Col. Chris Hadfield

Today I took (another) road trip to Dublin, for a book signing by the famous astronaut Chris Hadfield. I had no idea how busy it would be, so I thought arriving about half an hour early would be early enough. I was wrong!

When I got there the queue was already about half a mile down the street, so I ended up queueing for 2 and a half hours in the torrential rain and gale force winds (I also didn't notice the forecast for a massive storm). After being in the queue for about 20 mins, an employee came out to tell us that the shop had sold out of the books, before the signing had even started, which was a bit of a surprise. There was a really lovely atmosphere about the event though, so everyone was trying to help each other out. A girl in front of me offered to go and search some of the other bookshops in Dublin for a book for me, and after about 6 stores and running around for an hour in the rain she actually managed to get me one! The friendliness of Irish people is always a lovely thing to witness. I heard that there were other people buying books and giving them for free to kids in the line, when it became clear that only people with books would be allowed to meet Chris.

Unfortunately the family in front of me weren't able to get their hands on a book, the dad went searching for hours but couldn't track one down, so I pretended to be the two little girls' big sister so they could come in with me and have a chat with their hero. If you hear of two female Irish astronauts some day in the future it might just be them!