Angry dad

Early start for a Saturday today. Noel Fielding was doing a signing and art event at Urban Outfitters. Maddy and a couple of friends wanted to head in. You had to get a wristband to get in and they were available from 10am for the event starting at noon. Because there were only limited numbers of bands available Mads wanted to get there early.

Cue a 7.30 start to get to teh shop for 9.15. We got a band no problem and were all set for things kicking off at twelve. However instead of the art thing happening with everyone inside they ended up doing it in the window so we had queued for a band to stand outside. Given that there were around 300 people tring to se in a small window you really couldn't see much, especially if you tried to queue properly. So we ended up standing for another hour and twenty minutes, unable to see anything, while he did the art thing. He was quite good about it and came out to speak to the people who couldn't see a few times.

Once he'd done the art bit they tried to organise the queue, but since the event management staff hadn't set up any sort of cordoning or barrier a large number of people who'd rushed to the front to try and see in the window barged in causing a bit of a crush. The security staff did their best to sort it out and to be honest were doing a great job, but there were only two of them to police a large crowd.

After standing for about another hour with nothing happening and no-one telling us what was going on I phoned the store to try and get an impression of what was happening. They told me it was actually Canongate Press who were running the event and they'd try and get someone to talk to us. Another 20 minutes or so later a woman came out and walked up to me and asked if I'd phoned to complain, then asked why. When I explained that by this point we'd been queueing for about five hours with no-one telling us what was going on at all she said something along the lines of "oh well, they'll start signing soon, sorry."

In the end it was about twenty past four before we got to the signing table, seven hours after getting there. I had another discussion with Angela, teh woman from Canongate who refused to give me her last name. She made it pretty clear that she thought I was being unreasonable complaining about, what was at that point, a six hour wait with no toilet facilities or refreshments provided and not even having the decency to let people know what was going on. On top of that the queue ended up being a bit of a crush. When she got shirty with me I suggested I should complain to the Health and Safety Executive about the way they'd handled the event. She then told me that there were always delays at big events. I pointed out that you didn't have to wait that long at music festivals where there were significantly more than 300 people. To this she replied that a signing was different but in fairness the book festival deal with far bigger signing events than this. I guess the book festival care more about organisation and respect for their customers than Canongate Publishing though.

Anyway, that's just about enough of a rant. I'm still considering whether to make a formal complaint about the event to the HSE. I'll certainly think long and hard about whether I ever attend another event organised by Canongate now. I kind of assume they thought since the vast majority of the audience was kids and youngsters no-one would make that much of a fuss about being totally messed about, but it's totally unacceptable treating people like that in my view.

Maddy was delighted to get the book and get it signed though and that made it worthwhile. And Noel and Dave Brown were great with the audience despite it no doubt being a long and demanding day for them too.