Hobs And Hobbits

Most of today was taken up with emptying and cleaning cupboards, removing the old hob, sawing away at the worktop to enlarge the aperture, installing the new hob and tidying up.

All this is down at Mum and Dad's house. Their old hob self-destructed (one of the ceramic rings exploded, I'm told), and the new hob has been awaiting fitting for a few months - for when I'm down to help out.

This evening I went to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug with my oldest friend, Gareth. I can't get terribly excited about this one. There's lots of it that isn't in The Hobbit (presumably either made up by Peter Jackson or from Tolkien's unfinished snippets) and to be honest it really felt like they were dragging out every last possible bit of Middle-Earth legend to fill in the time.

I'd also like to know if one of the two threatening-looking characters in the Prancing Pony at Bree at the start of the film was Jimmy Nail... Ain't no doubt... (Well, there's a fair bit of doubt!)