A Christmas Toad

I've just been watching a glorious BBC adaption of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows (which, rather unbelieveably, I have never read - an omission that I intend to correct when I next visit the library!) starring Bob Hoskins as Badger, Mark Gatiss as a very convincing Ratty, Lee Ingleby as Mole, and Matt Lucas playing a hilariously over-the-top and very slightly camp Mr Toad. I've seen several adaptions of this before (one I remember well was done with stop-motion plasticine) but this was the best - I was a bit worried about the thought of people playing the animals, but the makeup and acting was so good that even though they still looked mostly human, they became the animals they were portraying. It was a fantastic Toad, a wonderful Toad, a frenetic and fabulous Toad.... and the concept of that maniac let loose in any kind of motorised transportation terrifies me!

The last few days have been interesting. There was the shake, rattle and roll on Thursday night that left me a gibbering wreck and Gisborne a real one (although amazingly the small daughter slept through the whole thing) - fortunately all the family up that way are unharmed. I'm not sure how big the earthquake was in Wellington but it was big enough, and I really don't like them.

Apart from that, I've been finishing up work and beginning to finally organised Christmas - the icecream is made, the cake is in the oven as we speak, most of the cleaning is done, and tomorrow I will brave the evil consumerist insanity that is the centre of town and get the fruit and last-minute things (I'll go very early though - I hate crowds!), but worth it for brandy baskets with raspberries and cream with shaved chocolate and handmade vanilla bean icecream....

I love Christmas: I love that squirmy excited feeling that comes on Christmas Eve and never at any other time of the year; I love the hush that seems to fall over the world on Christmas Eve night; I love the candlelit Cathedral and the sound of that wonderful organ and rafter-raising carol-singing, the descent of the Christ-child, and driving home at 12.45am after Midnight Mass with the stars echoing the songs of the angels, to be welcomed home by the lights on our tree, a sleepy cat, and a glass of Bailey's. Hopefully, I'll also love the silence from a small daughter as she listens entranced to the Cathedral choir singing Mozart's Missa Brevis, but we'll have to see about that!

Pachyderm