The Madness of Collectormania 4!

Saturday

6.30am – Rhi’s alarm goes off. Instantly cursing it, but excited about the day ahead. We make some attempt to make ourselves look half-decent and go downstairs. After much fiddling with kettle and toaster we are fed, watered and ready to go.

We start the small trek to the shopping centre at around 7.15am. Thankfully we were stopping at my friend’s house – which meant that we didn’t have to pay for accommodation, but did also mean that we had to walk about 30-45 minutes to the shopping centre. Emma (my friend) had shown us the route the day before, but just because we’d seen it doesn’t mean we remembered it. Especially at silly times in the morning. One thing we learned that weekend – silly times in the morning are stupidly cold.

After a couple of small detours (i.e. - we got a bit lost) we finally managed to find thecentre:mk, and – more importantly – Collectormania! We were being indecisive monkeys and couldn’t decide where to go first, but we eventually settled on standing in the queue for Neil and Adrian Rayment - mainly because there was no-one else there. Yes…we were the first to meet them….well, Rhi was actually, but still….

So there we were, waiting in anticipation for the famous people. Two girls appear behind us, generally being as fanwenchy as we were. Listening to their conversation (‘we ain’t been dropping no eaves, sir!’), we’d found out that they liked the usual. Elijah, Dominic, Billy, etc. Then one of them mentions her signed Hugo Weaving picture that she’d bought that morning. Wham! Rhi turns right round and starts talking to them. She’s a massive Hugo Weaving fan. And that was the start of our great friendship with Richenda and Alys. They were just us in another form.

The Twins appear, and wow, they’re so much better looking in real-life. And very tall. Rhi was the first to go up. I was curious to know which one was which, so I watched them sign. Turns out it came in handy, because when it was my turn they turned round and asked – “Which one’s which then?” God bless my natural curiousness (Note from Rhi: or curiosity as it’s known in most parts). And because I “guessed” right, they gave me one of their markers. They’re such nice blokes. After photos and much thanking, the four of us decided to head off in the direction of Christian Coulson’s queue.

Chris’ queue was quite small too, so we were allowed to go straight in. He was such a nice guy too, and also so much better looking in real-life. He knew how to spell Rhi’s full name, which she was quite impressed with. Turns out he has a friend called Rhiannon too. He signed his pictures: “To [insert name here], Best (evil) wishes, love Christian Coulson”. And after the usual pictures and such, we went on our merry (and Pippin) little way.

After getting our tickets to see Anthony Head, we realised it was only about 10.15 am. Strangely it had seemed to be a bit later than that. We thought we’d do a bit of investigating so we had a little wander. We came across the stands for Elijah and Dominic (note from Rhi: see the photo section), and also discovered that the Weasley twins (or Tweasleys, as they shall now always be called) were appearing in the toy department of John Lewis – a big department store right next to Collectormania.

After much walking round stalls and such, we went to see the Tweasleys – who are also better looking in real-life (sensing a theme here?) We had our photos taken with them – the very nice woman that worked there offered to take a photo of all four of us. Didn’t really talk to them much for some strange reason – but they are probably now freaked out by me and Richenda – details will follow later.

A quick tea break and then it was off to see Anthony Head. He’s such a nice guy, and sounds so different from on TV. He talked to us about his new stage shows in London – The Pirates of Penzance and Peter Pan. Richenda made a comment about how she’d already spent her student loan, to which Rhi’s reply was, “Isn’t this what the student loan is for?” Tone (our nickname for him) thought that was particularly funny. He even posed for pictures when he wasn’t supposed to. We love him even more now.

And that was the end of our star encounters for Saturday. What a great start. Lovely celebrities and two shiny new friends for life. Not a bad day, eh?