Matinee Madness

I used to go to the local picture house regularly when I was young. It was a real picture house too with a rolling programme and even an old organ in the pit below the screen. I don’t know if this was ever played in the time I went there but I suspect it wouldn’t be worth employing someone to play it for the kids’ matinees that I used to attend. Both because of the cheap entry prices and the fact that most of the kids were up to their eyeballs on boiled sweets and fizzy drinks and were probably generally addled from breathing an atmosphere merrily mixing industrial pollutants with leaded petrol fumes.

There are a few cinemas that do Saturday morning matinees. I’ve taken the kids to the Macrobert cinema at Stirling University but this Saturday I took them along to the Bo’ness Hippodrome: a proper picture house like the one I used to go to but very much refurbished and without the plumes of cigarette smoke, knackered seating and disgusting sticky mess of God-knows-what underneath the row in front.  The main feature on this occasion was Epic – the latest animation from the team that did the Ice Age films although this time they actually appear to have employed script writers.

Matinees have the great advantage of being very much cheaper than the usual cinema experience. I managed to take the whole family along (two adults and three children) for a few pence over £11. Partly this is to entice younger families to start the cinema habit and partly to offset the obvious interruptions of younger members of the audience. Saturday Morning Matinees were always something of a chaotic affair. Even as a child I used to get hacked off with the antics of the more ADD members of the audience but the one thing that strikes me with a modern cinema audience is that the children (at least the younger ones) are actually remarkably well behaved. There are the occasional trips to the loo and some incessant sweetie wrapper fiddling but they are quite happy to sit and watch the film. This is just as well as there was at least 40 minutes worth of adverts and a short spoof news reel to sit through before the film started at which point there were a few kids that already had to trip off to the toilets (no doubt offsetting the cans of juice that they had been consuming for the past half hour or so.)

I’d like to take the children along to the cinema more often but I have noticed a new feature advertised at several cinemas which is the “Autism Friendly Screening”. Amongst features for this includes moderate sound volume, ambient theatre lighting and, importantly, no adverts or trailers. Whether this actually makes the viewing experience better for autistic people is a mute point (I’m assuming that they have taken advice from medical experts)  but the relaxed, no adverts, no-nonsense approach sounds fantastic to me – not so much for children with limited attention spans but more for my sanity. Maybe I’m slightly autistic on the quiet?

The Longest Mile

“The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men Gang aft agley” as a popular Ayrshire ditty writer once noted. And such it seems to be in much of life. A great example was last weekend and the annual Memorial Mile: traditionally an idiotically long pub crawl taking in some of the seediest drinking establishments that North Wirral could muster in memory of old friend of mine who made the ultimate sacrifice to dodge out of buying a round.

Overlooking the River Dee to North Wales

Although I’m always up for a session of social frivolity mixed with borderline alcoholism, progressing middle-age maladies combined with increasingly middle-class mortgage arrears tends to count against carefree bacchanalia and the associated after-affects. Something more appropriate is called for and the suggestion was made to go for a long country walk, followed by a pub lunch and a few social beverages at one of the more refined drinking establishments that New Brighton could offer.

My suggestion had been to walk up Moel Famau, the highest hill in Flintshire which, whilst hardly on the scale of Snowdonia, should offer an achievable challenge for a bunch of overweight 40-somethings with varying levels of unfitness. My only concern about this was whether the weather would hold out for us. North Wales can be an unforgivingly sodden place and an afternoon trudging up the side of a hill engulfed by a raincloud is not exactly anyone’s idea of fun. What I hadn’t considered is that it might actually be too sunny for us. After two elite soldiers died in the Brecons of heat exhaustion it was clear that an alternative would have to be found.

Dave and Simon - neither soldiers nor in Australia

As it was, we went for part of the Wirral Way – forgivingly flat as it follows a stretch of a disused railway. Even then it was astonishingly hot with the ground more resembling the Australian Outback than  supposedly lush North-West England. However, we managed two-hours of walking followed by lunch at an Italian restaurant, a few beers, a walk past an impromptu piece of art (a pirate ship made out of driftwood on the Mersey – very impressive) and an evening spent in the beer garden of a local pub. All-in-all a very pleasant evening out.

Pirates Of The Mersey - Things to do with driftwood in New Brighton

As a post script, it must be noted that drinking beer whilst very thirsty is possibly not the good idea that it may seem at the time – as I discovered the next morning when I woke up feeling like I had been lobotomised.

Books

I don’t read anything like as many books as I used to. Partly this is because I don’t use public transport to get to work but I think the main reason is that I don’t have enough time or, more likely, I don’t make enough time. I had a great example of this last week when we were in Norfolk.

The cottage had two downstairs living rooms: one had the TV and couches in and the other just had a couple of chairs and a coffee table – a nice little quiet area that I could settle down and read. I had taken along Back Story, David Mitchell’s autobiography, which I had loaned out of the library after hearing a funny anecdote on the Graham Norton show about Olivia Colman (literally) pissing herself laughing on stage. The rest of the book is just as funny and engaging and actually reads in Mitchell’s resigned comedic tones. As it was, I had already renewed the book once and had only read any of it when I was waiting at Kwik Fit for my MOT test (at least my car's MOT test – I  had mine the week before at work and was amazed that I passed that as well).

The problem at home, and the reason I had time in Norfolk, is because of distractions. For some reason aimlessly watching TV or flicking through Teletext pages seems to be a far more worthwhile activity than reading. The internet is also another astonishing time waster. Not just writing emails or reading on-line articles but endless, aimless browsing. I could spend entire days just clicking on successive Wikipedia pages or browsing through videos on YouTube. Even worse are the likes of fan forums or the complete waste of time that is Facebook. It’s not even as if it was the extra living room that made a difference as my bedroom at home was originally intended as an additional downstairs living room - the reason I don't read in there is probably more to do with the wireless connection not reaching that far.

I finished the David Mitchell book half way through the week’s holiday. I also discovered that those adverts he did with Robert Webb were intended to sell Apple computers rather than Microsoft’s products but this gave me the chance to start reading another book: Hugh Dennis’s Britty Britty Bang Bang, his examination of what it is to be British. I had read through around 100 pages of this at the end of the holiday and was determined to make time at home to read the rest of it. Well, I’ve been back home for a week now and I haven’t read a single page since.

Normal For Norfolk

The annual family holiday; this year: Norfolk. I had visited Norfolk once before which was a somewhat ill-fated work related trip many years ago but it looked nice and I had always fancied a trip back there. We had booked a cottage there on the basis that a holiday residence should be at least as nice as one’s normal abode and this one even had access to a private swimming pool which was a real bonus. The only downside was the 7 hour trip to get there. At least we kept the kids amused with a variety of handheld games consoles. Maybe I could even get them as far as Cornwall in the future?

Sunday was the first full day there and after making good use of the swimming pool we went to a local pub for lunch. The lady who runs the farm where the cottage was located recommended it and it was very nice with a beer garden and a children’s play area at the back. At least I think it was nice as I sat at the table sneezing my head off with my eye’s itching and bloodshot. I haven’t really been bothered much by hayfever in  recent years but the pollen count was ridiculously high – at least by Stirlingshire standards anyway. Apparently, this was normal for Norfolk.

We stocked up at the pharmacy with every anti-histamine pill, nasal-spray and eye-drop that we could buy off-prescription and headed to the coast – specifically Cromer where I had my unfortunate work trip. The work went well but I went down with influenza (as in the real thing that can kill you – not a cold) and only just about made the drive back North. I did get into the house but couldn’t make t upstairs. This trip was much better and being on the coast the pollen levels were more bearable. We also went for a seafood lunch which was nice. Cromer Crab is the local speciality but I chickened out and went for plaice.

We also went to the coast on the Tuesday but this time to Great Yarmouth. This is more of a traditional seaside resort – i.e. lots of “attractions” designed to extract the largest amount of cash in the shortest amount of time. It’s OK for what it is but it didn’t quite have the charm of Cromer and the more traditional fish ‘n’ chips left Nina somewhat unimpressed. I did like the model village that they had there although taking a family of five in to see it really is a pain in the wallet. We did wander down to the beach but the kids seem to have my general mistrust of sea-beasties so we went back to the house for a swim.

We went out on to the Broads on the next day and I took the kids up an old wind-pump (essentially a windmill for pumping water). This was run by the National Trust and it cost a fifth of what the model village had done to take the whole family. This is the advantage of the NT – they are run by enthusiasts and are genuinely educational as well as being of general interest. I also found this on the Thursday when I took the family to Norwich Cathedral. That is actually free to go in with a voluntary donation (which I was more than happy to make). The only problem I had there was Raymond’s mistrust of all things religious and Sophia’s odd line of questioning. She asked me what one of the engravings on the floor said and I did my best to translate the Latin for her. She then asked me if there were dead bodies under the floor (there were) and if the bishops had killed them before putting them there (they hadn’t as far as I know) and also if they were put on a cross like Jesus would they come back to life? We left and went to a Spanish restaurant instead.

The last day there we were there we took the kids to Bewilderworld which is a sort of outdoor adventure playground with a tree-house theme and seemingly designed by someone who had been smoking something funny. Actually it was very well designed and for once it was possible to play with the kids in the tree-houses (and bring out the big kid in me). It was by far the most expensive of the day-trips but was worth it. However, when we got back home I asked the kids what their favourite part of the holiday was. Raymond said the swimming pool; Sophia said “when Dad got a bumble-bee out of the swimming pool” and Jake said playing on the games consoles. I can’t win. I just can’t win.