Birmingham, 16th October 2012.

Ah Birmingham. Davey was in Birmingham, if I remember correctly. In fact yes, he was, I know he was, cos I borrowed his koala to sleep with because I’d forgotten my teddy and I couldn’t sleep without anything, (Note: ‘Borrowed his koala’ is not a euphemism, no matter how much it may sound like one) and Annabel and I both wore our I ‘heart’ Davey shirts.  IN FACT DAVEY CAME WITH LOUISE TO PICK ME UP FROM WORK and my boss looked like she wanted to murder me. Yes. I remember now.

Anyway. Birmingham.
Louise and Annabel and some friends had done the dates between Stoke and Birmingham, but I’d been away so I couldn’t go. I remember running to Pill when I saw him before the gig and saying “Pillnahn I missed you!” to which he responded “I missed you too!” which was actually really sweet for Pillnahn.

I ended up being stood in front of Drew at this gig, which was odd for me, because it meant I was stood in almost exactly the same spot as I had been the first time I saw the lads. Anyway, the gig was perfectly normal until somewhere towards the end, just before the encore (which was a really old song, Faces in the Dirt) when Drew stepped forwards towards the crowd. I was stood where two different types of barrier met, one slightly shorter than the other, and as Drew stepped towards us, the crowd surged towards him to touch him (I assume, I mean who doesn’t want to touch a sweaty bassist) and I slipped down sideways between the two barriers, which was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. Because the people behind me wouldn’t step back, I was stuck there screaming and being crushed. I later discovered that Dave the TM saw it all happening and tried to get security to go and lift me out but they refused. Well done Birmingham O2 Academy, thanks so much for that. The pain immediately afterwards was pretty bad, but it did ease off after a while (I think the worst part that night was probably sitting down in the car and putting my seatbelt on) and I think I managed to ignore it most of the time. I still don’t know what I did to my ribs that night, I refused to go to the hospital or the doctor but my stomach and chest were pretty purple and I struggled to breathe for a bit but I got by. I just wish it hadn’t been so early in the tour. To make the whole thing even better, I was filming Faces in the Dirt because it was song they didn’t play very often, so somewhere there exists a perfectly normal video of FVK playing a song that turns into something out of a horror movie with lots of shots of the floor and bloodcurdling screams. Amazing.

My shortness had become a running joke by this point, what with Pill and Beveridge both being 6’’ 2, and somehow we’d gotten Dave to smuggle a foldaway stool into the venue for me. Outside, after the gig, Dave went and got the stool and there is a series of pretty great photos of me being ‘taller than Pill’ in which Pill looks like some sort of terrifying gremlin creature.

This was also the night one of my favourite pictures of Beveridge and I ever was taken, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with anything other than I remember it being a thing.

 Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo

Stoke, 12th October 2012.

Stoke was the first proper night of The Killing is Dead tour, and therefore my first proper night of any tour ever.

The Sugarmill is an interesting venue, because the stage is pretty high to start with, and then at each side of the stage there’s an extra ‘booster’ step, so basically being 5 foot nothing, a lot of my view of the stage in that venue is knees. I said something to Kemp about the height of the stage, and he simply laughed in my face and went “HAHAHA CROTCH SHOT!” which was…just delightful. 

Something must have been said about this, because my other resounding memory of this night is Beveridge showing me the hole in the crotch of his trousers and then winking at me. There’s a photo of this happening somewhere. I think Dave, their tour manager at the time, posted it on Instagram. (Ah Dave. You were a dick. And you hate me now. He's blocked me on twitter otherwise I'd go and look for that photo.)

I have a video from Stoke of the song that was to become All Hallows Evil but at the time was known to me as “the first song”, because I wanted to try and watch it back to learn the words. That can be viewed here.

Stoke was where Beveridge asked me ‘What’s the Latin for ‘exploding’?’ from the stage before thrusting the mic in my face. Why the holy hell he asked me of all people I’ll never know, I mean did he really think I might know or was I just there? Who knows. Anyway, I’m pretty sure the answer I gave was something incredibly eloquent, like ‘…Whuh?’ After that gig I made a point of looking up the Latin for ‘Exploding heart disorder’ (Exploding Cor Inordinatio, a phrase that will stay with me until the day I die) and figured I’d just bide my time until he thought to ask me again. He didn’t. I had to basically scream it at him in Wolverhampton. But we’ll come to that later.

The only other thing I remember distinctly about Stoke is asking Beveridge where his stage clothes were, because they’d done an interview/photo shoot with the Attitude clothing magazine and gotten a bunch of free stuff that he’d worn in Rugby, and he told me that he’d forgotten all of his stage gear and had in fact had to go out and get everything he was currently wearing from a charity shop.

Oh I should probably say something about this being the first time I saw The Dead Lay Waiting live. …Yeah. Considering I went on to see them about another 10 times, I was not their hugest fan. I mean they’re really lovely guys (well, most of them are) but their music was just not really my thing at all. I’d gotten into them a bit more by the end of tour but… you know. Future tours with bands like Fort Hope and Dead! were way more my scene.

After the gig I remember giving the guys glowing lollipops, which were nowhere near as exciting as I’d thought they were going to be, they were essentially just tiny glow sticks with lollies on the end. And I have a picture of Pill with kitty ears on with one in his mouth.

Until next time,

Meg Mercury xoxo

EDIT: I went poking around and to my delight I discovered that Dave had in fact unblocked me on his instagram account, meaning I had access to this beauty that I thought I'd never see again.
You're welcome.

Rugby, 6th October 2012.

Rugby was the unofficial start of The Killing Is Dead Tour. Looking back now, I suppose it was a warm up show of sorts, but I still class it as the first date of the tour, cos it was in the right month and like 6 days before the first official date. I mean The Dead Lay Waiting weren’t even playing but that’s hardly the point.

Rugby was, in my memory, at least, vaguely uneventful. It was the first time the guys ever played All Hallows Evil (which at the time I don’t think even had a name and was what they opened with every night on TKID) and the first time they played Exploding Heart Disorder (which was their single at the time) live. There's a video of that here if you're interested.

Oh actually, Rugby was the night that FVK became the band I had seen the most. Up until then, it had been Trivium, who I’d seen 7 times, but Rugby was my 8^th FVK gig, which meant they’d overtaken by one show. I’d been following Trivium since 2005, FVK since May. I often look back and think this should have rung a warning bell and I should have had at least a vague idea of what was going to happen with my life at this point, and yet I really didn’t.

I wish I had more stories about Rugby, but the only memory I can conjure up is talking to Shane about merch, and him telling me that their flat was just full of boxes of it. He ended up drawing a little diagram of their flat, telling Annabel and I where everyone slept (he and Drew shared a room, Kemp and Beveridge shared a room, and Pill slept on the sofa) and even drew little mice around the boxes because apparently they have a problem with mice.

Oh, I’ve just remembered that Beveridge came to me this night and told me that he still had the Spike Milligan book that I’d loaned him back in May.
I told him it didn’t matter, he could keep it.

EDIT: I made a note in the book I’ve been drafting in to come back and add something I’d forgotten to this date. I’m so glad I remembered to note it down because it was one of the funniest things that has ever happened to me and I can’t believe I didn’t think to put it in before.
While Louise, Annabel and I were waiting outside the venue we saw Kemp, Drew and Pill walking up with giant pizzas. We went over (I tried to steal Pill’s pizza but he hit me with it) and chatted to them for a bit cos we hadn’t seen them for a while before they said ‘see you later’ and carried on into the venue. They’d been gone all of about three minutes when some young girls came up to us and one of them said in the most excited-but-trying-to-be-calm voice “Excuse me, can I ask you something?” We told her ‘yes’, knowing damn well what was coming next.
“Do you like… KNOW Fearless Vampire Killers?!” God bless her. We said yes and she flapped her hands and squealed ‘OH MY GOD’ in an incredibly high pitch before asking us about six questions in twelve seconds. God bless her. She was great.

DOUBLE EDIT: While writing about the second time I went to Rugby I remembered that when Kemp left this night he simply announced “Right. Well. I’m going to go and do that thing now where I get in the van and everyone has to follow me.” And that was his goodbye. Thanks Kemp.

I'll end this with one of the most adorable photos of Pillnahn I have ever taken. 

Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo

Basingstoke, 2nd September 2012.

The idea of Basingstoke was that we’d surprise the guys and just appear on the front row without telling them we were even going to the gig (like Doncaster).
However we actually fell at the first hurdle (…like Doncaster), as when we pulled into the car park we noticed Shane standing outside the van tweedling away on his guitar
I vaguely remember skipping across the car park to Shane and greeting him with something along the lines of “Is the venue open yet cos I really need a wee”. Poor Shane. When I’d had my wee we came back out and chatted for ages and he told us the most amazing story about the time he tried to shoot at a rabbit that was eating the lettuces in his garden to scare it off and ended up shooting himself in the foot with his air rifle. Incredible.

I remember seeing Beveridge come back from the town, and I think at some point we must have seen Kemp, because when we were in the venue the only people we managed to surprise were Drew and Pill. (I have a vague recollection of Pill waking up and finding a wasp in his hair? I wish I could remember the full story to go with that but in a way I think it’s even funnier that I don’t.)

Inside the venue Drew walked past us and doubled back, just standing, staring and pointing for a minute in silence before giving us a hug and saying “I didn’t know you were coming today!”
We evaded Pill until just as the guys were setting up. It was the Bang Bar (again, like The Leopard, RIP) they were playing, which you may or may not know did not have a stage. The guys literally played on the floor, with everyone standing in a semi-circle around them. Pill was bumbling around and generally being Pill and as he squeezed back past us to go and get some more of his stuff he did a triple take and then just scooped all three of us up into a giant hug. It was adorable.
The only thing I remember from the set itself is the classic ‘song about periods’ Bleed Till Sunrise, (and that’s because it was the last time I heard it until 18 months later on the Cabin Fever tour in 2014 in Carlisle, and also because I have a video that is horribly out of sync and I still mourn because that video should have been perfect fuck my life) and Club Tropicana. The reason I remember Club Tropicana is because Falkor managed to elbow me RIGHT IN THE JAW as he and Davey rushed forwards to join in for that song. He hit me so hard I saw stars and actually very nearly fell forwards and took Drew and Kemp out, which to be honest would have been pretty spectacular. Sometimes I’m almost disappointed it didn’t happen. 

Walking outside afterwards, Pill yelled at me “MEG! IS YOUR FACE ALRIGHT?” which I think is the closest Pill actually gets to being caring and concerned, bless him.
When we’d gotten back to Louise’s the night of Manchester we’d dug out the twins (Louise’s twin boys, Bill & Ted) old toy stethoscopes for the lads to wear to be Sanch & Dag so we could recreate the photo from Manchester but with even more props. 

Somehow Pill ended up with one of these and spent about 5 minutes sat on a wall trying to use it on himself before looking up and announcing “……..Where’s your heart?!”

I got a group photo this night and Luke Lucas tagged on the end, next to Shane. I had literally no idea at the time who he was and why he was in my photo, and I’m sure it wasn’t until the first time I saw The Dead Lay Waiting in Stoke that I even realised who he was.

OH! And at some point during the set Kemp flicked the sweat off his fringe RIGHT INTO MY EYE. He tried to make it better by stroking my face.

He poked me in the eye.

In a vague attempt to recreate the Pill-leaning-on-my-head photo in Doncaster, I ended up with this. Amazing.

Until next time,

Meg Mercury xoxo

Manchester, 1st September 2012.

We got to Manchester really late. I don’t actually even remember if there was a reason for that or whether we were just really late. I remember being really gutted not to be on the front row, cos it was the first (and for a very long time, the only) time I wasn’t on front row, and I could see very little from where I ended up standing. Unsurprisingly I remember very little of the music part of the actual thing, but I do remember that it wasn’t FVK’s gig, it was an EP/album launch for a band that I no longer remember the name of (Red something? I think it had Red in the name), and FVK were the main support. The reason I remember this is because afterwards, when we were milling around, I went and tapped Beveridge on the shoulder and he said “Meg! I’m talking to my NEW FRIENDS!” 

Oops.

Manchester was also the first time I gave Beveridge a ‘proper hug’, by which I mean I dragged him over to some stairs that were in the middle of the venue, went up about two of them and then hugged him around the neck instead of around the middle. Being 5ft nothing means it’s pretty much a given that hugging people means my head is level with their nipples. It was nice to be tall enough to rest my head on someone’s shoulder for once.

Um… I don’t remember much else about Manchester. Except that I hadn’t eaten all day, I looked like shite and I had a few more drinks that I should have. And I bought all the lads a drink, which I only remember because when I asked Shane what he wanted he said “Surprise me” and I ended up getting him a Cheeky Vimto. Oh and I bought Kemp a pint of lager and put a pink straw in it, which he actually drank the pint through which I recall thinking was pretty hilarious.

 If you’re unfamiliar with the TV show Garth Merenghi’s Darkplace then you’re not going to understand this but I can’t leave it out. I don’t know how I found out that the band were fans of the show (I think they tweeted about it?) but I was very excited to discover that they were. I can’t even begin to describe what it’s about but the two main characters are DR Rick Dagless MD played by Matthew Holness and DR Lucien Sanchez, played by Matt Berry.  Beveridge had once said he felt he looked like Matt Berry and in my head for some reason this made him Lucien Sanchez and Drew Rick Dagless. I found a pair of sunglasses in Poundland that looked like Dag’s and made Drew wear them while he and Beveridge did a classic Sanch and Dag pose.

I’m easily pleased okay leave me alone.

At one point for reasons I don’t recall Shane told me he “cries every day because he wakes up next to Drew". No, I don’t know either. OH and I found a pair of guitar shaped sunglasses lying around and hooked them onto my top and Drew walked outside (Annabel and I were helping load out but then we were refused entry back in…) and went “Those are my glasses!” and I said “Oh. Sorry, they’ve been in my boobs now.” to which he responded with “Your boobs have been everywhere tonight!”
I was unaware that they had but cheers Drew.

Do you know what I'm dumping this picture here just because it's awful. 

Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo

EDIT: I’ve had to come back to this point because since I started writing I’ve found a little book that I used to write stupid shit the lads said to me in and the first thing in it is an amazing line from Manchester. Obviously this was the first time I’d seen the lads since my breakup/baby meltdown in Doncaster, and I felt like I needed to apologise because really no-one needs to see me in that state. So anyway I apologised to each of them, but by far my favourite reaction to my apology came from Drew, who when I said that I hadn’t realised I’d be that upset responded with “I can stand on it (the baby) if you want. Not to kill it, just to maim it a bit. So that it walks with a limp.”

Doncaster, 21st August 2012.

Doncaster is an odd one for me. I got in from Yeneville the night before it and when Mum asked me how it was I burst into tears because I was so happy and relayed to her that I had the chance to go to Doncaster the next day and she agreed to let me go again (bless her I still don’t think she understands why I do so many gigs and I’ve done pretty much 100 more since Doncaster). I went to bed for all of about 5 hours and then went and got on a train to meet Louise and Annabel and Becky and head waaaaaaaay up north.

We hadn’t actually told Pill that I’d been given permission to go to Doncaster with the idea that we’d be on the front row so that when they walked out I could be like “I MADE IT!” but as it turned out the venue (The Leopard, RIP. Except I think it’s back now. Maybe RIP maybe not.) had an upstairs, which was where the stage was, and as I walked up the stairs to go into the room I walked smack into Pill. It wasn’t the surprise I was aiming for, but it was still pretty cute and he hugged my head.

Apart from the bit that I’ll explain after there are only two things that I really remember about Doncaster (eliminating the one particularly horrific support band whose name I can’t even remember but the singer was trying to hard to be Ziggy Stardust and failing so hard that Louise had to leave the room). One of them is Drew coming out on stage with his flies undone, and me having to call him over to tell him so, as no one around us would tell him. His response was “It’s hot, it needs air!”  I don’t know what I said in return, or even if I said anything, but I will never forget that as long as I live. The other thing that I remember is cutting my arm open on an amp. I only remember that cos I picked at it when it scabbed and I now have a really faint scar there. Go me.

The reason I have such mixed feelings about Doncaster is that just before FVK’s set, I had a text  informing me that the girl my ex had cheated on me with and gotten pregnant had had the baby. In all fairness I had asked my friend to let me know if he heard anything, but I really hadn’t expected to find out the information out of the blue or indeed at a gig. I tried to forget about it during the set (this was during my “front row or no show” days, so it was pretty easy to have periods without it on my mind, namely when Beveridge was holding my hand or I was screaming lyrics something) but afterwards it hit me full in the face. At one point I told Pill that I was really sad because my cheating ex had had a baby and he tried to comfort me by telling me it could be worse, I could have just had a baby. I told him that was a good point and I couldn’t possibly cope with a baby now, and he said “I’d be terrified if I had a baby now.”, to which I responded with “…Pill I’D be terrified if you had a baby now.”
Then he laughed and mimed ‘giving birth’ which was pretty spectacular.

Then we took a photo where he was leaning on my head.

This was also the night that I heard Beveridge say ‘cunt’ for the first time. I can’t remember why he said it but I remember hearing it and me immediately going “SAY THAT AGAIN” because although I’m not a huge fan of the word in general Beveridge says it in the most beautiful manner and it was a wonderful thing to behold.

I don’t remember how I came to be sitting on the floor weeping into my knees but somehow that happened, and as Beveridge walked past me I asked him if there was anything I could do to help because I needed a distraction, and he looked slightly lost for a moment before handing me his bottle of Budweiser and saying “…You can look after my beer?” I asked him if I could drink it (through my snotty sobs) and he, in all his adorableness, responded with “…Do you just want one?” and then disappeared and came back with a full bottle for me, which made me cry even more because that happens when people are nice to me. I hadn’t actually had an alcoholic drink in almost a year at that point, as I’d had my drink spiked at a Halloween party the year before and it had made me extremely paranoid, and it wasn’t until afterwards that I realised that not only was I drinking alcohol, I hadn’t even seen it being opened. I trusted him so much that I’d taken it without question.

I think in the end I actually helped the lads load out and then we all hung around by the van whilst I alternated between crying and laughing and probably generally looked a bit mental. I remember repeatedly hugging Beveridge and Pill, and at one point I had my arms around Beveridge and was having a little cry on him as he hugged me and he bent down to me and said “You deserve better” and then once again I cried even harder. About 30 seconds later Pill came up behind me and hugged me from behind and I had one of the greatest hugs I have ever experienced.

The last thing I remember about that night is Louise taking my hand and telling me I could watch Queen in the back of the car on the way home and Pill saying he’d watch Queen too, and we’d ‘watch it in sync’.
I love that boy.

Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo

EDIT EDIT EDIT: I'm currently in Andover at the Stevie D memorial weekender and I've been hit in the face with a memory from this night.
I can't remember how it came about but Pill started telling me everyone's middle names. He told me his was Darren, and I thought he then informed me that Kemp's middle name was Gollum.
It isn't.
It's Dorran.
I was gutted.
Imagine though.
Kier Gollum Kemp.

London, 20th August 2012.

Yeneville. Where do I even fucking start with Yeneville… 

The Party at Yeneville, as it turned out to be, was a ‘secret’ gig that the lads put on to promote the release of Militia of the Lost, which had in fact come out months earlier, in May. I don’t know why they had the album launch so late, but I’m guessing it was time constraints more than anything else. They did the oddest build up to it, where they didn’t actually announce what it was for weeks, just dropping hints here and there and updating a website with new images and things. Eventually it was officially announced as a free gig, and with this announcement came the news that there would only be 50 tickets.  I panicked immediately and ordered a ticket. 30 seconds later I realised that I’d ordered my ticket under my internet alias ‘Megan Mercury’ instead of my actual name and ended up bagging a second ticket under my REAL name in case they asked for ID on the door and I (obviously) had nothing with my alias on. As it turned out, all of Ashes gave aliases (I think one of them may even have been ‘Stabby Joe’?) and then couldn’t even REMEMBER their fucking aliases so I had in fact been worried about nothing. When I ordered my ticket, I had ZERO idea how I was actually getting to London, where the gig was. I tweeted about my dilemma and was replied to by Louise, who offered me a lift as she and Annabel were going anyway. After managing to convince my mum that she was a real person and wasn’t about to abduct me and kill me, I kindly took her up on her offer and we became gig buddies for the next 18 months or so.

We got to the gig hours early and spent the longest time hanging around outside the tube station opposite the venue. This day was the first time I met Ashes, and what a fucking introduction to them it was, oh my God. My main memory is someone drawing a moustache on Jim and therefore us saying “EHHHH GRINGO” to him all day, and Nico making a sign on a piece of cardboard that said “FREE HUGS” on one side and “NEED DRUGS” on the other that he kept holding up at people getting off buses.

Pill turned up at one point when we were waiting. He’d just finished work and he was wearing his pale blue John Lewis polo shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts, which was essentially one of the most hilarious and least goff things I had ever seen in my life.
Bless his heart.

Yeneville itself was an experience like no other. To be honest, I can probably pretty much put it down as one of the greatest nights of my life if we wanna get super lame. It was the sweatiest gig I’d ever experienced, and Pill said something to me that night that would help me to make a very important decision about three months later. The guys played the album in full from start to finish, and that’s still the only time I have ever heard Even Ghosts Forget live, and only the second time I heard Mascara Tears live. In fact I have a video of Mascara Tears because I was very aware that I probably wouldn’t hear it again, and because I’d given Beveridge ‘peppermint rock and a lollypop’ earlier that day, when he sang that line he turned to me and grinned and raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to be filming something in my life. (Video here if you wish to see)
I also had my first group photo with the lads that night. I sent it off to Kerrang! on a whim and then got the shock of my life like two weeks later when someone posted on my Facebook wall “Hey I saw you in Kerrang!” cos I had absolutely no idea that they’d printed it.

Kemp was WASTED. He was wandering around carrying a 2 litre bottle of lemonade that someone described to me as 70% vodka 30% lemonade. He was wearing a wolf hat that I’m sure I’ve been told the origin of but have since forgotten, and it was perched right on top of his head in a very precarious manner. Oh drunk Kemp. You’re still one of my (debatable) favourites.

(Trigger warning: Self harm.)

Going back to the Pill thing, I’d seen somewhere (I suspect Twitter, he always has been pretty shite at Facebook) that he was helping someone get through self-harm issues, and I wanted to speak to him about it. (I have four huge scars across my left arm from the disastrous new year’s 08/09 when I had some sort of drunken breakdown and decided I wanted to die for reasons I don’t remember, then freaked out when I saw all the blood and changed my mind. I should have gone to the hospital and been glued up or gotten stitches or something but I didn’t tell anyone or do anything about it, so the scars are pretty bad. Anyway.) I went over to him as they were half milling around half packing away and just said “You’re helping someone through self-harm, aren’t you?” he said yes, and I showed him my arm and said “You’re doing a wonderful thing.” He reached out, put his hand across my scars and just said “Don’t do that any more.”
3 months later, in November, I would find myself in a bath tub with a butcher knife with very bad thoughts in my head. Pill saying that simple phrase to me is one of the only reasons that I got out of that bath and walked away. I can’t honestly say that he saved my life, because he didn’t, he didn’t burst into the room and pull the knife out of my hands or anything, but what I can say (and what I have said to him on more than one occasion) is that he is without a doubt one of the only reasons I’m alive, and I love him to bits for that. I mean I love him to bits anyway, but I love him to bits extra much for managing to pop into my head when I needed him the most. Bless his beardy face.

It was also at Yeneville that Pill rang my mum.
…I will explain that more, I just really like that sentence.
Whilst at Yeneville, Louise asked me if I was planning to go to Doncaster the next day. I didn’t even know the lads were playing in Doncaster the next day, so naturally my answer was no. Again, she told me she and Annabel (and Becky, it later transpired) were going and so it wouldn’t be any trouble to have me in the car too. I really wanted to go but I wasn’t sure if my mum would let me, so when Louise said something about it to Pill, he told me to ring my mum and he’d have a word with her. So I did. And he did. I think I have a video of that somewhere too, he pauses in the middle and goes “Hang on I’m just taking a photo” and I have to tell him that I’m filming. He later told me he couldn’t hear anything, and when I got home mum said almost exactly the same words. Oh well. He tried. And I did go to Doncaster the next day. 

Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo