Cardiff, Wales, August 25th 2007
I wanted to go to Reading and Leeds festival to see The Streets, haven’t seen them since August last year, my best friend Ozzy needed a proper summer holiday, euhm a proper summer holiday in England? Yeah why not…. we decide to plan that holiday in England, around this festival. The Streets never played at that festival this year. We go camping in England .
Luckily, the same weekend they were playing at Carling metro weekender in Cardiff & London. Great! because we already took time off work for these 2 weeks.
Finally after not seeing The Streets for over a year it was time for our summer holiday, I didn’t care about that holiday much (sorry Oz), I just wanted to see the Streets. Would Mike still recognize me? I’m blonde now, as I dyed it. We’ll see, I’m sure the bikini will help…
August 18th Day 1:
We drove by car from Hillegom, to Duinkerke (France). We took the boat to Dover. We stayed at Tony’s house, he’s Ozzy’s friend/Old colleague. He lives in Hastings with his wife Donna and their 3 kids. We also celebrated their son’s birthday. We taught him and his friends some bad Dutch words.
August 19th: Day 2:
We went to Brighton, the “beach”, the pier and the town. We spent the night in Hastings again at Tony’s house.
August 20th: Day 3:
We went to Wool. That’s near Bournemouth. We stayed in a B&B. Yep, still no camping. In these two weeks it hasn’t been raining. We didn’t see any rain anyway. We could see that it had been raining, the roads were wet. It must have been, but we didn’t see it. The camping was still too wet. There was no dry space for us. We didn’t have another choice then the B&B.
August 21st: Day 4:
We went to Monkey World. Known from tv as “Monkey Business“. At 9.30 we were there, the park didn’t open until 10, but it was sunny, so we enjoyed the sun. By noon. two hours after it opened, we had seen the whole park twice already. It was getting busier with school kids. Time to leave.
(This Orangutan is called Amy)
We spend the rest of the afternoon in Bournemouth. Although it took us like two hours to get to Bournemouth, even though it is very close, but we got lost and were driving round and round and round. Finally we found it.
August 22nd: Day 5:
We went to Bath. On our way we stopped at the Stonehenge. Parking was 3 pounds and seeing the Stonehenge up close was another 5 pounds. We parked the car and crossed the road. zoomed in our camera and took a photo. That evening we watched England play in the pub of the camping site. First time on a camping, in a tent.
August 23rd: Day 6:
We went shopping in Bristol.
August 24th: Day 7:
We went to Cardiff, today The Streets were having a show in de Melkweg in Amsterdam, Why are we here? What did we do wrong? Anyway, we were going to see the boys tomorrow in Cardiff, and the day after tomorrow in London. We don’t want to think about what we’re missing. We checked in at Nomad Backpacker Hostel. Then we went shopping in the city centre and we went to have a look where the festival was.
August 25th: Day 8:
We arrived at Bute park, where the festival is, at 11am. The doors won’t open until noon, so we enjoyed the sun for a while. Then finally the doors opened, but there was no band that we knew, so it was basically waiting until The Streets came on, for 9 ½ hours. The weather was great, about 25 degrees, it definitely felt warmer, so we were just chilling in the sun, watching the thousands of Welshmen/women.
We had no idea how popular The Streets were over here, so we decided to get to try to get our space at the front at about 4.30pm. Still five more hours to go until Mike and the boys came on. Kate Nash was on… so we decided to wait and give it a try when she finished…
When she finished most of the people left except from the 1st row… until we stood behind a guy who left. That was my chance to get to the front. YEY I managed to get to the 1st row again… the 4th time… Ozzy squeezed in as well, but… then that guy came back with food. Sorry mate, but thanks!! 😉
Dizzee Rascal came on (We saw Mike dancing (backstage). We had never heard of Dizzee before, but he was brilliant!!! Although, we enjoyed seeing Mike dancing on the side of the stage more then Dizzee himself!
Then after him, it was the Automatic who came on stage…. What the fuck was that? what a horrible music, oh we know this song!… “Monster” Didn’t know it was from them though. We met two funny guys … YEAH! (One of them yelled to Ozzy a couple of times)
After that horrible band, we met a couple more blokes who were there for the Super Furry Animals. “SFA OK!, SFA OK!, Super Furry Animals are SFA OK!”… That’s what they were singing/screaming….
But OH MY! They were even worse than The Automatic… How are we supposed to survive in the cold… (It got cold, cos the sun went down) until Mike came on?!… Oh well… only forty more minutes to go…
Then Mike came on…
Mike saw my banner… it said: “I’ll cu 2mrrw in London” Mike pointed at me. I took off my t-shirt, and I was wearing THE Bikini (again)… Mike saw it and pointed at me again and had a face like “Hey, I remember this bikini”.
After a while, when Johnny stood up, he wanted everybody to go Low, and when Johnny sat down, everybody had to jump. Before he was going to do this… he said to me “You know what I’m going to do, right?!” I nodded, but wasn’t really sure to be honest. (I should have known, he did this at Lowlands 2006 as well)
There are three new people on stage, Chris Brown, he replaced Eddie Kid, and two extra people, Mike Millrain and Laura Vane.
Example came on stage with Mike. When they played “The irony of it all”
Mike was Terry and Example played Tim.
When Mike finished his performance.. Ozzy and I went to the backstage area… after waiting for fifteen minutes outside the area, while he was filming for Beat Stevie number 18 with Kate Nash and Example. We were watching this from the fence. We were like… nah its too cold lets go back to the hostel. We’ll see them tomorrow anyway.
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