Rescuing Laura and a Hobbitathon!

Friday December 12^th.

Maybe it was a mistake attending the party tonight. Or was it just the clothes we wore that was the problem? Laura decided, with my encouragement, to wear one of her buttock skimming dresses and I went in a trouser suit that simply screamed “Dyke!”. This wasn’t a problem for most of the evening. We arrived fashionably late – 10pm and we introduced to those in the room already, which was unusual for a student party, from my recollection.

By around midnight there wouldn’t have been the chance to introduce anyone to anybody else, the whole house was heaving. Laura had wandered off somewhere and I was engaged in a chat with a couple about Pompeii and the finds there. It wasn’t raucous or out of hand but there were far more people around than I would have felt comfortable with, if it had been a party at my house. I had been given scraps of paper with mobile phone numbers and e-mail addresses most of the night (I stuffed them into my jacket’s top pocket). I just smiled at the giver and put them away. I didn’t offer anyone my own in reciprocation, which [you’d have thought] might have told them all something, wouldn’t you?

Laura and I had decided to mingle and I ended up chatting to loads of different undergraduates, all of whom seemed very young and very naïve. Maybe I am getting old. I found Loll after a while and refilled her drink [I was driving and so was on juice or anything non-alcoholic I could find]. I wandered back to the kitchen and got involved in a discussion about the merits of reducing the drink drive limit to zero. This was with a group of students who obviously had never been behind the wheel of a car. Their views were zealous, forthright and wrong! I asked them several questions and it was patently clear none of them knew the first thing about how alcohol makes you think you are OK when in fact you aren’t at all. Some of them didn’t even know why a car full of people is more dangerous for a novice driver than drinking.

I had to explain the altered steering dynamics of a full car and how it would perform in the same way as just a car and one driver. That was why there were lots of fatalities in situations where the car was full of people, especially young people! It was due to the increased inertia in the vehicle, which caused all sorts of unforeseen problems for a new driver which they would never have encountered or even been taught.

It was at this point I got a text from Loll with just “!” as the message. This was one of our quick instant messages and it means she needs me. I went back into the main room, but she wasn’t there. After wandering a bit I finally tracked her down in another room which was half full of people and may have been a dining room She was sort of in a corner, with a bloke standing in front of her. He had his arm out and was blocking her way out of the space. As I watched she tried to move out of his reach but he moved his arm a bit which meant she’d have to touch him to move or stay where she was.

She caught my eye and did they eye roll into the top of her head, which let me know she was alright but would appreciate some help getting away from this drongo.

I cheerfully, and in mock innocence walked across to where they were, and said, “Ah, there you are. It’s time we were going…”

The drongo came back with, “No she doesn’t. She and I are having a little talk, so run along and leave us alone.”

I asked her, again with fake naivety, “Do you want to stay or are you ready to go?”

She said, “I think it is time for us to go, yes.”

I muscled past the idiot’s arm, took Loll’s out stretched hand and we attempted to move away.

“Bugger off, bitch! She is staying here. She and I are getting to know each other…”

“You heard her, she wants to leave so we are going! Goodnight.” I pushed his arm away again and stood aside in front of him to let Laura pass.

“Not so fast, you cow. She and I haven’t finished.”

I wasn’t sure what to do next but Laura took over the situation, “Yes, we have you fucking halfwit. Actually, compared to you a halfwit would be gifted. If you were the last man on the planet I would kill myself rather than having anything to do you. But for her, I would do anything…” She turned back to me and kissed me hard and passionately for what seemed like forever, but was probably only about twenty seconds. “It is scum like you which make me so pleased I am a lesbian.” She linked her arm through mine and we walked out through the doorway.

Through the open door I hear a male voice say, “Ha ha, Andy. She had you pegged right didn’t she? Bloody gorgeous and a lemon, eh? You’d never have guessed.”

We strolled out through the kitchen door and on to the back lane where I had parked up a few hours earlier. As we sat in the car I said, “OMG I am so bloody horny. I can’t wait to get you back home, my lass.” She told me to drive and she would help me out on the way.

I once gave Richard a blowjob while he was driving and he was so turned on but nervous as hell that he would crash as he couldn’t concentrate properly. He pulled up at the kerbside, abruptly, as he started to fire his load into my mouth and then he needed a couple of minutes to recover before he drove on again. I had to do a swift stop just opposite the Middlewood park and ride carpark for a similar reason. I couldn’t concentrate as the orgasm her fingers had produced washed through me.

Callie was surprised to be ignored as we burst into the kitchen [a few minutes later] but I think she has witnessed what followed so many times now, not to be phased by it at all. She has also got used to a short wander round the back field if her mum has been busy making those squealing noises. We slept though until 9 am, even Callie!

Saturday 13^th Dec.

Lying in bed this morning, Laura asked what I’d have done if that drongo, last night, had turned violent. I told her I would have hit him with the ball of my palm, square on the end of his nose, with as much force as I could. She wanted to know if it would have been effective. I explained that for me, who has a relatively slight punch in comparison to a guy, it would have done the trick but if a muscular bloke did it, there was a chance the breaking nose bone could enter the skull and cause death. We had been shown how to do it as a last resort during our self-defence classes. It always breaks the nose and usually produces a lot of blood. Apparently most people, when confronted with their own blood, tend to stop and try to deal with the blood. Kicking them in the goolies is good but sometimes may be not as effective as a bashed nose.

I was probably blustering again, but she does know I have broken a guy’s little fingers using one of the techniques we were taught so I think she accepted it. It would all have come down to what he did first. Another thing we were taught was; do not start anything, in a court of law that would count against you. If you react to defend yourself, 99 times out of 100, you’ll get away with it. I can break most holds but if he’d been lashing out I would have been under more of a threat. Fortunately, it didn’t happen.

We spent a lazy day having a “Hobbitathon” because I have booked tickets to see The Battle of Five Armies tomorrow and I thought we should refresh our memories of the (drastically revised) story. We watched film one after lunch and film two after our evening meal. They really are excellent and make a brilliant holiday advert for New Zealand, even if they take extra-ordinary liberties with Tolkien’s tale. I hated the way film two just stopped though, so I hope film three just starts from there and we don’t get a “Previously on…“ section first. That would be utterly tedious in the extreme.

As the day was unusually clear, we took Callie out after the first film, but only down the road a little, to Loxley Edge, in case the weather turned on us. It didn’t. So we walked the really long circuit and arrived back at the car park just as the light was fading. We did toy with the idea of having sex, there and then in the car, but despite the dry weather it was really quite cold and the inside of the car was freezing. We drove back home and indulged ourselves before the second film. (And after too!) 

Our Christmas card count has now reached 50. It is going to cost us a mint to post all our cards out! Phew. Still, it is nice to get them. There have been several smug and self-congratulatory letters in cards from my friends from Norwich and University. I toyed with the idea of putting one in my cards but I tend to just scribble a little note inside the card instead. This year I have been putting:

“Summer in Australia was brilliant! We actually found a lot of culture in WA (no not yogurts!). The PhD. Is progressing well; we are about halfway through our translations. Life with Laura is as blissful as I imagined. We do seem to be very busy though; work, tutoring, concerts and theatre (it works out at over 1 per week!) plus Rock climbing and fell walking, not to mention all the swimming! Have fun…”

That seems better than the never ending boasting I have been getting about their children or their holidays or how much they have spent on trivialities! Maybe I am being unfair, but have my friends always been slaves to mammon and materialism? I hope I am not as culpable. I don’t think so. I think my life has always been about experiencing things rather than owning them, so maybe that’s why I am not bothered about the things they have written about?

We decided we would spend the first weekend up in Cumbria watching the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy as Middle-Earth would still be fresh in our minds. All three copies are actually up there already in my bedroom at Dad’s but we’ll watch them on Dad’s ‘council house telly’ as it is about double the size of the one in my bedroom.

As we were out late last night I was nodding during Montalbano. I did make it to the end and then sleep walked Callie for her last walk of the day. I sort of thing Laura was planning on more nookie when I got back as she still had the bedroom light on and she was lying fast asleep next to one of our double enders. I decided if she woke up as I slipped into bed I’d go for it, she didn’t. (We used in in the morning instead!)

Sunday 14^th December.

Good seats, aisle seats, you feel you can rush out in an emergency. I always book aisle seats for most shows. It is awkward having to keep shuffling to let people past but I don’t feel enclosed or hemmed in. [This is the girl who has flown the world in economy class throughout her childhood!] Our aisle seats at the cinema were pretty comfy, they were arranged in such a way that if you slumped down in your seat, you still didn’t get the head of the person in front blocking your view. Oh why aren’t all theatre seats like this too?

The auditorium was about half to three quarters full, which wasn’t bad for a Sunday afternoon. I was expecting it to be heaving but it was quite OK. The performance time said 14.10 as I knew there would be at least 10 minutes of adverts and trailers, we strolled in at 14.20. We had another 8 minutes of bloody adverts! Arrrggghhh! I hate having to sit through all that shit.

The film did start exactly as it had ended, in a way, except it began even before the first film started!! Then it jumped back to Smaug flying to destroy Lake Town. I am not sure how long the film was but it held me gripped throughout. I was so entranced I forgot all about the huge packet of midget gems I had smuggled in to scoff.

Laura wanted to know if the Orc leader was in the original book when we had watched the first two films and I explained just how much wasn’t in Tolkien’s story. The love interest element wouldn’t even have been on JRR’s radar when he was writing the book. I bet her that Tauriel would die at the end of the story, so she would have her absence from the LOTR trilogy explained. She didn’t! I knew that Fili and Kili had to die in the film but they didn’t die defending Thorin as they had in the book. I explained that in order to avoid convoluted inheritance they were probably killed off by Tolkien to make Thorin’s succession less complicated, Ironfoot becomes ‘King Under The Mountain’ in the book, if the two had lived then Kili would have been the next king.

Despite all the changes it still had unity and it held together as a convincing narrative structure [although, Mr Jackson, why isn’t Tauriel in the LOTR?]. I can’t wait to see it again.

It was strange coming out of the cinema, so early in the afternoon, into darkness. We caught the tram back to Middlewood and then picked up Loll’s car to drive back home. Automatic ovens are brilliant inventions, our meat and potato pie was ready to scoff as we arrived, a bit earlier than we’d usually eat but we had been on a long journey and fought a very tiring battle against overwhelming odds!

As a footnote we had an answer machine message from Felice. She had arrived safely back in Arcachon and wanted me to lie for her if I was asked where she was at the faculty meeting next week. Could I say she was at the Modern Foreign Languages faculty meeting? She had already briefed Antoine to say she was at the History faculty meeting if her absence was noticed in MFL. She has a bloody cheek. The nice thing about it being an answer machine message was I didn’t have to say “Yes!”

I am now not only Jane Eyre and Lisbeth Salander I am also Silvan elf Tauriel too!