Peterborough, 18th October 2012.

We weren’t supposed to go to Peterborough. I was working 1.30 till 5.30 that day, and I was still high as a kite on the painkillers I was taking for my ribs when I was on the train home (and at work but that’s another story) talking to Maz about spoons on Twitter when I suddenly thought I’d ask Louise if I thought we could make Peterborough that night if I paid her and Annabel in. It wasn’t until about 4 o’clock, an hour before I finished work and literally only about two hours before doors that we even officially decided to go.

Louise, Annabel and Becky picked me up after work, and I RAN into my house, changed out of my uniform, grabbed my corset, made a flask of tea for Dave (did I mention at any point that we used to take a flask of tea for Dave and a flask of coffee for Shane to every gig?) and legged it back out of the house.

I’m going to take a brief break at this point to say I have no sense of geography. Literally none. I’ve been all over the country following these guys, and I couldn’t point out 99% of the places I’ve been on a map.

That being said, I think it’s safe for you to assume that I had (and by ‘had’ I mean ‘have’) no concept of how far away Peterborough was. The only thing I remember is looking at my phone when we’d been in the car about an hour and my GPS telling me that we were still two hours away. I brought this up and at the point we genuinely considered turning around and going back, but then we decided we’d been in the car for an hour so we might as well carry on.  At some point during this journey I decided to climb into the very back of the car and put my corset on underneath my t-shirt, which was my own way of fixing my still very painful ribs.

When we got there, we found there were only about 20 people actually at the gig, and yet unfortunately I ended up stood next to the most IRRITATING GIRL IN THE WORLD. She was claiming to be a photographer and repeatedly elbowed me in the ribs trying to stand in front of me, even after me explaining to her that I was struggling with fucked-up-rib-syndrome. At one point I couldn’t hack her any more and stormed off to talk to Drew. It was somewhere around this point that he called me ‘Ribby’ for the first time, and I informed him that that nickname made me sound like a condom. He asked if I’d been to see a doctor, and I pulled up my t-shirt and showed him that I was wearing a corset, which was ‘pretty much the same thing’ in my book. He told me to ‘stay off the front row or at least sit down for a bit’, which I refused. At some point I realised that when I’d shown Drew my corset under my shirt whilst he was stood in a corner and I was stood with my back to the room, so it looked suspiciously like I’d flashed him. I told him this and he responded with “I’m glad you didn’t, that would have been scary.”
“Oh so now my boobs are scary?”
“Well no, I mean, yes, because I know you, I mean…”
I’d actually pretty much forgotten this happened until I started writing this. 
I am a bad person.

The lads almost didn’t play an encore this night. The crowd was really crap, I think there was pretty much us on the front row, a row behind us and that was about it. Luckily, the four of us knew there was an encore so we started chanting “FVGAY! FVGAY! FVGAY!”
The band knew how poor the crowd were so they came out and announced Beveridge had in fact been sat behind the merch desk because he wasn’t expecting us to call for an encore.
Kemp looked down at us from the stage and said “You guys had best not have been chanting ‘FVGay’…”
“Who, us? Nooo…”
Kemp: “You little shits.”
Annabel: “You love us really.”
Kemp: “Lovely little shits.”

This was also the night the merch board fell on Drew’s head and Dave shot me in the eye with a Nerf gun. Good times.

I think this was also the first time that I hugged Drew around the middle from behind. He didn’t really react, he just said “Hi Meg”. I asked him how he knew it was me. The answer I got was “Because of the height the arms were at.” …..Fair play.

This was the first gig after which I ever really spent any time with The Dead Lay Waiting, and my outstanding memories of this time include Luke Lucas prancing around in Annabel’s Hello Kitty hat and Ben somehow ending up inventing a guy called “Jesus (hay-seus) Bonk” who he claimed was his Mexican friend. (This actually ended up as a running joke for the tour.) I tried to get a group photo but it ended up with the most bizarre half arsed two band photo I think I’ve ever seen.

I also asked Shane and Beveridge for a photo of all of us with our glasses on. I didn’t normally wear my glasses to gigs but I was rushing so much to get changed when I’d finished work I’d forgotten to take them off so I’d ended up taking them with me. I decided to make the most of it and ask for a photo of ‘Team Glasses’. Beveridge looks really angry with someone behind the photographer but apart from that it’s not too bad a photo. 

Until next time, 

Meg Mercury xoxo