HP, art, thumb, floods

Last Wednesday we took advantage of Orange Wednesdays and went off to see Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. Hopefully I am not spoiling anything as I am assuming that most poeople have now read this book (although that is a huge assumption to make!). The film was good, and the 2 hours 10 minutes flew past, but I'm afraid there were some omissions which just brought back "Winkiegate" all over again. By "Winkiegate" I am referring to the fact that although the house-elf Winkie was an integral part of the book HP & the Goblet of Fire, she was completely omitted from the corresponding film! So, some of the omissions from this film included:

Tonks' hair was not pink and didn't change colour; Although only Luna and Harry could see the Thestrals, no one mentioned this fact when they all jumped on them to fly to the Ministry of magic; There was no portrait of Mrs Black in the hallway of Grimauld Place screaming abuse; and although Kreacher was there, his part in the book wasn't covered in the film. There were others which I can't remember now, because I've read the new HP since.

So, go and see the film, but be prepared to come out saying "Where was the bit where.....?"

(I currently have Radio 2 on in work, and they have been trailing a programme about the songs of Noel Coward. I think a much funnier and popular programme would be "the Songs of Noel Fielding" - "crouton, crouton, crunchy friends in a liquid broth", "I am electro boy, I am electro girl"!! Genius!)

Well we had an interesting time on Friday. We had arranged to go and visit a friend near Reading for the weekend. As he was going to be working all day Friday we thought we would take our time going down and take A-roads instead of just hurtling down the motorways. So off we went in the rain. After stopping for some lunch we headed on down towards Redditch and Stratford. Well, you know what the weather was like. The puddles got larger, the roads got wetter, the traffic got slower, and we ended up in a VERY slow moving queue, while watching the water outside the car getting higher. And we were heading downhill. Not good, when there are floods you really want to be going uphill. In the end we turned round, and abandoned the trip. I had visions of the car floating away and us wading through waist deep water with our bags over our heads. All I could think about was that there were no floods north of us so that was the direction to go in. So after a seven and a half hours round trip we ended up back where we started, at home. And what a good job we did, because all the places flooded on the news were exactly the places we were heading towards. I am very sorry for all the people who have been flooded but am also very relieved that we didn't get caught in it. It was a shame we didn't get to see Dave though.

Of course it did mean that we were home on Saturday morning so Colin went off to do the weekly shop as usual at 7am. He went to Tesco where you had to spend £50 to get Harry Potter for a fiver. So he got one. Then on his way back, he popped into Morrisons just to see how much they were selling it for, and it was £4.99 with no minimum spend so he got another copy so we wouldn't have to fight over it. We spent the weekend racing each other until we both finished it yesterday, with me winning by a couple of hours.

There was some time off of HP though. Sunday morning we decided to go out for breakfast because we would have if we'd been away. We went down to the Blue Moon cafe by the river in town, and had two cooked breakfasts. Phew, I didn't half enjoy it, I could have eaten another one straight after. Then we went to B&Q for some boards for the loft, and after went to a garden centre on the Wirral where the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art was on display. We bought these two.

They are very nicely framed too. We can't have them for a couple of weeks as they are still on display, but then they are ours. Ah, I wish I was that good at drawing.

Well yesterday I went off to physio. The physio I saw was very nice and easy to talk to. She didn't yank my thumb back but gently stretched it to its limit. She thinks that the little finger may respond to an injection but the thumb will probably need surgery. I have now been referred on , (although I do have to go back to see her a couple more times in the meantime,) to be assessed for the next stages. So another appointment to wait for.

Well I think that's everything caught up.