Talking about tattoos and Moomins with Graham, the most surreal 10 minuets of my life
Okay so I’m trying my best to remember all of what happened last night. So when we were waiting outside the venue for them to let us start queuing Graham walked across to go into the building “Graham” I said, he turned around and I asked if he was busy, he said “yeah I’ve gotta play, I’ll be out in a minute” when he said ‘play’ he motioned as if he were playing a trumpet which I thought was cute.
When we were at the stage we were literally AT the stage, it was quite a low stage and we were at the front, several times during performances I leaned on the stage and just stared lovingly (mainly for my back but also like hearteyes motherfucker). When we were all coming in and going to the stage Graham was just kind of hanging around off to the side, he seemed chilled out.
So there was a break in sets and Graham and Damon where the next “act” and we saw Graham off in the corner talking to another fan I assume and signing something, it was only one girl so we went over before a crowd formed and he felt swamped. I went over and it kind of went like this Me: “Hi I saw you earlier outside! I just wanted to say everything you’ve done has been a big help for me so I put together this (the moomin presents bag I got him) as almost like a care package to say thank you for everything” Gra: “oh my god wow! Thank you! takes bag and I show him whats inside* Me: “There’s a notebook in there for song writing and doodling” Gra: “Oh that’s so funny I just finished mine and needed a new one to write in!” I finish telling Gra about the gifts and he tucks the gift bag under his arm. He then notices my arm “oh my god!” He says and points at the tattoo on my arm (oochy woochy themed) I mentioned that I tweeted it to him before, he said yeah he was confused because it didn’t have the mouth the way his original drawing did, we talked about how I did a few little changes to the original for my tattoo and we talked about how there aren’t many HD images of the original cover art “HD?” Graham went “High definition” I said “oooh” he went. He pointed at my Little Girl Blue tattoo for Janis Joplin just below my oochy woochy one and asked me what it was, I explained it to him and he said he liked it, I showed him my Andromeda tattoo and my Jamie one and he went “ahh Jamie” I also showed him my newest Moomin tattoo, he likes my tattoos so much, “I wanna show Essy!” He said turning and looking at her “she’s talking” he said, Essy was busy chatting. I told him how my friends “forced” me to come and talk to him because I was ‘confident’ when I met Jamie Hewlett, Graham did a little impression “You must talk to him!!!” He said fake aggressively as if he were the squad making me talk to him, it made me laugh.
At one point I mentioned I was a slam poet but I wasn’t big enough to perform at a venue like that “one day you will be!” He said, I said I only perform in Norwich at the moment “Oh Norwich is nice!” He said. I said I’m from Diss and I don’t think he knows where that is lmao.
He signed my Love Travels CD and then I got him to sign Amy a photo, I saw him draw a little heart on Amys photo and jokingly said “oh I don’t get a heart I’m not special enough” he then went “you can have a heart and then get it tattooed” next thing I know he was touching my arm and drawing a heart at the top of my arm in sharpie. He did it so gently.
I said I had wanted to get Damon a present too but he’s so hard to shop for “yeah! He is! I usually just make him something out of wood” Graham said, “I didn’t know you did woodworking” I said “yeah I went to art school!” He said “oh yeah I knew that but I had no idea you did sculpting and woodwork” I was in awe he’s so talented. At one point we asked where Damon was because he wasn’t sat with the rest of the performers and Graham just went “oh late as usual” when Damon finally did come past we scolded him for being late, us and Graham all went “OH here he is” Damon smiled and gave Gra a hug as he went past.
At the end of our chat I got a photo a asked for a hug, he said sure and opened his arm, I’m just a little shorter than him so my head went to his chest when I hugged him, he was warm and soft and his chest felt sturdy, he smelled fresh. I said thank you as the rest of us got photos and talked to him. He held my presents bag under his arm the whole time. He was an absolute sweetheart and paid absolute attention as we talked I really felt like we were one on one. It’s so insane that we had such a chat and then he sat RIGHT in front of me and played the guitar and saxophone literally so close to me. I’m in awe.
