Once Christmas Day is behind us, and we have negotiated the dread no-man's land that is Boxing Day we arrive at OH's birthday. This has always been a bit difficult to differentiate from Christmas, especially given people's (totally understandable) propensity for giving joint presents, and the fact that most years thinking about baking a birthday cake just seems like a step too far after all the other food we've been exposed to. I try to make it special, but most years it's a struggle.
Not so much this year though, thanks largely to Peter Jackson and the local cinema, as we went to see The Hobbit. I have had reservations about this project since I heard it was going to be two films, and those only increased when I heard it was going to be stretched into three. The Hobbit after all is a very slight work, even in its revised state, and I'm still not totally reconciled to what Jackson did with Faramir in LOTR. Be that as it may, we all agreed that a trip to see The Hobbit followed by a nice meal in our local Italian restaurant seemed an excellent way to celebrate a birthday.
And we were right. Despite some negative comments we'd picked up about the film, mainly to do with its length, we all enjoyed it very much. I did find bits of it tedious (mainly the very unrealistic 'escape' scenes, which are down to the Director wanting to do huge action sequences, and the deus ex machina that is The Eagles, Tolkien's forunner to Dr Who's Sonic Screwdriver, which presumably is down to the author's inability to dream up anything more consistent with his overall scheme) but overall I loved it. Music, sets, landscape, costume, acting - all amazing. I particularly enjoyed Hugo Weaving's younger Elrond, someone more open and much less grim than his later incarnation in LOTR and Richard Armstrong as the haunted, driven leader of the exiled and wandering dwarves. I understand OH's favourite moments were largely those featuring Cate Blanchette's Galadriel. And who can blame him? she looked fantastic and acted up a storm.
Afterwards we decamped to Locarnos where we enjoyed some good Italian food and wine, in warmth and light and a friendly atmosphere, then came home for coffee and some of the birthday cake OH had made for himself. I know, how sad is that? But he likes baking cakes and although my ankle is improving I don't know that it would cope with standing around in the kitchen baking cakes. We'll leave that for the new year.
My daughter's best friend when she was at Primary School, had a December birthday, and then decided it was too close to Christmas (at age 9!!!) and changed it to the same date, but in June. All her birthdays after that warranted a party in June, only her family celebrated it in December. My mother, who has the same birthday, but is about 50 years older, wishes she'd had the thought herself............ Fran39
ReplyDeleteI've often wished to do that but no-one else in the family would play ball. Compounded the problem ourselves by having son no 1 on 29th December!
ReplyDelete