MASSIVE PHOTO-POST AHOY.

[bethan_b_bad]

And then in February I went to Oxford to see bigfluffball and go to a John Barrowman book signing, and then on to Guildford for rowanberries's 21st birthday party! And a good time was had by all. I was coherent in the face of meeting Mr Barrowman, which was just shocking. I'm still a little sad I didn't remember to get a photo of all of us at Amy's house, but Charlotte did manage to get a photo of me(ish), John and his sister at the signing. Since she had a video camera in the other hand, this was quite an achievement.





Then March was Collectormania in Manchester. requiem2adream came down on the Thursday night for a meal out with me and the_outlander (in Las Iguanas, because we are ever creatures of habit - and guys, no lynchmobbing his eljay or I'll - I'll frown! *sternface*). On the Friday Lauren and I caught the train up to Manchester and spent the afternoon wandering round the shops and exploring, courtesy of the free bus service, before meeting up with plum177, skitty_kat and nevaendinstorey to go back to Amy's house for pizza, geeking and sleep. Unfortunately it was also at this point that we found out that Naoko Mori had cancelled. D: Luckily I got an automatic refund on the money I paid for Lauren to get her photo taken with her, but still. No faaair.

Saturday was omgbusy. I met (and developed a sudden crush on) Sophie Aldred, aka Ace from Doctor Who, who is very sweet indeed. We got to talk for quite a while, as her queue was small, and she's very lovely, very little, and very pretty. Ace is a favourite Companion of mine - how can you not love explosions, after all? - and meeting her actress just confirmed it.







We saw talks with actors from Life On Mars and Heroes, but the best talk that day was from Anthony Stuart Head, now the subject of another crush. I got mocked by him! (Hey, there are far worse people to be mocked by.) He doesn't sound anywhere near as posh as Giles in real life, but he's very smart and very funny. And also very nice. (Plus, he reallyreally doesn't like Charmed.)







Prior to nipping off for the ASH photoshoot, five of us were in the cosplay tournament as the Torchwood team (prior to Gwen's joining) -- I was Suzie, natch. Didn't win, nor did we expect to, but seeing as the guy who did was in a shop-bought Power Rangers costume clearly the competition was clearly a bit crap anyway. There was, however, an extremely gorgeous Johnny Depp lookalike cosplaying as Sweeney Todd. He had the most fantastic arse, which he was happy to pose for photos of when we dared Teaboy to ask him. Unfortunately mine turned out a little blurry - does anyone have a decent one? Nonetheless, for any interested parties, my version's here. And this is the view from the front. Cool, no? Can't be bothered to post many more photos of me looking crap (I am the least photogenic person in the universe. I hate it.), but here's one of Lauren-as-Tosh with the Toshbear!




Then there was shopping, and general messing around and then we migrated to Manchester city centre and an extremely awesome all-you-can-eat Chinese/Japanese/Indian restaurant. And then the geekbar underneath, where we all got ID'd, despite some of us being in mid-twenties. And then, eventually, the original five of us plus our newly-acquired oz_the_bobble went back to Amy's dad's house for sleeps.

The next day we got up late and nearly missed the Lewis brothers' talk - Matthew Lewis plays Neville in the Harry Potter movies, whilst his older brother Anthony played Tommy for an episode of Torchwood. They were very funny, mucking around, teasing each other, and generally being brothers. Their talk and ASH's were probably the best of all of them, so I'm extremely glad not to have missed it. Happily, there were no obviously scary-obsessed fans in the audience, either -- the Harry Potter fandom frankly terrifies me half the time.



We convinced him to go grab his brother (who had a much longer queue for autographs) so that we could get a photo of the pair of them together. And this he did, when we queued to meet Matt. The assistants told us off for doing it - but seeing as there were something in the region of twenty of us at this point, you can imagine how much of an affect it had. The pair of them were very good sports, and Matthew Lewis dealt with the large group of fangirls appearing together with ease - you could tell he's had practice. I don't think we were worse than giggly and slightly hyper, though.












Oh yeah, and Neville Longbottom? He grew up good, is all I'm saying.

Kai Owen, aka Rhys from Torchwood, was next! His talk was also very good, and involved several spoilers for the Torchwood finale which I won't talk about here. It's on tomorrow night, y'all can wait that long! (Or, okay, ask for them in the comments. Whichever.) Kai was lovely, and when we went to talk to him later agreed to come along to Cardiff and give a Torchwood talk to assembled Geek Groups when they start filming the third series. He also said he'd bring Eve, as she's 'totally mad' and would be up for it. (He told me he was going to be in Evolution in Cardiff after the Wales game the next week, but sadly the queue there was huge when I got there so I didn't see him. Alas!) Kai was incredibly lovely overall, and posed happily with the massive group of Torchwood bears who'd been brought along. He was miffed that we didn't have a Rhys bear, though, so several of the girls nipped off into Manchester to find a Build-A-Bear Workshop and build one, and I helped modify the red t-shirt to turn it into a Wales shirt when they brought it back. His fanboy squee, when presented with it, was adorable.










We didn't stay too much longer after that, and eventually split up - some to go home in a mini bus, and the original five of us departed for trains. The train Lauren and I were catching wasn't due to go until very late, and would have got us into Cardiff at like 2am or something, but Lauren convinced me to sneak onto Amy, Kat and Emily's train with her, and we spent the journey cracking each other up and getting very weird looks off the other passengers. Also, I read The Little Prince, which is the most beautiful thing ever.

And then something else happened, but that's for the next post. :D?