7 days to go
Book 1 page 103, and I'm really getting into it. It's better than I remember from the first time I read it. I was probably too young then to really appreciate it. 
The Hagrid Doll
 About two years ago, in the successful wake of the first movie, my youngest son was given a Hagrid figure as a birthday present. He was not too enamoured. First off, he was not that young and considered the figure to be beneath his maturity. Second "the doll", as we christened it to help him accept it as a worthy gift, was awful.
It's hard to see just how awful it was from the picture. But let me assure you, I am not prone to exaggeration. It was solid plastic, which somehow neutered Hagrid's flowing cloak. In one hand he carried a naff umbrella and balancing on the other was a dinosaur hatching from an egg. This dino/egg contraption was a separate piece which you put on to Hagrid's outstretched hand for maximum effect. Except, it didn't balance too well - there was nothing at all to fix it to the hand, and it fell off with remarkable regularity. And to cap it all, the doll looked more like TV detective Cracker than Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys.
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Family Cruelty |
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My birthday is 3 days after Christmas. Every year my loving sisters would receive numerous chocolate selection boxes for Christmas. From these, they would immediately extract all Caramac bars which they hated. I wasn't too keen on them myself and it was always something of a let down when year after year on my birthday I saw those Caramac shaped presents from my sisters waiting to be unwrapped.
So the Hagrid doll was not so bad... |
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My son refused to have Hagrid in his room, so the doll moved around the house on various window-sills and drawers, a constant reminder of today's plastic world. Eventually, it became a real annoyance. I'd open the curtains and that bloody egg would fall out behind some heavy piece of furniture. Creep through a darkened room for a sip of water in the night, only to suffer excruciating pain as the dinosaur's sharp bits sank into my foot. It had to go.
But what do you do with a 9-inch plastic detective and his pet creature? We didn't want to lose face with the bin-man and anyway it seemed kind of ungrateful and wasteful to throw it away. It took some time time, some deep thought. Last year, my young niece received an exciting piece of Harry Potter memorabilia to brighten up her birthday.
9:04:46 PM 
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