Animal Week

Hello everyone!

During half term we had Animal Week at the Warner Bros. Studio Tour London - The Making of Harry Potter, where they had a lot of the real animal actors that play the beloved pets in Harry Potter. The animals were a wonderful addition to the sets and really brought the whole place to life! The animal trainers were lovely - willing to answer any questions about the training of the animals which I found really interesting. Meeting the animal actors had me completely starstruck - so here's a little account of my AMAZING day.

Here you can see the new additions that were made to the Great Hall in the form of breakfast! The Graphic Department were very clever in creating 'Pixie Puffs' and 'Cheeri Owls' wizarding cereals. And you can see one of the letters that the owls were trained to hold and drop - one Ron Weasley would rather not have recieved - his dreaded Howler! On display they had some other letters and packages that were use by the owls - because the owls hated holding onto the string itself, little pieces of leather were attached so the owl had something more substantial to hold onto during training.

By the Gryffindor Common Room, some of the heroes pets were being shown! One of my favourites was the picture of Pigwideon, Ron's owl - even though he was TINY, he wasn't afraid to stare people down. He was such a beaut! Also out of his cage was Ron's rat Scabbers, who, by some extraordinary coincidink, has a toe missing as did Peter Pettigrew! They also had Trevor, Neville Longbottom's toad who was a lot more lovely that he looks! Out of all the animals I expected to see, Trevor was definitely not one of them so it was a really nice surprise! If you follow the Studio Tour on Twitter, you may be aware of their 'Twitter Litter' which gave accounts of a group 6 kitten's training in the few weeks up to Animal Week and allowed members of the public to name them! They are so flipping cute. I couldn't get any decent pictures of them because kittens are very excitable and won't stop moving but here's the best one I took of the 'rogue' kitten they called 'Fletcher'. To get better pictures and videos of the kittens then you can see them on the tour's Twitter account HERE.

An ancestor of Fang, a Neopolitan Mastiff, was here at the tour, whose name is Ray. Despite the wrinkly face and slobber, she is lovely and seeing her loving some attention from Julie Tottman, one of the main animals trainers, was so sweet. There were loads of owls based in Diagon Alley at Eeylops Owl Emporium which was SO cool! Including Errol, the Weasleys bird who keeps crashing!

The last two are my absolute favourite. These animals are the ones I got the most starstruck over - Crookshanks and Hedwig. Crookshanks (whose real name is Crackerjack) is such a beautiful cat. I know he's got a squashed face, but I think that makes him even cuter. He's known for thinking he's a dog and is trained to go to specific marks - some even as small as a leaf! Hedwig is one the most gorgeous creatures I've ever met! His real name is Elmo and is trained to just sit and be beautiful. I said to one of the animal trainers 'That bird is a saint for sitting there all day' and he replied 'What? He likes sitting there all day doing nothing!' :'). So he's a very lazy bird but he does bite if you go near him!

So that my absolutely amazing time seeing all of the animal actors. Did anyone else go to Animal Week and enjoy as much as I did?

Au Revior lovelies, Alice xxx

Long time again ...

Hello everyone!

It seems I say this every single time but I am sorry for the reeeeeally long absence. I have incredibly busy over the past four months with work and my music studies and I just haven't had anything really interesting to post. After a while, I felt I'd lost the reason why I did this and I was particularly unhappy with the design of my blog - my computer crashed so I had nowhere to create a new design and my photos are scattered everywhere. Now, my computer is fixed and I feel a lot more purposeful about my aims of this so I'm ready to give it another stab! But I want to thank the many of you who have still popped in. It's really nice! But I thought I would do a whistle stop visual tour of what's been going on with some lovely instagram photos.

So a lot has been going on! The first two pictures may be a bit confusing but they are shots from a show I did for my theatre group in January which was incredibly fun, particularly since I got to wear the most incredible costume for Queen Elizabeth I - For my brother's birthday in January, I was a lovely sister and took him to the Waffle House in St Albans which is set in a beautiful 16th Century mill, decorated with cute fairy lights and serves delicious waffles - England was covered in snow in February as you can see, and what better to remedy the cold with a lovely Cafe Nero and The Musical Times on a day off - My Harry Potter iPhone covers that I bought from Etsy and was absolutely delighted with them. Really well made and I have dropped my phone many times and it is still intact - A night out seeing Chase and Status in Watford with Lizzie and Laura which was immense - A visit to Durham where I shall be studying next year - On the way back in King's Cross Station, I visited the Platform 9 and 3/4 shop (which is ridiculously overpriced) but I managed to get my ticket to Hogwarts.

This has been long so I'll stop, but I do want to make blogging a usual occurence now. As a musician, I'm going to play to my strengths and talk a lot more about music - about interesting topics in music, current and new exciting music and any pieces that I feel are so moving, they should be shared with the world. But until next time ...

Au revior my lovelies

 

Love Alice xxx