I went to the Harry Potter launch last night. Waterstones didn't seem to want to let people in and Blackwells didn't start till 11pm. Borders is usually open till late anyway, so I went there. It was really busy. There were things going on but I don't know what because there were too many people stood around them for me to see. So I sat in the history section and read a book about the French Revolution (which I then went and bought, since they were doing 20% off until midnight).

They started people queueing at 11pm, which was silly, I thought. Not least because they went all round the shop so you couldn't get to any of the shelves. We joined the queue at 11.45pm, which seemed sufficient. By 12.30 we hadn't moved far - which was a problem because the bus was at 1am and I didn't really want to hang around until the next one at 2am, since I was already tired.

Borders had a mad system on where you queued round the shop to go downstairs and get the book. Then you came back up and queued round more of the shop to pay for it. I reckon at 12.30 we'd have had another hours wait. Waterstones had an even longer queue, I think because it was a couple of quid cheaper there. Blackwells is a bit out of the way so I don't know what it was like there. But Smiths had opened at midnight just to sell it, so I got it there - it took all of five minutes.

I've read half a page so far. I was counting on having a lie-in, but my neighbours had other ideas. So at the moment I'm waiting for them to shut up so I can go back to bed. I'm too tired to read at the moment, plus I just don't care. I just want to sleep.

Comments are closed.