The Squeee

Crazy about Cathy? Hankerin' for Heathcliff? Join the Wuthering Week here at The Squeee , 11-15 July 2011! If Wuthering Heights is your thing, or even if it isn't, join in! I'm looking for fellow Brontëites to guest blog about Wuthering Heights in one way or another during this week. Love it? Hate it? Both work! Please email me ASAP at blog@traxy.co.uk to sign up! :) Special guest during the week will be author Kay Woodward (who wrote the smashing Jane Airhead ), whose new young adult novel Wuthering Hearts is out in July. She'll be making a stop on her blog tour here on July 13th. Can't wait! I'll be posting a review of Wuthering Hearts and anything else is up to you. :)

While we're busy waiting for the much anticipated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 , I thought it would be fun to have a little giveaway. I've never done one before on this blog, and it won't be the last one. So it'll be interesting to see how this turns out. The Prize It's a Harry Potter theme and seeing as how I make wands as a hobby ... it's a wand! That's right, you can Accio one of these! (Not necessarily this particular one, it's just to give you an idea.) Wood, decoration, length and diametre is up to you. You can pick which ever one you prefer (except the alder ones with beaded handles) from the Thornfield Handcrafted Wands shop , and I'll send to you if you're the lucky winner. :)

URL MOVE SUCCESSFUL STOP BLOGROLL BUGGERED STOP Fortunately, I had backed up the non-RA blogroll by putting the links under the "Links" page . Sadly, I had not yet got around to do this with the Richard Armitage blogs, so that whole list is gone. Can rebuild it easily enough, as most of us link to one another anyway, but it'll take some time. To prevent any future problems of this matter, and also because the list was getting insanely long, the resurrection will be moved to the page now entitled "Blogroll & Links" page , which I've seen other people do. :) Also, check back tomorrow for the first ever GIVEAWAY, oooh. :)

With great sadness, we have learned of the death of  Columbo - Peter Falk. He was 83 years old when he died in Beverly Hills on Thursday. Apparently, he had suffered with dementia for a few years. Heard on the radio that he was fairly similar to his super sleuth character in real life. And "just one more thing ..." R.I.P. Peter Falk. You'll always be remembered - both as Columbo and as the grandfather in The Princess Bride . In more positive news, Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz have tied the knot . Congratulations! :) Latest news from Nottingham: Last night, driving past some traffic lights near Wollaton Hall, saw a yellow temporary road sign saying "WB LOC" and an arrow pointing toward the Hall, which I tried taking a photo of today. Wasn't successful. (We stopped too far from the traffic lights and they weren't red for long enough.) It made me go "ooooh!!" in the car. A Warner Brothers location practically in our neck of the woods! How co...

Entertainment Weekly have released three pictures from The Hobbit . The one I’m most excited about is this one, because it has dwarves on it: The dark-bearded fellow in the middle of the picture is bound to be Thorin (Richard Armitage). :D Also: Dame Edna has been cast in the film. Or, rather, her actor Barry Humphries has. One of the blokes from Jackass has died in a car crash, says BBC News . Ryan Dunn, for reference. I have no idea who he is, I’ve just heard of the show … and it doesn’t make me inclined to watch it. David Suchet has got a CBE and the Beeb are going to dramatise the big rows around Monty Python’s Life of Brian . Should be interesting. I’m intrigued to learn that Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest musical, Love Never Dies (the one that isn’t a Phantom of the Opera sequel, except it is), is due to close in August . The part that intrigues me most was this:

JK Rowling has finally made her Pottermore announcement: What is Pottermore? Pottermore is a free website that builds an exciting online experience around the reading of the Harry Potter books. Come back on 31st July to find out how you can get the chance to enter Pottermore early. So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight: The official launch is in October this year, but on 31 July, a lucky few can help with starting to populate the site. And beta test it, presumably. It sounds like it’s part social network (seriously? Yawn!), part encyclopaedia (hooray!) and part fanficion site (err, okay?). If I understand it correctly, we the fans of Harry Potter help shape the future of the characters and the world by submitting stories to the site. JK Rowling herself will be adding things as well, such as all those facts she’s been hoarding over the years.

In an hour, JK Rowling will announce what Pottermore is . Speculation has been rife. Is it an MMO? The mere thought made me tingle the other day . Other suggestions is that it's an eBookstore ... but she's not going to write more books about the Potterverse? Three leaked pictures of what appears to be screenshots show a shop front, a library and some books. Looks very good, except the thought of a site built entirely with Flash turns me right off. Perish the thought.

Today is the longest day of the year, the Summer Solstice - or Litha, as it's known in the Neo-Pagan community. The celebration of the longest day of the year has fallen out of fasion since Christianity was introduced ... except for in Scandinavia, where we're still stubbornly heathen in our ways and insist on celebrating Midsommar ("Midsummer", go fig) the first Friday after the solstice. Meaning back home, on Friday, there will be much merriment (read: drinking), and the traditional eating of new potatoes and matjessill (a particular spicing of pickled herring). If you've got children, it's likely there will also be dancing around the traditional midsommarstång - midsummer pole. If you needed convincing that the old solstice celebrations were a fertility ritual, look no further:

'Ere be the Horrible Histories crew on ITV's Daybreak , from Monday 20 June 2011. Thanks to "hannouille" for uploading! :) It also has a very interesting piece of news at the end, grabbed from Daybreak site : They are also appearing at the BBC Proms on 30 July. Free tickets will be available from 8 July online, by phone and in person at the Royal Albert Hall box office. Featuring songs from the series and things. Ooh I hope they tape it and show it on telly. But they normally do with the proms, don't they? Can't wait to see it! :)

Fans of Harry Potter are falling over themselves - correction: OURselves - recently because of a mysterious happening. I saw "MORE POTTER" trending on Twitter last Wednesday and wondered what it was about. Apparently, there was some sort of treasure-hunt going on to find various letters, spelling out a word. As it turned out, the word wasn't "more Potter", it was "Pottermore". This led to Pottermore.com and the @Pottermore Twitter account . On Thursday, this tweet came out: Looks like the owls are getting ready to deliver some exciting news: www.youtube.com/JKRowlingAnnounces #pottermore It links to a YouTube video page, where it counts down to an announcement by J.K. Rowling - set to be delivered on June 23. Question is, what the hell is Pottermore?

Earlier in the year, I posted about Wollaton Hall and mentioned there's another hall further south which has been modelled on it. They filmed bits of the new Batman movies there and said they should use Wollaton Hall as a filming location. My wish has been granted! Probably the fanciest council house in Nottingham Starting on Monday, rumour has it Hollywood are coming to town! It's the worst kept secret in Nottingham right now: Wollaton Hall is to be Wayne Manor in the next Batman movie: The Dark Knight Rises (due out in 2012). There have been casting calls in town for an "unnamed project" and all, apparently. (Why didn't I know this beforehand so I could've given it a go?!) Nottingham has taken a step up from Magicians , shot at the Theatre Royal in the city. Holy heart of England, Batman! If I hear anything more I'll let you know. Also: I wrote this on my Kindle, so apologies for spelling being worse than normal. Will edit and add links and p...

Work is very hectic at the moment and haven't been able to write any reviews at home in the evenings either, so in the mean time, here's the final trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 , which is out July 15. Which also happens to be my birthday, so I'm getting a pretty awesome present! ;D Really. Can't. Wait. Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

All this week, I've seen peculiar names trending on Twitter. They've all turned out to be names of horses, and that's how I found out that this week is Royal Ascot week. For those not acquainted with Ascot, it's a place near Windsor in Berkshire where there's an old horseracing track. Every year in June, there's a week of races where the Royal Family show up. I think it's normally the Tuesday where it's Ladies' Day, and this is supposed to mean "women only" but is in fact ... well, far from it. On Ladies' Day, you get women dressing up, wearing poncy hats or fascinators . Men get dressed up too. Seeing as how I've actually been to Ladies' Day at Royal Ascot once, I thought I'd write about that today, instead of reviewing something. 1 (Not trying to procrastinate finishing off the Lady Chatterley's Lover review, or anything ... *cough*) The reason for being there was because it was my then to-be-sister-in-law's...

...has put this song firmly back in my head: Cheers for this, Erwin Beekveld . You legend, you. Also, I've started re-reading The Hobbit . Bilbo is whiny, Thorin is a know-it-all and the dwarves are generally incompetent buffoons so far, and they have just encountered some trolls.

News media reports another quake has hit Christchurch (New Zealand), which is of course where the filming of The Hobbit is taking place. Not in Christchurch per se , but New Zealand. Home of brilliant people like Sam Neill and temporary home of brilliant people like Richard Armitage. Not too long ago, I wrote about how the Richard Armitage fandom went into their pockets for the Rise Up Christchurch telathon . To be perfectly honest, I think Tolkien fans in general - or actually just people in general, regardless of their fandoms - should do the same. Dig into pockets, that is. You can donate to Rise Up Christchurch here (VISA/MasterCard only - 1 NZD = ca £0.50 GBP or $0.80 USD/CAD) To reward your generosity, have a look at this clip from a trailer inhabited by a group of handsome dwarves, courtesy of RACentral: Now go be generous, aaight? :)

Thanks to BrontëBlog for the tip! Here's the UK poster for the 2011 version of Jane Eyre : (With hugs to The Guardian ) I like it, I really do. I like the colours and in general I just find it more appealing than the US one, to be honest. Beautiful photos and beautiful artwork. They've also released a UK version of the trailer, which is different from the US one! They seem to do a lot more talking, and it summarises the book as well.

Driving to work this morning, we ware listening to the BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show with Chris Evans. I realised they were live from the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts (must remember to go there in the future) when Alex Jones (the Welsh lady on The One Show ) was reading a story as the radio was switched on, and I remembered they'd been talking about going to the Hay Festival on yesterday's show. They were reading out the stories of the runners up in the under 9's 500 word writing competition , and Alex read a story about a knicker-pinching dog - didn't realise at first that it was written from a dog's perspective, so someone hiding a little girl's knickers in their bed was slightly confusing, as you can imagine! "Stop looking at me like that!" A bit later on, when we were coming up to turning off the A52, the next reader was introduced ... Ben Willbond, a.k.a. Henry VIII (and others) from Horrible Histories . In my head, I went bouncing up...