Henri IV as in ‘chicken in the pot’ king and ‘Paris is worth a mass’ (or ‘Paris is in a mess’ according to ‘1066 & All That’)? Big A-level history vibes for me, would absolutely listen.

A true Original (I’m just leaning into the whole toffee thing now 🤷‍♀️)

I suppose it makes sense if Rangers generally carry spare short elvish swords with them, or if Gandalf told Aragorn to have a couple with him in case he ran into Frodo & Sam, which is credible, but neither Aragorn nor Gandalf would have known Merry & Pippin were involved.

Yes, but those are not the ways Tolkien gave them the swords, & the swords coming from the barrow is significant because they are linked to resistance to the Witch-King. I don’t remember Aragorn having some handy hobbit-sized swords about him in the film but it would fit with its utter randomness.

In the book Tom Bombadil, if nothing else, rescues the hobbits from the Barrow-Wights & gives them knives from the barrow as swords. Frodo uses his to attack the Lord of the Nazgǔl at Weathertop. Merry more successfully uses his to help kill the Lord of the Nazgûl. No Bombadil, no swords.

Many years ago (late 80s) I had a holiday job with a Christian bookseller (it was way better than waitressing tbh) and they stocked a series of books with Mr T delivering Christian self-belief messages to ‘troubled’ youngsters. So he has form going back a long way.

My mother did various diets when I was growing up but somehow never conveyed that anxiety to me, or I never picked it up.

I sometimes think I must be the only woman who didn’t (& doesn’t) do this. At the age of 56 I still have no more than a vague idea of the calories in different foods, though since being diagnosed with high cholesterol I can probably quote you chapter and verse on saturated fats.

A Trump rally in Croydon perhaps?

This one from Paris really takes the biscuit