MCM London Super Comicon, 25th May 2013.

By the time this came around it had been way too long in my mind since I’d seen the boys. A month wasn’t very long to have been without them when you think that I’d had to go three/four months at other times, but coming off a tour always feels like crashing back down to earth, and when you’ve spent two weeks with your favourite people being happy a month is a fucking long time to be without them. Anyway, I can’t remember when the lads had announced that they were attending this to promote their comic some more, but as soon as they did I messaged Maz and asked if she wanted to go.

The doors opened at 10.30 so Maz and I arrived at about 12, thinking we’d have given people plenty of time to get in and we’d have avoided any queues.
Oh dear lord. We were very, very wrong.
The con in February had been all in one of the large halls, so I assumed that this would be a similar sort of thing, maybe slightly bigger, but not much, because it spread outside too. There was a stage outside that The Dead Lay Waiting (who were also there promoting THEIR comic) were due to play on at two, and I was dying to see them because I hadn’t seen them play in months. Anyway, we arrived expecting to breeze pretty much straight in and find the lads, chat to them for a bit, then go and watch TDLW. Beveridge had said he’d only be at the con until one because he had to go and… do something, I forget what, but I still thought 12 was a decent arrival time.
Oh how naïve I was.
Keeping in mind that in February the entire con was in one hall, when Maz and I walked into the hall we were directed to I was thinking that would be where the con was.
Nope.
It was where the queue was.
The room was full of the longest, most weaving, snake-like queue I have ever seen in my life. It seemed to double back on itself ten times over. You know how at theme parks they put barriers up to make you queue in a smaller space? It was exactly like that. Except about fifteen times bigger than any queue I had ever seen at Alton Towers. I almost cried on the spot. Maz and I looked at each other in utter horror as we realised that we were going to be stuck for the foreseeable future. We tagged on what we perceived to be the end of the queue and started waiting. And waiting. As 12.30 approached I actually caved and did something I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t do again: I texted Beveridge. There was no way we were going to get through to him by one, and I was so desperate to see him that I texted him and said if he could possibly hang on I’d be really grateful, because we were stuck in the queue and definitely not going to get through by one. He didn’t reply and I knew he’d be gone by the time I got in there. I wanted to cry.
Several times I suggested giving up but we decided to stay seeing as we’d been there as long as we had, and we made our slow progression through to the ticket booths. The only vaguely amusing things that I can remember happening are me threatening to kick the small child in front of us over for my own amusement, seeing the message “SEE KARL” scrawled in chalk on the floor (I don’t know why that was amusing, I think by the time we saw that we were starting to get delirious) and someone trying to force feed me the biscuits they were passing around when I politely refused the offer.

We got into the actual convention at about quarter to three. We’d queued for over two and a half hours and had missed both seeing Beveridge and seeing The Dead Lay Waiting play. I was crushed. The first thing Drew said when I walked up to the table was “Laurence says he’s really sorry but he had to go. He asked me to tell you.” and I wanted to cry all over again.

I’d written a short letter that I’d planned to give to Beveridge or Pill (Pill didn’t actually even go to the convention but I didn’t know that he wasn’t going when I wrote it obviously), but in their absences I gave it to Drew. It wasn’t much of anything, only a short note thanking them for the past year, because the convention fell three days before the anniversary of the first time I’d seen/met the boys but I’d put a photo from Basingstoke inside it that featured both Beveridge and Pill leaning on my head, which is why it was one of those two that I was planning to hand it to, but never mind. Drew read it and thanked me and laughed at the photo, and I think he might actually have handed it to Shane to read too, I don’t really remember. I’m 99% sure he didn’t hand it to Kemp, and that was probably for the best because somehow Kemp had managed to get wasted. How you get drunk at a comic convention is beyond me, but somehow Kemp had managed it. We’d been there about ten minutes when he wandered off, and came back wearing sunglasses, a red felt bowler hat, a bullet stuffer’s belt and carrying a fake pistol. I have no idea where he’d gotten these things from and to be perfectly honest I strongly suspect he didn’t know either. He looked very proud of himself though.

There was a blonde lady that I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since at the lads table and I think she’d just sort of accidentally stumbled across them while wandering away from the table she was supposed to be at, but she was drunk too and I remember Maz asking her where you could get booze from and she led us away to something called The British Tea Society (I think) that was people all dressed in steampunk gear drinking gin out of teacups. Apparently if you went up and said what she told us to say you got free gin, but Maz and I were both too scared to do it so we gave up on that and slinked away because to be honest that entire stall was really cool but also slightly intimidating. Maz went and bought a book and had it signed by the author at this point but I can’t remember who the author was because I am a terrible person. All I know is the guy was awesome and he wrote her name in the most beautifully detailed block capitals I think I’ve ever seen. When we got back to the table Kemp led us back to where we’d just been for what I think was supposed to be a group photo but Maz and I hid. I remember going up to Kemp afterwards though because this was the first time I’d ever noticed that he’d got his own name tattoed on the inside of his left wrist and I took the piss out of him, asking if that was in case he ever got so drunk he couldn’t remember his own name. (I now suspect that this was accurate, having seen some of the states Kemp gets into, but those are other stories.)

When we went back to where Drew and Shane were I went over to Shane to converse with him properly because I hadn’t really said two words to him since I’d arrived, mostly due to the fact that I was still sulking about the queue from Hell. I don’t really remember talking about anything apart from the fact that he still owed me two pounds, which I brought up as a joke but he got out his little purse (which is shaped like a cat face because Shane is actually a five year old girl) and started digging around to pay me back. When I’d made the joke I’d forgotten it was Shane I was talking to. Any of the others would have laughed and told me to piss off but Shane seemed genuinely upset that he hadn’t ever paid me back for that stupid geometry set and I felt so bad that I don’t think I’ve ever brought it up again.

This was also the day that Kemp FINALLY realised “Shut up Meg” was a thing. As I mentioned before, at this point I’d known the lads two days short of a year and had done more than 30 shows, and it took Kemp until this day to finally go “Oh shut up. ….SHUT UP MEG!” I couldn’t even be angry with him. He looked so fucking proud of himself.

The final thing I remember from this horrific day was ordering a Could We Burn, Darling? print from the massive folder of artwork they had with them that day. It was £20 for a full poster sized print and to be honest I wish I’d bought more than that one because it is a fucking beautiful thing. Oh well. 

Until next time,

Meg Mercury xoxo