Welcome to my lovely two part post on V Festival 2008, thought I’d separate the social part of v festival and the gig part of v into two posts to make things easier to digest, granted there’s not much to talk about in the gig section so it will probably be photo flooded whilst this one will most likely be content orientated. So yeah, after being guestlisted for the lovely v festival at Staffordshire on a Sunday, I had arranged all the travel and accomodation a few weeks in advanced to ensure things go well (“well” being i can actually get there and have a place to stay), I booked a lovely hotel at the Wolverhampton Quality Hotel (where quality is oozing from the hotel so much that the word quality popped into the name of the hotel, that’s how awesome it was!) and some tiddly train rides to Wolverhapton (was about 3 hours to Wolves but 2 hours back, silly trains). Fact was I was going for the day and wasn’t really keen in heading home early or camping (that wasn’t allowed anyway what with the wristbands and not having weekend passes). The hotel seemed like the best (and warmest) option and I was surprised that it was only £48, including bed and breakfast. I had booked a holiday for Monday to ensure I had sufficient amount of rest once I arrive home (besides I don’t think work would appreciate me coming into work all muddy and bloody from the festival (mm soft skulls).
As soon as returning to London from New York, I agreed to goto a meetup since I had the energy to (it was that or just loads of sleeping). This was a quick lunch followed by some Nando’s, it was a free for all meetup so all sorts of musers ranging from oldies to n00bs were about. I arrived pretty late since I was trying to get stu to come, he missed his coach. I eventually buy tickets for him and he managed to catch the coach to see us later on the day.
New Years was pretty epic, we all decided to meet up in Canterbury and celebrate new year there. Alice unfortunately wasn’t able to go since the planning was horrifically bad. I initially wasn’t keen on going since it was Canterbury but decided to go in the end since travel wasn’t too bad on the train and I didn’t feel too mashed after coming back from the north.
After work I took the train from Charring Cross to Canterbury West where Stu and Inn were there to pick me up. They had already spent the night there and had Xmas dinner ready, the previously mentioned that they WILL get a xmas turkey cooked to cheer up Karis’ gloomy xmas. They all decided to wait for me to arrive before eating (which was nice of them!) and once the party was all ready, we were ready to party. I was curious as to why the turkey was so tiny when I saw it but wasn’t really in the mood to question it (was more in the mood to eat tbh). Once at the table I made sure everyone was following strict table manners and regulations to ensure we had a formal and respectable dinner. I was quite impressed that they managed to prepare a pretty beefy amount of things to go with the “turkey”, they had the chandberry sauce, sweetcorn, peas, gravy and even pigs in a blanket. We managed to take turns with toasting the new year and Inn made me be the last person to give the toast to really sum everything up, I turned my toast to a business meeting agenda and yeah, lovely toast. I was also able to do my usual bit of asking how was everyone’s days. Stu managed to shock Karis some more by popping out of the living room dressed as Santa, we all god Karis presents and everything (mine was pretty impromptu but I got her something in the end). She seemed pretty chuff, but not because of that too…
It appears that Karis was able to find love in the meetup. Michael (Originalboywonder on the museboard) was at the meetup and before I arrived they managed to “hookup” (OH YEAH! haha) so yeah, this is where it gets interesting, we all took turns to tease the hell out of her. Including an extended long game of “I never” as well as that game where they stick names on your head and you have to guess who they are. It was pretty fun of an evening. New Years eve was celebrated with some lovely paper burning, I can’t remember what I wrote so yeah…
When the clock struck 12 we let loose some party poppers and drank some super cheap champagne (took a LONG time to open). We then played a few “t00ns” on Stu’s laptop and raved for a bit. The night fizzled down with everyone going to bed with me and Inn going online via mobile and ds lite respectively. I slept on the hallway since every room was taken, which was fine since I could sleep anywhere (including the stairs), I could have slept in the living room but Karis and Michael were there… I took the essence of the sofas and made a lovely mattress to sleep with. Later on the evening I kept getting woken up by Ste snoring at a disturbingly high decibel, I tried recording it on my phone but sadly it didn’t pick it up too well 🙁
The next day began with me waking up nice and early and having a lovely shower. I played some soothing classical music to wake everyone up which was quite hilarious, inn found it funny this time instead of enraged since the music was fucking awesome haha. I was glad I didn’t sleep in the living room either because the next day it had a very strong stench of crotch smell, and like what Stu said, “it’s only nice when you’re smelling your own crotch”. We thought the best breakfast would be a trip to Nando’s haha. I had already had nando’s with Alice but what the hell, nothing else nice in Canterbury haha. Karis got a bit antisocial at times with Michael and it was pretty hilarious watching them not being able to sit next to each other haha (young love and all that). After eating more chicken we all parted ways, I was dropped off at some train crossing and had to walk to the station in the rain, the train left a few minutes before I arrived so I had to wait an entire hour for the next train and spend another hour and a bit on the train (thank god I was able to phone alice for the entire journey!). All in all a good way to start the new year.
I don’t like making resolutions so I’m simply going with the flow. Life is awesome at the moment so I’ll just stick to what I have.
For Stuart’s birthday we all opted to get him a DS Lite, the original plan was to get him vouchers for it but I thought it was cooler to just get him the actual console. Alice was able to attend and spend some time in London with me. We managed to all meet up at Brent Cross and head to Kazzie’s for the night. I believe we had some nice grubby takeaway from some random Chinese Takeaway place.
I’m not sure how we spent our evening and morning but I believe we did have an amazing breakfast! We bought everything we needed to make the perfect full english breakfast and got delayed for the actual event that Max and Aino organised. I believe we did quite a fair bit of smash brothering too which made us disturbingly late, no worries though since we’re the host I guess *shrugs*. Passing Brent Cross I was able to smuggle myself a black DS Lite for Stu whilst Karis and Inn were able to distract Stu for a bit.
We arrived at Regent Street pretty late and finally found everyone, we then headed to a very packed Oxford Street finding the restaurant. We were going to have tapas at a place called La Tasca. Quite a fair amount of people were about which was fun and we had a lovely seat booked and all.
The meal was alright, paella was just wet rice and bits of stuff however we did order a fair amount of stuff and in the end, the bill was a joke. It came to £200+ and people were simply gobsmacked by it, it was rather awkward for people, especially when some were refusing to pay any more. Me and Alice decided to save the day by pitching in the rest so everyone was able to pay the bill and avoid embarrassment. But boy Max and Aino aren’t planning any meetups in the future. Tapas is a 2 person event, not suitable for orgies.
The rest of the weekend was spent with Alice, we met up with Jason and Rachel and had some yum yum dim sum at Royal China, I chose this place because Jason and Rachel previously took me to “Ping Pong” to have dim sum when I told them that Royal China is a nicer place and do a wider range of dim sum. So yeah, it was a pretty epic meal at a far less scary price (especially when Jason and Rachel could afford it all hehe). I was very pissed off that we didn’t get free oranges! They usually do it so 🙁
We went into the Natural Cafe to sit around and chat for the rest of the day, Jason got me an orange to eat hehe. Was always nice seeing Jason and Rachel, Alice got on well with them too so it was all good 🙂 We then called it a night and that was that day.
The day after I had to go work and Alice had to return back up north, we said our farewells at Monument and that was the weekend. Lesson of the day, don’t get tapas. Stick with a golden crispy fucking duck haha.
Today was a weird day, I had my second interview at a company I eventually get into and boy was that a crazy day. I was told to turn up at 9.30am and have my interview which turns out to be rescheduled to 11am. The interview was a double whammy! I had two sessions, one with the Vice President of Client Services and the second was with a client relationship manager and a fellow technical consultant (or solutions engineer back in those days haha). Afterwards I was scheduled another interview with the director of technical consulting later that day. It was a phone interview from new york so I gave them my mobile number and expected their call later on.
After a hard and gruelling interview day I felt pretty happy with the results and went to see Inn, Stuart and Karis at Brent Cross since they were heading off to Stockholm the day after. I went to a KFC prior to meeting them outside hendon central station. Karis and Inn were picking me up whilst Stu was slightly late and all. We had some food (at Burger King and Yo sushi) and eventually met up with Stu and basically did a bit of shopping, checked out the new ipod touch and went to Luton airport to exchange some money.
Now the last line was a bit hectic since I’ve never been to an airport before, the worse bit was that I wasn’t travelling the day after so I was just going for company and all and BOY was it a horrible journey! I suppose it was horrible since we went there and found out that they dont exchange Swedish monday there since there’s not departures to Sweden in the airport! Grr! I kept telling them about how I’ll eventually start looking for cufflinks if I get my job so I had a quick gander at the cufflinks store haha. Once all of that was done we eventually went back to Kazzie’s place and headed off to pick up kev. It was a quick swop of people but meh! I wanted to go home, I was far too tired from all the interviews, I had my phone interview inside Karis’ car when we were driving to Brent Cross which was funny (especially when moments before the interview I told them two that at any minute I was going to get a phone interview haha). So yeah, a tiring day with interviews (and random trips to airports) but hopefully I get a job offer and all (which I do haha, damn me writing this AFTER getting the job)
Stu invited me and a load of other people to his hosue for a lovely housewarming party. It was a lovely weekend involve sun, sea, sand, bbq meat and other bits and bobs.
The final of the trilogy, this is where everything ends, the climax of the weekend (I do have an extra day with Kiernan and Kazzie but this was really the end of the weekend). Probably the best day and all too. We have already seen loads of Muse fans singing in a square, muse perform live for the first night, and met an ungodly amount of Musers through numerous locations including BBQs, pubs, and Trafalgar Square. Now we see the final night and say goodbye to quite a lot of people as we watch Muse for the second night to conclude this grand weekend.
