Wednesday 14/07/10

As a kid I loved the summer holidays, and I still do. I can’t wait until the 6 beautiful weeks of freedom. There’s little-to-no traffic on the roads when I go to, and return from, work. Fantastic. It literally takes minutes off my commute.

I'm was holiday last week and I did nothing after returning from Gastonbury but watch Frasier and My Name is Earl, while occasionally playing Football Manager. It's about all I want from a break and having been at the hottest Glastonbury ever the weekend before I am certainly not complaining. The tan I developed there, though it was mostly dirt, is fading fast with each shower and I'm looking forward to returning to my lazy, pale and indoor self. Sometimes the comforts of home beat the excitement of a major music festival.

The only exercise I've done at all in the last couple of weeks is five-a-side football. Although it’s good exercise, it served only to remind me why I never try to save any shots. Putting my hand out to make a save from a powerful and well-aimed shot, the ball connected and, while I stopped the ball going in with unexpected agility and vision, it bent my elbow slightly too far the wrong way leaving me both proud and in pain. I followed this up by ducking when the next shot was aimed at my head, pathetically conceding a goal I'd worked so hard to protect. I truly am an English goalkeeper.

Festivals, the likes of Glastonbury and Reading anyway, have probably seen the last of me. I just can’t cope with the intensity of the situation any more. At my first Reading, aged 16, I could drink my way through a crate of lager, eat a metric ton of super noodles before going to the arena to skank maniacally to whatever ska band was on in the Lock Up tent. Now, of course, my lungs are crap, so I get a cough within a day and a nasty cold for the rest of the week. My knees ache and creak after the first time I’ve gotten myself pissed and tripped over a guy rope. I’m also tired and dehydrated once I’ve been forced awake at 8am due to the stifling heat in my tent. Surely I’m above that by now.

Berlin, in 2007, was probably my favourite trip as it was essentially a festival with luxuries you miss when absent, like comfy beds, daily showers and meals that didn’t come on plastic trays with wooden forks. We’d go get drunk at a bar or at the beer festival, move on to a club and return to a room that allowed you to sleep off the worst of the hangovers between freshly laid sheets. It’s not even as if it’s more expensive. Cheap flights, hostel accommodation and food/drinks for a few days probably matches the cost of a Glasto ticket. Need more of those, I think, and fewer holidays that feel like I’ve been shipped out to Vietnam for 6 days.