Was it really ten years ago that Princess Diana decided she didn’t want me and my chums to run a comics convention in Birmingham so decided to have her funeral on the same day?
I should explain. Back in the mid 90s I was doing zines and stuff about comics and eventually was running a mail order distro selling small press comics and importing weird stuff from the US and Europe. Around all this these existed a community that would meet up at the big comics conventions like UKCAC in London and the more niche events like the still running Caption. At some point in, ooh, 1996 I realised that while these big events were all lovely and stuff all the action went on in the bar. The talks and signings and stuff were just a justification. You could do away with all that and just meet up in a pub.
So we did.
Every month a group of comics folks from Birmingham would meet up in the pub and talk comics. And it still goes on to this day.
Of course having stripped the concept down to its essence the natural inclination was to build it up again, and so the notion of BrumCAB (Birmingham Comics and Beer) came about. Essentially it was to be a bigger pub meet where we’d book the upstairs of a venue and get people to come along from other cities. There’d be some stuff for sale, a booklet of art and, most critically, a pub quiz about comics. I think that was our most inspired move, quite frankly, especially with Dave Morris’ section on obscure Kirby monsters.
Thanks to Dek Baker’s punk connections we got free (I think) use of the upstairs of the Exposure Rock Cafe, now an exotic dancing ladies establishment, for the Saturday daytime. After that we’d go for a balti, naturally, and then onto the usual pub.
The date set was Saturday September 6th.
On August 31st Princess Diana, a woman who I had never really had any interest in, went and died. Over the next few days the country went fucking mental and it was both amusing and mildly disturbing. Until they announced the funeral would take place on Saturday 6th and it looked like the country was going to shut down for it.
Bollocks.
Now I had a load of advance payments for BrumCAB. Not much, just a few quid or so, but confirmation that people would be coming. Also, this was pretty much pre-internet. If it was to be cancelled then I’d have to write to people using stamps. And it was a close thing. The manager of the Exposure was pretty sure he’d be open but the owner hadn’t decided whether he needed to do the “mark of respect” thing or not. Finally on the Friday I went in to meet with my long haired conspirator. We were go.
Going with the Rock Cafe was a bit of a joke to begin with. This place was kinda cheesy with lots of shiny aluminum and black leather about the place. But in retrospect we couldn’t have done better. See, had we gone with a standard pub or venue then they would have been closed for the funeral. The Exposure, however, was alternative and when push comes to shove that counts for something. My faith in the unifying power of subculture was reaffirmed that day.
Of course even with a venue we still had to put the event itself on. I remember getting a taxi in to town that morning, laden up with posters and booklets and stuff. The roads were completely empty and the taxi driver was emitting vibes that indicated he was rather insulted that I’d decided to carry on my business as normal on such a day. I arrived at the venue to find Andy Luke sitting outside like a lost dog and, as others arrived, proceeded to set up. Pretty much evenyone made it and we had a good turn out. In fact we managed to create a non-Diana space, probably one of the few in existence on that day. If nothing else that was a major achievement.
There are more stories from that day, from the balti house to the Spanish pornography the next day, but they can emerge as and when. All that matter is Diana’s ghost tried her damnedest to stop us and failed.
Naturally ever since that date the concept of Princess Diana (and that’s all she is, a concept) has had pretty negative connotations with me. I mean, nothing personal (and how could it be since I never knew her) but fuck off with your ghoulish Diana worship. All you who think she matters, you all secretly want to own this. You know you do.
SCREAMS ! Thats horrific ! Why would anyone want anything like that ?
Unusal synchronicites going on Pete. Yesterday, I made my LJ mostly friends-only with about twenty public entries left, thus changin the face of my journal.
At 2am this morning I posted a entry (post-dated for I think, two days time), on BrumCab. If you click on the front page it should come up.
Woof ? Hoot !
I have similar feelings. I got up early the morning of 31st august to watch a certain cartoon I liked (yes, I was that young). However, there was a notice in the corner of the screen saying “Please turn to BBC1 for an important announcement”. I did so (during the ad break!); there were four people talking about some event, but I couldn’t make out what the event actually *was*. Eventually I turned to Sky News which actually told me what was going on. My mum was just coming downstairs, so naturally I told her. She comandeered the tv and I *never saw the end of the cartoon*! It was an important episode as well!
At the age of 11 this was a pretty important thing in my life, much more important than the death of some princess who, before she died, no one had seemed to like very much. In fact I found the ‘outpouring of grief’ that followed incredibly hypocritical. I suppose that was before I learnt that a lot of things in life are like that.
My story of hearing about Her Death is kinda amusing. I was at a friend’s party in Bolton, sleep over style, and for various reasons lost to the mists of time had gotten very, very, very, VERY drunk. The next morning I refused to emerge from whatever bed I’d found myself in. Chum Ben pulled the covers off me and said “Diana’s dead”. My response was a gruff “Good” as I pulled the duvet back.
The death was actually a blessing for me on that day. Radio 1 was playing ambient chill out music all day out of respect (cos Diana was all about the chill out) and quite frankly I couldn’t have coped with anything more.
I had the dubious pleasure of being awake the whole night that Diana died. I was driving in a very slow convoy of various hippy buses, caravans and clapped out transits from Evesham to Kent (to pick apples) from 9pm to 7am so heard the whole sory mess unfold on the radio and at various service stations along the way.
At 6am when they announced, live on Radio 1, that she was indeed dead they had a reporter out in the streets of London. The only people she had managed to find were some chemically assisted young people who had just stumbled out of a nearby club who gibbered there way through the “interview”.
We had a Diana free day too – we had the day of and got very drunk in the orchards.
I was in London back then and didn’t have a telly so I’d not seen images of the area round Buck House. I was astonished when I took my usual route up the Mall to my art class. It was lovely without cars, but the millions of bunches of flowers and cards were just really, really strange. It still seems inexplicable now.
On the day of the funeral I painted my back bedroom.
Good to have you back Pete.
That was grand, that convention. Still one of the best I’ve been to. I remember driving up, we had the road to ourself and sailed through rain and rainbows. I’ve still got those trousers, you know, that everyone drew all over … and they still fit. The humungous hole in the arse renders them pretty much unwearable, mind. I should probably compost them.
Was up all night writing my MA thesis the night Diana died. First response when my partner came in to tell me she was dead: “Did she kill herself?” (What can I say, I had 5 hours sleep in 72 hours).
Best moment: walking a friend to the train station on funeral day in Coventry, past a boards-on-the-windows porn shop which pricelessly bore the sign: “closed as a mark of respect”.