugs at a festival which is actually selling magic mushrooms on it's licensed stalls seems to be a bit hypocritical. I know that one is legal and one isn't, but still it seemed to me to be a bit joyless and stupid.
I took 132 pictures on my new digital camera over the weekend (just because I could). Typically, I kinda neglected the manual so a lot of the pictures are badly focussed or using the wrong mode. I did get some though which I think are quite nice; I may put some up here for my loyal reader.
Heh, whilst waiting around between bands, it was possible to send text messages to the big screens next to the main stage. It quickly became obvious that there was a swear word censor running on the texts, but very little else. The highlight was that whilst waiting for the Pixies, across the screen was printed 'What is worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm?' Now most people know the punchline to this very old joke, but after about a second the following was printed across the screen…
'Being raped. Show us yer tits!'
40,000 people gasped and then broke into titters. Well I did anyway. There were a couple of other good ones, but not as unexpectedly funny/bad as that.
Fuck me, The Pixies were amazing. Jesus, I knew they'd be great (coz they're the fucking Pixies), but their performance on Saturday night was something else. It's risky when a band reforms after several years, more often than not they're lazy in preparation, fat, old and end up pissing away what kudos they'd previously built up. Well, The Pixies are definitely older and fatter but they were tighter than an underage gnat's lady-garden in a Scotsman's wallet. Or something.
'Tame', 'Debaser', 'Planet Of Sound' were as powerful and exciting as they've always been on record, and hearing songs such as 'Wave of Mutilation' and 'Where Is My Mind?' made all the hairs on my arms rise in unison.
At the end we all just stood there gawping at what we'd just seen.
The Strokes were on next, but they were never going to live up to what I'd just seen so we wandered over to watch those Delays boys. Jingly-jangly mid nineties indie? Yes please!
Also, we'd become a little bit annoyed at people in the crowd. During the Pixies, ignorant little shits kept barging past everybody, whilst clasping the hand of their girlfriend (who probably calls herself Princess something). At first we just ignored the lack of manners on display, but after about an hour of people doing it, and with skanky pony-tailed witches starting to jabber over the beautiful music, I started to get more and more wound up. I trod on the boy's calf as mentioned before, It was probably best that we went to the less crowded tent when we did, otherwise I'd have probably ended up booting somebody up the arse. (Note: During the Divine Comedy on Sunday, one prominently beaked gentleman decided to entertain everybody by repeatedly blowing a whistle. I know it may come across as being quite arsey or that I'm a bit of a misery, but I just wish people in life (and at gigs especially) would show some consideration for other people around them.
The Delays were quite good, the sound in the tent wasn't the greatest, but I quite like their album and they played me my favourite songs off it. Which was nice of them.

We actually got off the car park pretty quickly on both nights. Muse finished playing on Sunday at 11am, and even with a detour and stop off at Telford, I still made it home at 1am.

Saturday had exceeded expectations, but for me personally, Sunday was THE day. It already had the look of a Glennfest about it before Embrace had been added to the bill, but now I was struggling to see everybody I wanted to. In the end I had to forgo seeing The Charlatans fully (I did catch the last 15 minutes) and Hope Of The States.
First band up was The Divine Comedy. I've never actually seen them live and it was nice. We'd been warned about a storm heading our way but the sun was still trying to fucking burn my neck.
We saw The Killers next. As we were quite well prepared and had a timetable worked out, we got quite close to the stage. It was a good job we did this, as even though The Killers were on the second stage in mid-afternoon it appeared that nearly everybody on the site wanted to see them. The audience stretched back as far as the eye could see. The band were good, playing all the better songs off their debut album, singer Brandon Flowers could really give Julian Casablancas a few lessons in how to play to the crowd.
It took us ages to get away from the stage. We went to watch The Crimea next. They consist of Davey from The Crocketts and a few new mates. Jesus, they're good. Their music is exciting and spiky, yet also full of quality musicianship. Davey jumps around the stage like an utter mental, I'll pop some pictures up of the bands we saw later on. Yeah, honestly.
We saw Easyworld after this. They were fantastic, but on for an all too-brief 25 minutes. I think we're gonna have to catch them doing a full set soon, it's been a while since we last saw them. They have a new single out on Monday, it sounds quite good on its first listen, so ch-ch-check it out.
We managed to catch some of The Charlatans, Tim was sulking a bit about playing during the day, yet he played 'How High' and 'We're so Pretty…' so it made me happy. AND THAT'S ALL THAT MATTERS TIM! He needs a haircut soon, or else he won't be able to call himself the "Dark Haired Glenn Allan".
It was hitting that time of the day when the site had become a piss-scented, litter-strewn hang out for immensely drunk Neanderthals. So we retired towards the front of the NME stage, to witness a couple of songs of the "I think I should like them more than I actually do" Elbow. Really we were just jostling for position, as soon as Elbow had finished we made our way right to the front. FOR EMBRACE!
Now, I saw them at the end of last year, and will see them three more times (at least) over the next month. I couldn't help but feel a bit nervous though.
When they did eventually appear, they were met by a great reception. I was concerned that some Jet fans may wander across expecting to see that Aussie bunch of shit, but these seemed to be genuine fans of Embrace. They certainly knew the words to all the old songs.
We were hampered on our side of the stage by a poor sound mix, we could hardly hear Danny's voice, and we got tonnes of bass. Still, I didn't let it affect my mood that much. The new songs sounded okay, the old songs still sounded as good as ever. No 'Fireworks' sadly.
Danny says on the website that it was one of the greatest nights of his life, I guess when you've been away for three years it'll be the biggest buzz in the world to see that there are still people out there who love you. No more Coldplay songs though Danny please.
We then faced a mildly mad charge across open fields to get in a good position for Muse. We didn't get as close as we wanted, but with Embrace finishing at the time Muse were due on, I guess that was too much to ask for.
Heh, Muse are preposterous. Matt Bellamy plays the guitar like he's trying to kill it, and his keyboard seemed to be some sort of dalek. Prog-rockish it may be, but it's still very very exciting. The songs are so fucking huge, I'm sure they come from space.
About halfway through their set I glanced to my left to see a man no younger than 60, singing along to every word, jumping up and down and punching the air. This wasn't some sort of new-age guy, he looked like somebody's dad. It made me smile and a feeling of warmth ran through my body. How cool is that? The audience was such a mix; people of all ages and from all walks of life seemed to be getting enjoyment from the gibberings of a trio of man-mentals.
Well actually, there were 4 tonight. The bass parts of Muse songs seem quite difficult but the guy from The Streets who was standing in for the injured bassist (who just chucked giant balloons out all night) was spot-on. I felt a bit of respect for the guy and his other "easy-guitar" players.
All in all it was a fantastic way to spend a weekend. Tops!

What else has happened this week? Well, I've decided to have a nice slow week, I'm running on empty batteries after a mental few weeks/months. We go to London again next weekend, and have a lot of gigs in September. Then it's my birthday, whee hee hee! The planning for the week of celebrations is coming along nicely. Something will be announced soon.
Tonight we're going to Lancaster. We missed Davo's birthday last week so it should be really nice. I may have a drink.

Oh aye, yesterday was the first flight of Nimrod. Despite myself, I became quite involved in it. It's strange when you have the thought in your head that by not doing my job properly it could result in the death of other people. Eeep!
We watched the take-off on a big screen downstairs, and then stood outside for over an hour to watch it land. It had a little fly over Preston and then landed safely at Warton. It's kinda nice that my CV has actually been validated, and I can change the bit where it says '1998-2004 Prison', for '1998-2004 Nimrod'.
I wander if I'll start to get itchy feet now. Whereas I can kinda justify it to myself that I've been working on a reconnaissance aircraft, where else can I go to? Is it time to get out? Write software for heart baby monitors? Or devote my life to crisps, and the pursuit of crisps?