An Unexpectedly Long Journey

Nearly three hours! Well, one hundred and seventy minutes to be exact, was the running time of The Hobbit Part One, which we saw at the cinema today. And that's only the first third of the book, so the total length by my calculations will be a whopping eight and a half hours. Now, James' childhood copy of The Hobbit has 272 pages (I have just checked) so that means that there will be nearly two minutes screen time devoted to each page of the book! Having said all that, I thoroughly enjoyed the film. I thought that Martin Freeman was perfect casting for Bilbo and I loved the brave but boorish band of dwarves. And I had no idea how long the film was lasting until I checked the time at the end and found to my alarm that it was already 6.30 p.m. - I hadn't checked the running time so had expected it to finish about an hour earlier! So although it was long, it didn't drag for me. We phoned Jamie to ask him to put the dinner on and then jumped in a taxi to get home in time for tea with Grandma. All went well and eight of us sat down to a nice dinner; Cat and Aisling have been here all weekend and I love having a house full of young people. We are now eating apple pie and watching BBC Sports Personality of the Year. What a pleasant evening.