Monday

5am alarm. Grrrr! Found out that it’s not good to spend 3 days on practically no food. We got to the shopping centre at 6.15am - it was still dark! And people were already there! We sat in the Elijah queue for about 2 and a half hours! During this time, I thought it was a good idea for Alys to do some of her fantastic chibis (manga-esque drawings) of Elijah and Dom. They were great, and we decided to give them as presents to Lij and Dom when we eventually got there.

At the front of the queue we managed to persuade the C4 worker that he really did want to let us all go up as a 4, instead of one by one as C4 wanted it. Success! So we went up, only to be told that he wasn’t doing personalisations again. But after much pleading, he agreed. Yay! So he had Rhiannon first, and then Richenda afterwards. His little helper woman was like, “You’re not helping.” They can’t help what they were named! I was next. I said, “My name’s easy. Sarah.” Elijah’s response was, “Oh I love that! With an h?” Once again, the eyes! I managed to engage my brain and ask for a hug, which then prompted Rhi and Chend to ask for one. He was so sweet, very cuddly and smelled lovely.

I mentioned the pictures, even though Elijah had already seen his. His reaction was, “Woah! Cool!” and Dom’s response was, “Wow! That is me!” Alys was very pleased. But to be fair, they were very cool! (Note from Rhi: We also met this guy that does drawn postcards, etc of Buffy/LotR etc characters, and he thought they were cool too.) We also gave them Melody-pops (lollies that make a tune).

And that was our only star encounter of the Monday…but it was so worth it. A hug and some actual face time with the Hobbits. How cool was that? We even went round the side and took photos through the window. Lots of touching Hobbit moments there.

Back to the B&B, watched a bit of Fellowship of the Ring and then to the coach station. Which meant the end of the weekend. But it was so cool, and definitely something we’ll remember forever!