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Jayne and I deliberately avoid “must see box office smashes”, “once in a lifetime opportunities” and the like, mostly because the crowds annoy us, but we decided last night to harden up and for once actually participate in something hype-y … i.e. trying to buy the new Harry Potter book on release day.

So this morning we drove into town to Griffith’s Bookstore. We prepared ourselves for hysteria, queueing up for hours alongside fanatics dressed as Dumbledore and Hermione, getting our picture taken with a Harry Potter lookalike, having scars tattooed onto our foreheads, ducking to avoid the broomsticks, and hustling to the front of the queue to snatch the last copy of the book out of the hands of a screaming 9 year old.

Well, that might have been the scene at Hamley’s in London but it wasn’t the scene in Ryrie Street Geelong. We got a Costanza park out the front, strolled into the bookstore at about 9.20 and queued patiently with around 30 other people eyeing off the 200 copies of the book stacked up on the counter. Actually Jayne waited in the queue and I mooched around the store. Before long I spotted a fancy-looking display of hard copy editions of all the other books, and I’m proud to say that I succumbed to the impulse and plucked them all from the display for Jayne to buy.

Unfortunately the person three in front of us in the queue got the last available copy of the new one (the 200 copies on the counter were pre-orders), but we weren’t going to be beaten that easily. When paying for the other ones we overheard one of the staff saying that some extra copies might be brought in from Queenscliff later in the day, so we set off on a leisurely drive to Queenscliff to jump the queue.

When we got there we couldn’t find the bookstore but Jayne spotted some happy families walking back from the station, which reminded me of a story that I’d read in the paper this morning about the Queenscliff/Drysdale railway running a special Hogwarts Express train today. We put two and two together and wandered down to find around 100 families milling around on the platform. Some were entering the best-dressed competition, others were waiting for the train to leave, but only one or two were queuing to buy the book from the lady dressed as Professor McGonagall (I had to look that up), so we waited for about a minute, bought our copy, then wandered off for a walk around Queenscliff.

So. Altogether quite a pleasant morning, despite (or more accurately because of) the lack of hysteria. And thanks to our impulse buying we should be right for our commuting reading for a few weeks.

P.S. On the way back from Queenscliff we dropped into the Mill Markets in Newcomb for a look around. Lots of great stuff in there, including these sunnies that I bought especially for the upcoming retro day we’re having at Falls Creek with our friends. (Yep, everyone skis or boards in retro gear all day long).

Nice.