| My Account of 5/3/02 (meeting Darren for the first time) At the time it happened, this was one of the best days of my life. On the Monday the night before (the 4th), my friend Nic stayed over at my house so we could both get the coach together the following morning. We made two banners, one saying “Darren, we’re here for the ride. Love you people”, and another saying “We may not have flown to the moon and back but we’ve come all the way from Manchester”. We were so unbelievably excited that night, knowing we were heading off to see Darren the following day, that we didn’t get to sleep until about 1am. That night was one of the worst night’s sleep I’ve had in my life. I woke up at least 3 times and when I did I got all excited and couldn’t sleep again. The times I did wake up Nic was either already awake or woke up soon after, so I guess she was going through the same thing as me! When I finally got to sleep, I was woken by my alarm. It was 6am and I was very tempted to go back to sleep, but then remembered what I was doing that day and jumped out of bed. I got dressed straight away, and tried to wake nic up on several occasions. When all else failed, I threw water over her (LOL)., and told her if she didn’t get up soon I was going to leave without her. So she got up, dressed, and I finished off getting ready, sorted food out, checked a bazillion times I had the money, coach tickets etc… Then we got on the train to Manchester at about 7:20, and by 7.45am we were walking towards Victoria Coach station. When we got there it was 8:05am. The bu was due at 8:30, but we still had to wait for our friend Bev to arrive. At about 8:20 she arrived and we talked excitedly about the day ahead and told her about our banner etc. The coach ride itself seemed to take forever. We didn’t seem to leave Manchester for ages. We listened to music and chatted the whole journey, and when we were about half way there we began to get texts from people we were meeting there (Well Bev i.e. MISS POPULAR did…LOL). We were so paranoid Darren was going to turn up whilst we were still on the coach and meet the others but not us so that everytime Bev’s phone rang or beeped we nearly had a heart attack lol. When we finally arrived in London and were just going through the streets to get to victoria coach station we began to get so excited and nervous it must’ve been unbearable for every other person on the coach lol. When we finally pulled into Victoria Coach station at about 2.20pm (over an hour late!!) we were very relieved to finally be off the coach, and we ran to victoria train station (and I do mean RAN…we started off walking but then all the london/darren vibes got to us and our excitement couldn’t be held in any longer).Then we went to Leicester Square, where we met some other people. We met were Cheryl (Darrenstoes), Jayne (Puskins), Liz (Lizifer), Anjee (anjee*), Laura (savagebabe84) and I maybe there were some more but I can’t remember their names sorry! We showed everyone our banner and talked for a few mins then we talked about which entrance we thought Darren would come out of. Then we found an entrance with a woman waiting outside it and she said this was the most likely entrance for him to go in and that he hadn’t arrived yet. By now it was about 3:00pm. We were told that the latest time he would arrive would be 5:00pm, so we decided we’d just stand there and wait. We also talked to the woman on the door about getting into the show and she said that if we got Darren’s permission then we might be able to go in for the rehearsals. Unfortunately, by 5pm Darren still hadn’t arrived, and so me and nic began to give up hope (anjee and bev were still talking to angie). Then we saw a car pull up, at 5.07pm. It had blacked out windows so looked like it could be Darren’s. Nic said to me “hey that could be Darren’s car”, but as it didn’t look like any of the ones the other stars had got out of, she turned away. I didn’t though, I walked towards the car the suddenly right in front of me my idol got out the car. The guy who was on all the pictures in my room, Darren Hayes. My jaw dropped and I shouted “Nicola!” and then Darren walked towards me and said “hey how are ya?” and I was completely starstruck. I didn’t say a word…just opened my mouth and shut it again lol. By the time I’d started to pick up courage there was already a swarm of people surrounding Darren. And most of them were Blue fans too grrrr. They barely knew who he was, they just wanted his autograph cause he was famous. I asked Darren for a picture and he obliged. He just put his arm round me and all I did was stare at his stubble LOL don’t ask me why…but I just noticed he had gorgeous stubble and gorgeous lips…I’m telling you they’re SO much bigger in real life LOL then I looked and grinned at the camera nic was holding and then the one leonie was, not sure which was my camera but not particularly caring lol. Then Darren was moving on taking pictures with other people and signing things. He looked at my photo and said “wow that’s a big photo” and saw my deely boppers and ‘twanged’ them and said “they’re cool…I like them”…or something along those lines… I don’t remember exactly! Then he saw this adorable kid running round and said “aww hello” and took her into his arms. Then Darren carried on making his way to the door and leonie saw my photo and said “do you want me to get him to sign that?” and I was like “ummm I don’t know…I don’t have a pen…” as I discovered Bev had nicked off with my pen! Grrrrr@ bev! Lol j/k I started asking Darren if there was any way he could get us into the show like the woman at the door said but he didn’t know. He was too flustered I think. Then Darren went into the Pepsi Chart Building and that was when it hit me. I’d just met Darren Hayes. I walked off and began shaking like mad, almost like I was having a fit (I feel like such an idiot now… but I couldn’t help it then… it was my gut reaction. Nic was there trying to calm me down bless her and I did soon enough. About a minute later, Becks (*queen amidala*) arrived, and found out we’d only just met him. She was gutted but we assured her it’d be alright cause he was gonna come out again at about 8pm. A few minutes later Leonie came out (I saw a few minutes later… I don’t actually know how long it was…). And she was a complete sweety. She took our letters that we wanted to give to darren but hadn’t had time (including a poem I gave her that was for SG/DH and had been written by a lot of fans). She said she’d try and get us into the show. So off she disappeared and came back a few mins later saying she couldn’t get us in unfortunately. But we didn’t really mind that much, we were already on Cloud 9! We spoke to Leonie a while longer and asked if there was anything wrong with Darren, cause he’d seemed a bit unhappy before, but she explained that he was tired as he’d just finished doing about 5hours of interviews in whichever country he’d just been in. Then we had our picture taken with Leonie, and she asked us if we were going to the Capital Gig on Friday and we were like “umm no… we wish!” and then she said she’d try and get us into it :O She took Bev’s number and Laura’s number, and said she’d ring if she could get us in. We didn’t honestly think she’d ring, just thought she was just being nice. Then she disppeared off again and we carried on standing there. |