Reading though not as you know it!
Summers are different. It has probably something to do with the school holidays. In my native N. Ireland, we had 9 weeks from the end of June to the end of August. In England, it is 6 weeks though enough time off school to see and live differently.
Of course, I am not at school though there is something about the school spirit that remains with me. Cee is and this is likely to be her last summer as a school pupil.
Each summer has given me the opportunity to mark her growth usually highlighted by the annual Summer holiday. This year has been different as she flew off with a friend to a Greek island. She has kept me busy when she has been here with driving her to a Science day at Oxford, picking her up from Gatwick and this week at a Summer school in Bournemouth. Just tonight I dropped her at Reading ( pronounced Reding) for the Bank holiday weekend festival for the inbetweeners.
This girl tried to cram so much in that somehow she got released early from the summer school and had me on hand like a getaway driver to drive her to Reading! Her friends had already travelled to the event which meant good old dad had to stand in the queue with her holding her excess luggage.
Initially, I felt uncomfortable. I mean the queue is made up young people between the ages of 16 to maybe 23. There is a lot of alcohol being consumed as they wait and a lot more conversations that you only have in youth. Within minutes I was fine no-one seemed bothered with my presence that said I was thinking it was ‘a bit odd’ when I noticed someone my age in the queue not that there were many.
I don’t think I would last the course of being in a field with, is it 30,000, others for a weekend. My imagination was taken by the boat that was ferrying them to the festival. Yes, a boat! Alex Garland’s The Beach came to mind as these young people took a boat to a world without parents.
I won’t know exactly will happen over the course of 4 days though I have an idea based on what she told me last year. The GCSE results (the main English exams in England for 16-year-olds) were announced today. The A levels ( the main exams in England for 18-year-olds) were announced last Thursday. Reading has become a post GCSE rite of passage for many youth. There is also an event in the North of England named after the town it is held, Leeds ( yes if you didn’t know there is something of a North and South divide in England). It seems for a few years after GCSEs Reading becomes the place to be free.
I am making friends with ghosts of late and as I stood in the queue I could see the ghosts of 30 years ago. We were as equally excited though my excitement was lived out mostly in pubs and a nightclub called, ‘The Coach’. Yes, we too were drinking under the legal age until, at least for me, the excitement was gone. By 18 I was wondering, “Ok I have done most of what had to be done what happens now?” It was at that point life really began.
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