I arrived at the Cottesloe and slipped into my seat. The play started and shortly thereafter I had a severe OMGwhoisthisguy*flails* moment. Which surprised me because I'm not normally prone to that sort of thing. Really. The next day I was walking back from Borough Market when some mysterious force
pulled me into the foyer of the NT towards the box office, where the nice man behind the desk very helpfully sold me a ticket for the next night's performance.
So it's now Saturday night, the play has just gotten out, and I'm determined to stage-door this time. There were quite a few other people waiting when he emerged, and he was very nice with everyone. I was sort of hanging back a bit, a combination of shyness and not wanting to come across as overly pushy, but then he saw me standing there, said "Hello", and I promptly melted into a helpless puddle of squeeing fangirl (so much for my plan to dazzle him with my cleverness and wit).
I told him that I loved the play, how this was the second time I had seen it, and asked if he would mind signing my program. He then asked what my name was, and while he was writing in my program he was telling me how one of his friends had just had a baby and had given her daughter the same name. He was quite chatty, and by the time he was ready to give back the program, I had recovered enough of my courage to request a picture. He happily obliged, and put his arm around me as I handed my camera off. He even did a second picture with me, in case the first didn't come out (lovely, lovely man).
I actually ended up seeing Landscape *again* on the following Monday, ostensibly to do a favor for a Tom Hollander fan whom I had met while stage-dooring on Saturday (we had waited together in vain for him until 11:30 that night). Grabbing hold of any excuse to justify the purchase of another ticket, I told her that I would go again and get Tom to sign her program. When the play ended I went over to the stage door, desperately not wanting Julian to see me ("she's back again?!"). But of course he did see me and probably thought that I was an obsessive weird person.
At least I was able to eventually find Tom and earn my good karma (me and some other girls were waiting ages in the cold).
And that is the story of how I discovered the fraise-blonde one and came to see LWW three times in the space of a week.
, when I start raving about Julian. My friends have no taste!
