Keep Following Your Dreams
Many fans today had the chance to meet Madonna in person at Selfridges for the first time. Our community member and friend Putneyboy has just put down to words his experience in our forum.
Here’s what he wrote about the amazing day he had today
“I managed to get to Selfridges in London today for the Adventures of Abdi book signing that Madonna was doing. I found out late last night when surfing the Selfridges website of where to queue and how they were organising the event. So I got a bus at 4.15am this morning straight into London and went to Selfridges. I went to the entrance they had specified and Sharon, Tas, Tony, Simon, Kimmy and Raff there and we queued in the freezing cold. There were about 40 people in front of me at this point. As the day got on the queue got bigger but not to the extent that I imagined it was going to be. We were issed with our tickets at 1pm and I was number 44 in the queue which meant i would 100% get to meet Madonna and have a book signed.
At 1pm they then got us to pay for the book and head on up to level 2 where the designer rooms were – all this was all blacked out with curtains and we had to queue until 3pm when Madonna would invite us in one by one to meet and greet us. By this point I was literally crapping myself and shaking like a leaf – I did honestly not think I would get in as it was just for the first 250 people. As usual she overran due to reading her book to 30 children so people were ushered in from 3.30.
The first 30 people in the queue had their books personally signed but this was found to be taking too long so they just then issued “love Madonna on the signiture”.
It was then my turn – 3 people at a time were then taken into the Madonna room – there she sat in front of me – slim, small in a black dress and blode flowing hair – she looked amazing. Two people went before me and then it was my turn. She looked at me and told me to come over. I was besides myself at this time but managed to keep it together just about !
I went over and she put her hand out to shake my hand – I shook her hand in return and then did something really stupid – I curtsied !!! Dont ask my why I did it – I have no idea but she looked at me strange and then laughed. I then went into overdrive and said to her that now was my opportunity to say something to her that I have wanted to say for the last 20 years. She replied “kindly continue“. I said “I want to thank you for the sacrifices that you have made in your life so that I can live my life how I currently live it“. She said “what do you mean” still smiling at me. By this point Liz Rozenberg who was stood behind and 2 other people behind her were all staring at me (just to add a bit more pressure).
I went on to say “I come from a small town in northern England” at which point she interupted me and said “Where do you originally come from“, so I replied “Yorkshire“. She then replied “Oh I have heard of Yorkshire”. We both smiled and I carried on saying “from a small mining town and through her being in my life I was able to move to London, live as an openly gay man with my partner of 6 years who I met on a Madonna chat site, that I had the dream job in television and to just follow my dreams and keep faith.” I then told her “I am currently studying Kabbalah as I started to read it to interprit her music and video’s and the tour to see what message she was trying to get across and that by reading this it made sence to my own life and I was reading further into it.”
She smiled back and said “It’s so nice to hear that I have such a positive impact on some of my fans. Do you want a book ?”
Of course I replied yes and she handed it over to me. She then put her hand out again to shake my hand and gave me a firm handshake this time and said “Keep following those dreams“. At this point I went into a complete mess and cried “Thank you so much” and that was my meeting with Madonna.
Everybody who came out was crying – we were supposed to have 30″ with her but we were getting 1 minute + – I got 2 minutes so i consider myself very very lucky – even if I did make a tit of myself at the start with the curtsey – I will never know why I did that but there you go – lol.”
Special thanks to Steve