Home again, home again

[nineveh_uk]

I am home, if not unpacked, after a very easy journey that culminated with my opening the door into the cold, dark house to discover that I’d accidentally left the heating on. At least this allows me to be annoyed with myself in the warm, and the orchid now has 12 buds on its flower spike (this is one I bought while flowering, and that I have actually managed to look after and is now flowering again. Unlike all the previous orchids I have possessed.)

Christmas/New Year was great, in a busy way. I have eaten and drunk a good deal, had some very nice presents, enjoyed the company of my family, seen The Hobbit: III*, had a couple of good walks, really good weather, and didn’t catch the vomiting bug from my sister. My mother did apologise that had we been spending Christmas in Leeds we would have had Anything Goes in Sheffield and White Christmas in Leeds,** plus your actual snow, whereas we didn’t get to the theatre and the only snow I saw was from the top of Arthur’s Seat. But you can’t have everything. I am severely out of date on Yuletide and LJ, but will catch up – if not tomorrow, as I think I’m now going to London.

I have kept up with the papers, though, which means that if you haven’t seen the video of BBC reporter Quentin Sommerville attempting to deliver a report from in front of a bonfire of drugs, I recommend it to you. If you think you’ve seen this story before, then you’re right that this is a case of life imitating art. There’s remarkably similar scene in Drop the Dead Donkey.

*I enjoyed it more than I’d anticipated. It probably helps that I rather like Jackson/Lee Pace’s interpretation of Thranduil as an elf-lord in a permanent state of eye-rolling and thinking “why am I surrounded by morons?” Also, Jackson is good at battles. Still plenty of WTF moments, but as I care less about The Hobbit, nothing to match Denethor and the Symbolic Tomatoes.

**Not the London one. This one is actually good.

Comments

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for easy journeys and good Christmases!

I find the Symbolic Tomatoes scene almost too uncomfortable to watch. Definitely a WTF moment.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It is infuriating - especially as the casting of Denethor for the canonical role is absolutely perfect.

[sonetka.livejournal.com]

For all the excrescences of The Hobbit, nothing in there is as bad as what they did to Denethor and Faramir. I'd half-forgotten the tomatoes until now and will be happy to half-forget them again. I can't say I cared for Thorin's end, though -- he pulls off a nice, thinking-on-his-feet move to sandbag the orc with his own metal weight (which was a nice callback to the bit in the first movie about how he got the name Oakenshield) at which point the screenwriters must have suddenly remembered "Wait, Thorin's supposed to die!" so they decided to completely switch off his brain function and have him basically stand there and wait to be stabbed by his magically-revived opponent. What's wrong with Thorin getting overwhelmed by some newly-appeared orcish mooks? There's no shame in being exhausted after an epic fight like that.

Glad you had a good Christmas and that all viruses were avoided! May all of 2015 be as enjoyable.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

That end was stupid, not least because it was also too drawn out. You're right that it would be much better to let Thorin win his duel, and then be overwhelmed with numbers and exhaustion.

My father and I spent several days in a state of paranoid hand-washing as Christmas 2013 threatened to repeat itself (not least as our amateur epidemiology suggested that it must be infectious during the incubation period), but it worked.

[wellinghall.livejournal.com]

Welcome back *waves*

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

*waves back*