x_moonshine_x: (torchwood//eve red)
x_moonshine_x ([personal profile] x_moonshine_x) wrote2009-03-16 03:56 pm

The Hub 2, quite possibly the best weekend of my life!

*Grabs cuppa* Mmmm, needed that... *flexes fingers and takes a deep breath*

OK and let's begin, right at the beginning shall we?! Hey, come on, you know I don't do things in halves!

As you know, we were immensely worried about the trains running on Friday, but you'll be pleased to know that everything went fine and we got there in time with not a hitch in sight. We found the hotel easily too, so checked in, threw our stuff down and went to get lunch and find the Park Inn. Easier said than done, I had to ring my dad for directions and shamefully when we finally found the place, we could see the sign for our own hotel through some trees. It was literally a stones throw away, but we'd gone round the long way and got completely lost in the process. Only us folks, only us.

When we finally got there we headed to the bar for the LJ meet-up, but of course, with us being the shy, retiring performing arts students we are (pah!) neither of us wanted to approach the table. Eventually I took the plunge and we chatted to a couple of the girls there before heading off to register and then back to the hotel and for some dinner.

We took a wander around the dealers room when we eventually returned to the Park Inn and one of the guys ended up convincing me to buy something lol. Seriously, don't ever mention that you don't have something when stood next to a dealer, they make you buy it! I just about managed to resist buying one of the massive Janto canvases, although I can't guarantee I'll be able to restrain myself at The Hub 3 if they're selling anything similar.

After that, we had the opening ceremony...

Tbh I don't remember an awful lot about the opening ceremony, so I'll leave going into any detail (not that I could even if I wanted to) and get straight onto the Turn of the Century Torchwood party. As far as evenings went, we found this one a little awkward as we didn't know who on earth to talk to. I mean, yes everyone's there for the same reason, but you feel a little weird about just approaching a random group and chatting away as if you've known them for years.

Eventually we spotted someone we'd spoken to earlier in the day, so approached [livejournal.com profile] dr_is_in and got chatting. Before long we and the whole table were having a very serious (I'm not joking!) discussion about fanfic and drinking Weevil's (one part whiskey, one part triple sec, pineapple juice and cranberry juice) like they were going out of fashion lol. Mr. Kai Owen came into the bar a little later on and we took the opportunity to snap pics of me and Rayne so we could get him in the background of them. How very fangirlish of us!

[livejournal.com profile] arlessiar and Gabriella took a walk into the other room where they had poker, roulette tables, etc. set up because apparently GDL was in there playing and they wanted to try and get some pictures of him. We got mixed reports back, no one can quite figure out whether he was a bit pissed off with everyone crowding or just concentrating really hard on the game lol. I guess we're never going to know!

The five of us got a taxi back to the hotel (don't ask, it became tradition) as they were staying in the Ibis too and then we decided we didn't want to go to bed just yet, so we sat down in the bar at our hotel, munching on panini's and crisps until gone 1am. The Weevil's went down a little too well, so we needed to eat! lol. Rayne and I were up a little longer than that because for some reason we decided at 1:30am that writing down our schedule in my notebook would be a fabulous idea.

On Saturday morning we got up nice and early and just about made it to the venue even though we were still half asleep. There we met up with everyone in the lobby for a chat before heading off for a chaotic morning of autographs and photo shoots. It started off well, but then things started running behind and our Tom photo shoot even got shifted over to Sunday.

First off we met Kai for autographs, who was then shortly followed by Eve and she was so incredibly sweet. She shook everyone's hand, called me "sweetheart" and "lovely" while I was stood there and the moment I walked off I teared up like a complete twat!

Other highlights of the morning were my autograph from Tom, who was doing a fantastic job at holding the queue up, when after I told him to take up as much space as he wanted on my box set (Kai had basically taken up the smallest space possible) decided to ignore me completely and sign one of the disks instead.

Me: "Take up as much space as you like!"
ME crew member: "You shouldn't have told him that."
Tom: "Hang on, is this series 2?"
Me: "Yes...?"
Tom: "Can I sign the disk that I'm on?!"
(you're on more than one Tom!)
Me: "OK..." *laughs*
Tom: "Right, which one is it? Adrift, episode 11..."


I swear to God, Tom's insane, but in the best possible way lol.

You heard all about my picture with Eve in the last entry of course, but I suppose I can't complain because I did get to spend a lot of time with her hugging me lol, which was rather nice. Sorry to Miss Watson, but she may actually be my new fave. Not only is she completely stunning, she is without a doubt one of the nicest celebs that I've ever met.

During the shoot with GDL, the photographer was still hating on me and somehow I became incapable of taking a decent picture first time around from that moment on. My ordeal with Eve scarred me for life, clearly!

For lunch, we stopped in at Greggs and then we headed back to the Park Inn for an afternoon of talks with the guests.

First to take to the stage, Eve and Kai, and five minutes in Kai's chair collapsed and he went flying lmao. For the rest of the weekend he was petrified of every chair they gave him. They were brilliant together and Eve ended up giggling her way through most of it. I would have loved to have gone to her intimate encounter (talks with the guests for 12 people; 10 places are auctioned, the other two are raffled off) but I didn't have the money to spend. Maybe if she does the next one I might go for it. Rayne and I were discussing trying to get into one next time around, but we'll have to see who's in the final line-up and then decide who to bid on. Back to the talk briefly though, at one point I do recall Kai shouting, "Have you got any weed?" but can't quite remember why.

Next came GDL and Matt Rippy who played off each other wonderfully considering that they never did work together on the show. Gareth (GDL's so informal!) was drinking beer throughout and, in fact, I don't think he even stopped drinking once the whole weekend. I don't remember an awful lot about Saturdays talks tbh, but the boys did end their panel with a kiss. They kept teasing everyone throughout and as they headed off, we were convinced we'd get nothing, but Gareth suddenly span around and grabbed Matt, planting one firming on his lips. Hoorah, boy!kissing, the weekend was made!

Tom and Siobhan had their talk last, but I remember bugger all from that one! lmao.

I was actually going to take notes, but my notes ended up looking something like this...

Eve & Kai

...and that's all I wrote down for the whole two days. Not so successful that one. Yeah, the panel with all guests is escaping me once again, aside from the fact that Gareth had a bottle of Jim Beam by his side throughout and it looked just a tad on the empty side by the time they left stage again. Apparently Matt had poured himself half a glass too. Honest to God, I could see those two turning into drinking buddies lol. Gareth teased Matt mercilessly ("American mentalist!") and also taunted Gabriella about the rugby scores as she was the only Italian in the crowd.

Saturday night was the Out of the Rain Carnival night and it was bloody fantastic! I had such a laugh and apparently my Pearl costume went down well because the second I stepped into the bar three of the convention goers decided they needed a picture of me lol. Five minutes after that I had a random Ianto cosplayer run away from me and another lady told me how good it was, too, so that was brilliant.

The carnival party was by far the best one, they completely outdid themselves with it; we had a freak show (which I actually missed out on going around in the end =(), a tarot card reader, numerous stalls, complete with prizes and a guy handing out popcorn and candy floss... for free!!!!

[livejournal.com profile] arlessiar, Grabriella and I kept wandering back into the main ballroom every now and then and every time we did, we seemed to stumble across Gareth doing something completely ridiculous. Honestly, I don't think drunk even describes the state of that man on Saturday night. The first time he was dancing around to his own CD in the middle of the dance floor, completely going for it and even dragged Gemma (his girlfriend) into the fray as well. And the second time we caught him, he was ballroom dancing his way around the place with several of the little girls who were there with their parents.

At one point in the night Gabriella attacked Kai with a load of streamers, but he was more concerned for the welfare of his pint than anything else.

We moved into the ballroom eventually and then the dancing began; the DJ playing the cheesiest music he could get his mitts on. We all had a great time and the room broke out into a conga line that made its way around the ground floor of the entire hotel. Apparently Rayne shouted that she was going to disown me when she'd noticed that we'd joined in and Matt laughed at her, but tbh I didn't even see her! lmao.

Even when we got back to the hotel we didn't go to bed straight away and we'd planned to get up extra early to head over and get The Hub 3 tickets at 7:30am. Rayne decided to plan her autograph wall for when she got home and naturally I helped, doubled over with laughter and in pain at the time.

Somehow on the following morning I managed to have a shower, dry my hair, get dressed and drink a cup of tea within a half an hour. Then, of course, the queuing began and we stood in line for an hour and fifteen minutes to get our tickets for Octobers convention (the guest was John btw!), picking up silver 14 and 15, which is a bit of a step up from silver 104 and 105 this time around.

After running back to our own hotel to finish getting ready and smarten ourselves up, we set about morning number two of autographs and photo shoots. We didn't have as much to do yesterday as on Saturday granted, but it was still a little crazy. Rayne skipped out on her autograph from Phil and hopped in the queue for Tom to get the one she'd missed from Saturday, while I got in line next to another Heather and spent the next fifteen minutes chatting to her about the Torchwood novels in-depth lol. That was pretty good and Phil was hilarious.

Matt came next and we were convinced he was actually still drunk. He was doing a bloody good job of playing that he had torrets to the girl in front of us and then to me, attempting to be sensible, he asked: "Have you been to church?" I had to ask him if he'd had a good night and he admitted that he had, the parts that he could remember anyway! Rayne actually got serenaded, something I'm sure she'll never forget.

The photo shoot with Burn was brilliant; the photographer told everyone off for talking too much, even though the one responsible was Burn himself. I had to have two pictures taken again, something I can hardly complain about seeing as Burn was cuddling me at the time. Come on, you know you wouldn't complain either! lmao!

We had lots of time spare for lunch and stuff yesterday, so we got ourselves some coffee from good old Costa and also went for meal in Edwards. Southern fried chicken, yum!

The afternoon could quite easily be described as one big cock joke, but I don't think that does it much justice so I shall share a few details.

Gareth and Burn in a panel together, there are no words for how funny this was.

GDL: "I think we've crossed the Barrowman line, gone around the world and crossed it again!"

Crossing the Barrowman line became the joke for the weekend, we all know how crude John can be after all lol.

Gareth made the mistake of mentioning that he'd quite like to do Macbeth, so both he and Burn spent the next couple of minutes turning around on the spot several times. Then he mentioned it again and they were straight up out of their chairs, which was rather amusing, to say the least. Burn decided that Janet was clearly the love of Owen's life and Gareth did a rather convincing impression... ;) lol. Not to mention how Gareth on both days kept randomly putting on his Ianto voice and calling out in a whisper, "Lisa...?"

Gemma also made an appearance during their panel after Gareth called out for his whiskey and she came running up, delivering a bottle of JD.

Following that, [livejournal.com profile] dr_is_in managed to win a place into Burn's intimate encounter, something I was so pleased about because she deserved it like no one else at that convention.

Roderic and Matt did a panel next, something Matt owned clearly and we were all convinced that Roderic didn't even want to be there in the end lol, he didn't exactly fit in too well with everyone else.

Kai and Tom's panel was the last of the day (with the exception of the final panel with all the guests), another amusing effort. Yet again, the chair paranoia kicked in and at one point they had the mic next to the chair for us to all hear the dodgy sounds it was making. Seriously when someone says, "Shhhhh, everyone listen..." it's almost impossible to stop yourself from laughing. Tom is wonderfully funny and it appears to come so naturally to him, unlike Gareth (as much as we love him), he doesn't need to be crude all of the time to have everyone doubled over with laughter.

They followed up their panel with a skit by the name of "RANDY!", which was written by Phil and also managed a brief cameo from Gareth. Very funny, but something I'm not going to go into detail about. Just let's say, if you want to ever see one of these things, come to the bloody convention, all right!?

The final talk and closing ceremony were just as funny as the rest of the afternoon and after Burn had to dash out, Gareth decided it would be a fabulous idea to auction off his place in the panel and a young lady shelled out £115 to sit in his place and answer questions along with everyone else (I'd just like to say, the auctions were for charity btw lol). They ended the talk with Gareth doing a rather awe-inspiring impression of a grumpy penis. I'm not going to explain, honest to God you had to be there for that to make sense, it's a very long story.

When the lights came back up and we left the hotel, it kind of hit us both that it was over and we decided that we didn't want to stay the extra night for the third party and my dad very kindly came and fetched us from Northampton. So that is why I was back earlier than planned last night. We were so tired though and I still am in all honesty.

Ummmm, I don't think there's much else to say, so... on with the pics! I'm posting up my photo shoot ones again for those who didn't see yesterday or missed the post, or for those who did see to look at again! lol.















For my other pics, hop on over to my facebook album here because I haven't got around to uploading them yet. I'd do it now, but seeing as I've been writing this entry for four hours, I'm going to skip it lol.

And that actually is it! =D

ETA: I just saw a picture and it reminded me of something Tom did in the final talk, he decided to record the answer phone message on his mobile and got us all to scream for it, God bless him! lol.

ETA again: OMG, how could I forget, in the final talk Gareth also announced rather abruptly, "I'm going for a piss!" and raced off stage. He got halfway across the room and after several shouts, turned around, came back, picked up his mic and took it with him. Unsurprisingly, a moment later we got shouts of, "Turn him down, turn him down!" I think everyone was a little unsure of whether he actually would turn it off/leave it somewhere or not lol

.x.

P.S. I'm leaving this one public for a while, so other peeps can read lol.

[identity profile] nik-nak-1012.livejournal.com 2009-03-16 09:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh my god, this looks like it was so fun! One word - jealous, haha.

Owenn I miss you, haha.

[identity profile] cloudysky.livejournal.com 2009-03-16 10:01 pm (UTC)(link)
My God it was, if you ever get chance, you should so come along!

Oh, I know, me too... =( I want Burn to come back, although he did say when asked "never say never" and kept saying that Owen was living in the sewers lol.

.x.

[identity profile] timey-wimey-kid.livejournal.com 2009-03-16 10:37 pm (UTC)(link)
OHMYFRIGGINGOD

THAT IS SO BRILLIANT

*stares at the pix*

[identity profile] cloudysky.livejournal.com 2009-03-16 10:59 pm (UTC)(link)
Mhmm, there really aren't any words for how good it was

.x.

[identity profile] rebeccama.livejournal.com 2009-03-17 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
It sounds like an entertaining and fun weekend. You did a very good job for not having made notes.

They were brilliant together and Eve ended up giggling her way through most of it.

They have great chemistry on screen. It is nice to see that they also get along in real life.

GDL: "I think we've crossed the Barrowman line, gone around the world and crossed it again!"

No doubt that the Barrowman line will become a fandom staple reference.

ETAL Fixed coding


Edited 2009-03-17 00:28 (UTC)

[identity profile] cloudysky.livejournal.com 2009-03-17 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)
Amazing, completely amazing lol. Now if only it were October already...

Honestly, you'd be amazed how well all of the cast actually do get along. But I must say I love that about them, you can tell that they're all really great friends out of work, too.

Haha it totally will! I already plan to use it in every day life, believe me!

.x.

late post is late

[identity profile] wounded-melody.livejournal.com 2010-09-11 11:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Hi! I'm a new TW fan (kinda late yeah) and was just wondering where the above all took place? Was it a Con or something? (came across this link via google) Thanks!

Re: late post is late

[identity profile] cloudysky.livejournal.com 2010-09-11 11:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Hi there! :) Yes it was a con, and there still are cons running a couple of times a year in the UK.

Here's a link if you want to know more about them: http://www.massiveevents.co.uk/hub5/