Brighton, 28th April 2013.

On the way to Brighton we noticed a van alongside us on the motorway and we knew instinctively that the lads in it were a band. I don’t really even know how we knew but they just…clearly were. I ended up holding up a sign I’d written that said “ARE YOU A BAND?” at the window and they saw it and got very excited and nodded vigorously. I flipped the sign over and wrote “WHO?” and they made us a sign saying ‘BLACK DOGS’. 

And that was how we made friends with Black Dogs.

Louise and Sarah actually met them because they were playing at a different venue in Brighton that was close to the car park (we’d been dropped off outside the venue already).

The wait for the show was the longest and coldest wait EVER. Because we were by the sea (unlike when we were in Stoke *cough Pill cough*) it was really REALLY windy, and the venue was down a side street, so it was essentially like standing in a wind tunnel for several hours. The main redeeming feature of the venue (The Haunt, I think it closed for a while but I think it’s come back now) was that it was REALLY close to Brighton Pier, so we took it in turns to go there at regular intervals. We were actually walking up the pier to head back to the venue at one point when we bumped into the lads, and we decided to go back down the pier with them. We followed them further into the arcade than we’d actually already explored, and Drew and Pill found House of the Dead 4.

Let me break off here and go on a slight tangent. I am not a massive video game fan. I never had a console as a kid, and it wasn’t until I was about 15 that I even got a PS1, and even then the only games I owned were Dance Dance Revolution and the sequels. However, when I went to uni I met Andy, who was (and still is, he didn’t stop playing when we broke up or anything) a big video game fan and he slowly but surely got me more into them. The first thing I ever really started playing was House of the Dead. There was one of the arcade games in our student union, and between morning and evening lectures (or you know, most afternoons really) Andy and I would just… take control of it and play it for hours on end. It even had handy little things at the side to put your pint on to swig from during the cut scenes where you don’t have to be ready to shoot a giant zombie sloth in the face. Actually you didn’t shoot the zombie sloth in the face, you shot the giant security guard in the face, you shot the giant zombie sloth in the claws to try and make it let go of the stairs and fall down but that’s a whole other tangent.
BASICALLY, WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY, WITHOUT BOASTING, IS I’M REALLY FUCKING GOOD AT HOUSE OF THE DEAD AND ALL OF THE SEQUELS, OKAY..

Where was I? Oh yeah Drew and Pill found House of the Dead 4 and I am very good at it. Anyway, I spent about half an hour watching them, twitching and shouting ‘RELOAD. NO, SHOOT AWAY FROM THE SCREEN.’ and other helpful hints before Pill died and left Drew on his own. I was really tempted to run in and tag myself in but I refrained, and about 20 seconds later Drew died. They got to the second level.
I could have beaten that…

Oh man I’ve just realised that I meant to put in something about when the lads were loading in. Basically, Pill’s arse is always hanging out. Not like bare, I mean his jeans are always sitting below his arse and you can see his pants CONSTANTLY. As they were loading into the venue I told Pill to pull his trousers up (which by this point was a fairly regular thing) and he actually stopped and looked at  the floor as though his trousers had fallen ALL THE WAY DOWN AND WERE AROUND HIS ANKLES. God bless that boy.

The main thing that I remember about this show is that it was the first time I saw DEAD! play. I think it was anyway, I don’t remember ever seeing them before this date but I have seen a LOT of support acts. I’d heard of DEAD! cos Louise and Annabel had mentioned them before, but I don’t remember having actually seen them myself. They played their first song blindfolded, which totally threw me until I found out it related to the name of the song (it might actually have been called ‘Blindfold’?). I really liked them (which was lucky actually when you consider in a year’s time I was following them with FVK on the Cabin Fever tour but that comes up much later) but I was so wound up about the fact that it was the last night of tour and the last night I’d see Fort Hope/the lads that I didn’t really pay an awful lot of attention to them, as bad as that sounds.

I think I cried during Fort Hope and FVK this night, cos I’m really not very good at last night of tour. At War With The Thirst almost always gets to me.  (Current me laughs loudly in the distance.)

Drew smashed his bass up at the end of the set and I screamed.

As I walked out of the venue that night I stole a poster. Just outside I bumped into Andé and he asked what it was. I showed him and he told me off for stealing it, at which point I informed him that if anyone asked I’d just tell them he took it.

There was someone wandering around outside who wanted to talk to Beveridge but seemed to be crying whenever she got near him, so I went over to her and tried to get her to talk to him but as soon as he said ‘hello’ she burst into tears and ran away again. I don’t think she ever did talk to him, but at least I tried. If you’re reading this, whoever you are, I hope I’m wrong and you did talk to him.

I took a photo for a fan I didn’t know this night cos she didn’t have a camera, which I’ve done quite a few times (I just get their twitter name and send it to them), and when I offered, Beveridge went “YEAH! Meg’ll do it! Meg…” and then he trailed off. After I’d taken the photo I asked him what he’d been going to say, and he answered with “…bees knees…I was going to say ‘Meg’s the bees knees’…” I almost cried.
I also told Beveridge he had Irish hair this night, because the wind made him look like Dylan Moran. OH and I kept offering him my hoodie because he kept saying he was really cold.

Andé walked us back to the car when we finally left, because he’d ended up parking Fort Hope’s van really close by. He and I walked side by side and chatted all the way, I was horribly aware that I was probably going to cry when I said bye to him, cos a bit like me and Pill in FVK, Andé was the member of Fort Hope I’d immediately hit it off with, and we’d gotten pretty close. As we walked, I asked him if he had a spare pick I could have to put on a necklace. He’d given a few picks out right at the end of the set and I didn’t really think he’d have one, but he dug around in his pocket and gave me one he’d been using on his acoustic guitar earlier in the day to film a video for a YouTube interview. When we finally got to the car and said goodbye for the last time I managed to pretty much hold it together until I got in  and we started to move, then I started to sob. I messaged Andé and apologised for being so quiet but I’d known I was going to be upset. He told me it wasn’t a problem and he was sad too.
When I got home I made a hole in the pick he’d given me.
I’ve worn it around my neck every day since then.

Until next time,

Meg Mercury xoxo