Bounce!

Where is the year going? It is a bit scary to think that the schools are back, the students are preparing for uni, and we are on the downhill roll to Christmas...

We had a very exciting weekend last weekend - we were up in Leeds visiting the Leeds Armoury. Part of the big excitement was that their Medieval curator had spent about 7 years cultivating a friendship with the owner of Weta, culminating in them bringing over a major chunk of the existing LOTR/Narnia collection (the arms/armour rather than the full costumes/monsters). That was bouncemaking enough, but what we had also discovered was that Peter Loyd, the head swordsmith had come over as well to do a talk on the making of the weapons, running from the design through to the finished pieces. This talk turned out to be free, but with limited seating (i.e. you had to book in advance), and at the end of it, not only was there the chance to have a chat with him, but they brought out of the collection for us to *hold* (though not take away or take photos of - hiss!) a centaur's helmet from Narnia, one of the Orc shields (one of the ones that looks like a claw), one of the stunt swords, and (which made us all go POING) the full size version of Sting (i.e. the one which Elijah Wood had, rather than his mini-me)

So I have now held Sting - and it is a glorious work of art as well as a weapon (couldn't do much cutting with it as it hasn't been sharpened, but I'm sure that it could still do some damage!). Only bummer is that when I bounced about it at work, everyone looked at me like I was mad...

Leeds itself is somewhere I have not visited before, and I was very pleasantly suprised. I was expecting concrete towers, graffitti, and a general "it's grim up north" feel; the reality, at least around the Waterfront where the Armoury is, was one of modern, well designed architecture, light and (not suprisingly!) water. We also found a *fantastic* Thai restaurant - just opened - very tucked away (we only realised that it was open because there were a couple of lights on - the rest of the shops in the arcade were shut). The food was amazing, the service perfect (though as we were the only people in there, it would have been hard for it to be bad!), and very reasonably priced. I did take away their menu so that I could give them a bit of publicity - however, I don't have it on me right now - details to follow...

Edit... The details of the Thai restaurant are:
Thai Khonkaen Restaurant
8a/10a Market Street Arcade
Leeds
LS1 6DH
www.thaikhonkaen.co.uk

Definitely worth a visit if you are in Leeds at all...