#oneaday Day 460: A rainy day in the forest

It has rained most of today. I'm not complaining; it's been nice for the heat that we've been enduring for the past few months to break, and I've always been rather fond of the look and feel of a forest during the rain, particularly if you have a decent amount of shelter and/or the appropriate clothing to protect you — both of which we have, because we are English, and we are always prepared for torrential downpours, even in the height of summer.

It's been a relatively unremarkable day today, and that's just fine with me. I went down to the gym earlier and did a bit of stuff there, then caught the "land train" back to near our accommodation. The term "land train" always seems a bit redundant; most trains go on land. What they really mean here is "road train", given that it's a train that goes on roads rather than rails. Regardless of what they call it, though, it's a nice way of getting around the forest, and means you don't have to walk everywhere. This is good, because the site here is pretty large, and the topography varies quite wildly in one particular area, so it's nice to be able to jump on something that means you don't have to stagger up steep hills after, say, doing a workout that your body really isn't used to.

We spent much of the rest of the day in the lodge. I played Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore, which I've had on my shelf for a while, and seemed like a nice holiday game. I reckon I could have probably polished the whole thing off in an afternoon, but I've called it a day for now, so there's a bit left to play tomorrow.

I haven't taken many photos as yet — while I love the forest surroundings, I tend to find that one shot of a bunch of trees tends to look like every other shot of a bunch of trees if you take too many, but if you're curious, here's a few little photos for you to enjoy:

This is a photo of a bunch of trees, as taken from the aforementioned "land train". While there is a lot of accommodation here, it's integrated very nicely into the forest, so there's usually at least one direction you can look in and see nothing but trees. Very nice indeed.

Here's where we're staying. It's an "Executive Lodge", which means it's slightly posher than the one we stayed in last time. That means it's a bit roomier, it has two toilets (one for pooing!) and a bubbly jacuzzi "hydrobath" in the bathroom. This is a noisy thing that… well, it makes your bath bubble like you're perpetually farting in it, but it's nice and relaxing for brief periods, particularly when combined with something relaxing in the water like a bath bomb. Andie and I have a tradition of stopping by Lush before a trip to Center Parcs and grabbing a few bath bombs to enjoy while we're here — I have indeed been doing just that for the past couple of days.

Here's a mildly artful shot by Andie showing a regular visitor to our patio (we absolutely, definitely haven't encouraged this with the judicious application of walnuts) framed by an empty glass and some Peperami ketchup bottles. (The Firestick one is really good!) According to Andie, the squirrel's name is Susan, though we don't actually know what its gender is, because we don't know how to tell that in squirrels. The Sword in the Stone led me to believe that lady squirrels had long eyelashes and sobbed over their loved ones, but I have seen no evidence of this.

Oh! And yes, I watched The Black Cauldron last night. As expected, it deviated significantly from the plots of the first two Chronicles of Prydain books, but it stood quite nicely as a story in its own right, so long as you don't get too sniffy about certain details of it. In the books, for example, Taran is completely unable to wield the magic sword Dyrnwyn, but in the movie he unleashes its full power with no difficulty whatsoever. Also, the one who sacrifices themselves to finally destroy the Cauldron once and for all at the end is completely different between the book and film, too, largely because the movie is a strange hodgepodge of influences from those first two books, discarding significant amounts of both in favour of making one nicely standalone movie.

In a way, I think this is probably for the best. We've all seen what happens when one story gets stretched out over multiple movies — be it whatever the fuck the Marvel cinematic universe is doing these days, or even the numerous Peter Jackson Tolkien adaptations. You can go a bit far in that regard; Disney's approach of acknowledging that books and animated movies are very different forms of media and thus have different requirements to tell their stories seemed to work well.

Anyway, we're hoping to get up at a reasonable hour and go for a swim tomorrow. We've also booked a session at the ultra-posh "Aqua Sana" spa for Saturday, so that will be a particularly luxurious opportunity to rest, relax and enjoy ourselves. In between, I'm sure we'll occupy ourselves appropriately. With that in mind, it's probably a good time to head bedwards for me!

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#oneaday Day 454: The Black Crochan

I mentioned a while back that I'd started reading The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander, the series of novels that the Disney movie The Black Cauldron was loosely based on — and which, in turn, the Sierra adventure game The Black Cauldron (my first encounter with the series) was even more loosely based on.

The other night, I finished reading the second book in the series. Much like the best-known book in the Chronicles of Narnia series is the second one (The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe), so too, it seems, is the case for The Chronicles of Prydain. Because the second book in the series is the one called The Black Cauldron. But if you're only familiar with the Disney movie or the Sierra game, it's around here that things diverge a bit more wildly.

Y'see, in the Disney movie, the Big Bad of the piece was the Horned King. And he was terrifying. He was terrifying in the 160×200 chunky pixel graphics of the Sierra game and, while I haven't watched the Disney movie yet (though I did acquire it on DVD recently) I am given to understand that he is even more frightening in fully animated form.

But in the actual books — spoiler, I guess, though I'm not apologising for it, given that we're talking about a series from the mid-1960s — The Horned King is offed rather unceremoniously at the end of the first book, The Book of Three, and this is well before protagonist Taran and his buddies have come anywhere even vaguely close to the Black Cauldron itself. As the name suggests, it's not until the second book, The Black Cauldron, that Taran and company set off on a quest to deal with the infernal thing once and for all, and the whole situation is resolved rather differently to how things happen in the movie — and in the game, which is different again.

To be clear, I don't mind these differences at all. If anything, it makes experiencing The Black Cauldron in all its different forms all the more worthwhile. It makes sense for the movie to have a more self-contained story with fewer characters — and for the game to be even more limited in scope. The book has no such constraints, meanwhile, and as such there's a much stronger feeling of "fantasy epic" to the whole thing.

Thus far I've found the whole thing to strike an excellent balance between readability and not treating the reader like a moron. Lloyd Alexander respects the intelligence of his readers, but he doesn't overwhelm them with difficult prose, over-elaborate descriptions or pretentious language. Instead, we get a clear story with some well-crafted characters and some genuine stakes to the action.

I particularly want to highlight his character work. While many of the characters in the series are relatively simplistic — Taran in particular is clearly intended for the young male reader to project himself onto — there are some definite standouts. As mentioned in my previous piece on The Book of Three, I am thoroughly enamoured with the Princess Eilonwy, who takes her place alongside Ce'Nedra from David Eddings' The Belgariad/Malloreon and Lady Mandragorina from Douglas Hill's Talents series as one of my favourite spunky, sassy princesses. She might even be my favourite to date. The girl's got bite, but she also knows when to switch it off and be supportive. Since she and Taran are clearly going to end up together, I'll preemptively say that he's a lucky man.

Anyway, I'm yet to start the third volume of the series — I'll likely kick that off once we're on holiday — but I've been really enjoying it so far. Looking forward to reading the rest, for sure — and, as I've previously said, very sorry and frustrated with myself that I've never read it prior to today!

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#oneaday Day 442: Munchings and crunchings

After listening to Danny from Game Grumps play Sierra's The Black Cauldron game while falling asleep the other evening, I decided that it was high time to do something I've been meaning to do for… probably several decades at this point, which is to actually read Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain, the books The Black Cauldron is based on. (I've still never seen the Disney movie either, for that matter, but I did collect several of the plastic figures you got free in boxes of Corn Flakes back in the day! The Horned King made a great Chaos Sorcerer for Advanced Heroquest.)

Thus far I'm about 75% through The Book of Three, the first in the series, and I am really enjoying it. Really enjoying it. Like, "wish I'd read this much earlier in my life" enjoying it. I'm finding it kind of fascinating quite how differently it is unfolding from The Black Cauldron game — which I'm sure was partly out of technological limitations necessitating a simpler narrative, and partly out of the Disney movie almost certainly diverging from the source material somewhat — but yeah. Really enjoying it.

As someone with a major soft spot for spunky princess characters (see: Mandra from Blade of the Poisoner, Ce'Nedra from The Belgariad/The Malloreon) I am absolutely a thousand per cent in love with Eilonwy, who has some of the most formidable sass I think I've ever seen committed to paper. The fact that she consistently delivers some truly wonderful withering lines at the expense of our protagonist, Taran, while being incredibly well-spoken the whole time is just… ah, man. I live for it. Absolutely live for it.

But anyway, it's entirely possible that you, dear reader, are unfamiliar with either The Black Cauldron of The Chronicles of Prydain in general, so here's the gist.

We join the story in Caer Dallben, a peaceful little farm seemingly in the middle of nowhere, where nothing ever happens — but with a slight air of mystery around it due to the fact its master is a man of nearly four hundred years in age who is in possession of a magical tome known as The Book of Three.

Taran, an orphan boy on the cusp on manhood who helps out around Caer Dallben, is discontent with this simple life, and wishes to know more of the world. After successfully being granted the rank of Assistant Pig-Keeper to the oracular pig Hen Wen — and after having burnt his fingers attempting to consult the magical Book of Three against Dallben's wishes — finds himself forced to set out on a journey when the aforementioned Hen Wen escapes following some grim omens.

The Book of Three follows Taran's journey to track down Hen Wen, during which he encounters several thoroughly interesting companions — including the warrior-prince Gwydion, the subservient and obsequious man-beast Gurgi, the bard-king Fflewdur Fflam and the aforementioned Eilonwy — and learns a lot more of the peril facing the world. The setting's great evil is positioned as Arawn, lord of the lands of the dead, but the more immediate threat is the Horned King, a frightening figure who roams the land in search of conquest — and, it seems, Hen Wen.

For context, The Black Cauldron game has none of this — at least, not in the exact same form. The game opens with Taran feeding Hen Wen, then her having a vision of the Horned King, then Taran being tasked with taking her to a safe haven with the Fair Folk to keep her safe from harm. Along the way, he encounters several of the characters introduced in The Book of Three, but in somewhat different contexts. This doesn't make the game a bad adaptation — as I say, for all I know, it's entirely possible that the Disney movie also played this fast and loose with the narrative, since I haven't seen it — but it is interesting to have all this additional context.

So anyway, yes. I am really enjoying The Chronicles of Prydain so far, and I will be moving straigh on to the other four books in the series once I've finished The Book of Three. Which will be pretty soon at the rate I'm going!

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