put on your jelly bracelets and your cool graffiti coat
So now that I'm eventually getting around to writing about Saturday, I'm surprised I can still remember anything. Yay for other people having already written reports! The pressure is off!
We had an alarm set for 7.30 on Saturday, and Hilary was first up. It was Jaina's phone we were using as our alarm, and as I have the same phone as her, it was a little disconcerting that I was woken up by what my sleepy brain thought was my phone, but wasn't. After Hilary had showered and we'd all lazed around a little more, I had a shower, and then Jaina did. She was going to come down with us to get a photo ticket for the twins - Hilary and I already had ours, but we'd talked Jaina into getting one too, due to their niceness the previous night!
So we went downstairs and hovered around, waiting for that. Then we saw Tim coming down the stairs, wanting a Ron photo ticket. So we did some standing and chatting, and then we deserted Tim to go in for our pictures with the twins. They were lovely, a little tall, but I can't hold that against them! Hee. Anyway, so after that, we went back outside, where Tim was waiting for us. We considered running for breakfast, but decided against it since the twins had been late arriving and we didn't want to miss our pictures. So we stood and did some more chatting until we were called for our Ron photos, and once again we abandoned Tim - his number hadn't been called. It was mere moments, however, before he joined us in the room.
Ron came in, wearing a natty red jumper with GOLF emblazoned on it. It was a bit grandad, if you ask me. But I guess you didn't. He was all smiles and seemed pretty happy for the pictures - perhaps he's more of a morning man.
After a trip back to the room (on the way, I told Tim that Kat hadn't showered as she wasn't having her photo taken. He spluttered with laughter and said that you don't have to be having your photo taken to have a shower, and I also spluttered with laughter in return and clarified that he hadn't let me finish and that all I meant was that because she wasn't having her photo taken, she had time to wait and shower while we were gone. So there. [Even though she didn't...]), we collected Kat and went to Cafe Nerd for toasties/muffins/brownies/sandwiches and coffee/not very nice hot chocolate that was too hot to drink before it was time for the Jonathan and Christina (and Michael...) photo session.
So we went down to get that done, and Hilary and I were put into Jonathan's queue first, while Ryan was only getting a picture with Christina so obviously he was in her queue first, with Diluki and Neil. I was chatting away to Hilary when Jonathan came in, and I heard Ryan say my name, and looked at Jonathan before Ryan (no idea why). When Jonathan came in, he'd brought the Jaffa Cake Basket with him! We were excited! He started to crack open one of the mini packs, and then spotted me pointing across the room and giggling, and he grinned at me and said “Hi darling!” so I waved back at him. Hee. I smiled a lot! woodsong_1978 was just in front of us and asked if we'd given it to him.
When I got up for my photo, Jonathan put his arm around me and said “You know, Sean stole a bunch of my Jaffa cakes!” I said “That's no good!” and he said “I know! I could spit in his mouth! I don't know why I said that, that's disgusting.” I love him so much.
After that, we went along to the main hall for Neil's talk, and ran into him on the way, coming out of the toilet. Hilary asked him not to start (as we were stopping at the loo) and he was like “hurry hurry!”
Neil's talk was first. He talked a lot about Charmed, and Love Soup, and Max Meltus and Nick Fury and all that stuff, and then suddenly he'd been on stage for 45 minutes before he got round to asking for questions. He also told stories about how he's always calling Shannen Doherty a bitch, and how that didn't go down so well at the Charmed con, where people are actually FANS of the show, lmfao.
After Neil came the twins. They were great up on stage, funny, and got some questions that weren't ALL about being twins, which was interesting. The funniest part, imho, was when Yan put on the Jayne hat that was on his seat and tried to get Rafael to wear his, which he wouldn't. So I have this hilarious photo of Yan huffing and pointing at the hat going “Put it on! Put your hat on!” Rafael didn't. Heh.
Next it was Jonathan and Christina - much more exciting! They both wore the Jayne hats that had been provided. Although Jonathan decided to wear his around his waist at some stage. And he also tried to pretend to sell it on a fake shopping channel, lmao. There was a lot of Christina laughing so hard she couldn't breathe, and Jonathan was funny telling a story about his friend Eric Weiner who was in the very beginning of Serenity. Jonathan was talking away and Christina was totally not listening. She said “I'm sorry, I'm just stuck on the guy's name being Weiner.”
Christina totally stole one of the hats, too. But she brought it back on Sunday, so that's okay!
After that, it was time for HIMYM. The hall sort of emptied, but we all stayed, because dude, HIMYM! Morena's HIMYM, at that! When it was finished, we ran to the toilet, but still missed the beginning of Ron and Michael. Not a huge loss, as Ron wasn't in the best of moods and they weren't even allowing non-flash photography after a little while.
After that, it was autograph time. We were going to the free room, with Ron, Michael and Christina first. On the way in, Gem was sitting on the floor giving Ron photos out as he wasn't signing his, so she was accosting people in corridors! Me and Hilary told her we'd be along soon to help as we were her stewards. I had Ron sign my companion and a 10x8, he didn't say a lot. Then we moved on to Christina and after Hilary had finished talking to her about her photo book (which Hilary had had to have approved by Sean Harry) I had her sign my Firefly tin. Both her PA and her were so interested in it, they'd never seen it before. I got her to sign on the back since the front is a bit bumpy, but it looks really good, I'm pleased with it! Michael signed that too, and his assistant was interested in it too, though he just sort of signed it and moved on. Hee.
After we'd finished up in there, we were told we could go into the bonus room if we wanted. So I ran upstairs and got my things for the bonus guests to sign (hadn't brought them down before as I didn't want to cart my poster round if I wasn't going to get into the twins on Saturday!) and we went along into the room. Most people shifted over into Jonathan's queue, but Hilary, Jaina and I stayed in the twins' one. Which was taking ages!
Hilary was first, and had a big conversation with Rafael about Kids in the Hall, which I joined in by turning it into a discussion about Studio 60. After she moved along to Yan, Rafael went to sign my stuff and noticed that my name is spelled with an ael at the end. He said “hey, we have the same last three letters of our first name!” and I was like “Yeah!” Of course, I share all but TWO of the letters with people called Michael, but whatevs. While Yan was signing, his wife overheard Rafael talking to Jaina. Only she misheard him when she repeated what he'd said, and Yan started asking me if his brother was trash talking about him, lmao. I didn't think he was, but I wasn't sure, so I told him he'd have to ask Jaina!
Then we skipped on into Jonathan's queue - I nipped over to see Neil first and left my things with Hilary and Jaina. Neil came around and did the hug/kiss-on-cheek thing that is so very Neil, and then signed my Charmed box set (where he wrote Rex it looks like a three year old wrote it, lmao) after a big discussion about where I bought it, because he wants to get it, and it was fifty quid in HMV. So I told him to check online, and that I got mine from Tesco Jersey.
Hilary nipped into the other room and told Gem that we were still in the autograph queue, and would it be okay if we stayed there til we were done. Gem said sure, as it wasn't busy, so that was good. We queued for what seemed like forever for Jonathan! While we were waiting, we queued past the twins, who happened to be signing our photos from that morning so we asked if we could take them with us. They'd looked up, confused, when they heard the cry of “Look, it's Ryan!” lmao. Then we just watched, and they kept glancing up at us while they were signing and then handing them over while they were done. Hee!
Finally it was Jonathan time. Jaina went first, and for some reason she and I was fake arguing about something, and she was going “Go on then!” and I was going “I WILL THEN!” and Jonathan just started doing impressions of us. Then as he started writing her name, he started singing her name to the tune of the Dreidel song, before he realised what the tune actually was. That made him stop and go “Wait, there aren't any Jews in here that I'm offending, right?” and Yan and Rafael yelled over (from behind the wall of people) “just us two!” Jonathan started laughing and put his head in his hands, ashamed, lmao.
While he was signing Hilary's stuff, she talked to him about the Jaffa Cakes and asked if he'd found any surprises in the bottom of the basket. He hadn't gotten that far yet. (She'd planted Twiglets in there, by the way. He hated them at NFA when somebody gave him one in a talk, and said they tasted like licking a corpse. That was why we gave him Jaffa Cakes in the first place - to take away the memory!)
He spotted that I was holding a copy of Wit for him to sign, and he went “Oh really?” and I said “Yeah.” Then while he was still signing Hilary's stuff, I started telling her about how it's one of Shirley's mum's favourite films, and that Shirley had told him he was in it, and then I said, for some unknown reason “she was thrilled!” and he looked up and sort of stared at me in disbelief and then went “thrilled?” And I was like “Okay, maybe THRILLED wasn't the word...”
Then Hilary started complaining about the box design, and I was like “It's region 1!” and he was like “Yeah! Stop complaining!” Then he took the box to start signing it, and said “Look, you can see my bald patch!” and I laughed. Then he said “I'm so proud of this, you know. It's the only box I've ever had my name on.” and he had his pen to the box at that stage, so I said “Well now you'll have your name on twice!”, and he just glared at me and then went “THIS one doesn't COUNT!”
He signed my 10x8 of him in Buffy with “All my Jaffa love”, and drew Jaffa Cakes in our stomachs on the photo of us from NFA that I'd brought. Then I gave him my Firefly companion and he asked where I wanted it signing. I said anywhere, as it was getting a bit crowded on one half of the page. Then I uttered the fatal words: “Take up as much space as you like.”
So he did. He took up the entire top half of the inside cover by writing JONATHAN WOODJAFFAWARD (though it was down to Mel to figure that one out!) and underlining it like a gazillion times, and then he said “Anybody who signs this after me is going to take one look at that and go “.... that BASTARD!”.
After that, Hilary and I finally ran off to do our duty. We'd been there long enough to put our bags down when Ian walked in and said “When these few have cleared, Gem, pack up for tonight.” Yep, we did two minutes of what was supposed to be a four hour duty. We rock! So I phoned Jaina and told her not to go for food as they'd let us go and we were coming!
When we got there, they were all watching Harry Hill's TV Burp. I went outside to phone Mam, but took my purse and said if they were wanting to go for food just to come out, I was ready to go. Apparently nobody heard any of that as they were all surprised to see me sitting on the floor when they came out! I did end up running back into get my coat first, though.
We went to Pizza Hut in the pissing rain. We got inside and they said they could have a table for us in about 15 minutes - because there were seven of us, we were awkward. They asked us to wait down by the stairs to the toilets, so we went that way, and got in EVERYBODY's way. Then they gave us the option of squashing onto a table supposed to seat about four, which we did, because we were hungry. There was some argument as to what we were going to get - the people eating the Veggie pizza were fine, but the meaties amongst us (me, Hilary, Tim and Ryan) couldn't decide what to get. In the end we got two for us, one meat and one chicken. Along with some people getting salad bowls - Tim just edged out Jaina in the salad piling prediction contest that Ryan and I had going on - and Jaina and I getting wedges (though we had to send back our BBQ sauce since it wasn't what we'd asked for, then we scared Kat and Ryan by almost sending the stuff flying over them when we tried to open it) we stuffed ourselves silly. Tim beat Mel in the Pepsi drinking contest, I think - though it would seem there were various categories and Mel won some of them.
I totally owned the Fanta contest, though.
We were in there absolutely forever. I love Pizza Hut. Especially when Tim is there doing Pizza Maths, lmfao. Then we decided it was time to leave, as grannies and families were giving us weird looks and I think the staff were dying to get rid of us (it definitely didn't help when a discussion led to Ryan saying something about Femfresh and Mel screeching “How do you know that word?!!!”, so I grabbed a piece of the veggie pizza that was left and ate it while we ran back in the rain.
When we got back into the hotel, we just about managed to nab seats at the very back of the hall for the Fancy Dress, which was fine by us. A little later (after we'd been to get our DSes), Hilary had to do some trickery to get Mel back in by lending her her badge as Mel's badge was in her bag which was in the hall with Jaina and Ryan and co. I still don't understand how that worked, as Mel was stuck outside, Hilary came in, took her badge off, went back out and gave it to Mel, which meant that Hilary was now badgeless, but that was never checked at any stage!
After Sean made his big announcements for Sinfinity and LA (and after I'd been deafened by Hilary and Mel screaming about Mr Muhney for Breakout) and the fancy dress had been judged, we scarpered off to the “chill out room” for the Sending a Wave quiz. Yeah, bad idea. Excellent fun for us, not so much for anybody else! Especially the people who were annoyed that we had seats and they didn't, and we were just ignoring everything that was happening and making our own jokes and laughing a lot. A lot of our quotes of the weekend came out of Tim's mouth during that short time, and as soon as it was over we literally ran out of there!
We went to Almar's room for some reason, and on the way we passed Tim's room. Tim said “Wouldn't it be funny if I came out right now?” which made Mel laugh a serious amount, and then Tim tripped over the tray with the cleaning chemicals in it which was just randomly outside a room, and that made me fall on the floor and start laughing because I couldn't breath. Then we finally made it to Almar's room there was tequila, which I had never had before, and realised I do not like. And also, I said “just as long as we don't end up looking for 54 other people with one of our names”, which nobody got. Though Kat said if she'd heard it in the first place, she would have understood.
Then we went back down to our room with DSes, and invaded Almar's gates. Unfortunately, we discovered that KK Slider doesn't play if you have people in your town, so there was no chance of getting a little Animal Crossing mosh pit going. Shame! I went to visit Jaina after that, as there were too many people in Almar's place and Jaina couldn't get in.
We took some photos and ate some dry cereal, and a few of us started singing Let's Go To The Mall, and then we decided it was Most Haunted time. The hotel used to be a hospital and the basement was a morgue, so we'd been planning to do this since we got there. Especially to find out what the fuck was making the really loud banging noises all night - we didn't figure it out, but we did find a hole in the ceiling at the end of the corridor out a door we probably weren't supposed to go out of. Jaina looked down over the bannister, and Tim said “CEILING!” and I started giggling and sat on the floor again.
Then we went up the little stairs to nowhere that we'd found on Tim and Almar's floor. I led the way, and got to the top, and just saw a lot of doors one after the other. Then I spotted people at the other end, so just went in, and was disappointed because it turned out there were lifts to the fifth floor up there and there were just bedrooms. But that disappointment was shortlived, as we found The Ironing Room, with a chair in a wardrobe and an iron with blood on it. Mel was too scared to take a photo of herself in the mirror, so I did that. There was nothing spooky in the picture, sadly!
And no doors would open. No doors that weren't supposed to, anyway.
So we went to the basement to look at the morgue. Turns out it was the leisure centre, and that was closed anyway. So that was another disappointment, though we still had great fun on our ghost hunt. The light randomly getting turned off and Ryan running away was another highlight!
We headed for the stairs and went back up, only Kat decided to wait for the lift because of her bad knee. Almar didn't come up with us so we assumed she was with Kat, only when Kat came up in the lift - no Almar! Weirdness! We sat around in reception waiting for her. Somebody went back down to see if she was around - no joy - and then eventually we found her, scared shitless from being left downstairs! We didn't leave her! She just didn't follow us! That isn't our fault!
We went to see if anything was still open in the station, which it wasn't. So Mel took some photos of Tim just wandering the empty train station - 28 Tims Later!
The rest of the night was spent generally being ridiculous, chatting, having pictures taken around by the bar. I told Jonathan to be on time the next morning, as his shoot was at 9 and we were going to bed specially to be awake for it! He laughed, and none of us expected him to be on time. I think that includes Jonathan, lmfao. I also recited Everything Comes Down To Poo to Holly.
We hung out in our room a while longer before Tim asked if we were throwing him out so we could sleep, lmao. We were, and we did, and we mostly collapsed into sleep pretty fast!
3600 words, on the dot. That's pretty tame for me, hee! Because I'm not quoting the guests as much as usual, I'm just talking about all of our ridiculousness! Sunday still to come!
Also, the light switching story reminded me that I accidentally leant on the light switch at Kat's last night when Kat and Jaina were hugging goodbye and we were plunged into darkness, lmfao.
We had an alarm set for 7.30 on Saturday, and Hilary was first up. It was Jaina's phone we were using as our alarm, and as I have the same phone as her, it was a little disconcerting that I was woken up by what my sleepy brain thought was my phone, but wasn't. After Hilary had showered and we'd all lazed around a little more, I had a shower, and then Jaina did. She was going to come down with us to get a photo ticket for the twins - Hilary and I already had ours, but we'd talked Jaina into getting one too, due to their niceness the previous night!
So we went downstairs and hovered around, waiting for that. Then we saw Tim coming down the stairs, wanting a Ron photo ticket. So we did some standing and chatting, and then we deserted Tim to go in for our pictures with the twins. They were lovely, a little tall, but I can't hold that against them! Hee. Anyway, so after that, we went back outside, where Tim was waiting for us. We considered running for breakfast, but decided against it since the twins had been late arriving and we didn't want to miss our pictures. So we stood and did some more chatting until we were called for our Ron photos, and once again we abandoned Tim - his number hadn't been called. It was mere moments, however, before he joined us in the room.
Ron came in, wearing a natty red jumper with GOLF emblazoned on it. It was a bit grandad, if you ask me. But I guess you didn't. He was all smiles and seemed pretty happy for the pictures - perhaps he's more of a morning man.
After a trip back to the room (on the way, I told Tim that Kat hadn't showered as she wasn't having her photo taken. He spluttered with laughter and said that you don't have to be having your photo taken to have a shower, and I also spluttered with laughter in return and clarified that he hadn't let me finish and that all I meant was that because she wasn't having her photo taken, she had time to wait and shower while we were gone. So there. [Even though she didn't...]), we collected Kat and went to Cafe Nerd for toasties/muffins/brownies/sandwiches and coffee/not very nice hot chocolate that was too hot to drink before it was time for the Jonathan and Christina (and Michael...) photo session.
So we went down to get that done, and Hilary and I were put into Jonathan's queue first, while Ryan was only getting a picture with Christina so obviously he was in her queue first, with Diluki and Neil. I was chatting away to Hilary when Jonathan came in, and I heard Ryan say my name, and looked at Jonathan before Ryan (no idea why). When Jonathan came in, he'd brought the Jaffa Cake Basket with him! We were excited! He started to crack open one of the mini packs, and then spotted me pointing across the room and giggling, and he grinned at me and said “Hi darling!” so I waved back at him. Hee. I smiled a lot! woodsong_1978 was just in front of us and asked if we'd given it to him.
When I got up for my photo, Jonathan put his arm around me and said “You know, Sean stole a bunch of my Jaffa cakes!” I said “That's no good!” and he said “I know! I could spit in his mouth! I don't know why I said that, that's disgusting.” I love him so much.
After that, we went along to the main hall for Neil's talk, and ran into him on the way, coming out of the toilet. Hilary asked him not to start (as we were stopping at the loo) and he was like “hurry hurry!”
Neil's talk was first. He talked a lot about Charmed, and Love Soup, and Max Meltus and Nick Fury and all that stuff, and then suddenly he'd been on stage for 45 minutes before he got round to asking for questions. He also told stories about how he's always calling Shannen Doherty a bitch, and how that didn't go down so well at the Charmed con, where people are actually FANS of the show, lmfao.
After Neil came the twins. They were great up on stage, funny, and got some questions that weren't ALL about being twins, which was interesting. The funniest part, imho, was when Yan put on the Jayne hat that was on his seat and tried to get Rafael to wear his, which he wouldn't. So I have this hilarious photo of Yan huffing and pointing at the hat going “Put it on! Put your hat on!” Rafael didn't. Heh.
Next it was Jonathan and Christina - much more exciting! They both wore the Jayne hats that had been provided. Although Jonathan decided to wear his around his waist at some stage. And he also tried to pretend to sell it on a fake shopping channel, lmao. There was a lot of Christina laughing so hard she couldn't breathe, and Jonathan was funny telling a story about his friend Eric Weiner who was in the very beginning of Serenity. Jonathan was talking away and Christina was totally not listening. She said “I'm sorry, I'm just stuck on the guy's name being Weiner.”
Christina totally stole one of the hats, too. But she brought it back on Sunday, so that's okay!
After that, it was time for HIMYM. The hall sort of emptied, but we all stayed, because dude, HIMYM! Morena's HIMYM, at that! When it was finished, we ran to the toilet, but still missed the beginning of Ron and Michael. Not a huge loss, as Ron wasn't in the best of moods and they weren't even allowing non-flash photography after a little while.
After that, it was autograph time. We were going to the free room, with Ron, Michael and Christina first. On the way in, Gem was sitting on the floor giving Ron photos out as he wasn't signing his, so she was accosting people in corridors! Me and Hilary told her we'd be along soon to help as we were her stewards. I had Ron sign my companion and a 10x8, he didn't say a lot. Then we moved on to Christina and after Hilary had finished talking to her about her photo book (which Hilary had had to have approved by Sean Harry) I had her sign my Firefly tin. Both her PA and her were so interested in it, they'd never seen it before. I got her to sign on the back since the front is a bit bumpy, but it looks really good, I'm pleased with it! Michael signed that too, and his assistant was interested in it too, though he just sort of signed it and moved on. Hee.
After we'd finished up in there, we were told we could go into the bonus room if we wanted. So I ran upstairs and got my things for the bonus guests to sign (hadn't brought them down before as I didn't want to cart my poster round if I wasn't going to get into the twins on Saturday!) and we went along into the room. Most people shifted over into Jonathan's queue, but Hilary, Jaina and I stayed in the twins' one. Which was taking ages!
Hilary was first, and had a big conversation with Rafael about Kids in the Hall, which I joined in by turning it into a discussion about Studio 60. After she moved along to Yan, Rafael went to sign my stuff and noticed that my name is spelled with an ael at the end. He said “hey, we have the same last three letters of our first name!” and I was like “Yeah!” Of course, I share all but TWO of the letters with people called Michael, but whatevs. While Yan was signing, his wife overheard Rafael talking to Jaina. Only she misheard him when she repeated what he'd said, and Yan started asking me if his brother was trash talking about him, lmao. I didn't think he was, but I wasn't sure, so I told him he'd have to ask Jaina!
Then we skipped on into Jonathan's queue - I nipped over to see Neil first and left my things with Hilary and Jaina. Neil came around and did the hug/kiss-on-cheek thing that is so very Neil, and then signed my Charmed box set (where he wrote Rex it looks like a three year old wrote it, lmao) after a big discussion about where I bought it, because he wants to get it, and it was fifty quid in HMV. So I told him to check online, and that I got mine from Tesco Jersey.
Hilary nipped into the other room and told Gem that we were still in the autograph queue, and would it be okay if we stayed there til we were done. Gem said sure, as it wasn't busy, so that was good. We queued for what seemed like forever for Jonathan! While we were waiting, we queued past the twins, who happened to be signing our photos from that morning so we asked if we could take them with us. They'd looked up, confused, when they heard the cry of “Look, it's Ryan!” lmao. Then we just watched, and they kept glancing up at us while they were signing and then handing them over while they were done. Hee!
Finally it was Jonathan time. Jaina went first, and for some reason she and I was fake arguing about something, and she was going “Go on then!” and I was going “I WILL THEN!” and Jonathan just started doing impressions of us. Then as he started writing her name, he started singing her name to the tune of the Dreidel song, before he realised what the tune actually was. That made him stop and go “Wait, there aren't any Jews in here that I'm offending, right?” and Yan and Rafael yelled over (from behind the wall of people) “just us two!” Jonathan started laughing and put his head in his hands, ashamed, lmao.
While he was signing Hilary's stuff, she talked to him about the Jaffa Cakes and asked if he'd found any surprises in the bottom of the basket. He hadn't gotten that far yet. (She'd planted Twiglets in there, by the way. He hated them at NFA when somebody gave him one in a talk, and said they tasted like licking a corpse. That was why we gave him Jaffa Cakes in the first place - to take away the memory!)
He spotted that I was holding a copy of Wit for him to sign, and he went “Oh really?” and I said “Yeah.” Then while he was still signing Hilary's stuff, I started telling her about how it's one of Shirley's mum's favourite films, and that Shirley had told him he was in it, and then I said, for some unknown reason “she was thrilled!” and he looked up and sort of stared at me in disbelief and then went “thrilled?” And I was like “Okay, maybe THRILLED wasn't the word...”
Then Hilary started complaining about the box design, and I was like “It's region 1!” and he was like “Yeah! Stop complaining!” Then he took the box to start signing it, and said “Look, you can see my bald patch!” and I laughed. Then he said “I'm so proud of this, you know. It's the only box I've ever had my name on.” and he had his pen to the box at that stage, so I said “Well now you'll have your name on twice!”, and he just glared at me and then went “THIS one doesn't COUNT!”
He signed my 10x8 of him in Buffy with “All my Jaffa love”, and drew Jaffa Cakes in our stomachs on the photo of us from NFA that I'd brought. Then I gave him my Firefly companion and he asked where I wanted it signing. I said anywhere, as it was getting a bit crowded on one half of the page. Then I uttered the fatal words: “Take up as much space as you like.”
So he did. He took up the entire top half of the inside cover by writing JONATHAN WOODJAFFAWARD (though it was down to Mel to figure that one out!) and underlining it like a gazillion times, and then he said “Anybody who signs this after me is going to take one look at that and go “.... that BASTARD!”.
After that, Hilary and I finally ran off to do our duty. We'd been there long enough to put our bags down when Ian walked in and said “When these few have cleared, Gem, pack up for tonight.” Yep, we did two minutes of what was supposed to be a four hour duty. We rock! So I phoned Jaina and told her not to go for food as they'd let us go and we were coming!
When we got there, they were all watching Harry Hill's TV Burp. I went outside to phone Mam, but took my purse and said if they were wanting to go for food just to come out, I was ready to go. Apparently nobody heard any of that as they were all surprised to see me sitting on the floor when they came out! I did end up running back into get my coat first, though.
We went to Pizza Hut in the pissing rain. We got inside and they said they could have a table for us in about 15 minutes - because there were seven of us, we were awkward. They asked us to wait down by the stairs to the toilets, so we went that way, and got in EVERYBODY's way. Then they gave us the option of squashing onto a table supposed to seat about four, which we did, because we were hungry. There was some argument as to what we were going to get - the people eating the Veggie pizza were fine, but the meaties amongst us (me, Hilary, Tim and Ryan) couldn't decide what to get. In the end we got two for us, one meat and one chicken. Along with some people getting salad bowls - Tim just edged out Jaina in the salad piling prediction contest that Ryan and I had going on - and Jaina and I getting wedges (though we had to send back our BBQ sauce since it wasn't what we'd asked for, then we scared Kat and Ryan by almost sending the stuff flying over them when we tried to open it) we stuffed ourselves silly. Tim beat Mel in the Pepsi drinking contest, I think - though it would seem there were various categories and Mel won some of them.
I totally owned the Fanta contest, though.
We were in there absolutely forever. I love Pizza Hut. Especially when Tim is there doing Pizza Maths, lmfao. Then we decided it was time to leave, as grannies and families were giving us weird looks and I think the staff were dying to get rid of us (it definitely didn't help when a discussion led to Ryan saying something about Femfresh and Mel screeching “How do you know that word?!!!”, so I grabbed a piece of the veggie pizza that was left and ate it while we ran back in the rain.
When we got back into the hotel, we just about managed to nab seats at the very back of the hall for the Fancy Dress, which was fine by us. A little later (after we'd been to get our DSes), Hilary had to do some trickery to get Mel back in by lending her her badge as Mel's badge was in her bag which was in the hall with Jaina and Ryan and co. I still don't understand how that worked, as Mel was stuck outside, Hilary came in, took her badge off, went back out and gave it to Mel, which meant that Hilary was now badgeless, but that was never checked at any stage!
After Sean made his big announcements for Sinfinity and LA (and after I'd been deafened by Hilary and Mel screaming about Mr Muhney for Breakout) and the fancy dress had been judged, we scarpered off to the “chill out room” for the Sending a Wave quiz. Yeah, bad idea. Excellent fun for us, not so much for anybody else! Especially the people who were annoyed that we had seats and they didn't, and we were just ignoring everything that was happening and making our own jokes and laughing a lot. A lot of our quotes of the weekend came out of Tim's mouth during that short time, and as soon as it was over we literally ran out of there!
We went to Almar's room for some reason, and on the way we passed Tim's room. Tim said “Wouldn't it be funny if I came out right now?” which made Mel laugh a serious amount, and then Tim tripped over the tray with the cleaning chemicals in it which was just randomly outside a room, and that made me fall on the floor and start laughing because I couldn't breath. Then we finally made it to Almar's room there was tequila, which I had never had before, and realised I do not like. And also, I said “just as long as we don't end up looking for 54 other people with one of our names”, which nobody got. Though Kat said if she'd heard it in the first place, she would have understood.
Then we went back down to our room with DSes, and invaded Almar's gates. Unfortunately, we discovered that KK Slider doesn't play if you have people in your town, so there was no chance of getting a little Animal Crossing mosh pit going. Shame! I went to visit Jaina after that, as there were too many people in Almar's place and Jaina couldn't get in.
We took some photos and ate some dry cereal, and a few of us started singing Let's Go To The Mall, and then we decided it was Most Haunted time. The hotel used to be a hospital and the basement was a morgue, so we'd been planning to do this since we got there. Especially to find out what the fuck was making the really loud banging noises all night - we didn't figure it out, but we did find a hole in the ceiling at the end of the corridor out a door we probably weren't supposed to go out of. Jaina looked down over the bannister, and Tim said “CEILING!” and I started giggling and sat on the floor again.
Then we went up the little stairs to nowhere that we'd found on Tim and Almar's floor. I led the way, and got to the top, and just saw a lot of doors one after the other. Then I spotted people at the other end, so just went in, and was disappointed because it turned out there were lifts to the fifth floor up there and there were just bedrooms. But that disappointment was shortlived, as we found The Ironing Room, with a chair in a wardrobe and an iron with blood on it. Mel was too scared to take a photo of herself in the mirror, so I did that. There was nothing spooky in the picture, sadly!
And no doors would open. No doors that weren't supposed to, anyway.
So we went to the basement to look at the morgue. Turns out it was the leisure centre, and that was closed anyway. So that was another disappointment, though we still had great fun on our ghost hunt. The light randomly getting turned off and Ryan running away was another highlight!
We headed for the stairs and went back up, only Kat decided to wait for the lift because of her bad knee. Almar didn't come up with us so we assumed she was with Kat, only when Kat came up in the lift - no Almar! Weirdness! We sat around in reception waiting for her. Somebody went back down to see if she was around - no joy - and then eventually we found her, scared shitless from being left downstairs! We didn't leave her! She just didn't follow us! That isn't our fault!
We went to see if anything was still open in the station, which it wasn't. So Mel took some photos of Tim just wandering the empty train station - 28 Tims Later!
The rest of the night was spent generally being ridiculous, chatting, having pictures taken around by the bar. I told Jonathan to be on time the next morning, as his shoot was at 9 and we were going to bed specially to be awake for it! He laughed, and none of us expected him to be on time. I think that includes Jonathan, lmfao. I also recited Everything Comes Down To Poo to Holly.
We hung out in our room a while longer before Tim asked if we were throwing him out so we could sleep, lmao. We were, and we did, and we mostly collapsed into sleep pretty fast!
3600 words, on the dot. That's pretty tame for me, hee! Because I'm not quoting the guests as much as usual, I'm just talking about all of our ridiculousness! Sunday still to come!
Also, the light switching story reminded me that I accidentally leant on the light switch at Kat's last night when Kat and Jaina were hugging goodbye and we were plunged into darkness, lmfao.