I got 99 worries and my used car is one

There is no worry like a post purchase of a used car worry, except that intense split-second worry about what to say to someone you have already said “Morning” to that day as you again approach one another in the corridor.
Top tip, “Hello again” is a good one. Or, if you’re really lucky and enough time in the day has passed, you can say “Afternoon”. A tut and “We must stop meeting like this” is useful for a third awkward encounter. “You again” followed by a hearty laugh works for a fourth time. You’re on your own with a fifth meeting, maybe roll your eyes or stare at the floor intently or jump out of a window or fake a heart attack or never leave your desk ever again.
Anyway, where were we… Cat GIFs? Cleavage shorts? Cute dog pictures? Oh right, yeah, used cars. I’m not very adept at this driving web traffic thing.
A used car is the ultimate example of once bitten, forever shy. All the early confidence that cars are indestructible gradually evaporates as an increasingly varied amount of stuff goes wrong. Much like how your body refuses to do now the things it used to be able to do with consummate ease, only it’s a metal box incapable of thought and moods.
First car I ever bought - £600 on a 1998 Renault Clio which worked perfectly at the start and I assumed would work perfectly forevermore with very little or indeed no input from me, right up to the point two of the engine cylinders imploded due to a lack of oil. It is now shaped like a cube or is part of a new washer/dryer combo or something.
Second car - £900 on a 2003 Renault Clio which, in the course of nine months, needed a new cambelt, new clutch, one tyre, a new tesseract power source, new shock absorber and coil and various other bits and bobs which probably all added up to more than the initial outlay on the bloody thing. It is now with a new owner who will enjoy all of these fixes as I developed ‘the fear’ and hated the damn car despite it working properly by the end of it all.
‘The fear’ now remains despite buying a low-mileage used car with a new clutch and a clear MOT.
‘The fear’ means every cough, squeak and judder is an impending sign of vehicular doom, possibly with fire and lopped off limbs involved at some stage.
Oh, the accelerator pedal is vibrating a bit. Wait, what was that noise? Hmm, the engine wouldn’t start first time round. Oh crap, the car shook a bit while stationary. Is that smoke from the exhaust of the car in front?
Even a vehicle health check at the garage which resulted in only new windscreen wipers being slapped on merely acted as a temporary boost. The worry something terrible is likely to occur in the not too distant future remains.
There has been one positive though in the whole vehicle buying process – the car’s number plate as the last three letters of it are ‘FML’.

Already it has bought a smile to the faces of the good folk at Direct Line, the AA and my local garage and presumably anybody who has been stuck behind me in a traffic jam. My car cheers people up wherever it goes.
But it goes back to ‘the fear’. I firmly believe there is now a very real possibility of me at the side of the road, slumped over the roof, head cradled in my arms, in the pouring rain with that number plate firmly in frame being taken captured and instantly becoming a meme.
Fuck my life indeed.

March 25, 2006, at the Walkers Stadium, a decade on

From the most extreme emotional experiences, there tends to be a handful of freeze-frame moments which remain with you.
These are probably the moments that are said to flash before your eyes when you are about to meet your maker.
One of those experiences for me came ten years ago today – football is the most relevant irrelevance so there is no harm in a day as visceral, intense and joyous as March 25, 2006, at the Walkers Stadium, Leicester, being classed as an extreme emotional experience. Plus, I’m male so emotionally stunted; sport being one of the elements allowed to pierce that.
The key thing on the day was context – Reading did not need to win to guarantee promotion to the top flight for the first time. It was going to happen that season, in the coming games, regardless.
On the face of it, there was no need for emotional engagement with the day. No jeopardy; no risk; the only failure being losing a game and even that could have seen us promoted. Why the stress?
But, the context. Going for our first ever promotion to the top flight, residual resentment over the events of 1994/95 (I was four at the time but the one promotion place, 2-0 with a penalty and bloody Fabian de Freitas was ingrained) and that nagging, nagging feeling all football fans have that it just cannot be true.

Moment one

It shouldn’t feel strange to fall behind in a game of football but that was the kind of season we were having. Leicester City away was our 40th of game of the season and this was only the 12th time we had fallen behind in a game. 12!
Nothing of Iain Hume’s goal sticks in the mind’s eye but what does is a feeling of slight confusion and disbelief at half time to be 1-0 down. This was our day to party in what was becoming a perfect season and someone had taken a piss in the punch. We couldn’t lose and get promoted, not after how we had performed all year.
We were probably going to go up anyway but it didn’t feel like it – it wasn’t anger or annoyance, it was quiet and nervous.
A regular enough feeling but in the wider context of the day, enhanced.

Moment two

The equaliser.
Even the very best goals you ever see tend to be lost in the mists of time and you end up remembering them how you saw it on TV. But not Kevin Doyle’s that day.
I remember thinking we won’t score from a right-footed inswinger of a corner. James Harper rarely took corners that season – the oft masterful left-footed deliveries of Bobby Convey and Nicky Shorey were the usual set piece routines that season.
I remember the mesh of bodies in the box and thinking for a split second the ball will just get lost in there before it bounced through a man in a white shirt (I had no idea who) got his head behind it. Time slows.
The middle of the net ripples.
The rest, a blank.

Moment three

Two or three minutes previous, the message had come over the PA system that Watford and Leeds had dropped points. We had done enough to win promotion.
Two or three minutes of forgettable but unforgettable jumping around, shouting, singing, hugging the complete strangers in front, to my right and behind.
Two or three minutes of enjoying the loss of control that football brings.
Two or three minutes before feeling I had a lot of space on my left-hand side. I look down. I see my father sat with his head in his hands; not in a despairing way but simply to take some time to himself and remember all the years that had led up to that moment.
Context. Then, release, he joined in with the rest of the incoherent, unconfined joy.

Plenty more happened that day but it often takes the fan videos (still stored on my laptop from the wonderful webpage of resources which emerged after March 25) and the season’s DVD to recall them.It was a delight to discover one of the fan videos was taken from three seats to my right, a keen refresher to fill in the joy-caused blanks.
These are my memories from where I was stood that day – their value only sentimental to me but to others, I would hope they bring back their own freeze-frame moments from that unrepeatable day.

A March day in Leicester

If I may start with what I know may seem a controversial view but…football is tribal.
And, to add another controversial conversational starter to the meal that is this stream of consciousness, Leicester City are winning the hearts and souls of millions with their story this season, rightly or wrongly.
Now those two points are thrown out there, I’m going to sew them together.
Like I assume a lot of Reading fans, for me the next four weeks or so are a time of nostalgia, reflection and reminiscence as we approach 10 years on from not only our greatest season ever, but one of the greatest seasons in English football history.
The numbers and their associated records are ingrained forevermore – 106 (points), two (defeats all season), 33 (league games unbeaten), zero (previous promotions to the top flight), 99 (the number of league goals scored, Reading’s equivalent of Bradman’s 99.94 career average in the pursuit of perfection) and one (the number of sex tapes Leroy Lita featured in that season).
Memories flood from that season; James Harper’s 18-yard header against Milwall, Lita’s overhead kick versus Crystal Palace, Glen Little’s one trick beating left backs every game, dominating Wolves for 90 minutes over Christmas, Bobby Convey being chased down the pitch for 75 yards by Andy Hughes before scoring in a 4-0 evisceration of Norwich, Kevin Doyle being Kevin Doyle, Ibrahima Sonko saving a goal bound shot by getting his face in the way at home to Ipswich, 5-0 to win the title at home to Derby, Graeme Murty’s penalty against QPR, John Madejski on a taxi outside Purple Turtle and so many, many more.
But the most important and everlasting memory came on Saturday, 25 March, 2006, at what was then called The Walkers Stadium, Leicester.
A 1-1 draw on a drab day in the Midlands isn’t quite how you can imagine it (your first time never is of course), but the 4,000 or so Reading fans who were there will remember the cycle of faint hope (knowing only a win would guarantee promotion), fainter hope (Iain Hume’s opening goal), resignation (half time when promotion on the day looked doubtful), relief (Doyle’s equaliser), anxiety (when the full time whistle went) and pure joy (when the results came through).
I intend to write more about the day as a whole later in the month but suffice to say, there will never be an experience quite like it.
Tempered within all of this was the welcome given to Reading by Leicester’s fans and the club as a whole.
From their announcer confirming Reading’s promotion with a bawdy shout over the PA system to the club allowing the fans to stay inside the ground and celebrate with the team for at least 90 minutes after the final whistle, it was all a bit unusual but very welcome.
Even allowing Reading fans in the home end to shuffle up to the barriers separating the away fans during the celebrations struck of terrific common sense and empathy.
But the lasting memory is leaving the ground at around 6pm to be greeted by a handful of Leicester fans who wanted to shake your hand and congratulate your team followed up by a similar group of a similar nature at a nearby pub.
What would I do in that situation? Say balls to tribalism and share a moment with a fellow football fan? I am fairly certain I would have buggered off home straight after the full time whistle went, especially seeing as Leicester were having an average season and, if memory serves, the draw that day basically ended their playoff chances.
I was 15 back in the 106-point season and was told to savour every minute of it as Reading will never have it so good ever again, something difficult to comprehend as a teenager. But in the last decade, we haven’t had it as good and I’ve made peace with the fact we won’t ever again.
And a portion of how special that how season was is all that happened immediately after leaving The Walkers Stadium on that soggy March day.
And there is a retained memory which adds another element to me enjoying Leicester’s season this year.

The case for sloped shoulders – the EU, the referendum and you

Has there ever been a subject on which more has been spoken and less has been known than the European Union referendum?
While everyone is talking about it, which for political issues is as rare as dodo’s teeth let alone hen’s teeth, the swirl of incorrect information, incorrectly-heard information and straight-up lies makes it hardly worth the conversations.
Media organisations with an agenda (mostly for the out option) and Brexit and Bremain campaigners throw information out there and see what sticks – the worst being the Daily Express’s poll saying same 80% of 100,000 voters back Brexit. A poll on the Daily Express website reporting the vast majority readers back the UK to leave the EU?! Grab the smelling salts.
There are sources out there which gives people a lot of basic and down-the-middle information about the EU – like these items on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-32810887 and http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zgjwtyc - but very few people have the time nor inclination to read up on a subject so convoluted as the European Union, let alone the European Commission and European Court of Human Rights which so many see their respective responsibilities as basically interchangeable.
It was probably the same for the Scots last year; this weird mixture of scaremongering, patriotism, conjecture and paucity of facts but at least that campaign had an element of positive campaigning in it (from the pro-independence lads and lasses. I didn’t and don’t agree with them but they generally went about it the right way).
And all this goes back to what I think is the huge elephant in the room with the referendum – why are we having it in the first place?
We live in a representative democracy where, for better or for worse, we elect people to make complex, complicated decisions for us. That’s their jobs and they get paid (not enough) for it.
The EU could well be the most complex, complicated thing going (and I include returning a damaged mail order product to a catalogue company in that) so this is surely the kind of situation elected representative democracy was designed for?
I would consider myself to be relatively well-educated – although the half of my degree I was not particularly skilled at was international relations – and with a strong interest in political issues and I feel as if I do not have the facts to make an informed decision.
So why are we having a referendum?
I feel it is because the Conservatives are terrified of what a parliamentary vote would do for the long-term future of their party with the divide between the UKIP-friendly MPs and the others coming very much to the fore.
Bust out the sloped shoulder, throw the decision to the people, no matter how ill-informed they are, and that perceived democratic mandate saves them the implosion.
“Taking democracy back to the people” is all well and good but if that’s your angle, at least have the decency to trust those same people with the correct information, not pseudo-facts and shouting to back up your viewpoint.
So, here we are heading to a referendum where none of us truly know the benefits or drawbacks of being an EU member so how can we possibly be allowed to vote? I don’t sign up to a mortgage provider without weighing up the options properly, why are we being allowed to shape the future of our country without being completely clued up?
The inevitable shitstorm that would go down if a politician were to say “I don’t trust the British public to make the right decision for themselves on this” means no-one in authority would make such an on the record statement but may I be the first to slope my shoulders and say “I don’t trust me to make the right decision for myself on this, you do it”.

Too much Butterbeer and larking about in Leavesden - fun times at Harry Potter World

I have a theory that my generation – through the combined effects of Playstation exposure, sugar intake and primary colour-heavy cartoons – is immeasurably more immature and youthful minded (for better or for worse) than those which came before it.

I and many people I know have very grown-up jobs, wearing a tie and everything, but to relax we like nothing more than cracking open a fizzy drink, busting out the Dual Shock 4 and, in between, snort laughing at memes involving cats or scenes from childhood culture.

Maybe it is a lot more socially acceptable to, in your downtime, have the mindset of a nine-year-old and live almost exclusively in the sepia-toned 1990s. Maybe it is simply you are not a fully-fledged adult just because you are in your 20s.

Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying, and attempting to justify, that I went to Harry Potter World on Monday and absolutely loved every single second of it.

There is no shame in saying I was giddy with excitement all the way through, whether it be walking through one of the carriages of the Hogwarts Express; wandering about The Great Hall; larking around in Diagon Alley; or simply nerding out looking at props, costumes and sets which are sealed in my memory vault forevermore.

There may even have been a stage where I got a tad too giddy after drinking Butterbeer and eating Butterbeer ice cream and then subsequently pretending to be a conductor on the Knight Bus and doing a high-pitched screaming Ron impression in one of the Ford Anglias.

As an aside, new-found extra kudos to Emma Watson, specifically for, in The Half Blood Prince, downing most of a stein of Butterbeer, the sweet sweet taste of which left me wanting to lick some soil to take the substantial edge off.

But I also enjoyed Harry Potter World in a more grown-up way – it’s essentially akin to visiting a museum about something you’re really, really interested in (rather than stumbling on something at a museum you then discover an interest in; also a lovely phenomenon).

The attraction gave me personally a more adult appreciation of the whole enterprise of creating the Harry Potter films from the size of some of the sets to the scale and diverse sectors of expert staffing required.

Something as simple as the stool which the Sorting Hat sits on was so lovingly and intricately carved – good quality wooden furniture has less craftsmanship and that gets seen every day.

Seeing how the special effects, visual effects, make-up teams, designers and so on went about their business was interesting but taking into account all of them working together with one end in mind brings in to stark relief just how huge film productions actually are, quite a realisation for a film industry layman such as myself.

Walking through the corridor to see the penultimate stop was off-the-scale – I won’t say what it is here but I do believe I gasped which usually only happens these days when it is really, really cold outside.

And best of all, Harry Potter World wasn’t really theme park-esque. It was well-presented, not over-the-top and respectful, letting the subject matter rightly be the attraction, not gimmicks.

That said, the gift shop was theme park-style; an array of the usual overpriced tat, a contemporary British approach which I love as it passes on the traditional fleecing of British people like me to a global audience. Thumbs up. (For what it’s worth, we bought a Harry Potter luggage-themed frame at £18.95 for what it’s worth plus 5p for a Harry Potter World bag which one suspects the attraction could have charged for before it became statutory.)

We spent around four hours there and not a single moment was not thoroughly enjoyed on an array of levels.

So, yeah, I’ve not really got a funny or particularly engaging sign off paragraph. It was good, I’d recommend a visit. That’s all I got…You can go now…

Ha, joking, here is something a bit thoughtful. Take childhood loves and revisit them as an adult – there is a whole new world of appreciation for them to explore.

TFI, the FA Cup and ticket prices

Everything that could be written in ten days about football ticket prices has been written in the last ten days and, with that in mind, have some more related content.

There is a more or less universal feeling that football is overpriced – if not ticketing, then all that comes with it; food, drink, replica shirts are all marked up football fans with, conversely, the quality going down (the Carlsberg and Fosters served at football grounds is somehow less appetising than it is normally).

Paradoxically, as a lapsed fan who does not go to many Reading homes games now as they cost too much for me, I feel as if ticket costs at the Madejski aren’t that bad – they’re too expensive for me in the sense there is more now I’d rather spend 25 quid on than watching another season of rudderless mediocrity.

If memory serves, tickets for matches when Reading were in the Premier League were similarly sensibly priced, despite the fact in a 24,000-seater stadium, the club could probably have got away with charging almost as much as they would like.

Furthermore, the young person’s season ticket introduced this year is also a massive step forward – if I had been a year younger, one would certainly now sit in my wallet.

Reading still have the wider football problem of overpriced tat and dubious quality food and drink, but the bottom line is you don’t have to pay for those, it is a choice (unless you have kids I suppose) and if one had to opt between relatively low ticket prices and low-cost extras, the preferred option should be obvious.

And, for non-season ticket holders like myself, the last week of this month allows you to go to three games in a week for £15 – a bloody good deal if ever there was one. £10 for a home FA Cup tie, a home freebie for friends of season ticket holders via a Reading scheme (a curious attempt to re-brand TFI – or The Fan Initiative) and £5 for an away day at Charlton Athletic, courtesy of an initiative run by the South London club.

All cheap, all good PR, everyone’s a winner.

However, the rub is, how many tickets would be sold for a cup tie against West Brom, a Tuesday night home league game against Rotherham and, from Charlton’s point of view, a match against a resolutely mid-table outfit, albeit while in a relegation battle, if tickets were priced normally?

From there, different tactics have to be used to sell tickets as the supply simply will not there – 13,000 for each of Reading’s home games in that week would be a reasonable target one imagines. In a 24,000 capacity ground.

Ergo, extra efforts have to be made to get people into the stadium and this fans vs customers argument works both ways; the cheaper it is, the more likely it will get your custom. Many economics terms sit uneasily in the realm of sport, but supply and demand works to an extent, especially if you’re not a fan of a Premier League regular where the lesser demand means fans who get fleeced will stop going and not come back or be replaced and the accountants are aware of this.

So, if Reading’s three games in a week were a cup tie against Manchester City and two Premier League games against say Newcastle and Aston Villa (two sides also in relegation battles like Rotherham and Charlton), that £15 fee for three games would probably be increased by 500%.

No harsh words should be levelled at clubs which slash ticket prices and run schemes to get more fans in their ground, especially kids, teenagers and people in their early 20s, but the wider context has to be appreciated that would these initiatives be run if most matches so far that season had been played at stadiums 90% sold out?

One suspects not.

Dan's Year of Sport: A puck-ing enjoyable night with the Basingstoke Bison

Before last night, the full extent of my ice hockey experience was playing NHL 95 on the Sega Megadrive a lot when I was about seven-years-old, playing almost exclusively as Long Island for no fathomable reason.
However, last night, as part of my New Year's Resolution, I rocked up at the Basingstoke Ice Arena to see Basingstoke Bison take on the Guildford Flames with a mind full of cliches about what I was going to witness.
NHL 95 told me to expect blokes knocking seven bells out of each other, common-sense dictated pucks flying at a million miles per hour with the crowd taking evasive action regularly and my girlfriend told me that when she bought tickets she was told we were in the 'rowdy' part. I decided to leave my purple v-neck t-shirt at home.
However, the first thing that struck me when turning up was the amount of women, teenagers and kids at the arena - being used to the exclusively white, male, middle-aged, homogenised experience that is professional football, this came as something of a surprise.

After a fight broke out about ten minutes in to the game and lasted a good minute, I thought we were back on track to fulfilling what I thought ice hockey was all about. But the very friendly and informative man sat next to us explained it is something of a rarity to have brawls in ice hockey this side of the pond - apparently our uncouth North American cousins encourage the practice - and this fight was a bit of a hangover from the last time the two sides played.
So we settled into the match which seems to consist of two separate events - the on-field game itself and the atmosphere created partly by the fans and partly by the announcer.
Sporting-wise, the sheer speed of what happens is mindboggling. The programme has in it a safety-first, "you-can't-sue-us-now" disclaimer saying to watch the puck at all times which is decidedly easier said than done considering it is a black object on white ice.
But the players must have the same frames per minute eyesight as pigeons to react as quickly as they do to the puck flying about the place and the reflexes of hares to actually control it when it comes to them whether it be with stick or skate. Add to that the skill to be get the thing to go where you want it to go and the thought process to decide what you are going to do with it. They seem to be in complete control and have all the time in the world. And that's before we get into how skilled as skaters they are - coming from a man who falls arse over head when skating, even when clutching the edge of the rink for dear life, this is both a point of huge jealousy and admiration.

Rolling substitutes keep the action flowing though, as a layman, the amount of stoppages in play did grate but that might be down to not knowing why fouls were called rather than breaks themselves.
Now, off-ice, like any sport, there is the fan-created atmosphere of singing, clapping and instruments, but, and I think I'm right in saying this is the norm across all ice hockey and not just at Basingstoke, the announcer plays a huge role in creating the spectacle.
Acting as kind of a cheerleader/pisstaker/commentator, this witty, pithy individual interacts with the crowd - wishing people happy birthday, letting people (crucially) know WHY a player has been sin-binned and not just who it is and, presumably with a sidekick, interspersing a combination of 90s club classics and sound effects in to breaks in play. A particular favourite was the use of the series of "D'ohs" as Homer Simpson falls down Springfield Gorge a second time when Guildford fans thought they had scored.
The appeal of the announcer ties in to a clear wider point which I felt from last night of a sporting club genuinely appreciating its fanbase and treating them as supporters, not cash cow customers. While I assume money is quite tight at this level of ice hockey, it might even be better that way, without the dispiriting and disruptive influence that is billions of cash of investment in sport. Apples and oranges, but I can't imagine football clubs allowing their fans on the pitch to have a kickabout at the end of a match like Bisons allow their fans to have a skate, for free I think, afterwards.
Speaking of price, we certainly got our money's worth - £12 for three hours of entertainment complete with overtime and penalties resulting in a 5-4 win for Basingstoke - is pretty hard to beat.
Overall, a thoroughly enjoyable and refreshing night of sport. I will most certainly be returning. Speaking of which...

Next up on the sporting 2015 tour
Possibly back to Basingstoke Ice Arena on the 15th for their last regular season home match or their match a Bracknell Bees on the 8th. Alternatively it will be Rivermead Leisure Centre on the 28th for a Reading Rockets basketball match.

Sports done so far
Football and ice hockey.

A late New Year's resolution - my 2015 campaign to see a massive variety of local sport

It is statistically (un)proven the New Year’s resolutions which are most easily broken are the ones made half-cut at 12.01am on New Year’s Day - those ones which have had no thought put into them whatsoever.

So, therefore, using the same reasoning, the best time to make a resolution must certainly be at the start of February. So, here is mine.

This year, I want to watch live as many different sports as I possibly can, at a variety of different levels in Berkshire and North Hampshire (for the simple reason I grew up in Reading, work in Slough where I cover the Windsor patch and live just in Hampshire in Tadley).

And this is where I want some help; I want suggestions on what sports and teams I should go to see over the remaining 11 months or so of 2015 to add to this crude list I’ve made below which will also outline why I’ve chosen that sport/team or who has suggested it.

Football

Reading FC - hometown team, supported since I was five-years-old and, to be honest, an easy one to add to this list as I would be seeing them already this season anyway. DONE - AWAY AT FULHAM FC, SATURDAY 17 JANUARY

Basingstoke Town FC - fitting in with my relocation from Reading to Tadley, Basingstoke are the nearest semi-pro side around (and my girlfriend’s boss owns the place so it would be rude not to divert some of my income that way)

Reading Town FC - there has to be a lower league outfit in this list and seeing as RTFC play at Scours Lane around 15 minutes walk away from the house in which I grew up, it kind of makes sense.

Cricket

Berkshire CC - when I was studying journalism at university, I did a ‘day at the cricket’ as a feature piece for the sports journalism section of my course. Unfortunately, that day largely consisted of eating the food the club generously laid on as heavy May rain caused the match at Falkland CC to be called off. Time for a re-visit.

Basketball

Reading Rockets - They are the only basketball team playing at a decent level in the region so kind of a forced-hand but they have been pretty handy in recent years, so Wikipedia tells me.

Rugby

London Irish - I am in no way a fan of rugby but as a proper UK sport, it must be done and I may as well see what is the cause of why the Madejski Stadium pitch is a bit ropey at times. Plus the promise of St Patrick’s Day being the day for this trip is kind of enticing.

Ice Hockey

Basingstoke Bison - I can’t remember where the idea for 2015 being the year of diverse spot for me came from but Basingstoke Bison features somewhere in there so they have to feature. DONE - HOME TO GUILDFORD FLAMES, SATURDAY 28 FBERUARY

Hockey

Reading Hockey Club - Back to Reading again (this is becoming awfully Reading-centric), but both the men’s and women’s team compete in the top tier of English hockey with many an international player among them which is something of a rarity in this list.

Boxing

No idea where yet but there is always some amateur boxing going on in Reading or Slough... no reference to nightlife chortle, haha, etc and so on.

Horse Racing

Newbury, Windsor, Ascot - plenty of choices here to get pissed in as classy a way as there is.

Got anything else I should add to this list? Tweet me or leave a comment!

On The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

The Hobbit series has never really grabbed the same attention the preceding Lord of The Rings series did for any number of reasons you want to pick out – cashcow, script stretching, less screen friendly content matter.

Naturally, the trilogy’s conclusion fits in with that dynamic being occasionally epic, occasionally banal but consistently…long.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (THTBOTFA for short, kind of) picks up where The Desolation of Smaug ends with Smaug angrily descending on Laketown to unleash fiery wanton destruction and the Dwarf fellowship set to claim the treasure under the Lonely Mountain.

What follows is two-and-a-half-hours of your usual Peter Jackson blend of battle scenes, undercooked romance and intense hairiness.

It’s a shame when something that was genuinely innovative and groundbreaking gets overtaken by rivals and left in the dust.

On the plus side, at least it doesn’t make the mistake of trying to keep up with other genre stablemates with graphic violence, countless sex scenes and exposed breast after exposed breast and sticks to what it does best.

In that regard, the climax battle scene is just as epic as any of the Lord of the Rings films and so, therefore, up there with the best in modern cinema.

And, as you would expect with any LOTR or The Hobbit films, the cinematography is stunning, augmented by that trademark New Zealand scenery and lovingly-crafted sets, perfect down to the smallest detail.

However, the feeling can’t be shaken that we are basically watching a film that is 13-years-old such is the shooting-style and script.

Everything script-wise is stretched to the limit to wring out as much screening time as possible (sound familiar with the rest of the series?) which is fair enough if it all stands up on screen, but in THTBOTFA it doesn’t. And that is saying something as close to half of the film is largely taken up with the battle alluded to in the title of the film.

The majority of these problems probably date back to that one fateful decision to make The Hobbit into three films – two would be enough and even probably one if we take out the ludicrous Gandalf ‘second storyline’ which sets up the Lord of The Rings trilogy a good century before it actually happens. I get keeping the dwarf/elf romance storyline as all modern films need a love angle to spread the demographic, but it is merely another adornment to pad out the script.

Towards the end, knowing nods allude to what is coming in the Lord of The Rings which quickly turn from being “ahh, clever” to “another one, really?” Something of a metaphor for how the two trilogies have kind of worked really. The thrilling finale of The Return of the King is more of a natural finish, but THTBOTFA does the best with what it can.

Oh, and ma-hoos-ive spoiler alert, again with the fucking eagles.

Something I can agree with teenage girls on

The things that are liked by both myself and teenage girls is a happily small pool.
Broadly speaking, things they like - One Direction, sexting, excessive make-up usage,teenage boys - are very different to the things I enjoy - FIFA 15, decent cider, writing and sleeping.
So, given lots of the crowd at the o2 Arena on Monday night were females aged between 11 and 19 wearing lots of eyeliner, perhaps the fair conclusion was to say either myself or all of them had got our dates and times hideously wrong and were at the wrong gig.
Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of Ed Sheeran - even more so reading up on his backstory prior to the gig (yeah I read to get a narrative before a gig as opposed to, I don't know, listening to the artist's entire back catalogue) - and he can write a good tune with actual proper lyrics.
But, I kind of thought, can a guy with a guitar really dominate an arena - keeping 12,000 people in the palm of his hand for 90 minutes, owning a rather large stage?
Well, the answer was quite emphatically, reject that thought Dan.
Sheeran was utterly superb - an enthralling watch from start to finish.
His slow, female-targeting songs were all well and nice, gentle strumming, nice lyrics and all that but his craftmanship is the truly astonishing thing.
Using perhaps a double figures amount of effects pedals, Sheeran makes it sound as if there are a band of four on stage rather than just one ginger fella younger than me (grrrrr) confident enough to play around with his tunes and engage with the audience off-the-cuff (with marriage proposals in the crown for example, lame!).
Recording a guitar rhythm section first off and then layering over a beat (smacked out on his guitar) and backing vocals together live on stage in front of a huge audience requires massive balls, to put it one way.
Then, with all that sorted, he bursts into a cutting mixture of clever, witty lyrics, extreme guitar shredding and occasional very adept rapping (I know what adept rapping sounds like of course...). In what surely lasted at least eight minutes, the mashup of 'You Need Me I Don't Need You' and a cover of Laid Blak's My Eyes Are Red' was a perfect example of this combination- it was truly astounding and thrilling.
I'm far from being a musical connoisseur, but it seems so innovative to use effects pedals so often, intelligently and properly to actually add to his offering rather than for the mere sake of it. 
Ultimately, a fantastic evening with an appeal for a wide variety of people.