Christmas in Sandiway

For me Christmas takes the form of invading the family festivities of my friends in Cheshire. As you can see, I easily fit into the spirit of it, Christmas crackers and all.

Not a white Christmas this year, but it made up for it shortly afterwards, taking us somewhat by surprise. We had made our annual pilgrimage to Runcorn to see the latest Hobbit film. (The last one - I have survived!)

Obviously it is difficult for critics to have a go at the Hobbit. There is an assumption that Tolkien is a genius, so any film based on his books must at least be considered passable. And of course once you have reviewed one you have reviewed them all. They are all essentially just a battle scene, each being just as preposterous as the last. And of course it has a first class cast. Sir Ian McKellen is beyond reproach and other top stars all  have their places on the gravy train, Martin Freeman, James Nesbitt, Orlando Bloom, Billy Connolly, Ian Holm, not even necessarily in substantial roles. And they have to be truly fine actors to spout the dire dialogue without corpsing. Made all the harder by the tendency to linger on the actor in close up after their lines to suggest they had said something of profundity.

The morality tale in the film is as subtle as a sledgehammer. And even the very worst Disney film would be more realistic, as a dozen dwarfs deciding to fight reverses the battle against thousands of orc warriors. The dwarfs are lucky. They have so much make up and hair you can't see them sniggering.

But when we had gone into the cinema it was a pleasant enough afternoon; on coming out we found a winter wonderland. My first sight of snow of the winter. A very slow journey home. I doubt the cinema would have had many takers for its evening performances that night. Next day I opened the curtains to this.

I went out into the village with my camera, but unfortunately although the snow was fine, the sky was grey and indeed it even started to rain.

 

But the following morning, although with less snow, there was a blue sky, so off I went to take all the same shots again, just in better light. Much better isn't it?

So nice was it that we actually went on a walk through the woods ("We" meaning the adults; teenagers of course have bedrooms to enjoy on a day like this.) The snow and ice were lovely. I rather lagged behind with my camera.

In fact I lingered so long with the camera that we had a rather later than planned lunch down the pub, but a nice one nonetheless. The waitress apologized profusely for having no turkey left. As if one wanted amny more. Sea bass and scallops. Yum.

Then on to Manchester for afternoon tea with another friend, before heading back to London via Sheffield. I managed to miss the worst of the post Christmas rail meltdown, although even so I arrived in Sheffield to find my chosen train was cancelled. Never mind, next one wasn't full, and so worst that happened was I missed the start of Match of the Day.