Well, since my ‘blog has been very neglected lately, I decided to write a special entry sharing my experiences of Kerrang and the Carling Leeds Festival weekend. Now this is going to be quite long, so get a cuppa, put on some Rob Dougan and then sit back and relax as I take you on a journey of trains, alcohol and…hugs?

WARNING – the following journal entry contains stupid stunts and ideas, as well as things you shouldn’t do, so enjoy but do not be inspired! You might turn into me otherwise :o.

On and Off

Well, towards the start of last week, I didn’t do much except for sulk a bit, then just walk around in a bad mood. Sounds pretty normal then. Anyway, after that, I got offered a spare ticket to the Kerrang! Awards show taping by Heather (from Huddersfield) and so that was the start of a good week. Heh.

In the mean time I was trying to get to Leeds to see Linkin Park on the Saturday, and since there were day tickets, I thought “Why not?”. So I started looking at transportation options, and found out that I couldn’t get back in time, which meant either spending a night there or not going. Since I didn’t want to impose on people, I decided not to go. After a little while of talking to Shel (from Dundee), I ended up looking at the possibility of staying the whole weekend. I went to the official site, and the company organising the sale of tickets, Meanfiddler, had sold out.

Damn.

Never give up hope though! Shellie somehow came across another ticket site that still had weekend tickets left! Wow – quick! Get it! Forget the transportation! So, I told my parents and booked it. I was going to Leeds and Kerrang! Yay!!

Trainspotting For Dummies

So, I decided to sort all my transportation and stuff there and then as well. I started looking at times of trains for both London (where Kerrang! was being filmed) and Leeds. Went on www.thetrainline.com (best site to purchase rail tickets online) and started looking at possible times for me to travel down and back to London. I soon found out I would have to catch a 6:17am train from Blackburn to get to London’s Euston train station via Preston in time for the recording. Yikes – that means I’d have to be up by 4:30am. Damn. Oh well.

I then looked at a possible time for me to get home, and I thought a 7:30pm train would be reasonable, getting me home for around 11pm in Blackburn station. So I had my times, and had to buy the tickets. The site provided me a list of possible train tickets and I saw a three day advanced ticket which meant I could get up to 60% off. I thought “Great! I’ll get that” since a London return would have cost me £31. I had the urge to read the terms and conditions, and I read that the tickets had to be purchased three days before the day of travel, before 10pm.

Looking at the time I saw it was 9:57pm!

I never moved so quickly in my life. I ran to my mothers purse, got her Switch out and entered all the details to purchase the ticket. 9:59pm – phew. I ended up urging and encouraging my PC to load up the confirmation page to increase the speed at which it was going. Then bam! There’s a problem with the card. A problem with the number? Weird. I double-checked the details and tried again. Same problem. 10:05pm – uhoh. I decided to give up on it, then purchase it with my own Switch card, the one with £30 of an overdraft left. Got it! I bought the ticket around 10 minutes after the deadline. Ooops. It sent me a confirmation and said I’d get it Wednesday. Hmm, cutting it a little fine there. I wasn’t even sure if I’d bought the ticket since I’d purchased it after when I should have been able to. Thank god for website bugs.

Another problem was that I had to find my young persons rail card, because I got a further discount on the tickets. Without my rail card on me, I couldn’t get on the train, which meant no London for me. I wasn’t about to let Railtrack or whoever it is this week screwing up our rail service stop me from being on TV and seeing LP again. I turned the house upside and still couldn’t find it. Obviously, my father moved it somewhere and forgot about it, so he swore blind he’d not seen it. Funny thing is, my family were trying to help me find it, but after looking, they asked what it looked like! How the hell can you look for something properly without knowing what it looks like?

Anyway – I checked out the prices of the tickets to get to Leeds and saw that it was only £7.50 or so, which is pretty much a bargain for the amount of time I was staying, so I kept that price in my head.

Panic Stations

Moving ahead to Wednesday, the day before London and two days before Leeds, I got up early to go into town to buy last minute things – food, drink, cameras, stuff like that. Thing is, neither the ticket to Leeds nor my train tickets to London had turned up, so I was panicking. I had no railcard either, which basically meant the whole plan for the week was off. Not good stuff.

I thought I can’t risk waiting for rail tickets that might not turn up because I wouldn’t have time on the Thursday to purchase the tickets, so I withdrew all money from my overdraft my bank allowed. My mother suggested I phoned my father (who was at home) to see if I had any mail. So I rang.

I had two mail, both registered delivery.

SCORE!

Wait. Kinda. One was from Scotland, which were my rail tickets to London. Deep sigh of relief. The other was from down south. I wasn’t sure where my Leeds tickets were coming from, so I asked my father told open it, reluctantly (he might as well open letters with a dog). He reads the letter then says he can’t find a ticket! OMG. I was really panicking then. No ticket!? WTF would I do? I calmly reassured myself he’d not seen it yet, and it was in fact actually hiding or something. I still had the problem of a missing rail card. Ack. So I bought another card, and that was that.

Score?

Later that day I was due at Nat’s, and so I made my way up there. I got there a little early and just passed the time by reading the little notes in my passport and my rail card. After a little while of waiting and getting suspicious looks (well, who wouldn’t get them from a 19yo hanging out around a high school out of school hours?), Holly and Kayleigh turned up from across the playing fields, and so I made my way over to them. Nat was in the shower getting ready and such. After a little while, she turned up and we, well, they talked. After a little while we moved to the top of her road. We didn’t go into the house because her brother was back from university. Anyway, her brother took Foggy (Nat’s dog) for a walk and saw me. Eek. He looked a little weirdly at me. Ack.

Anyway, eventually, we ended up going into the house and watched TV a bit – the usual Kerrang and other Sky Digital music channels. Then Holly and Kayleigh were packing up stuff, deciding who was spending the night with her and we went to her room. It was a typical teenage bedroom, so there wasn’t much room to sit down so I stood up. Anyway, the girls told me to sit down somewhere, then suggested Nat’s bed, which she was lying in (!). after listening to music with them, Nat started stretching around, playing and stuff, and soon ended up with her head besides mine. The next thing I know she’s holding on to me and she was sorta holding my hand, which was nice, but it didn’t last long because I had to get going – I had stuff to buy still for Leeds.

London, Ho!

Stupidly, I went to bed at 2am Thursday morning, for two hours sleep, because I was chatting to Shel (from Dundee), Heather an organising my plans for the next few days with them. I got a little sleep, then woke up to check out how on earth I was gunna get to the train station in Blackburn’s centre without missing my train. Well, I looked at the buses – nothing. My parents wouldn’t let me walk it, so I had to book a taxi. With less than 20 minutes ‘til my train was due, my taxi finally turned up (a little later than planned). 5 minutes later I was ready for my train complete with new blue hair!

Got on the train to Preston whilst it was still quite dark, and then sorta passed the time by watching the fields, sheep and golf courses pass by. Got to Preston pretty much on time, found the London train and my seat then pretty much fell in and out of sleep for the next three and a half hours.

Got into Euston a little later than expected, but quickly found Heather (from Huddersfield) and Emma (Lincoln, I think?). We made our way to the tube, and just as we got off at Lancaster Gate, we saw like lots of other LPU’ers lol. When we found our way to the Royal Lancaster Hotel (very nice), we met up with a few others, like Dan (from Somerset) and his mate. I saw a few other familiar faces, like Mar (Marianne) and Shru (from London), Jo etc. I also saw Lorraine, who me, Emma, Bucket (from Chester) and Sags (from London) first met back in March during LP week. She (Lorraine) sorta helps out LP with UK things, and is just a typical member of the LPU as far as I’m aware, although she does work on radio if I was told rightly. Anyways, we (Emma, Heather, Dan, Dan’s Mate, Lorraine and who I’m guessing is a friend of Lorraine’s) just hung out in the hotel and passed time until we were allowed to go see Good Charlotte. We had to wait around “20 minutes” (55 minutes), and well, it was rather pointless. They recorded one song, Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous, and the crowd might as well not have been there. Talk about pitiful. It was funny lol. Good Charlotte didn’t even try either, so it was pretty much wasting everyone’s time. After the one song, we were all escorted back to the waiting area, and for the next four hours we stood / sat around, being treated to coke and Jackass: The Movie. Not bad then, but the wait was agony since I was pretty much alone, even despite the number of fans there. It went so slowly, and I just sat there, looking like an idiot with my blue ears.

Numb-bum…

Oh well. I did manage to get a bit of flirting with someone though (I won’t name names).

You might be thinking that I’m being stupid fooling around flirting with people and stuff, but whoever I do end up dating, I just don’t want them to be a rebound, so surely a bit of harmless fun will prevent that? Worth a try.

Anyway, once we went back upstairs to see LP, you could tell everyone was well and truly psyched up for the show, and the crowd were great. LP started off recording Faint for Kerrang, and once they finished, they had to do another. However, Chester cussed and Kerrang said it was a no-no, so just as they began again, Kerrang decided to do a lighting test. After Emma shouted to Rob for a drum solo, the whole crowd started chanting for one, and we got A.06 by LP, which was great, an Chester did one hell of a scream which made it that bit more special too. At least he’s looking better than the last few photos I’ve seen of him. Losing 17lbs in a week would have fucked up anyone. Then after that, they did Lying From You to pass the time whilst Kerrang sorted out the lighting, and then recorded Faint once more. I have a feeling they did that so that they can cut-and-paste the fans into the Good Charlotte performance since they pretty much sucked live.

After the show, Dan managed to get Mike to sign his Frat Party DVD, which was cool of him, and then Chester, Mike and Joe (!) came down to the fans to shake hands. Yeah – JOE HAHN of all people. He was in a good mood. It was great. I’m now missing only something different from Phoenix and then my collection is complete. Rob’s drumstick, Mike and Brad’s guitar picks, handshake from Joe and a water bottle from Chester. W00t.

Yumyum

After the show, me, Emma and Heather made our way to Kings Cross (where Emma’s train was leaving from), and we said our goodbyes on the tube, leaving just me and Heather for a few hours. Why didn’t we go home? Well, we’d both booked seats for later trains. I had a 3 hour wait, Heather a 4, so we went to get something to eat, ideally McDonalds, because Heather has this thing about Burger King. She despises them to the point where she won’t even buy a drink from them. Anyway, after a bit of searching, we couldn’t find much and so we settled for BK and she won a drink – wow. We ate pretty quickly, and we were both knackered so we went to find some grass to lie on, because the nearby grass was actually straw.

I found a map and saw that Regent’s Park was only 10 minutes walk away, and since we had around 1.5 hours to kill, we thought “Why not?” It was quite sunny and quite windy, but that didn’t really bother us. We got there and just sat down on the first bench we came to. Soon we were being ambushed by squirrels that came way too close for comfort, and then one of the squirrels started to attack a pigeon and then another squirrel. Was fun to watch though.

Heather got freaked out by the squirrels, so I suggested moving to some grass away from them so we could stretch out. Soon we were sunbathing as the sun began to set. We were just playing around and throwing grass about and stuff, hehe. Time soon ran out and we had to make my way back to the station for my train. Not much happened on the way home, except once in Preston, I phoned up and found out how my sister did for her GCSE’s. She got a mixture of C’s and D’s mainly, with a few lower grades, which means she can’t do her plans at 6th form, which is a shame, because it will have dented her confidence a lot, which isn’t good at all, but at least she has the opportunity to re-sit the exams at St. Mary’s.

Next Stop - Leeds