Baaaaaah!!!

My vampire books are officially ruined. It’s a shame really. They were soooo good. That is saying something coming from someone who has somehow avoided all vampire literature in the past and pretty much anything that can be classified as popular literature as well. Forgive me, it is not by choice, but due to limited access. I live in a foreign country in which the local bookshop apparently thinks English-speaking people read only John Grisham and Jeremy Clarkson books.

They were 4 beautifully new books. I read the first one, borrowed, as a total skeptic. Then, I patiently awaited the arrival of the next three books, ordered from Empik. I was excited to find that the books were in and then disappointed that the second book hadn’t arrived yet, just the third and fourth. Finally, they had all arrived. And now they are ruined.

I guess I should consider myself lucky that I made it all the way to the 4th book before the ruining took place. It’s not that anyone told me what happened before I had a chance to read them, although a few people have tried to spoil the surprise. It’s not that I couldn’t resist the temptation to find out what was coming next, and I read the last chapter for answers. Never! I enjoy the suspense. It’s not that I watched the first movie and was disappointed by the film version. The film was pretty good. No, it is none of that.

It is this, some knowledge that I now possess which has ruined the quite serious vision in my imagination of a vampire and werewolf world intertwined with the human world. It is this, that in the vampire hierarchy, in the royalty of vampires, that one of the most frightening of the vampire kind existing in my imagination as a horrifying, terrifying yet at the same time beautiful and intriguing creature will be portrayed in the film version by Tony Blair. Ok, not the real Tony Blair, but the actor who played Tony Blair in The Queen, who will forever be, in my mind, Tony Blair plus a little bit of David Frost from Nixon/Frost mixed in, but still, that doesn’t help. Baaaaaaah!!!!

To be fair to the actor Michael Sheen, I’m sure that he does a lovely job as a vampire in the film. That’s not the point. I’m not upset that he has been cast in the role of vampire in the film. I’m upset that the knowledge of his being cast in that role has now cemented the image of him as Tony Blair in my imagination as I am reading my books. I don’t see in my mind the actor Michael Sheen as the thrillingly frightening vampire. I see Michael Sheen as Tony Blair-ula, the Prime Minister vampire. And now that the image is there, I cannot get it out. Baaaaaaaaaaaaaah!