It was my hope that I'd be able to put up a little video of my trip to Glasgow, but my plan to do it on Tuesday was scuppered when I woke up feeling lousy. It's just a cold, but add that to a knackering weekend and it knocked me for six.
We — that's Karl Kennedy, one of the organizers of the Commando and British Comics Swap Meets, and I — headed off on Friday at 6.15 am to beat the Friday morning traffic and had a pretty sweet drive. From Essex through Cambridgeshire, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland and across the Scottish Borders and parts Scottish until we reached Glasgow. We only made two brief stops: one to look at a life-size Lancaster Bomber Memorial on the approach to Lincoln; and at Scotch Corner to grab a drink and a burger.
Arriving in Glasgow around 2.30 pm, we headed for Forbidden Planet, bumped into a couple of friends and arranged a quick drink at the nearby Bavaria Brauhaus bar. A couple of pints later, we headed off to the Airbnb we were booked into and met up with Stuart and Ed (who organize the art show) and Keith Burns, not only a top artist but a firm supporter of the Swap Meets.
A fish supper later, we headed to the venue, a scout hall that was full of scouts. We had to wait until they were finished before dragging in a load of tables and then unload the car; we finished around 10.30, watched a bit of Red Nose Day before crashing.
I woke up at 3.30 and was unable to get back to sleep again; the room was way too warm and the boiler was revving up every five minutes. I sneaked off downstairs and read for a couple of hours. We were due up at 6.00 and away back to the venue by 7.30 to — in my case — empty six boxes of books onto the table. I had examples of most of the comic reprints and comics indexes that I've done over the years. Plus the new ACTION: THE SEVENPENNY NIGHTMARE. I'd sold a couple of copies before I'd finished unpacking!
The punters came in at 10.00 and I had a steady stream of customers, selling copies of a dozen different titles. I got to chat to a lot of Bear Alley's supporters and some folks — like Stephen Montgomery (co-editor of Sequential) and Colin Brown (who runs the John M. Burns Facebook page) — that I've known for a few years through e-mail and FB posts. I sat next to Colin MacNeil, with Colin Maxwell behind me. It was a pleasure to meet people like John McShane and Dave Alexander, Gordon Tait and Gary Walsh, and we had a bone fide celebrity, Susan Calman, who is a 2000AD fan. I grabbed a selfie with her, but my phone is ancient and the camera not great.
We left about 4.00 or thereabouts as we were heading back south the same day and were facing a roughly eight hour drive. Eventually, we arrived back in Wivenhoe at 10.30 pm, unloaded boxes (four rather than six) and was in bed by midnight.
I've been keeping myself busy since then, although a night without much sleep leaves you with jetlag that took a couple of days to get over... and by then the cold had taken hold. What profit I'd made went on paying for some more printing; I had to nip into town on Tuesday and picked up five books for £2 (a good haul!), my Mum was over on Wednesday and that's you, dear reader, all caught up. It's six o'clock on Thursday evening, Mel's due home shortly and I'll be cooking dinner in about an hour's time. I realise I have an astonishingly dull domestic life, interrupted with the occasional bit of excitement.
There's nothing due until at least June. Hopefully I'll have recovered by then!
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