The Golden Compass

Mrs. Lacer goes to see actual film, in actual cinema shocker.

The stunningly beautiful and chillingly evil Mrs. Coulter with Lyra

Well you have to when something like The Golden Compass comes along don’t you? And I am very glad I did. Much as I’m getting a bit of an old fogie and preferring the comforts of my sofa and DVD player and far nicer film food provided far more cheaply by my own personal kitchen, some films you just have to see on the really big screen.

Now it’s been a while since I read the books but as far as I can tell The Golden Compass was pretty faithful to the original book, which I often question why don’t all movie adaptations of books actually stick to them when at all possible, unlike the dreadful abomination that is The Dark is Rising movie. After all look at the Harry Potter movies, pretty faithful, big hits. Shows that you can’t argue with a good book. Anyway I’d heard lots of talk about how they’d toned down the anti-religious references, I don’t think they did so overly, but then again the books get more anti-religious as you go through the series, so they weren’t that anti-religion in the first place, I can imagine though that using an adapted St. Paul’s as the Magistrium might annoy a few people.

London of the Golden Compass – I loved how this reality still had the Gherkin!

I think what might concern parents more when taking their small children to see this film is the level of violence, in particular the Ice Bear fights, there is one moment where literally the entire movie audience sat back in unison in their chairs and gasped, however in conveying the violence, strength and importance of the fight between the two Ice Bears it was very well done.

From Comic-Con 2007

The Ice Bears was my favourite bit though, those along with the daemons were very well done. Can’t wait for the next movie!

I hate housework

I hate housework; today my sister finally deemed to visit, at a later hour than expected of course and I spent the entire day (except for a very cute ballet rendition from Girl Lacer in the morning) tidying up the pit of the flat. The kitchen, living room and kids room are now tidy. The bathroom is still a work in progress with Mr. Lacer drilling in it today and my bedroom looks like Del boy’s flat, so those weren’t even attempted. Anyway as always of late, any reasonable level of cleaning triggered a ginormous allergic rhinitis attack, quite early on in the day to (I think it was our sofa loosing feathers again), so I was feeling worse and worse doing the housework but I still had to work on, although I couldn’t help thinking if this was Mr. Lacer with a man cold (very very funny youtube video), all work would have been halted.

So anyway I did about as much housework as I physically could and I was desperate to get out of the house to get away from the allergens, so when Mr. Lacer finally finished drilling holes in the bathroom I was released to go into town and felt instantly better by the time I’d exited the road next to mine, although the allergy flared up everytime I went into a shop, not that that was going to deter me from shopping, although someone violently sneezing was probably offputting for the other shoppers! I had a browse in Monsoon, thinking ahead to be one and only Christmas party and I’m going to sound like the complete billy no mates that I am but this party is the first non-family Christmas party since I became a mum. Anyway it’s a group of mums from school having a buffet down the local pub and I haven’t a clue what you’re meant to wear to that sort of thing. Obviously not one of Monsoon’s gorgeous ballgowns that the stockbroker wives were in there trying on (not jealous at all, no not at all), I was thinking something more along the lines of jeans and a nice top. Now I do have some ‘nice tops’ but this is yummymummyville and I can feel like a slovenly slob going down to the school gate in a ‘non-trendy’ T-shirt, so most of my ‘nice tops’ are seen in weekly use and you know how it goes, the first proper party in 4 years and you want to wear something different, so a purchase was in order. However I didn’t want to go down the overly glitzy route because that sort of top means that I can only wear it to parties and well you’ve seen the frequency I go to parties, so it had to be a new ‘nice top’ that would have it’s debut at the party but that I could wear elsewhere to and I landed on this

Green top from Monsoon £25

A nice festive green colour yet will also work well as a nice summer blouse. The third top in a row that I’ve brought that’s green come to thinking of it. I brought a necklace as well from M&S to go with it, a blue pendant on a black shoe string rope.

Other than that I’m pleased to report that Montezuma do do nice chocolate after my run in with the most disgusting chocolate on the planet, their milk chocolate buttons are absolutely divine, a crunch as you bite in followed by a delicious buttery melt. I am not going to be able to resist everytime I walk past.

Montezuma’s chocolate buttons, thankfully for the wallet and waistline they do them in £2 bags to