Glasgow, 10th February 2013.

The trip to Glasgow was even more insane than the trip to Liverpool. We left the venue in Liverpool with the intention of driving straight to Glasgow, but that didn’t go so well because I started hallucinating on the motorway and made Louise pull over. I’d never hallucinated before in my life, but at about 2 in the morning somewhere on the road between Liverpool and Glasgow I became 100% convinced that I could see a man running down the middle of the motorway, and then all of a sudden we drove through him. (I can’t remember whether it was on the way to Glasgow or on the way home the next day but at one point I also saw evil faces in the trees…) It was my job to keep Louise alert and I knew that I was about to pass out, so I figured the safest option was to stop for a little while. How she’d driven as far as she had in those last two days I’ll never know, although I suppose she did actually sleep in Liverpool when I didn’t so she was probably running on that. After having had about two hours sleep (cuddling my drumstick and snuggling into a sleeping bag for all I was worth) we carried on, until I insisted we stop for coffee/a wee.

I’d had no idea until this day that service stations had showers. This was a total revelation for me, and as someone who washes her hair daily to save looking like she’d stuck her head in a chip pan it was a total life saver. I attained the key for the ‘shower’ (it was basically a shower head on a wall in a tiled room) and set about trying desperately to wet only my hair in order to wash it with the closest thing I had to shampoo, which was something called ‘apple foot scrub’. I didn’t have a towel, so when I’d finally done as good a job as I could manage I wrapped a pair of pyjama bottoms around my head and hoped that my hair would dry rather than freeze solid. I think I ended up with about 50/50.

We got to Glasgow at about 6am, and once again there were only two or three people in front of us. We settled ourselves down on the floor wrapped in a cheap double duvet, and began the 12 hour wait over again. We’d been there all of about half an hour when a very very drunk Glaswegian man came staggering past us. He stopped, turned around and came back, looking at us like we were absolutely fucking insane (to be honest looking back at this experience he was probably right to do so ). He said asked something along the lines of who/what we were waiting for and when we told him it was a band he started to laugh. He rambled on for about five minutes about how drunk he was and presumably a bunch of other stuff that I didn’t catch because drunk Glaswegian is the fucking hardest of languages to translate and then told us that we were even more hardcore than him because even though he was totally wasted he was going home to bed and wasn’t going to have to sit in the snow. Even at the time I recall thinking how jealous I was that he was going home to bed.  Not long after Mr Drunk had gone home, it started to sleet. While we had the duvet (which until that point had been lovely and dry and warm) we had nothing actually waterproof, so we were totally and utterly fucked. In the end, Louise and Annabel left me there to go to a Sports Direct (or something similar) and pick up some cheap umbrellas to try and construct a fort with. Whilst they were gone and I was on my own two girls turned up to queue behind me. If we thought we were unprepared not having anything to keep the sleet off then we were nothing compared to these girls. They were both wearing shorts, stockings, and crop tops. That’s it. Neither of them even had a coat. Keeping in mind that this was a February tour, even without the sleet they would have been absolutely fucking freezing. Had I been a nicer person I would have offered them the duvet but as it was I was cold and tired and alone so I just left them to it. I think they lasted about an hour before they both turned blue and disappeared. Actually now that I come to think of it, they never came back… I hope they didn’t actually die just because I was too selfish to share my soggy duvet…

By the time we went into the gig, the two or three people in front of us had swelled to a crowd of 30 or 40, because every time we left to go and grab food or go to the loo, the people in front of us let their mates and their mates mates and their dog in, thinking we wouldn’t notice. Let me tell you now, there is nothing more fucking annoying that sitting outside a venue from 6am to 6pm and seeing a group of 5 people rock up at  5.55pm and waltz into the venue in front of you. One person is fair enough, if you’re waiting for a mate I totally get that but seriously, these guys took the piss. To the point where I was almost in tears of frustration. If you’re ever at a gig and there are 3 people behind you who’ve been there all day and you want to let 50 mates in to go in with you, please don’t be a dick, let the three people go in first, for the love of God.

Anyway. We FINALLY got in and managed to get front row by some fucking miracle I will never understand as long as I live. My only other resounding memory of Glasgow music-wise is the fucking insane pits that got going during Chiodos. The venue itself was amazing, I think it was an old theatre or something, and it had balconies and slopes everywhere, so for once I didn’t actually find it all that hard to see once we’d bailed back from front row. Chiodos called for a pit every night and usually got one, but the crowd in Glasgow was actually FUCKING MENTAL. Like I think the pit was going before it was called for. To be honest I think it was going before the band was even on. It was huge, too, and there was a guy in the middle directing the pit and picking people up, a proper pit general. He was my hero.

After the guys had played and we’d watched a bit of Chiodos I came to the horrible realisation that I urgently needed something from the car. I don’t take a bag into gigs (well, I do now, but I didn’t used to) and the thing I needed wouldn’t have fitted in my pocket, so I was pretty screwed. I went to the doorman and asked if I could have a pass-out, which he refused, saying that leaving the venue was leaving the venue and there was no re-entry. I tried to explain that I urgently needed something from my car and I’d be gone all of two minutes, but he still refused. I ended up going to a female security guard and asking her if I could leave. She asked me what exactly it was that I needed. I announced “SANITARY TOWELS.” as loudly as I possibly could, at which point all the male guards looked away and the lady opened the door for me and told me to be quick.
Never cross a woman on her period.

We met the lads in the venue this night (which we had also done in Liverpool but only very very briefly). They came out during BVB for about half an hour before they were herded away, which was nice because we’d been told that they weren’t actually allowed out while BVB were playing, as they wanted 100% of the audience’s attention. Delightful. The photo I got of Beveridge and I inside this night is blurry as hell but also really cute, cos I don’t look like I’m freezing to death, and therefore remains one of my faves of us.

I can’t remember whether I told him at this point that it was my 20^th show or not. I think I told Pill, but I might not have told anyone else until we were outside afterwards when Louise gave everyone cake because it was their 25^th show. In saying that, I’ve just remembered spending about 5 minutes arguing with Drew outside about the fact that pink wasn’t a flavour, because he’d said he wanted pink when asked what flavour cupcake he wanted. I’d forgotten that…

When we left the venue and went out to wait for the lads I ended up with about 6 layers on, including my pyjamas, because it was seriously so fucking cold. I don’t remember much of anything in particular happening, other than telling Beveridge that I missed my cat, and him talking about his cat. …I just really love my cat okay.

Until next time,

Meg Mercury xoxo