Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King

Hiring the DVD of the Two Towers so you can catch up with the so-called story - three pounds and seventy-five pence.

Pay-and-display car parking ticket, valid for three hours only, purchased on the understanding that you'd have to be pretty unlucky to get snagged in that 20 minutes you're not going to be covered before you leave - three pounds.

A pair of tickets in the slightly more expensive part of the cinema to avoid contracting DVT from sitting in the cheapseats for over three hours - fourteen pounds.

Confectionary and fizzy beverages, with a recommended retail value of around a pound, stupidly bought from the cinema instead of being smuggled in from the supermarket next door - six pounds and ninety-eight pence.

Parking ticket, issued in that 20 minutes between the pay-and-display ticket running out and leaving - twenty pounds.

Total: forty-seven pounds and seventy-three pence - that's about NZ$ 130.

If I went around taking money off people like that I'd be locked away for robbery, but Peter Jackson does it and they'll probably give him an Oscar.

I'm afraid those films have ended up doing nothing for me - other than making me want to go to New Zealand even more than I did before. I suppose, for their genre, they're probably exceptional, and they did look very pretty, but it would seem that that genre is not for me, and eleven hours of pretty is more than I can handle.