We Breathed The Same Air

I’d like to  imagine that it was that ‘Clever North Wind’ that blew in from Paris, Charles de Gaulle delivering my Bristol bound flight 15 minutes early that Sunday 28th August 2011. I know for certain it was the masters of Stuttgart that sped my silver Mercedes along the M4 corridor and I’d like to think it was the gods of Valhalla that guaranteed safe passage with not a speed camera or police car in sight to let me arrive a further 15 minutes ahead of schedule. The destination was Reading Festival and the reason? A rendezvous with those boys from Teignmouth performing the entire Origin of Symmetry album, back to back and in order.

From this point forward however I’m pretty sure that it was Loki who was taking care of proceedings…. It seemed that my car parking pass purchased for the closest car park was not acceptable…. I was redirected to another car park, miles away from the main arena area and things only got worse when I got there as the person at the gate was all for not letting me in as I was “Too Late”. Remonstrations occurred and finally I was allowed into the site but by now I knew I would be late. What I failed to appreciate was just how far away this damn car park was from the main arena… I remember hearing the opening refrains of New Born from such a distance that it was like a tinny transistor heard through a pillow, forbidden fruit after bed time. I walked faster and heard the song that was the whole reason I wanted to be here, Hypermusic. I’m sure it was amazing but by this point my temper was not great. To cut a long story short I arrived very late, in a foul mood elevated only to “reasonably happy” after seeing what remained of their set.

How was I to know that this evening was to be one strand at the genesis of another story. We were unaware of each other before and remained so after the concert, our eyes did not meet nor our ears hear, we were both here ‘with’ other people. Despite this fact our breaths intertwined somewhere above the heaving mass of the consumed crowd in the rapidly cooling air above the main arena. It would be a full 18 months before our breaths would meet again.