Conclusion

I have come to a simple conclusion: I have Hobbits on the brain. Not the little furry fuzzballs themselves, cute and leaf-eared as they may be, but the film and its future fellows.

The primary reason for this, beyond my status as a general all round Tolkien geek, is the fact that I still can't see the damn thing. This post is not about my slowly receding Chicken Pox (you want 'agony' for that), but its lingering effect is that I'm still in isolation. Sitting, with my germs, in a cinema with lots of potential unPoxed people is to be frowned upon, even if some of my scabs look a little like popcorn.

 Instead, I can read reviews, watch clips, try to ignore my friends on Facebook (my only form of regular human contact) as they discuss details. I can read the damn thing (gasp!) but I can't see it. As a result I think it's taking on greater proportions of importance in my mind. Frankly, up until the reviews started coming in I wasn't all that bothered. I had obsessed over every tiny detail of the production of the Lord of the Rings trilogy to the extent that by the time I watched it the film was so denuded of surprises that it left me cold. So I have intentionally ignored "An Unexpected Journey", so successfully that I was in danger of being rather ennuish about the whole thing - not like me at all, when it comes to M.E.

So when I find myself musing on a facebook status that someone's "three hours' sleep is catching them up", I end up with Tolkienish imagery entering my head, imagining three hours' sleep as a sort of Grey Rider, hooded and cloaked as if it does not want to be known, slowly gaining on the bad sleeper until it comes upon him, in some dark place, far from help. I shared this idea, much to the horror of the friend who felt that I had added a new terror to exhaustion. So I amended the image in my head from a Grey Rider to a Hot Pink Rider, on the basis that just because I'm starting to lose my marbles I don't need to scatter everyone else's.