Watching the Desolation of Smaug in The Rex, Wareham ...

One of my pleasures nowadays is going to The Rex - I can buy a Merlot in the tiny bar, glance up at a signed poster of Brief Encounter - I've been warned about the double seats at the back of the auditorium - the springs have a habit of sneaking out and biting you - 

I can loll in my 90 minutes seat - I gulp my robust bumper whilst watching adverts for cars and Red Bull - lean men ski off mountain peaks, racing over snowy slopes with dancing skis - powerful shapely BMW saloons race through red deserts - 

I eat my tub of Purbeck Icecream - the trailers follow the adverts - there's Audrey Tatou, perched upon a Vespa, slender and lovely, melting a boy's heart - there's George Clooney, wisecracking and smouldering - there's a blue planet filling the sky - 

I immerse myself in the film being shown with a shameless abandon - so it was this week, with The Desolation of Smaug -

For almost three hours, I forgot my shameful anxieties - dwarfs stroked their beards, brooded upon wrongs and hewed orc necks - skin changers roared - elves glittered with immortality and moved with terrible swiftness - a dragon fixed me with its subtle wicked eye - wizards gave wise counsel, battled against a ravening darkness - spiders gossiped and hissed over their cocooned captives - orcs rode monstrous beasts - the hobbit kept hidden a heart twisting secret - 

When I left the cinema, I was still in Middle Earth - I walked past the life sized cardboard cut out of Charlie Chaplin, adorned this Christmas season with tinsel - the Master of Lake Town was lurching out of The Antelope - 

I wonder what secrets those I loved kept locked away - perhaps, I thought, if I looked upwards, I'd see blue butterflies, waltzing over the roofs of Wareham -