The Hobbit at Christmas

I spent Christmas with my friends in Sandiway in Cheshire. Made as difficult as possible by the rail company choosing to use the Festive Period to undertake engineering works, thereby requiring use of the slow train to Birmingham Moor Street out of Marylebone, walk to Birmingham New Street and then get the train up to Cheshire. And my wheelie bag laden with presents broke a wheel.

But then the presents all seemed to go down well, including the framed print which took up much of the space, and the much smaller tablet which went to my friends normally bouncy 13 year old. To be fair he was still pretty bouncy despite sounding like he was dying of TB. Now I appreciate it was probably just a bad cold, but the rasping cough (probably exacerbated by his choir-boy duties), did sound more like consumption. Not great timing for Christmas. (But then again, while doing a mercy run for extra strepsils at the local chemist, I did hear another customer ask "What have you got for a 2 year old with vomiting and diarrhoea?" so there was clearly someone having a worse Christmas.

Pet and master in dynamic harmony

Sandiway is not exactly a sleepy village, although it does have its picturesque parts. However, it has been greatly added to by post war boxy housing. Which makes all the more amusing the local campaign against an extra 100 houses. Presumably on the grounds that the character of the village will be spoilt if there are more houses exactly like the ones that are there, with more incomers just like the current population, with more cars exactly like they have at the moment sharing their almost empty roads. Spectacular nimbyism.

Boxing Day we headed out to the local multiplex to see the first of the Hobbit trilogy, in 3D. God this is an awful film, in any number of dimensions. Sort of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, but with more dwarfs, less plot, less developed characters than say, Bashful, and of course more fight scenes in the woods. If you like sword fights between dwarfs and a variety of creatures all with bad teeth, then this is the film for you. (And there is certainly a living to be made setting up dentists practice in Middle Earth. Or a barbers.)

Basically the film is interminable, and its only part 1! I wonder how many takes there needed to be for these actors dressed in their silly beards to come out with the rubbish dialogue without having giggling fits. I suppose if you get paid enough you will turn your hand to anything, even this tripe. Typical dialogue is something along the lines of "Ah, Dingleberry, Son of Whodyoucallit, grandson of Bigbollox, I see you carry the sword of Wibble Wobble, forged by elves in the Fires of Dangle Dale", all to be declaimed with a straight face while wearing the joke beards.

And the fighting is all strictly joke stuff too, no doubt to be suitable for the kiddies. So of course no matter what the odds and however many thousand orcs there are, our little band of dwarfs survive completely unscathed. Even when the leader of the merry band takes a fearful amount of being thrown around by an orc with exceptionally bad teeth, he still only looks like he had a bit of a bad morning in front of the shaving mirror.

Strictly for Fantasy nerds. Of which there are clearly many.

Then we all headed down to my place for the weekend after Christmas, the 13 year old now back to full perkiness while the rest of his family were down with the bug he had so kindly passed on. Yours truly somehow survived this plague. Luckily young Kit is enough fun on his own for any family. Great kid. And I suppose what I love most is I am made to feel very much part of the family. And it is nice to be able to choose one's family rather thamn have to take the one you are given!

Sunday morning started with skating at Somerset House (at least for mum and dad - I don't do skating and the kids preferred a lie-in). Then onto the Courtauld Collection (with very reluctant kids), but I saved Kit from further punishment at Tate Britain by suggesting going to see Skyfall at the Barbican Cinema. Which seemed to be enjoyed by all apart from almost having a mutiny on my hands when it turned out that the Barbican Cinema doesn't do popcorn (one of its strongest selling points in my opinion.)

So that was Christmas, on to New Year....