[lyg 10] and i would walk five hundred miles;

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

With T in the Park this weekend, this post about my first year at the festival seems timely. And it means Ross has been gone for six years.

14th July 2003
I’m just back from Ross’s funeral but I don’t think I need to talk about it; only to say how on earth is a twenty-minute service in a conveyor belt crematorium, in one door and out the other while the next set of identikit mourners file in, supposed to give you any sense of closure? I can’t say it-was-a-lovely-service because it’s too easy to get the impression the minister is reading out directly, changing only names and the occasional “her” to “him”.

I had been there before but it’s still the opposite of what I’m used to and I don’t ever want to get used to it.

I only cried, privately, when I realised how many people I didn’t know had heard my name.

I suppose you could say the thought overshadowed my weekend, not in a bad way or to detract that I have had the BEST FUCKING WEEKEND OF MY LIFE (TM), but of course you can’t just forget. Ross was there when Feeder dedicated “Just The Way I’m Feeling” to their drummer who committed suicide a few years back, he was there during “Everybody Hurts” – but he was always going to be.

But the Best Weekend of my Life – a weekend of meeting new people (new person who will be at the Manics signing tomorrow and who has been promised bootlegged Ryan Adams, if I remember correctly, damn the wine that tasted cheap and yet wasn’t), learning new lessons (how to put up get someone else to put up a tent for you, that by the time you get to the end of the queue you will wonder what all of the fuss is about and, most importantly, that it is in fact possible not to go to the toilet in twenty-four hours), spending way too much money on stuff that seemed like a good idea at the time and probably even more over-using my mobile, oh and apparently there were a few bands playing too. It’s over (until next year – definitely an annual event in the Pixie Calendar) and I’ve nothing to show for it bar the sunburn from hell and an REM setlist saved into my phone pending being turned into a mix CD. And some cute beads. And a belt. And a Ryan Adams bootleg. And a hat, which for some reason seemed to be a target for evil boys to steal.

REM as an experience was nothing short of spiritual – as close to the front as two little girls who were only half an hour early can be, Patricia (who shared the obsession with me in high school) and I held hands throughout and sang every word. I emerged from the crowd, tears streaming down my cheeks, realising nothing has or will ever come close to the way I was feeling at that very moment.

Other highlights then. The Flaming Lips – ample substitutes for the White Stripes and an amazing show. I stand converted. Idlewild – a couple in their forties jumping around with myself and Patricia’s friend Joanne as no-one else in our bit of the crowd was quite as mad as we were, and sticking my phone in the air to send good vibes and song snippets to the other side of the world. The Raveonettes with Steve on Sunday morning, as he’s right about bands eightyninemillion times out of eightyninemillionandTWO (now I realise who The Coral are and it hits me they were already on my shit list). Everyone going mad when Supergrass played “Alright” – their set seemed almost like the Proclaimers, play what you like but there’s only one song everybody wants to hear and they won’t be happy until they get it.

We got a relatively early bus home, the bus so obviously full of people who have “overdone it” as my mother says, either in the sun or with drugs (to employ an overused cliche if I never smell hash again it will be too soon, I just don’t see what the attraction is). My brother had sunstroke and what was there to stay for anyway, fucking Coldplay?! So i watched the highlights on TV when I got home, and giggled and chattered to my mum.

I feel as if I could sleep for a week, but every time I try to lie down I find something else that hurts.