Glasgow Comic Art Convention, Part 1

Originally published April 10, 1992

MARCH 12: My plane is an hour and a half late getting into London’s Heathrow Airport, where I’m to make my connection to my flight to Glasgow. The reason given by American Airlines for the delay is a rather unique one: We’re told that because of prevailing tailwinds, our plane–had it left on time–would have arrived at Heathrow almost an hour early. Therefore (we were told) the order to wait came from London air traffic control.

Now I don’t know if they were hosing us or what. I personally would not have minded a bit getting into Heathrow early. Nor would the people seated nearby me who wound up missing their connection in Heathrow because we were now late. The cushion of time built in for my connection was a comfy two hours; thanks to the delay, by the time I get off the plane it’s trimmed down to a crisp 25 minutes…during which time I’m going to have to get to another terminal, get through customs and immigration, and go through the rigorous Heathrow security system.

I run down a hallway and get to a sign that points to “Arrivals” in one direction and “Transfers–Terminals 1, 2 and 4” in the other. Figuring that the former is for people who are staying in London, I bolt for the latter. The entire way to the shuttle bus I look for the Customs and Immigration desk. Nothing. That was the other direction. To my shock, I get on the bus and am driven over to Terminal 1 without being checked through immigration. With absolutely no effort at all, I’ve managed to enter the U.K. illegally.

I wander, hopelessly lost, around Terminal 1. I finally find a security check-in point and ask them where immigration is. The guy looks at me slightly appalled with a “How did you get past customs?” expression, and I’m convinced I’m going to be arrested. My only hope is that I get to be defended by Rumpole of the Bailey. But the security guy points me to immigration.

I have ten minutes to make my flight as the immigration woman looks at my passport, looks at me, and tells me that the rule is that you’re supposed to check in at the terminal you’ve entered the country at. My voice kicks up an octave as I look in horror at my watch and squeal, “You’re not sending me back there, are you?!” She takes pity on me (I am pretty pitiful), stamps my passport and welcomes me to the U.K.

With five minutes to spare I get to my connecting flight–and then spend 45 minutes in the departure lounge because the flight’s delayed. I call home to let my wife, Myra, know that I’ve made it to Heathrow. I wonder why she sounds like I just woke her up. It might possibly be because I’d gotten the time difference mixed up, and that I’m calling her at 4 AM E.S.T.

I finally get in to Glasgow and am met by convention organizer Frank Plowright. He doesn’t drive, so we go down to a waiting cab. Frank and I get in the back seat, and a guy hops into the front passenger seat. No one’s in the driver’s seat, and I wonder who we’re waiting for and who the guy up front is when the cab, to my shock, suddenly starts to move. It is my first (of several) reminders that in Europe they drive on the left, which would naturally mean that the steering wheel is on the right.

We get to the hotel where the convention guests are staying: The Copthorn, ideally located in the center of town at George Square. I get up to my room which is roughly the size of my dining room table. Still, even though the room is incredibly small, I figure this shouldn’t be too much of a problem. I haven’t flown thousands of miles so that I can hang out in my room.

As a welcoming gift to Glasgow–and after having read my earlier column where I mentioned trepidation about Scottish food–Frank hands me a can of Premium Stably’s Black Pudding (a.k.a. Blood Pudding) in a Skin (an emblem of a trophy at the bottom of the can pronounces it the 1991 European Champion. And here I missed the contest. I can just imagine the swimsuit competition).

I check the ingredients: Blood, rice, barley, oatmeal, wheat flour, beef suet, onions, salt, spices. It does not say precisely what sort of blood is in it, nor does it mention whose skin it’s in. I smile gamely, reminding myself that if I have no trepidation about eating scrambled unfertilized chicken embryos for breakfast, then I have no reason for getting nervous about food with a prime ingredient of blood.

Frank leaves me on my own. I go out and get all my souvenir shopping out of the way, cruising up and down Buchanan Street, one of the main shopping drags. I feel very touristy. I stop in at Forbidden Planet and chat with the guys there. They mention Grant Morrison will be there tomorrow, so I resolve to stop by if I can.

I go to other stores and buy an assortment of the exact types of things you’d expect a tourist in Scotland to buy–sweaters, kilts (no, not for me), tams, and shawls. I buy a hat for myself that looks like the kind Sean Connery wore in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” and I keep practicing saying “Junior?” with a brogue.

I get back to the hotel, nap for a few hours, and Frank and I go out to dinner. I absolutely flip out when we turn a corner and there, in front of me, is a genuine blue police call box, the kind that hardly exist anymore except in the hearts and minds of Doctor Who fans everywhere. It’s a bit ravaged by time (appropriately, I guess) but it still looks great.

After dinner we meet a bunch of people at a Pub. Now I should make it clear that I really don’t drink all that much. However my guide book reads, “Teetotaling is looked upon with contempt in Scotland.” I don’t want to be held in contempt, but at the same time, I want to be responsible.

Many years ago, one of the two mentors I’ve had in my working career–a man, now gone, named Paul Hurwitz–gave me a sound piece of advice for anyone who is only the most occasional of drinkers: Develop one drink which you order whenever you’re in a drinking situation, and nurse it. I’ve always followed that advice and consequently have never gotten drunk, which is fine by me. In America, if I go to a bar, I order a Screwdriver. But in this Scots pub, it doesn’t really look like a Screwdriver type situation. Fortunately, I’ve planned ahead.

I avoid large, forbidding pints of booze and opt for a half (pronounced, “hoff”) of whiskey, which is just under two ounces. A real Scotsman orders “a hoff and a hoff,” which is whiskey with a beer chaser, but I’m not interested in being real: Just sociable.

I drink three “hoffs” in the course of two hours. The whiskey–the strongest alcohol I’ve ever had in my life–burns as it goes down, but because I’m sipping so slowly it just feels pleasant rather than intoxicating. The result is that I remain stone-cold sober.

On the other hand, one of the folks I’m with, John (I won’t mention his last name because I don’t want to embarrass him) had been drinking since early afternoon. He is what one would term a “good” drunk, if there is such a thing. He is laughing, boisterous, very outgoing. Remarkably, I don’t smell alcohol on his breath. He asks me where I live, and I tell him. He asks me what airport that’s near and I tell him. He asks me this again about four times in the course of the evening, each time very eager to hear the answer. He also belts out the theme song of “Fireball XL-5.”

I’m also struck by the accuracy of my guide book in another respect–that in the pub there is a good deal of good-natured ribbing. People calling each other names, even insults, that if I ran them here would seem, in cold black and white, to be hurtful and nasty. But everyone’s laughing as they say it, and are so clearly happy to be with each other and see one another. The warmth and good feeling in the pub is pervasive and relaxing. It makes the TV bar camaraderies of “Cheers” seem positively formal in comparison. My first real, close-up impression of Glaswegians is that they are a warm and amiable people, and I’m pleased for the chance to get to know them.

MARCH 13–Breakfast. At the buffet is not only blood pudding (which looks like a round, thick, sausage patty) but haggis, which is a Scottish dish made up from various internal organs (like intestines) of sheep. I feel some trepidation. But no less an authority than Harlan Ellison vouched for the blood pudding to me. Besides, I’m on a roll. I had woken up with no ill-effects from the previous night. If I could handle whiskey for the first time, I should be able to handle this.‘

The black pudding tastes thick and extremely spicey, like a sausage. I’m not that wild about it, having nothing to do with the ingredients, but simply because–even at home–I don’t like spicey sausages. I have more luck with the haggis. I wish I could describe what it tasted like, but I can’t. It tasted like haggis–very faintly like lamb, but also various spices and some onion flavor. It’s not bad.

I have decided to rent a car and drive up to Loch Lomond, up in the Scots Highlands. It had taken some doing to find a rental car agency that could give me a car with automatic drive. But I’ve never driven a car with a stick, and I figure that adapting to driving on the “wrong” side of the road will be tough enough; trying to adjust to manual transmission at the same time, I’ll probably kill myself. As it is I’m not sanguine about the odds of my coming back undented, but I’m determined.

The car has automatic transmission, as promised–but it’s the first time in over a decade that I’ve driven a car that doesn’t have power steering. It’s like trying to maneuver a frigate. I resolve to try and avoid parallel parking situations.

I figure the first thing I should do is avoid driving in the city until I’m used to the car and the situation. Fortunately, the rental agency is only two blocks away from the entrance to A82, a highway that runs all the way out to the Highlands. I figure driving on a highway won’t be as tricky as dealing with the demands of city driving.

Naturally I manage to miss the entrance to 82, and wind up driving in a huge circle through Glasgow. I’m in a sink-or-swim operation, having to adapt not only to the sensation of perpetually feeling that I’m about to have a head-on collision, but also getting the hang very quickly of Glaswegian road signs. Making left turns is not a problem, but right turns are more difficult, because I have to keep reminding myself not to instinctively drift over into the right hand lane. Drivers seem to sense that I’m new at this and start giving me a wide berth.

Half an hour later I achieve my great triumph–I’ve made it back to where I started, and I haven’t cracked the car up yet. I’m not exactly brimming with confidence yet, but I’m slightly buoyed. This time I find the entrance to the main highway and I head out in the direction of the Highlands.

A82 is, at that point, a four-lane divided highway. I figure that, since I’m still new at this, I’ll only drive just at the speed limit or a little below it. So I drive in the right hand lane, which I thoughtlessly figure is the slow lane. It’s only after people behind me are flashing their lights in irritation that I realize, like a cluck, that I’ve actually taken up residence in the fast lane. If you drive on the left, then you pass on the right. D-uh. I get over to the left lane and people shoot by me, shaking their heads. I don’t blame them.

The trip up is uneventful as I get more accustomed to driving. The weather up in Loch Lomond (indeed, in the entire area that day) is insane. I’d pull over to the side of the road and watch it snow on the Loch with blizzard-like intensity. It would do that for fifteen minutes. Then it would stop. The Loch would be covered with fog, and then the mists would dissipate and gorgeous gobs of sun would shine through. And it would stay that way for ten minutes…until it started to snow again. And so on.

It’s as if the whole area is inside one of those glass paperweights that you shake up and little fake snow swirls around furiously before settling down.

At one point I drive up a narrow mountain road to try and get a panoramic view. But after a couple of miles, with the snow falling again and no room should a car come in the other direction, and no inkling of just how far up the road goes, I chicken out and turn around. A three-point turn with the non-power steering is five minutes of grunt-filled exercise.

I drive back down half a mile, and a ram leaps directly into my path.

It’s a remarkable piece of timing. One road. One car. One ram. The dámņ thing could have crossed at any other time with no jeopardy at all, but instead it suicidally jumps right in front of my car.

I slam on the brakes, sliding and almost skewing off the road. The sheer climb up the embankment on the right hand side of the road hadn’t phased the ram, but going over it in my car would sure as hëll have phased me. The car stops and the ram looks at me with curiosity before continuing on its way.

I’m filled with relief that I didn’t hit the thing. I would have been in a real fix then–on the one hand, I would have felt terrible about leaving its dead body in the road. On the other hand, there is no way I could possibly have snuck the corpse through customs.

I head back down to the main road and soon pull over to the edge of the Loch. I climb over barrier fences and crouch down on the bonnie banks. The serenity of the place is breathtaking. I hear nothing except the gentle lapping of the water. In places like this, you truly get a sense that all of humanity is merely passing through.

Also, as I see beer bottles and Coke cans littered around, against the backdrop of the majestic snow-covered mountains, I’m reminded again of the beauty that was handed us with the creation of this planet–and the unspeakably rude manner in which we’ve responded. If a child were given a brand new toy and proceeded to rip it apart and destroy it, we would automatically stop the child from engaging in such deplorably destructive behavior. Too bad it’s taken mankind this long to become aware that such behavior is not acceptable for grown-ups either.

I head back to Glasgow. I get back to Forbidden Planet after closing hours, but the store owner is still there. He introduces me to Grant Morrison. I say, “I’ve enjoyed a great deal of your work.” He half nods politely, says “Thanks,” and goes back talking to his friend (who was also introduced to me, but I didn’t catch his name; I’m still working on getting the hang of Scots accents).

I’m left standing there with nothing to say. End of meeting Grant Morrison. I toy with the idea of shouting, “But I thought Arkham Asylum stank on ice!” but dismiss the notion as probably being bad form. Instead I wander off in desultory fashion, pick up a coupe of things including an X-Factor t-shirt. The owners refuse to take any money for the stuff. I suppose I could give them a free plug in exchange–let people know they’re at 168 Buchanan Street, Glasgow, G1 2LW, phone 041-331-1215 (for mail order call 071 497 2150)–but I would never stoop that low.

Back at the hotel I run into other convention attendees (with whom I will go out for Indian food, which I eat about as often as I drink alcohol) and John, who has only vague recollections of the previous night. Within earshot I sing softly, “I wish I were a spaaaaceman,” and John covers his face. “Was I singing Fireball XL-5 again?” he says. I nod.

After dinner a bunch of us go back to the hotel bar until they throw us out. I’ve closed out two bars in two days, which is two more than I’ve ever closed out before. The convention promises to be interesting. ‘

(Peter David, writer of stuff, will conclude his Scots trip next issue. It’s pure dead brilliant, Jimmy.)