Friday Five

1. What's the last movie you saw?
When I originally filled this in it was Shall We Dance, but we've moved on a bit since then, past Deja Vu to the fabulous oldies we watched today while wrapping presents: White Christmas and It's A Wonderful Life.

2. Are you gentle?
Like a kitten, baby.

3. Do you sleep with your bedroom door shut?
No. Unless either or both of the girls are in the house. Then we all need our privacy. Oh, and at weekends. Closing it helps keep the streetlights out so we can sleep in longer :o)

4. What's your middle name?
Christopher.

5. Friday fill-in:
I could learn to like ___.
Stephen Fry.


Interesting day today socially. We popped round to the new neighbours for a glass of wine and a mince pie as we'd been invited by Christmas card. It reminded me of us, a year ago. They moved in on almost exactly the same date as us (only this year) so they've been in about 9 weeks and the house is still looking a bit unlived in, if you know what I mean. Like things aren't quite in their right places yet. But the welcome was warm and quite a few of our other neighbours were there, so we expected to pass a pleasant 90 minutes or so before making our excuses to leave in time to prepare for the main event of the evening: mulled wine & mince pies at Jamie & Lise's. That was until conversation turned to what movies we've watched recently and one woman said she was looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass. Our host's demeanour changed instantly. "Oh no, you mustn't," she said seriously. "Philip Pullman hates God and his stories are all about killing God. You might think it's a simple story but the movie makers are doing what they did with Harry Potter... they'll draw you in and then in the final instalment you'll be watching them kill God. Don't go. Spread the word, warn all your friends about it."

Honestly, I thought I'd stepped back into the 11th century or something. We just sat there quietly not really knowing what to say. The usual advice is you shouldn't discuss religion or politics with friends and these were people we'd only known for like an hour. I wasn't about to engage them with any high level discourse on how His Dark Materials is set in a fantasy world and even though they're called daemons they're not actual mythic demons. Not, you know, works of the devil. And I certainly wasn't going to get into a debate about how anyone who believes God is omniscient, omnipotent, the creator of everything, could possibly be worried by a story, even if that story does involve killing God. Actually I think if you look a bit closer it's more likely to be about getting rid of the church, which is a different subject altogether. Anyway we stayed long enough to be polite and slipped unobtrusively away. If they ever find out about the ritual sacrifices, we're done for.

We opted to walk to Jamie & Lise's, because I didn't want to have to watch what I was drinking overmuch and because we didn't really have a feel for how far it is. The answer, surprisingly is "not far." Barely more than a 20-minute walk even allowing for the fact that the pavements were icy and the roads even more so.

We stayed until midnight, until the cockles of our 'earts were well and truly warmed by the wine and the great company, and then walked home again. Surprisingly for that time of night it seemed to have warmed up a bit. The cars that had been unused all day were still rimed with frost but those that had been out at some time hadn't frosted back up again.