Out the house by nine this morning, with minutes to spare 🙂 Couldn’t be doing with all that malarkey every morning though!
We arrived at the Marina with a good half an hour to spare so had a quick look round Asda and used the loo – nice to browse with no money and not see anything I would have bought anyway 🙂
We arrived back at the cinema at the same time as one small school party of 6 children and 2 adults with another two larger school parties milling around nearby. I was quite surprised at how ‘wild’ all the children seemed to be although I actually remember acting similar when on school trips myself looking back. Considering I only had one less child under my control – and they’re mine so theoretically less likely to listen to me somehow (well that’s how it worked with other adults in my day!) I was very proud of how well D&S conducted themselves. 🙂
We bought popcorn and coke – justifiable when the cinema was free I thought 😉 and settled down in the front row. We had about a 20 minute wait before the film started during which time we just chatted and looked around. It was Tarly’s first time in the cinema so she was enthralled with the chairs, the drink holders, the posh curtains (Davies said ‘I bet the Queen has posh drapes like that’ when he pointed out some swags as being very nice. No idea he even knew who the Queen was let alone that she would be bound to have posh stuff – the only time I’ve ever mentioned her to him was when we saw corgis in the street!) and the huge screen. Davies talked about how ‘Adam’s got a big screen in his house but there’s only enough seats for four or five people in the room’ in response to my explanation that it needed to be so big cos there were so many people going to be watching it! (Ros, you might want to get that sorted out 😉 ). Then I attempted to be educational and explain about projectors to Davies but he told me instead :-).
The film was quite good I thought. Nowhere near as clever and catering to adult audiences as well as Shrek, Toy Story etc aside from the fact it seemed to be animated in the style of cartoons from years gone by – not quite so technicolour as today’s usual cartoons and with drawings in the same sort of style as Top Cat, Flintstones and other HB stuff from the 70s, so a bit of a nostalgic feel to it somehow. No slapstick, lots of gentle humour to make the five year olds giggle and some nice moral stuff tucked away in there too. So simple, unsophisicated, quite charming and probably one of the most appropriate films I could think of for a first time for Tarly.
She spent pretty much the whole of the first hour utterly mesmerised – not sure if that was the story, the size of the screen or the hypnotic rhythm of posting popcorn into her own mouth 😉 Davies watched it and whispered to me lots – he likes film watching to be an interactive and sociable experience (Chris, you’d hate sitting next to him 😉 ).
We came home and they did some drawing and then got the sticklebricks out and started playing with them. I made a rhubarb, apple and ginger crumble ready to go in the oven and the pastry cases for quiche for dinner tonight and my Dad came over ready to look after Tarly while I took Davies to Badgers as Ady was working up in London today and wouldn’t be home til late.
Badgers was good, as usual. I gave a brief kiss goodbye and left him to it to wait in the car, I could see him through the window and he appeared to be just fine. Right at the end while they were tidying up he came to the window and waved and blew kisses for a bit but is more than happy with me being out there instead of in the next room. I’ve decided that is fine for now, mainly because I really enjoy the hour sitting in silence in the car reading a book 🙂 They covered where Germany is in relation to England and talked about the currency there. Davies also brought home some sort of abstract piece of collage work with German flag colours and drawings on it. Not sure what they were supposed to be doing (I imagine it was something slightly more structured) but loving his individuality anyway 🙂 I was really pleased to notice as we left that loads of the children were talking to him, calling his name and yelling goodbye. I really like the huge age range there as far from giving space for the ages to seperate it appears to be the great leveller with the older ones enjoying ‘looking after’ the younger ones and them all being taken as individuals.
Dad and Tarly read some books while we were gone and Ady pulled up at the same time as we got home. Ady tidied up while I made the quiches and we’re about to eat and watch BB.