![[Quaking grass (top) with other grasses. Illustration by Edith Holden]](../img/q_grass.jpg "Quaking grass (top) with other grasses.
Illustration by Edith Holden")
![[Goldenrod. Illustration by Edith Holden]](../img/goldenrod.jpg "Goldenrod. Illustration by Edith Holden")
Ai! laurië lantar lassi súrinen,
Yéni únótimë ve rámar aldaron!
Ah! like gold fall the leaves in the wind,
Long years numberless as the wings of trees!
Jul 9th. While cutting away some diseased stems from the clematis, I came across a pale brown spider in the remains of a nest which she had spun on the underside of a diseased leaf. In the nest were 30 to 40 white eggs. I had probably damaged the nest while pulling out the stems that I had cut off. I immediately stopped cutting and left the spider in peace to set about her repairs.
10th. The spider has repaired her nest. The newly repaired part is semi-transparent so I can still see the spider inside guarding her eggs. Only they're not eggs, they're live young – tiny white spiders crawling about inside the nest. I mistook them for eggs yesterday because they were all clustered together and keeping very still.
I've been reading The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, Edith Holden's nature notes for 1905. Among her many beautiful illustrations is one of quaking grass. Several years ago I was living in my parents' house and at that time Mum was growing various wild plants in the garden. One time she told me that she had grown some quaking grass and that I must go and see it while it was at its best. She told me where it was in the garden and said that she had stuck a label in the ground beside it to identify it. While she was explaining this, Dad kept making cryptic remarks – something about the grass making a noise. When I went down to the garden and found the plant, I discovered that Mum had make a spelling mistake. On the label it said "Quacking Grass"!
One of the proprietary colour names which Internet Explorer and some other browsers recognize is "goldenrod" #daa520. This is a quite different colour from gold #ffd700. I've often wondered why the colour has this name. Why should a golden rod be a different colour from gold? I now learn from Country Diary that "goldenrod" is the name of a flower.
By the way, the colour scheme and page heading style for my diary are based on the less famous but very similar book The Nature Notes of an Edwardian Lady, which reproduces Edith Holden's notes for the previous year (1904).
Watched FotR on DVD. I like the Elvish dialogue and the fact that I can catch a familiar Elvish phrase here and there. It's a pity that, as in other dramatizations of The Lord of the Rings, the encounter with Tom Bombadil and Goldberry is omitted. I think the fair lady Goldberry
O slender as a willow-wand! O clearer than clear water!O reed by the living pool! Fair river-daughter!O spring-time and summer-time, and spring again after!O wind on the waterfall, and the leaves' laughter!
is one of Tolkien's loveliest creations.
Another familiar casualty is Glorfindel, the Elf who is sent from Rivendell to look for Frodo and his companions. In the animated version he is replaced by Legolas, and in this film Arwen takes his place. Poor guy! The substitution of Arwen for Glorfindel, giving Arwen a much more active role than in the book, is obviously a major change to her character and had caused some dissent among LotR fans, some of whom see it as pandering to feminists. Personally I have no problem with it. It certainly makes sense cinematically.
The scene at the Ford of Bruinen with the white horses is rather well done.
The city of the Galadhrim in Lothlórien is a very impressive set, but the telescoping of the time the Company spends in Lothlórien from a month down to a single day is a bit disappointing. A lot happens in that month – all the tension between Gimli and the Elves, Galadriel's kindness to Gimli, his love for Galadriel and consequent friendship with Legolas, his surprising the Elves by not being "grasping and ungracious" – all these are left out and so presumably are the incidents throughout the rest of the book which depend on them. All the emphasis is on Galadriel's telepathy – and even that seems more like speaking without moving her lips than the testing of the travellers' resolve that Tolkien describes.
However the film as a whole is very enjoyable with wonderful scenery, good casting and appropriate use of effects.
FotR disc 2 includes the Enya music video of the song "May It Be" which plays over the closing credits. I like both the song and the video. You can listen to the song or watch a reduced-size version of the video at Enya.com. I couldn't quite catch the Elvish phrases in the song so I went looking for them on the Web. Found them at the Fellowship of the Word-smiths, a site devoted to Elvish and other Middle-earth languages. I'm quite interested in Elvish, but some people clearly go much more deeply into it than I ever would. There's an interesting news item on the site [see January 10, 2002: "Sindarin humor in Beyond Bree" in the site's News Archive] which refers to an article about the similarities between Sindarin Elvish and Middle Welsh (an ancestor of modern Welsh). Glorfindel's greeting to Aragorn, Ai na vedui Dúnadan! Mae govannen! (LotR, bk. 1, chap. 12) if interpreted as Middle Welsh means: "It's not a drunken Dúnadan! It's a blacksmith!"
Some people who definitely take their Elvish seriously are the members of Elfling, the Yahoo! group for Middle-earth languages. [Yahoo! ID required for access.] But it's clear they also have time for a laugh because I found this cartoon about the One Ring among their files, and following on from that, these amusing alternative translations of the Ring-inscription. My own effort in the same vein can be found in the Jokes section below.
December 2001: Elvish greeting
More LotR entries below.
Dad asked me to make a colour copy of a photo he took years ago. It shows a bee orchid which he and Mum grew in their garden. The photo had discoloured badly with age, so as well as making a copy of it the way it is now, I tried adjusting the scanner settings in an attempt to compensate for the loss of colour and recreate its original appearance. Managed to produce the second image below, which I think is fairly realistic.
![[Bee orchid (uncorrected)]](../img/orchid1.jpg "Bee orchid (uncorrected)")
![[Bee orchid (with colour adjustment)]](../img/orchid2.jpg "Bee orchid (with colour adjustment)")
Friday 13th Sep. When I looked out of the back windows this morning I saw that the disused church on the main road at the other side of the Court was smoking and being hosed down by the Fire Brigade. Walked down to have a look. Part of the main road was cordoned off (and remained so for over a week). The church had evidently caught fire some hours earlier and was little more than a shell.
The friend I mentioned in Lightship, New Year's Eve and Friend stopped visiting me and then stopped replying to my emails. In her last reply she even called me a pest for emailing her too often. Looks like this friendship is over. She's got a boyfriend now, so I guess she doesn't need a friend any more.
As E.T. said, (points to heart) "Ouch".
Watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone on DVD. The Quidditch match is fantastic! Not sure about Madam Hooch's refereeing: there seems to be a lot of blatching (flying with intent to collide) going on. That's a foul in Quidditch and should have been stopped. But it's a very exciting match.
It's good seeing Harry wearing his Invisibility Cloak. I know that's a bit of a strange thing to say – rather like Doctor Who's remark when told that the inhabitants of the planet Spirodon were invisible: "Invisible beings! I'd like to see one of those!" But what I mean is, it's good the way the Cloak is invisible from the outside, and visible but transparent from the inside.
Thought You-Know-Who's face should have been more scary. JK's description is:
Where there should have been a back to Quirrell's head, there was a face, the most terrible face Harry had ever seen. It was chalk white with glaring red eyes and slits for nostrils, like a snake.
The face in the film doesn't come anywhere near that. It's realistic enough, but it's just an ugly face. Harry's encounter with You-Know-Who should be the scariest moment of the film, but it turns out to be a bit of an anticlimax.
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the film and look forward to the next.
Also watched the 7 scenes, deleted from the movie, that are hidden on Philosopher's Stone disc 2, after stumbling across How to find Harry Potter scenes never shown in theatres. My favourite, although it's short, is the one about Harry and Ron making friends with Hermione as they walk back to Gryffindor Tower after the troll incident. Although Emma Watson has no lines in this scene, she says just as much as the boys with some good facial and postural acting.
Previous page: Other stuff on disc 2 in
Golden Jubilee
More Harry Potter entries below.
Received an interesting post in my guestbook from Juan Bautista Massolo in Argentina. He and some friends are translating "The Story of Wong Ts'in and the Willow Plate Embellishment" (as related by Kai Lung) into Spanish and he had some questions about it. I replied to him by email, but you can see a summary of my answer in the guestbook.
I've been rereading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. I'd forgotten how funny the book is, and it's a higher grade of humour than that in the film. The centaurs ("Mars is very bright tonight") are very entertaining and remind me of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle in C. S. Lewis's The Silver Chair.
Decided to do the potion puzzle in chapter 16 – I didn't bother the first time I read the book. This is where Hermione has to work out from a set of clues which of seven bottles contains the potion for going forward through the black flames and which contains the potion for going back through the purple flames. Soon discovered that it's not possible to solve the puzzle completely, because one of the clues concerns the largest and smallest bottles, and JK doesn't tell us where those were. However the largest must have been in position 2 or 6 (numbering from left to right) and the smallest must have been in position 3 or 4, otherwise Hermione would not have been able to solve the puzzle. The position of the largest bottle actually makes no difference to the contents of the bottles, so there are just two possibilities for the contents:
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smallest in position 3 | poison | wine | potion for going forward | poison | poison | wine | potion for going back |
| Smallest in position 4 | poison | wine | poison | potion for going forward | poison | wine | potion for going back |
...by yours truly.
Psychiatrist to patient: "So you're telling me that no-one ever seems to remember your name, and that makes you feel hurt and angry? I understand. Well, Mrs...um...er...what did you say your name was?"
Doctor to patient: "I've ordered a brain scan, exploratory surgery and six weeks of intensive psychoanalysis. We'll soon find out why you have difficulty remembering your own name, Mr. Wajimowikiwakerenaputidarasamozipongodatuchiwazamazingi."
Frodo: "I cannot read the fiery letters. What do they say?"
Gandalf: "'FOR EXTERNAL USE ONLY.
If adverse reactions occur, discontinue use and consult a magician.
Do not use if allergic to Ringwraiths.'"
Bought the recently published 3rd edition of The Road Goes Ever On. This Middle-earth songbook contains several of J. R. R. Tolkien's poems, mostly from LotR, set to music by Donald Swann. There are also notes by Tolkien on the Elvish texts and the book is decorated with his Elvish calligraphy. The new edition is not quite as nicely presented as the 1st edition (published 1968), which I have. That is printed on yellow paper and the calligraphy is enhanced by having the diacritics, punctuation, flourishes etc. printed in red. The 3rd edition is plain black on white. However it has some major plus points: two additional songs, the extended foreword of the 2nd edition and a "free" CD with all the songs on it. I'm always sceptical of claims that a paid-for item is accompanied by a "free" item: surely the cost of producing the "free" item is taken into account in setting the price of the paid-for item, so you're really paying for both. But in this case, getting a large-format book with all the music and calligraphy and a CD all for £20 is certainly excellent value. Having written that, I look inside the front cover of the 1st edition and see that I bought that new for £2.10. Ah, you could afford to buy books in those days!
![['The Road Goes Ever On', first edition]](../img/rgeo1.jpg "1st edition")
![['The Road Goes Ever On', third edition]](../img/rgeo3.gif "3rd edition")
Created a Webrings page to put webring navigation bars on. Was already a member of the CFIDS/FMS Ring of Friends SiteRing. Joined the Ring of Words, Pen-Dragon, the Writer's Ring, BlogPhiles and Blogsters.
Joined HP Fan Logs. There were around 70 sites in the queue and I had to wait three months for Colin's Taels to be admitted.
Joined the CFIDS/M.E./FMS Ring of Friends WebRing (no connection with the other Ring of Friends mentioned above) but have since discovered that the RingMaster has deleted my site from the ring without even informing me. I think that's very rude and not at all friendly.
Rendering of various pages improved for users of Netscape browsers, both new and old. Added August, September, October, November and December 2001 pages to the diary.
Mum realized that she kept hearing one particular name in connection with computers, so she asked Dad: "Who is Michael Soft?
Enjoyed this cartoon from TV Times.
![["I see you've met Jonathan Ross"]](../img/donkey.gif "\"I see you've met Jonathan Ross\"")
Oct 4th. Launched Harry Potter Bloggers, my own webring for Harry Potter fans who keep an online diary or weblog. Four sites had joined the Ring by the end of the year. The first to join was Blue Kingdom.
My sister has been to see Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. She says it's even better than Philosopher's Stone. Wow! She thought the Whomping Willow was a bit wooden – not whippy as a willow should be.
She's also seen The Two Towers. She liked Gollum, but says he looked more cuddly(!!) than she had imagined him; also she hadn't expected him to be pink!
![[Xmas card: Mouse decorating Xmas tree]](../img/mouse.jpg "Xmas card")
