Staying Home: Day 84

Our Teen Girl celebrated her 14th birthday today. H baked her a Biscoff cake - plain sponge with Biscoff butter icing, melted Biscoff biscuit (cookie) spread melted over the top, and decorated with both whole and crumbled Biscoff biscuits. It was very good!  H also decorated the living room with a banner and balloons after TG went to bed last night and set out her presents ready to open this morning.

TG did a (very) small amount of schoolwork this morning - she is so conscientious normally that we could hardly complain that she decided to take it easy on her birthday - then went out for a walk with H and her BF after lunch. One of her gifts was a FitBit so she was motivated to walk and get her step count up!  After they got back, M and I went for a our walk. We drove a short way to have a change of scenery and walked round the area where I lived between the ages of 3 and 15.

One of the footpaths on our route took us past our old farm (above).  In our time the house was part thatched and part tiled. When my parents bought it, the roof was fully thatched but sloped down to the right hand side in the photo, so much so that the upstairs room at the end was too low to be usable. They had building work done to raise the roof, which is why that end was tiled. Since we moved away the whole place has had a lot of money spent on it. The house has been "restored" and extended. I picked up a brochure when it was up for sale some years ago, and it is very different to how it was when we lived there - my parent's bedroom is now part of a "galleried  entrance hall" for example! The original heart of the house was very old. We thought it was Tudor, but heritage records date part of the framework to the 15th century. In our day it was a working farm, with mostly old boarded outbuildings and a couple of modern barns. Now it is an equestrian centre, with modern barns and stables, and a garden courtyard in what was the farmyard. Even the name has gone up market, from simple "Hill Farm" to "Hollingdon Grange". 

We walked back across fields to the village church. The cattle in this field were very curious and followed us right up to the gate. They were young bullocks and may have been hoping for food! The church is mostly 14th and 15th century. I remember there being a "squint" window looking from the one side of the aisle towards the altar, and an organ which still needed someone to pump air through it with bellows.

Birthday celebrations continued in the evening. A nearby branch of Nandos (a restaurant chain specialising in spicy chicken and a favourite of TG's) has reopened for pre-ordered takeaway and delivery, and we put in an order for dinner which the three younger members of the family went to collect. The restrictions of the last few months have made us appreciate treats like this so much more!  After dinner R and her partner came over with their dog. They went for a walk with TG, H and her BF, then we all sat in the garden and chatted and played with the dog for an hour or so. This was the first time we had seen R since M's birthday back in March, so it was extra nice to catch up in person. I think we all really enjoyed today, and TG felt it had been a particularly good birthday. 

Merry Month of May Movie Meme

While participating in the A to Z blogging challenge I stumbled across the genealogy blogging community. One of these bloggers, Pauline of Family History Across the Seas, has posted a Merry Month of May Movie Meme and I thought would be fun to join in ...

What's the earliest movie you can remember? The first movie I remember seeing at the cinema was Mary Poppins. I just checked and it was released in 1964, just before my fourth birthday. I don't know whether I saw it when it was first released or a year or two later. Of course, in the UK in the 1960s they were called films, not movies!

Where did you go to the movies? As a child I used to go to the old Odeon Cinema in Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire). At that time it was a single screen cinema, but I think it was subsequently divided into one large and two small screens. It closed in 1999 and was replaced by a modern multi-screen cinema in a different location. The old Odeon fell into disrepair and is now being demolished to be replaced with retirement apartments. 

Did you buy movie programs? I don't remember there being such a thing!

Did you take in food and drink (and what did you like)? Not that I can remember. We always used to get ice creams during the intermission, in the days when there was such a thing. I have to admit that I am a popcorn lover and a trip to the cinema just isn't the same without a hefty portion of salted popcorn (has to be salted, not sweet). I know it is ridiculously overpriced for something that is mostly air, but I can't resist. 

Movies of your teenage years: Star Wars (the original movie, which I saw four times), Grease, Saturday Night Fever, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Towering Inferno (for which I mostly hid on the floor as I don't like fire - no idea why I went!).

Do you remember how old you were when you went unsupervised? No, but probably early teens. 

Mischief you got up to in the movies: As teenagers a group of us once smuggled in a bottle of whisky. I doubt I drank much as I loathe the stuff!

Did you watch movies at home? Yes. I remember sobbing through Love Story on TV, going through a phase of watching late night horror movies (the old fashioned type) when I had to sleep on a put-up bed in the sitting room at my grandmother's, and another phase of watching westerns as a teen. And of course we always took part in the pre-VCR British family ritual of watching the big blockbuster films shown on TV at Christmas.

What was your favourite movie to watch at home? During my childhood it was only possible to watch what happened to be on TV. No VCRs or DVDs.

Do you prefer to watch movies at home or at the cinema? Definitely at the cinema. So much more engrossing on the big screen with surround sound than it is at home, and it makes a movie into an event. 

Does your family have a special movie memory? Not one particular memory. The Harry Potter movies were a big thing with my two older daughters, and each new release was a cause of much excitement. We sometimes went on the first day, but never to the midnight premiere. With hindsight I wish we had done as it would have made that special memory.

Movies you fell in love to/with? I really didn't! Movies and romance never coincided for me. 

Favourite romantic movie theme music: I'm not a fan of romantic music and would find it much easier to pick a most disliked romantic theme - My Heart Will Go On from Titanic wins that title. I get to play a lot of movie theme music with brass and concert bands and if I had to pick a favourite it would be either Jurassic Park or Pirates of the Caribbean. Much more fun than the romantic stuff, both to play and to listen to!

Favourite musical movie: For some reason I always loved Calamity Jane.

Which movies made you want to dance/sing?  I'm a hopeless non-dancer, but for singing along it has to be The Sound of Music and Mamma Mia.   

Do you watch re-runs or DVDs of old movies? Not as much as I would like to. Most of the DVDs we own are newer, although we have some classic children's movies. We have a Netflix subscription and I keep meaning to watch some of the old classics but somehow never get round to it. 

Do your children/family enjoy the same movies? There are a few children's movies which all three of my daughters have loved, but there has rarely been a movie that all five of us would watch. In fact, I don't think we have ever all been to the cinema together. Partly this is due to the age gap (eleven years between eldest and youngest daughters) and partly because if all three daughters like something it is almost certainly too girly to appeal to their dad. 

What's your favourite movie genre now? I am not sure I could pick one single genre. I enjoy human interest dramas, British comedy (American not so much), some science fiction/fantasy, some rom-coms. It really depends on my mood. 

Did you read the book before or after the movie? Usually I prefer to read the book before the movie. 

Which did you enjoy more, the book or the movie? More often the book, although not always. I loved The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel as a movie, but did not enjoy the book at all. Some movie adaptations are just awful - the American movie version of the children's book The Borrowers was particularly atrocious.

What's the silliest movie you've seen (silly funny or silly annoying)? I'll go with silly funny and pick Rowan Atkinson's Mr Bean movie. 

Pet hate in movies: Bad sound and / or mumbling actors making it hard to follow dialogue. 

A movie that captures family history for you: Interesting question! I am going to go for All Creatures Great and Small, the movie based on James Herriot's vet books (yes, there was a movie, made a few years before the better known TV series). It is set in rural North Yorkshire, where my mother's family come from, and I have farmers and farm labourers on both sides of my family. No vets though! 

If you could only play 5 movies for the rest of your life, what would they be? 

(1) Lord of the Rings. Love the books, love the film version. Can I count the trilogy as a single movie?

(2) Star Wars IV (THE Star Wars!). The big movie of my teens and part of me has never outgrown it.

(3) Truly, Madly, Deeply. A wonderful low budget British romantic movie starring Juliet Stephenson and the late, great Alan Rickman as the ghost of her dead partner. Poignant and funny by turns, and beautifully acted.

(4) The Railway Children. There has to be a family movie in there. Matilda nearly won this slot - one daughter loved it so much that we can still quote chunks of the script, and Pam Ferris's Miss Trunchbull was superbly awful. Another daughter watches Elf multiple times every Christmas, Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc are big favourites, but The Railway Children just squeaks it. I loved it as a child, and even as an adult I can't help but shed a tear when Bobby spots her father through the steam of the train at the end. 

(5) Billy Elliot. This was the hardest to choose as there are a number of other films I like but none that stood out above the others. Billy Elliot, in which a young boy from a tough mining town in Northern England fights poverty, political upheaval (it is set against the background of the 1980s miners' strike), and prejudice to become a ballet dancer, is one that grabs me each time I watch it.

Favourite movie stars: Alan Rickman, Harrison Ford, Robin Williams, Benedict Cumberbatch, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep