New Zealand/Sydney Diary 2010: Part 3

The last, but hopefully not the least, of my unexpurged, unedited e-mails from my NZ/Sydney trip back in 2010 for your gratification (PS: my engagement party has now happened, as indeed has my wedding, so if you go to Butler's Wharf in six days time I will almost certainly not be there!):

"Ok, I am actually back in the UK now and recovering from the after effects of an epic 33 hour journey around the world, but nevertheless I promised a final instalment so a final instalment there shall be (and this is it).

My last e-mail left off in Dunedin, which is known as “Edinburgh of the South”, and my guidebook indicated that the residents actually still have a distinctive Scottish burr. Disappointingly, this proved to be a tissue of lies, much like some of the other nuggets of information which I spotted in the Rough Guide, for example the suggestion that New Zealand measures beer in “flagons”, “riggers” and even “elegantly fluted twelves”. Presumably in the fantasy world in which one can order such measures in a pub without being greeted with gales of mocking laughter, if one was not quite up for an elegantly fluted twelve one could settle for a “quaintly piccoloed four and a half”, or something of the kind. Almost as far fetched as the suggestion by a man who inflicted his company on me in the bus from Rotorua to Wellington, who suggested that if I put butter on my fingers in Arthur’s Pass I would have Kea birds flocking to lick it off without taking my fingers with it. The fact that both of his hands still featured the usual five digits suggested that he had not tried this experiment himself, and because I never take suggestions from strange men on buses these days, neither did I (in fact we did not end up even visiting Arthur’s Pass, let alone take any dairy products with us to use for such inappropriate purposes!)

Nevertheless, the Rough Guide and the Lonely Planet Guide did prove invaluable to us on a number of occasions, and did at least provide us with a glossary of useful Kiwi phrases such as “daggy”, defined as “uncool; from the dags that hang off sheep’s bottoms” and “westie” defined as “from West Auckland; rough edged fellow, probably wearing a black tee-shirt, drinking beer and listening to AC/DC; see also bogan, munter” (in fact both “bogan” and “munter” refer back to “westie”)!

Anyway, I would venture to suggest that Dunedin lacks some of the charm of the Edinburgh of the northern hemisphere as well as the Scottish accents, although the swimming pool, the Cadbury’s World and the Speight’s Brewery are all fun. But it was nevertheless nice to get back to Queenstown, a town with real charm and a huge number of things to do, except of course that we did not end up getting a chance to do most of them because practically the only time it stopped raining during our three day sojourn there was when it started snowing. We did, however, get to do some snow shoeing, which due to the icy weather was particularly dramatic and brought back alarming recollections of the fate of Captain Scott from our recent visit to the Antarctic Centre. Although if Captain Scott had had to put up with such a politically incorrect travelling companion as our guide (his “hilarious” Chinaman impression would have made Bernard Manning wince with embarrassment), he would probably have ended up eating him and thereby ensuring his own survival (which would have made for a considerably less heroic story, perhaps!)

We did go up the gondola in Queenstown as well, which had a fabulous view (if you happen to find thick fog visually appealing), and we were not short of things to do in the evenings thanks to a fantastic wine tasting shop which had 84 wines to taste (we did not quite get through all of them but we had a pretty good try), but during the other two days (before and after the snowshoeing day) we had to settle for swimming and going to see “Despicable Me” at the cinema (was it me, or did they model the central character on Dara O’Briain?)

Thus moving over to Australia and the warm, temperate Sydney climate was a bit of a welcome relief for both of us. You will recall that Australia have now got their first female Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, whose reign began inauspiciously when she was photographed with her new banner “Flying Start”, with one word below the other, and most of the photographs cut off the first letter of each word so that it suggested something else entirely! Despite this hiccup, she managed to just about retain power at the last election due to the fact that her opponent, Tony Abbott, appeared to spend most of the election campaign wandering around Australia’s various beaches in a pair of excessively tight speedos, waving his ponderous beergut in the faces of the horrified electorate, which was probably enough to put anyone off!

We had to fly from Queenstown to Christchurch, and from there we took a flight to Sydney. The flight out of Queenstown was itself pretty dramatic (and I still have Julie’s fingernail marks in my arm to prove it) which for me partially made up for our not getting to do an official “scenic flight” over Milford Sound, which I did back in 2003.

On the Christchurch-Sydney flight I found myself sat next to an elderly woman, who initially seemed friendly, chatty and above all, harmless. This first impression swiftly disappeared over the course of the flight, when in three hours she managed to miraculously transform herself, through the medium of alcohol, from Miss Marple into Oliver Reed at his wildest, taking every drink that was available from the air stewardesses and then surreptitiously pilfering a couple more from behind their backs whilst they were not watching. It was when she started doing an impression of me that my hackles started to rise (needless to say, the soused old bat did not even get close to doing me justice). In spite of her mockery, she then asked me to hold her hat as she staggered off to make one of her several drunken attempts to upgrade herself to business class. She was very fortunate that she was sitting next to one of the last gentlemen in the English speaking world, as a less restrained fellow traveller than myself would have probably have retaliated by punching a hole in her hat and then stamping on it. She had disappeared by the time we landed in Sydney, so I can only assume that she was ejected somewhere over the Tasman Sea.

We had a wonderful time in Sydney from start to finish. The YHA room was probably better than any of the rooms we had had in NZ (with the exception of the “Raja Room” in Blenheim) and unexpectedly en suite, which brought a jetlagged smile to our faces. It also had a swimming pool on the 9th floor which offered spectacular views of the city even if it was only slightly larger than our bath.

On the first morning we did a tour of the Sydney Opera House (probably narrowly beating out the Colosseum in Rome for the title of “my favourite building in the world” on the basis that opera singers tend to receive slightly better treatment than the gladiators in Ancient Rome did), thinking that we would be lucky to get standing room seats at any actual operas that they happened to be showing for the price that we were willing to pay. However it turned out that we were in fact able to get tickets for “the Marriage of Figaro” on our last night there for less than half the price we would have paid for the Lord of the Rings tour we had turned down in Queenstown (in all honesty there is only so much I am prepared to fork out for the opportunity to touch Gimli’s helmet!) I am not much of an opera buff but I was nevertheless excited at the opportunity to get to see an opera that wasn’t Don Giovanni!

In the afternoon following the Opera House tour we had a look around the wonderful Botanical Gardens nearby, then after lunch we walked around Sydney Harbour, looking at the Literary Walk of Fame, which has plaques for such legendary Australian authors as…er, Umberto Eco (who apparently merited inclusion because he “visited Australia in 1982”). We then went back and forth over the Harbour Bridge before retiring to the hostel, then out again for tapas and sangria at a Spanish restaurant (Sydney being a relatively international city, and I did try kangaroo as well on another occasion so no one can say I did not have my fair share of Australian cuisine. FYI it tastes like a particularly bland steak).

On the second day we took a ferry out to Manly beach. We almost ended up missing the boat due to my being a glutton for punishment and not running away fast enough when one of the street “entertainers” at the harbour “volunteered” me as one of his stooges to help him ascend a twelve foot tall unicycle. He then proceeded to waste twenty minutes of my time with “hilarious” banter interspersed with moments of virulent anti-New Zealand hatred (which was quite surprising bearing in mind that he was actually American) following which he finally climbed up the damn thing, and I got my revenge by scuttling away to catch the ferry before he could ask for my help getting down again. From the fact that the area was not cordoned off when we came back, and there were no suspicious bloodstains on the pavement, I can only assume that he roped in some other unfortunate victim to help him down. We had a nice walk along Manly beach, although it was not quite warm enough for me to feel any envy for the rugged Antipodean lunatics who were surfing nearby, and then got dinner at a restaurant that was recently voted as having the best pizzas in Australia.

The final day was spent going at Tauranga Zoo, followed by the opera in the evening (with dinner beforehand at the Opera Bar, which is not in fact in the Opera House at all, as the person on duty informed us with some smugness, but nearby overlooking the harbour). And that is all I have to say about the trip for now, and if you have any desire for further information you can pester me with questions at our engagement party, which, just to give you all a further reminder, is next Saturday (i.e. six days time) in All Bar One in Butler’s Wharf)!

See you all soon.

Al"

New Zealand Diary 2010: Part 2B

More NZ shenanigans from 2010 below:

"Apologies for another message so soon, but apparently my original e-mail was too long for the facebook fascists, so I had to split it into 2 (editing it to remove the surplus rubbish would have taken too long I'm afraid and if I had done so I would probably have got another message saying it was too short!)

Continuing directly from my previous e-mail, the Antarctic Centre was expensive, as I said, but the exhibits were quite interesting, including a room where they took the temperature down to simulate a genuine Antarctic storm. In all honesty it felt like a slightly less damp version of an average winter in London, so I suspect they were pulling their punches a bit, probably out of some absurdly paternalistic desire to avoid killing too many tourists. But it was worth the entrance price just to see the tiny blue penguins being fed. Naturally most of them were given cutsie names like "Pedro" and "Bagpipes" although there was also an "Alex" who had broken both his beak and one of his limbs, so was obviously as clumsy as his ginger namesake. They also had a "Pingu" who turned out to be much more of a queue barger and womaniser than his fictional counterpart. Most of the time I have not had too much trouble with the New Zealand accent, but on this occasion I must have misheard something as the penguin feeder mentioned during the session that the reason the oldest penguin, "Toto", had lived so long was because he did not have to worry about any creditors. Mind you, they have occasionally had problems understanding me as well (the horse riding people I mentioned in my previous e-mail, who got all excited about the horse on my Lloyds TSB card, had written my name down as Mr Crockflab after I called them, which was almost as bad as the "Mr Cockhard" my father once got at a Chinese restaurant).

After Christchurch we went on to Mount Cook, which really is in the middle of nowhere, and it was at this point that the landscape really started to get more spectacular and also much more empty and devoid of people, the South Island having a much smaller population than the North Island. It was also a lot more rural, as was evidenced by the house which was using a microwave for a post box (presumably the Kiwi equivalent of a hotmail account). Mount Cook was spectacular, even though the tour of the glacial lake we had booked had to be cancelled because if we had gone on it they said we would probably have been flattened by a passing iceberg.

We then travelled to Dunedin (following a brief stop off in Queenstown, one of my favourite towns in New Zealand and one we returned to for a lengthier stay later on). Dunedin is home to the steepest street in the world. This is a few kilometres out of town, but I am convinced that our hostel must have been on top of the second steepest. However, we had to choose the hostel based on its name alone, which was Hogwartz, spelled with a "z" to avoid confusion with the place I went to school. Unfortunately I think they must assume that all guests have their own broomstick or hippogriff, and as we were equipped with neither we got very fit climbing the hill dozens of times during our two day stay, even though once again a lot of this was undone when we took part in a tour of Cadbury's World conducted by a tubby Willy Wonka in dungarees.

We managed to get through the tour without falling victim to the evil machinations of the Oompa Loompas, and we did get a fair bit of chocolate, but unfortunately to maximise one's chocolate intake during the tour one had to answer the tough questions set by the guide, and an elderly gentleman on our tour had obviously been on it before (in fact he probably went on it every day) and was firing off answer after answer, pocketing chocolate bar after chocolate bar whilst quietly cackling to himself. Eventually Julie managed to get an answer in, but I suspect that if I hadn't been fixing him with my steely glare at the time, this chocolate snatching, geriatric Augustus Gloop would probably have clamped his hand around her mouth and shaken her to the point of insensibility to prevent her from getting the answer in before he did.

We followed this tour with a scenic train journey, taking in such exotic sights as the Taieri Gorge and the quaintly named "Arthur's Knob", and then a tour of Speight's Brewery in the evening, which was particularly wonderful as they finished the tour by leaving us alone in a room with 6 beer taps (only for 15 minutes, alas). Having exhausted the delights of Dunedin, we went back to Queenstown the following day, and I will relate the highlights of this last part of our NZ tour, and indeed our subsequent trip to Sydney, in a fourth and (mercifully) final e-mail in a week or so.

Bye for now

Al"

New Zealand Diary 2010: Part 2A

Part 2A of my series of e-mails from 2010 detailing my journeys through New Zealand (and a bit of Sydney at the end). The fact that it is split into Parts 2A and 2B also demonstrates my struggles at the time with the frustrations of modern technology. As mentioned previously, this is an entirely unedited set of e-mails sent to a selected group of friends, which I foolishly thought could be circulated via facebook. Should have stuck to being a luddite....

"Greetings once again from New Zealand. The more assiduous readers among you will recall that last time I wrote I ended by describing my experiences in Wellington just before I crossed over to the South Island, and that I visited Te Papa museum, which contained, amongst other things, an exhibition all about earthquakes. Having spotted that NZ is right smack bang (if you excuse the expression) in the middle of a huge faultline, the thought occurred to me that it was strange that the country suffered from so few earthquakes. I clearly must have been thinking too loudly, as Ruaumoko the earthquake god obviously heard me and decided to throw a massive wobbler that very night. Or possibly it's Julie's fault. She does have an uncanny habit of being on the scene for all sorts of disasters (as evidenced by the fact that our first date was on the Cutty Sark just before it caught fire) and I have often speculated that if she had been born a century earlier she probably would have found herself sailing across the Atlantic in the Titanic and then come back on the Lusitania.

But technically, as far as the earthquake goes, neither of us were "on the scene", being on the wrong island and several hundred miles away at the time, so one could say that this time we had the perfect alibi. However, the fact that a state of emergency was subsequently declared in Christchurch (which also happened to be crawling with scientologists, but that was probably a coincidence), did not stop us, gluttons for punishment that we are, from visiting the city a few days later (twice!)

First, however, we crossed over on the Interislander ferry and took the bus to Nelson, a useful "gateway" to the Abel Tasman National Park. There we were greeted at our hostel by a rather sleepy looking individual with a thatch of blond hair who reminded me a bit of a narcoleptic polar bear. This led me at once to the mistaken assumption that this hostel would have rather a laissez faire attitude to its guests, but instead the owners proceeded to treat us rather like unwelcome house guests, closing the various facilities at arbitrary cut off points. For example, the kitchen was open from 6 am, but the lights and power did not go on until 6:30, so in effect the owners were indicating that it was perfectly acceptable for us to fumble around in the dark during that period (it was particularly dark in the area surrounding the "sharpened implements" drawer) as long as we didn't get it into our foolish little heads to do anything outlandish like actually trying to cook anything. Normally neither of us would dream of getting up that early during our holidays anyway, so it would not have been a problem, but this was the "active" part of our trip, as we had planned kayaking and hiking trips in the Abel Tasman. And unfortunately getting transport out there meant getting up very early indeed.

Our tiny windows of sleep were further diminished by the garrulous German girls who were on skype outside our room until ungodly hours every night (isn't modern technology wonderful? Once upon a time it would have taken months to travel from Germany to New Zealand, but now German girls can giggle at each other from opposite ends of the globe at the touch of a button). By contrast, the rugby team that were also staying at the hostel did little more than throw a few pebbles off the roof at around 10 pm one evening. Aren't rugby players supposed to be hell raisers? It was actually faintly pathetic, a bit like the Rolling Stones in their heyday going off to feed the ducks instead of getting completely trashed.

Our kayaking session was very enjoyable, although it did involve a bit of clambering around on a cliff that had not been mentioned in the brochure, which I suspect that the guide would not have suggested had he known a bit more about myself (extremely clumsy) and Julie (almost as clumsy and also terrified of heights), but fortunately my fiancee rose to the challenge bravely and we survived the terrifying ordeal. After such healthy outdoor activities in the Abel Tasman we proceeded to Blenheim to undo all the good work with a fantastic afternoon of wine tasting in the glorious sunshine. I say "good work" but in fact Julie had caught a cold and sore throat in Wellington which got worse in the Abel Tasman, which affected her voice to such an extent that if I had not been looking at her when she spoke on a couple of occasions I would have assumed that Frank Butcher must have come back from the dead.

In Blenheim we treated ourselves to a night in a hotel following the wine tour (as opposed to the usual grotty hostels), and were given a Moroccan style room (referred to as "the Raja Room") with more pillows and cushions than one could shake a stick at. I had in fact been to Blenheim before, back in 2003, and am very proud of the fact that, together with a Geordie called Dave, I managed to break the record for the number of wineries visited in a single day by the tour company in question. Sadly, this time we used a different company (the "Bubbly Grape Tours") and although they did a grand job and still managed to get us around six vineyards in four hours plus a distillery, a chocolaterie and what I suppose should be referred to as a "fudgerie", they had not heard of these legendary exploits, so unfortunately my name does not appear to have lived on in infamy.

By this time (tanked up on booze, no doubt) we felt more than ready to handle Christchurch. We arrived on the Wednesday evening (the earthquake had struck on the previous Saturday) and there was, as you would expect, a lot of damage to many of the buildings to be seen as soon as we got close to the city. There were a lot of soldiers around as well, and it was extremely difficult to find anywhere that was open for dinner that night. We eventually found a Japanese place that was open called "Mums" which was brilliant. Having experienced both Mums and "Sweet Mother's Kitchen" in Wellington, I would advise you that if you are ever hungry in New Zealand, try to find something with a maternal name and you are unlikely to be disappointed.

Our first stay in Christchurch was a very brief overnight stop on the way to Hanmer Springs, which had a lovely spa and excellent fish and chips, but was marred by the YHA being a bit like a prison camp (at least on the inside), only with rowdier and more reprehensible inmates. These consisted of a gang of noisy schoolchildren in their late teens, who I suspected would be a pain in the backside as soon as they walked through the door. The YHA staff did make a half hearted warning to them not to make too much noise outside, advice which, in fairness, they did take, as they proceeded to make too much noise inside instead. All night. I may be sounding like a prematurely grumpy old man, but is it really socially acceptable among today's youth to run around corridors at 4am screaming "Hamish" at the top of their voices? What is it supposed to achieve? I am not even sure that "Hamish" existed. Anyway, after that night of fun and games it was a relief for us to get back to Christchurch where there was nothing to plague us but earthquakes and scientologists. We did feel a few piddling little tremors both nights we stayed there, but nothing worse than a 4 on the Richter scale, peanuts compared to the original, which was a 7.1. 

We had a bit longer in Christchurch the second time round, and decided to go to the Antarctic Centre, which is a bit out of town but is served by a coach called the "Penguin Express" which runs every hour. The driver, presumably Mr Penguin, turned out to be a former policeman, and upon hearing that I was a lawyer, mentioned that, by an astonishing coincidence, he had a friend who was a lawyer who had referred a couple of clients with problems to him once upon a time. I am not quite sure why he spoke of this with such pride, as not only did Mr Penguin fail to solve these problems, but he also added another fairly large problem to their pile in both cases by arresting them! He then suggested that if we bought him a bottle of gin and sat him down by the river he would tell us all about it. Even though this would probably have proved cheaper than the Antarctic Centre turned out to be, we declined his generous offer. In terms of eccentricity he was second only to the taxi driver we recently came across in Ireland who, when asked what there was to do in Limerick, replied with two questions of his own, which were "Can you swim?" and "Can you throw a knife?" (TO BE CONTINUED)"

New Zealand Diary 2010: Part 1

Having spent a fabulous week in Andalucia I am officially in a happy holiday mood right now (a mood which will no doubt dissipate rather rapidly on Monday morning). I have been far too lazy to do a holiday blog this time round but recently found myself reminiscing about my last "big trip" back in 2010 when Julie and I spent a month or so travelling around New Zealand (with a few days in Sydney as "dessert" at the end) and thought I might as well dust off my holiday diaries from that trip and share them with t'internet folks (I have avoided the urge to edit or otherwise tinker with them). So here's my first entry:

A few of you may remember that many years ago (early 2003, to be exact) I spent 2 months travelling in New Zealand and recorded my thrilling adventures in a series of e-mails. After a seven and a half year hiatus I am finally back, this time with fiancee in tow, for the belated sequel, and whether or not anyone enjoyed reading the last set of e-mails, I enjoyed writing them so I am going to subject you all to a couple of further instalments.

Accessing facebook at all from the other side of the world has proved surprisingly difficult, as when I first signed in I was told I was in 'an unusual location' and so I had to prove my identity via a series of "tests" which included identifying seven of my friends from two of their facebook photos. I soon found out that this was a more challenging prospect than it sounded when the photos from one of my friends (whose identity is still unclear to me) consisted of one photo of themselves as an infant and one photo of a cartoon devil. Fortunately facebook makes allowances for the fact that everyone has a few friends who are instantly forgettable, so you are allowed to "pass" on two of the questions.

Anyway, digressions aside, my journey began with an excruciatingly uncomfortable 24 hour flight via Hong Kong. During the second leg of the flight I was unfortunate enough to have a doppelganger of Keith Miller from EastEnders (he looked very similar, and he also smelled roughly how I imagine Keith Miller to smell, as well as being possessed of a similar level of intelligence) sitting directly in front of me. "Keith" wasted no time in pushing his seat back as far as it would go and no amount of surreptitious sharp kicking from me could get the grotesque man to move it forward again. Julie managed to get a keyring with her name on it in Hong Kong though, so not a complete washout.

We landed in Auckland at about 7 am last Saturday, sweaty and sleep deprived (speaking only for myself, that is, Julie, being a lady, never sweats at all, and actually managed to snatch a few hours of sleep during the flight in between the seventeenth and eighteenth repeat of Family Guy). We soon perked ourselves up with a coffee by Auckland Harbour though, followed by a brief cruise around the harbour during which we were informed by our tour guide that New Zealand's biggest imports are Japanese cars, and their biggest exports are in fact onions. He didn't in fact say "sheep are soooo 2003" as he didn't happen to be a camp Californian, but I could tell he was thinking it. But more of sheep anon.

Speaking of California, Julie's conclusion was that Auckland was a bit like all the boring bits of San Francisco, so we decided not to linger, but departed for Rotorua the following morning. Our coach driver was in fact going further south, but made a big fuss of telling everyone that there would be a "driver only" change in Rotorua, in a tone that suggested that while his replacement was a "driver only", he himself was so much more than that. I half expected him to do a David Brent and follow this up with a statement that he was a friend first, a driver second, and probably an entertainer third, but mercifully he refrained from doing so. We made a brief stop off at a cafe and I was greeted by the sight of a massive cock in the garden (or at least Julie says it was a cock, I maintain that it was in fact a hen, but I thought it would be a shame to let the opportunity for a bit of childish innuendo slip out of my hands).

We arrived in Rotorua, indulged ourselves with a soak in the Polynesian Spa on the first morning, which contained a number of different hot pools each with different minerals in them, all of which were overlooking Lake Rotorua itself. It was extremely relaxing. We followed this up with a "Maori cultural evening", complete with Kiwi watching (the birds, not the New Zealanders in general, they have all gone abroad to avoid the tourists), glow worm sightings, and excellent food from a hangi. There was also a bit where one of us was chosen to be a "chief" whose job was to make a speech, following which we would all support him with a rousing rendition of a Maori chant. Eventually, after the usual awkward and embarrassing hesitation, a rather wizened old gentleman from New South Wales called John was "volunteered" as the chief. John proved to have rather a cavalier, reckless approach to leadership, in that he demanded that we performed the Maori chant without having practised it first. The result was as messy as might have been expected, and the chief Maori muttered something afterwards which I half expected to translate as "kill them all, and leave no survivors", but was in fact something surprisingly mild and sycophantic. All in all it was an excellent evening.

The next day we decided to hire ourselves a car, the roads around Rotorua being so wide and simple that Julie had concluded that even an idiot like me should be able to drive on them. It was actually my first experience driving an automatic, and once I had deduced, through a lengthy process of elimination, that "D" stood for "Drive", everything went relatively smoothly (although Julie's attempts to pronounce some of the Maori street names caused much hilarity. "Rangiuru Street" caused particular problems.) We went to see some redwood trees in the morning, then went horse riding in the afternoon. My horse was a malevolent character who went by the name of "Cossack", and not since Wendy at the Trinity Hall College Bar has anyone taken such an instant and visceral dislike to me. All I will say is that if all the cossacks had been as uncivilised as him, there would have been a lot more pogroms, and the Russian Revolution would have happened considerably earlier. But fortunately he was not given too many opportunities to kill me and it was actually an extremely pleasant ride, despite my getting occasional snorts out of him that probably translated as "just give me an opportunity to trample you underfoot and I'll crush you like the pathetic maggot you are", or something along those lines.

Our final day in Rotorua was quite a busy one. Rotorua is known by the New Zealanders, rather touchingly, as "Rotovegas". Although I haven't actually been to Las Vegas I suspect that it does not shut down quite as early on Sunday evenings as Rotorua does, but nevertheless it is true that there is quite a lot to do there, including "Hobbiton tours", which is an innovation since last I was there. We refrained from doing this one, as it happens, exciting though the opportunity to see a bunch of sheep chewing away at the mouldering remains of Mr Baggins' once proud home would have been. The tour would probably have been more accurately described as "A tour showing what would have happened if Mordor had won and all the hobbits had been exterminated".

Instead, we went to Wai-o-tapu, which has a weird and wonderful array of boiling mud pools, thermal lakes in all sorts of strange colours, and a geyser that is artificially induced to erupt at 10:15 every morning. Amazingly we managed to drag ourselves out of bed and made it with several minutes to spare. We even had enough time to look around the neighbouring gift shop first, which had various products on offer including something that was described as "Kiwi Willy Wash". I am telling the honest and unadulterated truth when I say that there was actually a sticker on it saying "Try Me". I had been told on the Maori tour that if Kiwis are touched by humans they sometimes refuse to eat for up to a week, so I can only assume that if someone tried to apply some of this unorthodox product it would probably trigger the extinction of the whole species.

That afternoon we went to my first ever sheep shearing, hosted by an extremely creepy man in a vest that was just a little bit too tight for comfort. I am pleased to say that I actually took part in these proceedings, not as a shearing "victim" but as a lamb feeder. The lamb I fed was very cute indeed, and I tried to eradicate from my mind the fact that I had probably eaten one of his close relatives that very lunchtime. We then went luging later in the afternoon and departed for Wellington the following morning after an extremely tasty waffle based breakfast. We encountered more poultry en route, as well as a very friendly fellow traveller who was half Maori, half Danish, and (obviously) went by the name of Dave!

We only had one full day in Wellington, which gave us enough time to see most of the floors of Te Papa, New Zealand's National Museum (which literally translates as "Your Daddy"), go up Wellington's cable car, get into a heated debate over whether it was technically a cable car at all or a funicular, and eat at a very good restaurant called Sweet Mother's Kitchen (twice), which is near the Embassy Theatre, which last time I was there was showing The Two Towers and had a huge statue of Gollum sticking up out of the roof. This time they were showing the the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, but sadly there were no statues of depressed looking Swedish people on the roof, which I feel was a wasted opportunity.

We crossed over to the South Island this morning, and the details of what we do next will be related shortly (once we have done it!)

Oh, and we slept through the big earthquake (being on the wrong island at the time).

Review of New US House of Cards (1st 2 episodes)

Big shoes to fill

When I tweeted a few months ago that the late Ian Richardson was the greatest actor who ever lived by a comfortable margin, I was only being slightly hyperbolic. I had the pleasure of seeing this fine actor on stage on 2 occasions before his death in 2007, and he also had a sizeable number of film credits to his name (e.g. Man of La Mancha, Brazil and...er...102 Dalmatians).

But few would deny that Commander Richardson's finest work (he was given a CBE but, outrageously, never knighted) was on TV. His performance as Bill Haydon in the original Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy stood out as perhaps the best of an impressive roster of performances from some of the best actors in the UK at the time, and his portrayal of Dr Joseph Bell, the real life inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, in Murder Rooms in the early 2000s nicely bridged the gap between the demise of Jeremy Brett and the arrival on the scene of Benedict Cumberbatch, silly hair notwithstanding (although it was not the silliest hair he ever sported on screen, see here and here for definitive proof). 

Even these performances, however, pale next to the performance he will always be remembered for, that of the diabolically machiavellian politician Francis Urquhart ("FU" for short) in House of Cards, one of the greatest political shows ever made. The show would doubtless have become a classic whenever it was shown, but the first episode happened to screen just days after Margaret Thatcher was toppled from power after 11 years in Number 10, back in 1990. Given that the makers could not possibly have known this when filming it, there is no doubt that they got lucky - witness this opening scene!

The remake

When I heard that they were remaking the show for US audiences, in spite of my fascination with US politics (hell, my first official date with the lovely lady who is now my wife was spent watching the November midterm elections back in 2006), my heart sank. Why the US feels the need constantly to remake great shows from abroad I have no idea, but isn't it slightly insulting to their intelligence to assume that US audiences won't watch the original versions just because they might, for example, be in a foreign language? (I'm actually talking more about things like The Killing now...whilst I do occasionally have problems making myself understood across the pond, I acknowledge that we do share a common language with our American cousins, and any communication problems which may arise mainly stem from my being incredibly mumbly and incoherent!) 

After my initial feelings of "oh Lord, why don't they just leave it alone" had subsided, I set to thinking about how they would remake the show if they were going to do it properly. Of course the key thing to get right is the casting of the central character. That was what worried me most. After having a long think about who could possibly fill Ian Richardson's sizeable shoes, I managed to come up with a measly 2 names. And as Vincent Price is even "deader" than Richardson, my conclusion was that "if they can't get Spacey, they're stuffed". Having now attended a Q&A about the show, it transpires that the producers and David Fincher were thinking exactly the same thing. 

Luckily, they did get him, and a stuffing was narrowly avoided. In fact, the more I heard online about the show, the more I started to reconsider my original feelings of scepticism, and by the time I was alerted to the fact that tickets were on sale to a world premiere screening of the first two episodes in the Odeon, Leicester Square (seeing Lester Burnham in Leicester Square, no less) followed by a Q&A with stars Kevin Spacey, Robin Wright and Kate Mara, director David Fincher (sadly he only directed these two episodes), writer Beau Willimon (who is a genius, but looks about 12) and writer of the original novel, Lord Michael Dobbs - I was downright excited, and snapped them up! 

After all, it was my first premiere and thus my first opportunity to strut the red carpet like an overexcited peacock, although my companions and I were stalled by some beefy security guards in mid strut...for some reason the big stars didn't want us to invade their photo opportunities - to which all I can say is ha (please note that "me" is not me at all but my wife!):

I know that it looks as though Spacey is coming over to pull the red rug from under us by the way, but sadly we did not get a chance to have a chat with him, friendly or otherwise!

Musings on political drama generally

Essentially political dramas fall into four distinct categories:

1) Politicians are brilliant, super intelligent, hard working public servants with a nice line in very fast, witty banter - e.g. The West Wing.

2) Politicians are decent people who generally try to do the right thing, but politics is hard, there are no easy answers, and they often get it wrong and have to make messy compromises - e.g. Danish TV series Borgen.

3) Politicians are generally self serving and a bit crap, and are constantly being manipulated by their civil servants - e.g. Yes Minister, the Thick of It.

4) Politicians are TOTAL BASTARDS.

I suspect that the truth lies somewhere between (2) and (3), but why let truth get in the way of a good story? And in any event, which political shows work, and which ones don't, tends to depend on the political culture of the country in which they are shown. House of Cards, needless to say, nestles comfortably into the fourth category, and my impression is that the US public, increasingly frustrated by the relentless partisanship of Washington politics, is ready for a show of this nature. In fact my suspicion (guided mainly, as is so often the case, by "what my wife says") is that the one the US would struggle with is category (3), not category (4). 

In contrast, coming from the UK I can confidently say that a West Wing equivalent wouldn't work over here - the idea of British politicians being that brilliant would make us all laugh (having said that, there is a strong West Wing following in the UK, even though the majority of the show was on during the era of Bush 43, a president not known for his razor sharp intellect, so we are obviously more willing to give overseas politicians the benefit of the doubt). 

Review of the Show

So now, dear readers, that you have scrolled down past all that semi-tangential nonsense, what you are all waiting to hear is the answer to the key question "IS IT ANY GOOD?" Well, I have three answers for you - the short answer, the long answer, and the evasive answer.

Evasive Answer

You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment.

Short Answer

Actually I could comment, in fact doing so was originally the whole point of this post, and the answer is yes.

Long Answer

They get it. They really do. I am already so hooked that I am going to have to get myself Netflix now, just so that I can download all 13 episodes of the first season and watch them over the course of a weekend. And I must have seen the original series five or six times, which means that I have a better idea of how it is likely to pan out than most people do (I am hoping that they might throw a few surprises in, but, without wanting to give away too many spoilers, I am also hoping they use the ending from the UK TV series, and not the book ending, which I suspect even Michael Dobbs would now admit is a bit of a cop out). 

The basic outline of the plot so far is very similar to the UK series. New Prime Minister/President has just been elected. Crafty Chief Whip/House Majority Whip Francis Urquhart/Frank Underwood is passed over for the job he wants in the new administration (in the new version he is denied the job of Secretary of State) and vows revenge, egged on by his even more ruthless wife, and starts undermining the administration and turning its members against each other whilst appearing scrupulously loyal to his boss. These episodes are focussing on the confirmation process of the new administration, so although the timing is not as impeccable as that of the original series was, President Obama's recent difficulties in this regard do make it at least somewhat timely. 

Meanwhile, of course, lots of people are having sex with each other, mostly extramarital. Episode 2 contains probably the worst declaration of love I have ever heard one person give another - you will enjoy it if your sense of humour is sufficiently scatological!

Most of the rest of the cast are essentially pawns in Urquhart/Underwood's cunning plan, including an idealistic and ambitious young female journalist (Samantha Harker as "Mattie Storin" in the original version, Kate Mara as "Zoe Barnes" in this version) and a loose cannon PR consultant/Congressman with problems with drugs and (in common with most of the characters) keeping his trousers fastened whilst in other people's bedrooms (Miles Anderson as "Roger O'Neill" in the original version, Corey Stoll as "Peter Russo" in this version). Having 26 episodes to really flesh things out will really help - the original ran for only 12 episodes in total, including the two inferior but still very watchable sequels To Play the King and The Final Cut (they won't be able to remake To Play The King, of course, one of the many unfortunate unintended consequences of our American cousins getting rid of the monarchy was that they have now senselessly deprived themselves of some damn good TV!)

So turning to the differences, then - it is already clear that Frank Underwood is a slightly different breed of monster than Richardson's Francis Urquhart was. Whilst Urquhart was smooth and serpentine, Spacey's Frank Underwood is slightly more of a brutish alligator. Whilst Urquhart was a superciluous "posh Scot", Underwood has a lovely South Carolina drawl, and is a bit more down to earth. For example he likes to get up and eat a rack of ribs at 7:30 in the morning, and he works out on a rowing machine (albeit after much henpecking from Mrs Underwood) - neither of which Francis Urquhart would have been seen dead doing. Sadly there is a shortage of the Shakespearian ad-libbing that Ian Richardson did so well (so far, at least), which is a shame, as Spacey, like Richardson, is an accomplished Shakespearian actor. I had the pleasure of seeing him as Richard III at the Old Vic in 2011 and it was one of the best performances I have ever seen, period. 

The politics are also very different. Whilst Urquhart was a traditional right wing conservative, Underwood is actually a Democrat this time round. This surprised me...in Hollywood, aren't Republicans always the bad guys? One wonders whether Spacey, himself a well known Democrat supporter, took the producers aside at one point and said "Look, I don't mind the blackmail, the adultery, the murder and suchlike fun and games, but I draw the line at playing a Republican!" 

From what I have seen so far, as far as Underwood appears to have any ideological beliefs at all, he seems to a be fairly centrist moderate, and is certainly contemptuous of the impractical left wing of the party, but even there, his contempt seems to spring from the fact that he knows what they are trying to do can't actually be done, rather than from anything more ideological. You get the impression that he doesn't really believe in anything at all except that he should be in charge. 

In my view this is actually a good choice. The problems I had with the two "sequels" to the British version was that the makers, no doubt riding the anti-Tory wave of sentiment in the mid nineties, seemed to be giving the impression that Urquhart was actually a bad Prime Minister as well as a bad man, whereas what made the first series so interesting was that although he was clearly a "bad egg", he was clearly so much more capable (and charming) than his peers, and patently the best man for the job. By taking the character's ideology out of the equation, the US version will hopefully be able to avoid alienating its likely audience and can potentially push the "evil guy but great politician" angle more easily (I don't know if that is the road they will go down, but I do hope so). 

Having said that, the essence of the character is, of course, the same: both incarnations are clever, ruthless, charming and willing to do absolutely anything and screw over anyone on their path to power. The asides to the camera are still in place - we, the audience, are his co-conspirators, and whilst we are appalled by his actions, once again we find ourselves enjoying the consequences of those actions at the same time and "rooting for the bad guy". 

In this version, even more than in the original, whilst Underwood is clearly a villain, there are no real heroes. The President and the members of his administration are so obviously shallow and out of their depth that we find ourselves enjoying their discomfort even though objectively they are not really bad enough to deserve to suffer the way they do. 

Even journalist Zoe Barnes, played brilliantly by Kate Mara, who is the nearest the show has to a heroine is, quite frankly, a bit of a bitch (she casually tells a fellow journalist who is lusting after her at one point that "If I wanted to f*** you, you'd know!") Interestingly enough, she already has enough information after the two episodes I saw to know what Underwood is up to (although he is still shamelessly manipulating her). This is quite a big shift from the original, where Mattie Storin was unaware of Urquhart's true nature until the very end - it will be interesting to see how that pans out and what she finds out in subsequent episodes (and when). 

Robin Wright as Claire Underwood is a revelation. While Diane Fletcher was great as her equivalent number in the original version, she was very much a background figure - Wright is getting more of a chance to really shine. Let's just say that she is no Princess Buttercup here, but a full blown Lady Macbeth - put in charge of a charity! With predictably scary consequences. Another interesting thing about the show is that while Mrs Urquhart/Underwood is clearly Lady Macbeth, her husband is not Macbeth at all, he's Richard III. Which makes much more sense as a pairing, if you think about it... no wonder Lady M went mad, being married to a man who needs half an hour of soliloquising even to psych himself up into committing a straightforward murder! As I mentioned above, Spacey has recently played Richard III, and, like Richardson, he clearly understands the parallels between the two characters, as there were some striking similarities between his two performances (in particular his wry looks of frustration at the audience every once in a while). 

The script is really excellent. The famous line "You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment" does feature in both episodes - I can't say I was overwhelmed by Spacey's delivery of that particular line, but to be honest that's because Ian Richardson so owns the line that anyone else saying it just feels wrong  (just as Alan Rickman is a marvellous actor, but it just felt wrong to cast him as Marvin the Paranoid Android in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie simply because he wasn't original Marvin Stephen Moore!) But who cares, when there are plenty of other fabulous lines peppered throughout the script that Spacey really relishes (did I mention how fantastic his South Carolina drawl is?), for example "I love my wife more than a shark loves blood!" Or, more accurately: "bluuuurd"! Having heard Spacey pronounce the "h" in the word "whale" I will never again say the word any other way!

The Q&A

Sadly the wider audience were not allowed to ask questions - Michael Dobbs himself acted as David Dimbleby, but he carried it off with aplomb and much (well deserved) backslapping all round. Spacey was dominant, of course, and in his element - very interesting but very sweary, dropping the f bomb as if there was no tomorrow (so much so that I was half expecting him to conclude his opening speech with "You might think that but I don't give a f***" rather than quoting the actual line). 

Robin Wright announced that she was "not really political" (meaning that being married to the ultimate political windbag Sean Penn must have been even more appalling for her than I had previously supposed)! Comparative newcomer Kate Mara was very sweet and seemed a little overwhelmed by the proceedings. And Sir George Young, the real Chief Whip (Urquhart's job in the original series), turned out to be in the audience, and briefly muscled in on the Q&A, protesting that the Whips are really a very mild mannered bunch of tea-totallers who would blanch at dropping the "drat" bomb, let alone anything stronger. This probably explains why the current government keeps getting itself into so much trouble!

No spoilers were dished out about the remainder of the series (apart from the obvious revelation that the relationship with Underwood and Zoe Barnes was unlikely to remain strictly platonic for long). But in less than 2 weeks, Netflix will have all the answers. Can't wait!

What to do when you meet a politician

It appears from looking at my blog stats that my US audience is almost as large as my UK one, so to my American readers I am going to make an admission. It is true - Britain really IS a small island!

The scene in the Simpsons in which the then Prime Minister Tony Blair was found greeting all UK visitors at the airport (to which Homer responds "Wow - I can't believe we just met Mr Bean!") might just be a slight exaggeration. However, if we take a celebrity at random....say, Hugh Grant:

• my sister and her friends once mobbed him on a golf course in St Andrews (she is still the proud possessor of a photo of three very excited eighteen year old girls beaming delightedly while a distinctly middle aged looking Hugh grins sheepishly in the background like their slightly overfriendly uncle, equipped with a suitably pervy baseball cap);
• one of my friends is regularly overtaken by him whilst jogging near her home; and
• another of my friends once attended a "surprise birthday party" for him despite never having met him before (maybe he was the surprise). Said birthday party consisted of watching three episodes of the In Betweeners in a tiny cinema in Soho. A better way to celebrate turning fifty two (yes...he really is that old) I cannot imagine. 

The upshot of this is that in the UK, especially in London, it is not uncommon to come across famous people on a regular basis, and this also extends to the realm of politics. Whilst in America even lesser presidential primary candidates get their own security teams (forcing Rick Santorum to use protection for the first time at the age of 54), here in the UK they tend to just wander round looking rather ordinary. 

Dave

I can report, for example, that I am at least half an inch taller than David Cameron, our current prime minister, who I was studiously ignored by when I made my first (and, hopefully for the British public's sake, my last) visit to 10 Downing Street a month or so ago for a reception in honour of the Spirit of London Awards, which is an annual ceremony at which awards are presented to young people for their talent in the arts, media, sport, campaigning and education. I was invited along in my capacity as a charitable trustee with some connection to this event.

Big Dave breezed into the room about halfway through the reception, fresh from having addressed the House of Commons about the Leveson Report (and looking surprisingly composed under the circumstances - however my plot to steal his copy of the Report just so that I could spend the next two weeks watching him squirm whilst pretending he had read it was sadly unsuccessful). As he entered, pretty much everyone else in the room suddenly cut off the conversations they had been having with dull fellows like me, and started circling The Big Man like vultures circling a freshly bloodied corpse (not a bad analogy, actually). 

My talons were sadly not sharp enough to allow me to get to the front of the queue, and before I managed to get in so much as an "All right, Dave" in the style of Trigger from Only Fools and Horses, he had already smoothly small talked his way through the room and across to the podium where he made a short speech, which, despite lacking any Winnie the Pooh references (please see below), which means that he will only, at best, ever be the second coolest PM I have seen in person, was quite well received, apart from a gratuitous reference to the Big Society which received the silent chorus of eye rolling it so richly deserved. 

Vince

But to be honest it is probably for the best that I did not get a chance to speak to Mr Cameron, as I had neglected to prepare any particularly pithy or witty conversation openers for the great man to respond to, and I fear that it would have come off as an unfortunate reprise of the occasion on which my friend Eddie and I had a somewhat awkward meeting with Business Secretary Vince Cable, then the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, in the bar of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, in 2006. 

Vince had just given a pretty interesting address to the Trinity Hall Politics Society and had obviously decided that it would be good to follow it up with a quiet pint, a notion that was quickly spoiled by two slightly star struck students (yes...I was star struck by Vince Cable, I do indeed need to get out more) loping up to him and saying "Hello Dr Cable". His face rapidly went from: 

• incredulity (how can they have recognised me. I don't understand...I'm wearing my hat! My hat makes me invisible! Damn these crafty Cambridge students, they have penetrated my cunning disguise);
• terror (this is it...I'm going to die, aren't I!);
• relief (OK, maybe I might get out of this alive, maybe they're just two students wanting to congratulate me on my speech);
• panic (I have nothing to say to them...why won't they leave me alone?);
• more panic (the bar lady is scowling at me); and
• more relief (phew, she scowls at everyone...she seems to particularly hate that ginger bloke, I wonder why).

We quickly realised that neither of us could think of anything more to say to him (intelligent or otherwise) at that point and we moved on, leaving him whimpering into his pint and clutching his hat tightly around his ears.

 

Trish

Distressing though this encounter unquestionably was, I can still happily say that Vince is not the politician I have terrified most. I was holidaying with my wife Julie in Cornwall a few years ago, and on our first night in Penzance we found a nice looking restaurant for dinner. At one of the other tables was sitting a middle aged lady who seemed oddly familiar to me, but I couldn't quite place her. She looked as though she might be one of my friends' mums, but I couldn't think of whose mum she would be. 

So I did what any sensible person would do in those circumstances. I decided to stare at her like a beady eyed hawk until I could work out who she was. I tried to do it as surreptitiously as possible, but my idea of surreptitious was clearly not the same as hers, as she quickly started to look more and more agitated for reasons which I could not fathom. It was only when I was about to leave the restaurant, having enjoyed my dinner far more than she probably did, that it struck me that she looked uncannily like Patricia Hewitt, the former Labour Health Secretary, who I had in fact seen in person once before, at a recording of Question Time. 

I don't suppose she recognised me, although Charles Kennedy (former Lib Dem leader who seems to have done the job more effectively despite apparently having been drunk for most of his seven years as leader than any of his successors has managed sober) who had also been on the Question Time panel, and who had leered at me cheerfully when he saw me kissing Julie, might have done (never let it be said that I don't know how to show a girl a good time...mind you, this is coming from a man who chose Borat as our first "date movie")! But poor Patricia had ruffled a fair few feathers as Health Secretary and she obviously thought I was a disgruntled doctor out for revenge. To this day she is probably still having nightmares about being hunted by a ginger Dr Shipman with a Cornish accent.

Jack

I am usually much better at politician spotting than I was that night. Indeed this skill does not desert me even when I am abroad. For example when I was in Rome in 2007 I spotted former Tory leadership contender and cabinet minister Michael Portillo walking past me, clearly also on holiday. Sadly he rounded a corner before I could point him out to Julie, much to her frustration. However, later that afternoon she got her chance to demonstrate that she was able to find her own politicians, thank you very much, when she saw a familiar face at a Metro station, turned to me triumphantly, and announced loudly "that's Jack Straw". 

Unfortunately (a) it turned out his face was not as familiar as all that, and (b) "Jack" was the only other person who heard her apart from me. Evidently a bit of a politics geek himself (or perhaps excited at the thought of finally having found his long lost twin brother), the bogus Jack started frantically looking around to see if he could spot the real Jack, only to find that the only Demon Headmaster lookalike on the platform was himself.   

John

Big Dave was not the first Prime Minister I have had the pleasure of sharing a room with. Another of my more exciting early dates with Julie involved going to the recording of a BBC Radio 4 programme which invited celebrities to come in and read out some of their favourite poetry. The two celebrities for this edition were John Major and sitcom legend Richard Briers. Julie, having grown up with some awareness of British politics but somewhat removed from it on the other side of the Atlantic, seems as a girl to have got the idea into her head that Mr Major was some sort of sinister bogeyman who probably lived under the bed, ate children and dressed up as grandma in his spare time. In fairness, my awareness of US politics at that stage of my development was significantly weaker (for some reason as a boy I had got it into my head that Ronald Reagan looked a bit like a bearded elderly tramp, an image which it took some years and several history lessons to shake off).

Because of Julie's misconceptions, she was somewhat surprised to be greeted by the sight of a tall, grey, amiable looking (and surprisingly imposing) middle aged man who proceeded to charm his audience with his  gentle voiced delivery of various poems, most of which incidentally appear to have come from Winnie the Pooh. No doubt these charming stories involving "a bear of very little brain" brought back fond memories of some of the people he came across during his illustrious(ish) political career. Ironically Richard Briers turned out to be a thoroughly malevolent psychopath ("listen to my poems or I'll break your f***ing legs, you got me?")

Conclusion

So, to sum up, if you do have an encounter with a politician, what is the best way to respond? Here are a few hints:

1. If they are at a restaurant, they probably don't want to talk to you, so it's best to leave them alone.
2. If they are at a bar, they might be eager to chat (I had a very pleasant conversation with former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind at the Cambridge Union, and remember coming away thinking that he would probably make quite a good Prime Minister but would never make it because of the dandruff). However if they are wearing a hat, again, it is best to avoid them like the plague.
3. If lost for a conversation starter, in my experience politicians tend to have surprisingly good taste in poetry.

Happy New Year!

Review of "The Hobbit: A Long Expected Journey"

I have a confession to make: I am Bilbo Baggins. That may be a strange statement for a tall lanky shoe-wearing ginger man to make, but the truth is in spite of the differences in height and foot-hairiness between Bilbo and myself, he is probably the literary character I have always empathised with the most ever since I first read the book in the late 1980s (yes, I have been waiting for this film for a very long time indeed!) Whilst his wimpier nephew Frodo seems to spend the entirety of the Lord of the Rings trilogy wandering around finding ingenious new ways of getting himself stabbed, Bilbo, the ultimate bookish underdog turned unlikely hero of the hour, actually makes himself vaguely useful on his quest, more than earning his share of the dragon's treasure at the end of the day.

Moreover, if there was  Guinness Book of Records category for the tallest person ever to play Bilbo Baggins, I would probably win it. Although I was never a member of the Cambridge University Tolkien Society (I am only willing to allow my geekiness to get to a certain level) I did join forces with them when I took on four roles for the Cambridge University Tolkien Society's Charity Reading of the script of the BBC Radio 4 Adaptation of Lord of the Rings at Borders bookstore in Cambridge (sadly now closed for reasons which I can assure you are not connected to the quality of my performance) back in 2004.

I also played Gaffer Gamgee, in spite of the fact that at one point the two characters appeared in the same scene, meaning that any innocent customers walking into the bookshop at that point, hoping for a quiet afternoon of browsing, would have instead been greeted with the baffling sight of me wielding a microphone and interacting with myself in two different accents. Probably not the strangest thing I did during my university career, but it's up there!

In short, I am a fan, and feel extremely protective of all things Tolkien. Which means that I was getting increasingly concerned by the mixed nature of the reviews of the first in Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, especially the complaints about the slow pace, not least because Julie and I had inadvertently booked a 10pm showing of the film last night after a long and tiring week at work, rather than the 8pm showing we had thought we were booking. Having waited the better part of a quarter of a century for this cinematic spectacle, was there a chance that I was going to end up falling asleep in the middle of it? This did happen to me fairly recently in the Russell Crowe version of Robin Hood (although that was in the middle of the afternoon, but I had better say no more about that cinematic travesty, even though I am sure Russell, being an amiable chap, would take the criticism in good spirit!)

As it turned out, there was no need for a power nap, even during the Rivendell scenes. I think the negative focus of a lot of the reviews stemmed from the fact that many critics were expecting a classic epic "magnificent octopus" (as Baldrick would put it) on the same level as Lord of the Rings. Quite why they had set their expectations so high is a mystery to me, bearing in mind how previous franchises that have sought to resurrect themselves after a gap of a decade or more (which is probably a fairer standard by which to judge the film) have fared. True, James Bond has managed to successfully reinvent himself twice now, but the longest period we have ever had between Bond films is six years.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is not quite as good as any of Jackson's Lord of the Rings films. However, it is significantly better than any of the three Star Wars prequels, Terminator 3 or 4, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Bollocks, Richard Lester's Return of the Musketeers, whatever the name of that Brandon Routh Superman film was, or even The Godfather part III. Jackson managed to recapture the spirit of the previous films far more successfully after a gap of eleven years than the Wachowski Brothers managed with the Matrix after just four. And I absolutely loved it, in spite of its flaws.

Getting the negative stuff out of the way first, I will say that I will not be watching the next two films in 3D, nor will I be watching this one in 3D again. It added nothing, it irritated my eyes, and New Zealand/Middle Earth is just as attractive in 2D. I didn't see the film in 48 frames per second so can't comment on that, but I have to say that the number of different formats in which one can watch the film is now verging on the ridiculous (although my attempt to find a cinema that was showing it as a black and white silent movie with a smell-o-vision option was unsuccessful!)

The second major criticism of the film has been its length, and I do wonder whether instead of releasing an Extended Edition of the film on DVD as per the LOTR films it might be worth Jackson thinking about releasing a truncated version! When answering questions about the upcoming LOTR films back in 1999, Jackson commented that his rule was that every scene had to advance the plot in some way. It is something he seems to have since forgotten. Let's put it this way, if he was making LOTR now, he would not only have included Tom Bombadil, but would have included ten minutes of flashbacks to explain where he got his inspiration for his "brilliant" songs and rhymes (no doubt the track title for that scene on the DVD would have been "A Shortcut to Mushrooms"). I actually think that two films might have been the better way forward, and not just because I now have to wait another year to see my favourite character from the book (apart from Bilbo) - Beorn, the bear man (to be played by the suitably big, hairy and Swedish Mikael Persbrandt).

True, the Hobbit is shorter than any of the LOTR films, but it has more padding, only some of which really adds anything to the story. The Erebor-based prologue does a good job of setting the scene, and the new wizard Radagast the Brown manages to just about stay on the right side of that very thin line between eccentric and annoying, partly because former Dr Who Doctor Sylvester McCoy plays him with such enthusiasm. But then again, with a sledge driven by giant CGI rabbits (which Tolkien forgot to mention) as a prop, who wouldn't be enthusiastic? If David Tennant is starting to get sick of doing those godawful Virgin Media ads, he may be reassured by the fact that it could be worse, bearing in mind that McCoy appears to have spent the twenty odd years since he left the show living in the woods being crapped on by owls.

But the whole sub-plot involving Azog, an albino orc with a hook for an arm (Middle Earth's answer to Abu Hamza) could quite easily have been dropped, although I did enjoy Barry Humphries as the Goblin King. Yes, that's right, Dame Edna Everage is playing the Goblin King, although in fact he is more like Sir Les Patterson reincarnated as a giant, angry scrotum. And whilst Elijah Wood's cameo as Frodo is fun, it is screaming out as being something that would have been better saved up for the DVD edition.

Plus I think that Jackson has become overreliant on CGI this time round. Surprisingly for someone who is such a big fan of Ray Harryhausen, Jackson seems to have forgotten that CGI is not the only instrument in the filmmaking toolbox. The most profound thing that Simon Pegg has ever tweeted (ok...possibly the only profound thing that Simon Pegg has ever tweeted) was when he was talking about showing his daughter the Empire Strikes Back. It was the first time she had ever seen a puppet, non-CGI Yoda, and her immediate reaction was "oh...he's real"). Take as another example this scene from Jason and the Argonauts. This could be done more realistically today (as much as a fight involving skeletons can ever be described as realistic), but would it be as much fun?

But enough griping. I was transported back into Middle Earth, and quite frankly I loved almost every minute of it. Starting with the performances, I find it difficult to find fault with any of them. I had been touting Martin Freeman as the perfect younger Bilbo for almost a decade before he actually got cast, and I can totally understand why Jackson decided to reschedule filming to accommodate Freeman so that he could take time off to film the second series of BBC's Sherlock (as a devoted fan of both Sherlock Holmes and Tolkien, I am almost in despair that I will have to wait another whole year before seeing Martin Freeman's Bilbo interact with his Sherlock co-star Benedict Cumberbatch as the sinister dragon, Smaug).

Freeman is far better suited to this role than he was to Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, partly because to my mind no-one could ever displace Simon Jones in that role in my book, whilst although I loved Ian Holm as Bilbo in LOTR, he is not the only actor who has previously played the role well (and no, I am not thinking of me here, I actually had in mind Paul Daneman, who played him in the BBC Radio 4 version of the Hobbit, opposite the fantastically named and wonderfully malevolent looking Francis de Wolff as Smaug). Bilbo not only needed to be a good actor who could handle both comedy and drama (Freeman is gifted with a naturally funny face) but also needed to be able to pass for a young Ian Holm. The only other actor I can think of who might have managed it is Paul Giamatti.

I was a little more sceptical when I heard about Richard Armitage being cast as Thorin, the leader of the unruly pack of dwarves who accompany Bilbo on his quest (the handsome leading man was a fan favourite to be cast in the films, but most people were expecting him to be playing Bard the Bowman, rather than a character who, in his last cinematic incarnation, looked like this). Whilst the Lord of the Rings cast ended up being pretty much ideal, give or take an unnecessarily camp elf or two, having heard more since about who had previously been offered roles in the films (Nicolas Cage was offered Aragorn, which would have been about on a par with casting Ronnie Corbett as James Bond or Bruce Forsyth as the Godfather), I have come to the conclusion that this may have been due as much to luck as anything else.

I had always imagined Thorin as older and sturdier, and it seems that original director Guillermo Del Toro was thinking more along my lines, having been considering Ian McShane and even the legendary Brian Blessed for the role (Blessed seems to have been born to play Tolkienic roles, but the only one he has played to date is, aptly enough bearing in mind his bombastic style, Farmer Giles of Ham!) It is a shame we will probably never see Del Toro's vision of Middle Earth, but I suspect that if he had stayed on as director the critics would have been lamenting the fact that Jackson didn't come back. Truth to tell, my ideal Hobbit movie would have been made in the 1980s and directed by Terry Gilliam or Rob Reiner, but we can't always have what we want!

But of course both Guillermo and I probably underestimate the proportion of LOTR's audience that was made up of swooning teenage girls desperate for another shot of Orlando Bloom surfing down the trunk of an Oliphant, and they needed to have someone good looking to keep them occupied until Bloom's return (a new still of Legolas from the next film has been released, which suggests that elves, whilst blessed with the gift of eternal life, are truly crap when it comes to Movember). Fortunately Armitage, as well as being a bit of a moody, broody hunk, is also a very fine actor (if eerily similar to LOTR's Sean Bean in his acting style - which is appropriate, since he is fulfilling a similar function in the new trilogy, as the token suspicious, morally ambiguous chuffer with the northern accent which every Tolkien adaptation needs). Armitage perfectly captures the essence of Thorin's personality (he is essentially the fantasy equivalent of the teacher who is assigned to play the role of bad cop on school trips and remind the children that they are "not there to have fun"!)

The rest of the dwarves do not get quite as much time for character development, although they provide much of the film's humour (the tone is markedly lighter this time round and the humour works better than in LOTR, in that Jackson finds other ways to relieve the tension without having to rely on dwarf burping every single time) and the scene with the dwarves invading Bilbo's home is genuinely hilarious - amazingly, the dwarves song about destroying Bilbo's crockery from the book actually makes it into the movie. In fairness Jackson does do better than Tolkien in differentiating the dwarves.

There's Balin, the gnarled, cautious one, played deftly by Ken Stott, exactly how I always imagined the character. Stott, who is evidently enjoying taking a break from playing VERY VERY ANGRY COPS, at times seems to be channeling the spirit of Finlay Currie, who played a lot of parts like this in 1950s epics and would no doubt have taken on this role in the Ray Harryhausen version (don't know who would have played Thorin, when I started thinking about it I couldn't get past the idea of Robert Newton lamenting the loss of the Aaaarghkenstone).

There are the younger, cheeky ones (Fili and Kili, filling in for Merry and Pippin).

There's the twinkly Irish one (Bofur, played James Nesbitt - presumably part leprechaun).

And I particularly liked the fussy, camomile tea loving, lettuce chomping one (Dori, played by Mark Hadlow).

The rest get less of a chance to stand out, but as there are thirteen of them that is not surprising, and they were never all going to be iconic movie characters in the way that all of the members of the Fellowship of the Ring were.

I would have liked to see more of the "fat dwarf", Bombur (aka Obelix), who I don't think got a single line. And while I am on the subject, I have never been one to plead anti-ginger prejudice at the drop of a hat, but I would just like to point out the following:

• literary characters who are described as red haired in the book but aren't in the film version: Edward Cullen in Twilight, Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades of Grey film (if Eddie Redmayne is cast, as rumoured);
• literary characters who aren't described as red haired in the book but are in the film version: Bombur.

I am not sure we ginger folk are getting the better side of that deal!

There are also plenty of actors making a welcome return from LOTR. Ian McKellen is clearly relishing being back as Gandalf the Grey (scruffier, wilier and more fun than Gandalf the White). Andy Serkis' scenes as Gollum are very true to the book and are a particular highlight of the second half of the film. Seeing him again was like coming across an old friend (which probably says a lot about the company I keep). And it was nice to see returns from Hugo Weaving (Elrond - less of a stroppybottom than he was in LOTR), Cate Blanchett (Galadriel - still an insufferable know it all telepath) and Christopher Lee (Saruman - already a bit of a sarcastic so-and-so but not yet the thoroughly evil old bastard he turns into later).

Howard Shore returns to do the score, which is terrific (at least as good as LOTR's was). Fortunately Peter Jackson seems to have resisted the urge to include this little gem from Leonard Nimoy on the soundtrack (a perfect illustration of why Vulcans should avoid going into popular music). I would have bought the soundtrack even if I had hated the movie - the dwarves "Far over the Misty Mountains Cold" is a haunting highlight. 

To sum up then, this is a very good film indeed. And in there somewhere, there is a great film. Imagine if Wizard of Oz had been released with all of the scenes which were actually in the film included, but with another hour of additional material including flashbacks, sub-plots, an extra wizard and a secondary villain. This is how The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey feels. Everything that is in the books (the bits with the dwarves at Bag End, Gollum, the trolls) are done exactly the way that I would have wanted. The additional stuff dilutes it a bit, but doesn't go as far as taking away the magic altogether. Peter Jackson ignoring the basic rules of filmmaking still makes a far better film than most filmmakers who adhere to it rigorously. If you didn't enjoy LOTR, you will hate this. If you did enjoy LOTR, you will find a lot more to love than to hate. Being back in Middle Earth is great. Can't wait for that pesky dragon to show up in 2013.