LotR Chess Collection

Apologies if this blog is slightly sticky and has a strong odour of orange. I innocently had a bottle of Orangina and, being a stickler for following instructions and serving suggestions, I gave it a solid shaking. Perhaps unsurprisingly to everyone but me, when I unscrewed the top it fizzed and foamed all over the place. Grrr – damn those Spanish pranksters.

On the subject of serving suggestions given on the side of jars, a current favourite is on my mum’s jar of horseradish sauce. The picture is of a large pool of horseradish sauce on which is sat floating three raw horseradishes. Underneath in small black writing is “Serving Suggestion”. Mmmm – raw horseradishes served in 6 jars worth of their own sauce. That’s good eating.

Anyway, I seem to have gotten over my own excitement at my return to infrequent blogging that gripped me in my last posting and wanted to have a quick look at an advert.

It seems that at a few points in the year – January, sometimes late spring and always September – there comes a new dearth of ringbindered magazines available from your local newsagent. These offer things like the complete Matthew Broderick film collection (1st issue £2.99 – subsequent issues £27.99), build your own Sherman tank, or the complete works of Shakespeare. Issue 1 includes an actual model of the dog that so memorably played Dog from Two Gentlemen of Verona in Geilgud’s classic 1969 production at the Old Vic.

Perhaps the best from an advertising point of view is the Lord of the Rings chess-set collection that is going to set you back somewhere in the region of £470 if you stick it through to the bitter. Now the advert states that, and I quote,"At last the final great battle from the Lord of the Rings trilogy can be brought vividly to life”.

Two things. Having read the book and then seen the film, I think that Peter Jackson did a pretty good job at bringing the battle to “life”, albeit in celluloid format. In fact, I would go as far as saying that it could only perhaps be brought more to life if the hordes of Mordor surged over the hills from Tiverton and had pitched battle in Crediton’s own park whilst I watched from my balcony.

The second thing is, if the battle hadn’t already been brought to life, I don’t think chess is really the most vivid method of re-enacting great battles. I love the game, I do, but it is hardly a simulation of war. In fact, if it were I playing Mrs P, the re-enactment would go more along the lines of me conservatively playing with my Saruman whilst feigning interest in Mrs P’s Ents before grabbing her hobbits in a typical queening 1-2. And as far as I can remember that ain’t how Tolkein wrote it.

While I’m on the subject of LotR’s, can I take a moment to remember my favourite moment of that film? Thanks. Now I seem to be the only person to find it wildly amusing, but when I saw it in the Odeon, the bit before the interval fell when the riders of Rohan are lining up to go to war or whatever. One of the soldiers is that beardy king’s daughter, disguised as a man. Except she is in full make-up. And has a hobbit stuffed up her chain-mail. Now I don’t know what the army is like in Middle Earth, but I think that in the Queen’s Own, the other soldiers might be slightly intrigued that one of their “male” counterparts has a large bear gut and appears to be wearing Maybellene Shepard’s Delight lipstick. I laughed to myself through the interval and most of the second half. I still chuckle about it now. A case of barely concealed cross dressing worthy of Shakespeare.