May the force be with you!

Everything and everyone appears to have gone mad for the new Star Wars film. Our granddaughter was invited by her "he's not my boyfriend" to a special first night showing in Rochdale (you can't really call it a premiere in Rochdale, can you?) where there was even free food! Our daughter and her fiancé have seen it and since then her fiancé has taken to calling their little dog Chewbacca! (Even the spell check on my iPad is aware of Star Wars; it just corrected my spelling of Chewbacca. This is amazing as usually such a random collection of letter would have received the notice "no replacements found".) 

I have not seen any of the new Star Wars films, let alone this latest one. Long ago I had videos of the original three but made the mistake of lending them to a friend of our daughter and never saw them again! There has even been a series on the radio called "I've never seen Star Wars". They put celebrities through experiences they have never had before and ask them to rate them out of ten. And, of course, the first was about someone who had never seen the Star Wars films. 

Anyway, the new film has been causing some furore and people have been dressing up in Star Wars outfits and queuing to see it. Here is a crazy story I found about what happened outside a cinema in the USA: 

 "BAKERSFIELD, CA – A 20-year-old man named Raymond Chatfield walked out of a premiere of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ on Thursday night and shouted out a major spoiler, which was heard by almost a hundred people waiting on line in the lobby.

“I was waiting on line to see the 10pm showing,” said witness Robert Selvidge. “Then this snot-nose kid walks past the line, shouts out the ending and starts laughing. He totally ruined the movie for everyone...what a jerk!” 

Chatfield was immediately assaulted by a Wookie, a Stormtrooper and Boba Fett. 

“I saw it all. This guy shouts out the spoiler right? Within 15 seconds he was on the ground getting his ass stomped,” said another witness, who asked to remain anonymous. “At first the crowd was cheering them on, and I think that made it worse. They beat him up for a solid 5 minutes, kicking him in the balls, punching him in the gut, bitch-slapping him...eventually people got quiet. Even I was like, okay...enough yo.” 

The Wookie, the Stormtrooper and Boba Fett were not only not arrested by police, they were even allowed to watch the movie as planned. “We view this as justifiable assault,” said police chief Greg Richardson. “May the Force be with you.” 

The spoiler Raymond Chatfield is currently listed in critical condition in the intensive care unit at Mercy Hospital." 

You couldn't make it up! 

I also read somewhere that more money was made out of the merchandising of Star Wars stuff than from the original films themselves. I can believe this. In the spoof film, "Space Balls", they even have a kind of cut-out section in the middle if the movie to advertise the merchandising. Absolutely wonderful! 

And someone posted on Facebook a photo of a London Underground station service update board which read: "ATTENTION, Anyone caught traveling without a valid ticket or Oyster will be told the ending the of the new Star Wars. (And also get a penalty fare.)" 

But I have not seen it and doubt that I will until it appears finally on television at some point in the future. I have, however, been out trying to get our Christmas organised. Presents, of one kind and another, have been bought. A list of food items has been made and I need to raid the supermarket again. All will be sorted. 

During one of my sorties, I came across a do-it-yourself advent calendar kit which declared that it had instruction in several languages: English instructions, French Instructions and so on. This made it sound as though the instructions were vaguely different in each country, perhaps reflecting cultural differences! What struck me though was that for Spain it said "Instrucciones Español" - no adjective agreement, not even, more correctly, "en español! 

The grammar police were not impressed!