The Making of Harry Potter

It's been an action-packed few weeks. Lots has been done and lots is to come. Firstly... I SAW FLORENCE AND THE MACHINE!

I'm a bit in lesbians with Flo. By a bit, I mean COMPLETELY, UTTERLY AND IRREVOCABLY.

She has the most amazing voice, style and panache. She's beautiful. 'No light, No light' from her second album, Ceremonials, is the most perfect song in my world at the moment. Since buying the album on October 31st, iTunes informs me I've now listened to it 403 times... Reasonable until I explain that I don't listen to my iPod every day. Usually when I'm travelling. So the 3.8 plays daily average is a lot scarier than it first seems. Still, it keeps me happy.

Pris and I went to see her in Brum, meeting up with Fran, Kirsty and Beth there. We had to drink our wine out of plastic pint glasses but I did get to buy a tea-cup and she played 'No light, No light,' as her second-to-last song and I did some happy tears and it was perfect. 

After Flo and some much needed fun-times with Pris, I headed home for a few hours to repack a suitcase before heading off to Surrey for a night, followed by a road trip to The Wirral to celebrate Ellie's birthday. It was pure bliss to have so many of my favourite people together in one place, last time it happened was Florida last July, so this was a rare treat. Though I'm hoping it doesn't stay a treat and we get to do it more, so much so that I start to take those beautiful people for granted.


Last week saw me, SophieSoph and Kat venturing into the past (and there actually was a TARDIS, no joke) and going to experience life in the Blitz, at the Winston Churchill War Museum by London Bridge. Soph and I are native City of Villains kids, so we're quite WW2 savvy, popping a gasmask on and scooting under a table when the air-raid siren goes off is all in a days work for us. We followed up Victory by seeking out crushing defeat, heading to the casino. I popped my complimentary £10 chip on the roulette wheel... And lost. So we got cake and went to the pub.


A couple of days later, I was awake at 5.30am... Because finally, after almost 5 months of waiting, it was time to go to Leavesden to The Making of Harry Potter at Leavesden Studios.


The point of this isn't to give you a step-by-step guide to it, as I'm hoping you'll eventually go and see for yourself just how amazing it is. But if you're a fan of the world of Hazza P, you'll love it.


Most of all though, I think it's a beautiful standing tribute to the people we never got to see on screen. So often, we focus on the actors and their performances, occasionally bashing directorial decisions or script changes, but we fail to appreciate the other miracles happening on screen. Thousands and thousands of props were created for the series, hours spent designing and painting things which, at best, might only be seen on screen for a split second. 

Actual chocolate

Since visiting Leavesden, I've realised that for every complaint I've made about the films, I should have been making three compliments, making a note of objects in the background, or how realistic a puppet was. I'm really excited to watch them all again now, to better appreciate the costumes and the detail that was added to them. Hours and hours spent covering phone books in leather, embossing letters, adding labels to bottles for when a camera pans past them swiftly. Things which were made, like Lily's letter to Sirius, but never included. The chocolate feast, some items made from real chocolate. The hundreds and hundreds of little touches, that make the Harry Potter series really magical. 

We won't be crashing into the Whomping Willow
and that's why our insurance is lower.

At the same time as discovering things you've never seen before, you can't look anywhere without seeing something you recognise. By the end of the day, my stomach ached from all the pangs I had when I saw something I knew. Big things, like the door to the Chamber of Secrets, the Knight Bus, the basilisk skeleton. Small things, like Umbridge's amazing cat brooch, Scabior's scarf, Luna's Dirigible Plum earrings. It was a trip down memory lane...

Not to be confused with the actual trip down memory lane that is Diagon Alley. It genuinely bought tears to my eyes and not just because I'm an insanely sappy fangirl. 

But because it's so real. Despite numerous reminders that we were on sound stages, it didn't click until we'd left and were on the red carpet watching the actors go back inside. Then I remembered that I hadn't just been to Hogwarts, or Diagon Alley, but to a workplace, where the cream of the British film industry spent ten years making miracles. 

I'm so excited to go back, I've booked to go again on 31st July, for Harry and JK Rowling's birthdays. And, best of all, because we were rushed from the gift shop at the end, WB have very generously comped us free tickets to go back! I would urge all Harry Potter fans to go, it is expensive but it's so worth it. And they have Butterbeer. Actual Butterbeer. It was beautiful.


I know there's stuff I didn't see there, stuff I need to see again, stuff I want to spend hours staring at. At the moment, the exhibit will be there until 2013, when it may be expanded to include more things, or removed to make Leavesden operational again. Go, before that happens. You won't regret it. It's one of two places in the world where you can step inside a book. And that's kind of all nerds want.