All the major bookstores in Lancaster (all 3 of them) opened their doors tonight at a minute past midnight to sell copies of JK Rowling\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s<\/a> latest instalment; Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I would have loved to be one of those queuing up at 11.30pm but Amazon<\/a> had a much better offer; 47% off the standard price of \u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a316.99, which works out at \u00c3\u201a\u00c2\u00a38.99 a copy. The Kikuyu in me decided to wait an extra 10 hours for my TWO copies to arrive in the post.<\/p>\n

Not wanting to miss out on the fun I did venture into town at 12.30 am and I could not believe that people were still queuing to get in. The sight of youngsters and adults standing patiently in line amidst the din of drunkards staggering home was amazing. Though looking at some of the Potter Fans who had turned up in fancy dress it was hard to tell who was sober and who wasn\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t.<\/p>\n

I desperately wanted to sneak into one of the bookstores, Ottakers<\/a>, but they had a a bouncer at the door! I tried to peer through the doorway and windows but they had gone to great lengths to cover it all up. I have to hand it to them. The staff at Ottakers took the launch very seriously. They ‘renamed’ their store to Pottakers<\/a>, they seemed to be having a party inside and according to their site you had to download an invitation<\/a> to attend! Unlike the other bookstores they included a Harry Potter gift bag with every purchase. Just in case anyone was in any doubt as to why hordes of scrawny six year olds were roaming round Lancaster town centre at midnight; they stamped each person’s forehead with a bright red thunderbolt. For those who don’t know what the thunderbolt represents, wikipedia describes<\/a> it as;<\/p>\n

the lightning-shaped scar Voldemort’s curse left on (Harry’s) forehead<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I actually took pictures of the queues outside but I am not sure if it is \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00cb\u0153proper\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 to post pictures of strangers on one\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s blog.<\/p>\n

At this moment in time I am far too excited to sleep but I am too scared to pull an all nighter in case I fade out at 8 am and miss the postman. The last thing I want to do is wake up at midday to find one of those \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cWe came round to deliver X but you weren\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t in\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac? type cards stuck to our letter box. Seeing a card like this will mean one thing \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 I will have to wait until Monday before I start reading my book. <\/p>\n

No matter what I do tonight I can be sure of one thing, even JK Rowling knows<\/b> about the July Countdown<\/a>. It is no coincidence that she decided to release this book 3 days before my birthday<\/b>. I must say though that I had initially thought that she too was attempting to upstage me but now I know that through all this she was thinking, \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00c5\u201cThis would make a great birthday present for Kui\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac?<\/p>\n

I\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2m off to drink a ton of coffee and to watch Big Brother but before I do so I just want to say that there is another HUUUUGE surprise\/gift that is due to arrive in the wee hours of the morning (6.45am to be exact!). It is sort of a joint present for my cousin Big Tesh and I; he doesn\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2t have a clue so for now I have been sworn to secrecy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the major bookstores in Lancaster (all 3 of them) opened their doors tonight at a minute past midnight to sell copies of JK Rowling\u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u201e\u00a2s latest instalment; Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,14,12],"tags":[96],"class_list":{"0":"post-242","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-mum","7":"category-my-junk","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-uk","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Y7Vr-3U","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beginsathome.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}