Waking up on a friend’s floor somewhere near Elephant and Castle after a handful of hours asleep, a handful of pistachio nuts and a bucketful of wine, is not always the best way to start the day. Especially not at 7am. It does, however, betray the hallmarks of an evening well spent: eating nuts, drinking wine, playing Carrom and generally engaging in good, clean fun. (Now, I say clean; clean, if we ignore the insistent cough caused by inhaling the chalk dust used to lubricate the Carrom table; clean, if we ignore the way the chalk dust glued itself to our lungs when mixed with the hairspray we were using as fixative on the covers of our Bearpit zines; clean if… well, yeah, the booze. Unsurprisingly, however, I considered the whole thing pretty awesome, lungs be damned).

Anyway, as dawn broke upon our sleeping forms, and our tandem alarms whittled away our collective patience (snooze buttons got a bashing), we were a pretty sorry sight to behold: the bit of my face where my eyes normally live was sagging like a pensioner’s settee and Nick was exhibiting signs of floorboard-induced sleep deprivation and an inability to string together sentences. (This latter condition was one that afflicted us both throughout the day and certainly led to some weird attempts to explain who we were, what we were doing, and why we smelt like the inside of a wineskin to the Expo punters). Nonetheless, we successfully bade farewell to our genteel host, and, burbling to one another in our ‘are we still-drunk or still-asleep?’ purgatory, we made it onto a bus. Better still: the right bus.

We arrived, fresh faced (arse faced) in New Cross. After some challenging supermarket navigation and breakfast/self-serve till negotiation, we made it to the venue to set out our wares.  The space was great; comfortable, friendly and, to our eyes, pretty well organised. We were full of hope that the day was going to be a good one that would line our pockets with silver and stop the throbbing of our heads. Sadly, this wasn’t necessarily what happened…

As most reports will probably suggest, the event was painfully slow at the beginning - our little hearts skipped a beat every time someone walked nearer our table, only to be disappointed as we detected the purple lanyards that denoted the figure was yet another exhibitor, roaming the room for customers. It was pretty difficult going. Still, it did give us plenty of chance to catch up with a bunch of names from the small-press scene (and meet some for the first time): Freddy and Kirk of Dirty Rotten Comics, Rob Jackson, Andrew Cheverton, Rob Davis, Joe from Good Comic Books, Ian Williams, Katie Green, Lando, David Ziggy Greene, Matthew Murray and more.

By the afternoon, the pace picked up, with more than a brisk trade happening at our table (to the gentleman who bought one copy of everything I had on sale: thank you). Perhaps our patter got more refined as the day wore on, or perhaps pity took hold of the folks walking by, but we ended up doing pretty well, Nick in particular. The pub afterwards was also good fun, and it was a shame we couldn’t have stayed longer than we did. Probably for the best, really: I think I would have ended up getting drunk and ranty. Whoops.

So, overall I’d like to think that the event was a success. The atmosphere was convivial and the work on display was varied, but united by a really strong commitment to self-publishing and small-press work. The punters were friendly and willing to chat (on the whole) and that made a difference. It was just a shame that an apparent lack of signage and publicity meant that the day started so slow, and had to end so abruptly. That said, I’m not one to bite the hand that feeds (well, I am – but not in this instance) and I think with a later start time, a later finish, more publicity, and some patience and good-will from us exhibitors, this event could do very well. I, for one, hope it will be back next year.

I am busy. I am eating apple. I am busy, eating an apple

Fointy pinger

(photos from Nick and Ian)