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