So, as planned, Claire and I went to the cinema to watch The Lion King.
The experience was a great advert for movie piracy. Not because the film was poor – far from it (more on that later). The problem was our fellow cinema-goers.
The issue with the other Lion King fans, was that they had an average age of about 3 years old. This predictably resulted in long queues of children, waiting to buy Pick N Mix – gram for gram, the most expensive consumable known to man. Seriously, I am sure crack cocaine carries a cheaper street value!
As well as the overpriced sweets, the kids also bought fizzy drinks, ice cream and popcorn. It would have been easier for all those involved, for a doctor to give each child a pill containing the addictives E534640, E134 and WTF209.
Swallowing the pill would have resulted in the devil-possessed bairns becoming equally as crazy as having consumed the sweets, but without causing endless queues for the rest of us.
Popping the ePill would be a bonus for the parents too, given how it wouldn’t cause their precious cherubs to vomit sugary additives all over the car upholstery on the journey home – something that cannot be guaranteed with the consumption of Ice Blast, Fizzy Fish and Crazy Frog ice cream.
It was all too stressful. I just wanted to relax and sit in a dark room for a couple of hours. Ironically, given how I was in a cinema complex, that is exactly where I was going. It was just a shame how I would be joined by dozens of Regan MacNeil clones.
Our final act before heading into the screen, was to pick up some snacks and drinks. We were not the only ones with the same idea. The queue was so long, that NASA were reporting to have spotted it from space.
Upon reaching the front of the queue, I ordered on behalf of Claire and me. A bit of a mistake. The cinema lobby, where we had been waiting was louder than a nightclub on a Saturday night (not that I would know). Plus, I was sat in the wheelchair (any excuse to park in the disabled bay), so a good couple of feet below the counter.
The man behind the till clearly couldn’t hear my shouts of “A KIT KAT AVALANCHE!”. The embarrassing thing about having to repeatedly repeat myself, was that I was convinced that everyone else in the lobby could hear me and were thinking to themselves “That man must really want his ice cream. I hope he hasn’t got a gun – he sounds crazy”
The frustrating thing was that the Avalanche wasn’t even for me – Claire wanted it. Even when my wife did intervene, the man claimed to have never heard of a Kit Kat Avalanche. This is despite huge advertising boards promoting the Kit Kat Avalanche and a large machine, located directed behind him – a machine used for making a Kit Kat Avalanche. Sigh.
I like to believe that there is a quote from Basil Fawlty, to deal with most situations in life. The world’s most useless ice cream vendor, could quite fairly be described in the same way as Mrs Richards – “Deaf, mad and blind”.
Fast forward a good half hour, to find Claire and me in our allocated seats. There is an advantage to taking the wheelchair to the cinema – nobody sat in the same area as the two of us.
We had fantastic seating, plus the Children of the Damned were all sat behind us. I don’t normally rave about how great a movie looks and sounds at the cinema, but I must commend Vue on their excessively loud speakers and fantastic surround sound – it totally blocked out any screams, shouts, farts and cries from behind us.
The film was due to start at 12noon. It started at 12.30pm. This is owing to the fact that we were forced to watch adverts we had all seen on television already, plus the usual selection of trailers for upcoming films.
Imagine if this happened at a train station. The 14:20 Virgin Cross Country pulls into the station. However, nobody can board it until they watch 40 minutes of adverts for Virgin Media, Virgin Wine, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Girls and Virgin Records. Wouldn’t that just be absurd? It would also be a bloody miracle that the 14:20 actually arrived at 14:20!
There is, of course, a solution. Just turn up 30 minutes late for the movie. Although, you just know by doing that, it’ll be the one time that the film starts when it should have, and you arrive, only to find Simba sobbing over his dead father. You creep in past snotty five-year-olds, off their face on Tangfastics, while their mothers, tutt at your tardiness and how you’re ruining the film for everyone else. Oh, the hypocrisy!
At least some of the trailers looked like films I might actually want to pirate – and if the Internet Police happen to be reading my blog, that is what we call a “joke”.
Claire really wants to see Cats. I must admit, I thought it looked good too, despite it starring James Corden – he seems to be in absolutely everything these days. I rather like musicals. In 1997, while all my classmates were playing air guitar to Wonderwall, I was in my bedroom, dancing and singing to my Evita soundtrack. I still remember the lyrics today, but don’t ask me to jump around like Antonio Banderas.
When it wasn’t Evita, it would be Spice Girls or The Smurfs Go Pop… I know – sometimes even I ask myself how I ended up marrying a woman.
The film I liked the look of was Horrible Histories: Rotten Romans. It’s one of those movies featuring every British comedian you can think of – apart from Jim Davidson (I hope) – either as a major role or a tiny cameo.
Horrible Histories has the potential to be, well, shit. 15 years on, I am still yet to recover from the disappointment and trauma of Churchill: The Hollywood Years.
Now for the bit you’ve all been waiting for. The reason you have read and tolerated all this spiel. My movie review for The Lion King 2019…
There isn’t one.
I don’t do film reviews. In the past, I have found writing them incredibly boring. This blog is kind of a diary for me, with posts about things I’ve done. I never intended to make a movie website, although had I done so, IMDB.com would have closed down years ago. Plus, I don’t think I am that good at writing them.
It’s a bit like putting together a match report of a football game. I would joyfully write page upon page about a dog invading the pitch, but a serious in-depth article on player analysis, tactics and shit? I never pay attention to that stuff when it comes on the telly! You have to remember, as a Leeds and Bath City fan, tactics and shit are pointless to me.
Back to The Lion King. No review. I’m not even going to write much about it, as if I was to put something on this blog, chances are it’s been done a gazillion times before on another.
What’s that? You still want me to put something? Awww, you twisted my arm…
- Why do all the animals of Africa celebrate the birth of Simba, despite knowing all too well that he will kill and eat them? It’s like users of Air B&B rejoicing at Rose West being released from prison and is renting out her box room.
- Who is Nala’s daddy? In the wild, the male lion fathers all cubs, killing any that don’t belong to him. Just putting that one out there.
- The film is set in Africa. Therefore, why do the majority of the cast have American or English accents? Imagine the meltdown from Daily Mail readers if the role of Simba was given to a talented child actor from Nigeria!
- Thank you to whoever at Walt Disney Towers made the decision to axe this…
Finally – a totally random coincidence. I have been off work unwell today. Don’t worry, I don’t plan on blogging from hospital again anytime soon.
Today’s absence did not require the use of a surgeon’s scaple. A day in bed and some spells on my throne – aka the lavatory – have been all that I required.
Why is this a coincidence? Well, after watching the original Lion King in 1994, I missed the next day of school with a stomach upset. Although, I think I know why I became poorly 25 years ago…
It was my wonderful wife’s birthday last week. She was celebrating the big ’30’. Claire was complaining of being old. Nothing has changed. It is hardly like she transformed from Miley Cyrus to Jackie Stallone, as the clock struck midnight, on the day of her birthday.
Anyway, given the fact I am 36, I hardly think it is time for her to apply for an older person’s railcard – although I’ve promised her unlimited use of my stairlift and mobility scooter. Us old folk need to stick together.
To celebrate her special day, we decided to join her parents, in braving the gales and rain of Storm Diana, and go Christmas shopping at Clark’s Village in Street. Did I say we were “celebrating”?
Amongst all the outlets in the open air retail centre, was a shop which really caught my eye. Proving that age is simply a number and in no way a reflection of mental maturity, I simply had to take photographic evidence, that a business could share a name with my pet rabbit… and an empire of 57 million people.
Besides getting excited about shop-fronts, I am also able to gift some pretty awesome birthday pressies – if I do say so myself.
Look what I bought Claire. Can you guess who it is?
There is a reason that I try to avoid self-service salad bars – hygiene. Some may call this paranoid. What I witnessed yesterday, gives weight to my reasons to steer clear of these bacteria traps…
While visiting a local Harvester restaurant, I observed the comings and goings from the salad counter. It was naturally busy. A group of young children gathered around a bread basket. One took a roll, using his hands. His father then arrived, they had a chat, before the kid returned the roll (still in his clenched fist), alongside all it’s brothers and sisters.
It gets worse. Much worse…
Towards the end of the meal, another diner – this time a grown man, so totally unacceptable – approached the dressings and condiments. Without giving a second thought, he picked up a ladle from a bowl of some sauce, brought it to his lips, had a taste, before returning it! Ewww! Ewww! Ewww! These people are pigs!
In other ‘Salad Bar Sightings’, I spotted a former Bath City player. I’m pleased to say that he had impeccable buffet etiquette, compared to many of the other diners.
After a very busy week at work, I was hoping for a restful Bank Holiday weekend. What I got was far from relaxing. I was out of the house every one of the three days. I’ve returned to work for a break!
Saturday was the quietest day. I went to Twerton Park, home of Bath City, where I will no doubt find myself standing in all manners of weathers and temperatures over the next eight months. City were playing East Thurrock United. If that name sounds familiar to you, it is because I have blogged about them before. They beat us 7-1 in the FA Cup. Things looked ominous. I needn’t had worried. A very early goal for City helped us win 2-1, albeit with a nervy final few minutes.
On Sunday we made our now annual trip to Longleat. We were stupid to do so. It was a Bank Holiday weekend, which meant two things – lots of people and lots of rain. We got both.
In between sessions of queueing in heavy rain, we did manage to ride the boat around the lake, where we saw sea lions and gorillas. Apparently hippos are in there somewhere too, but I didn’t see any. As well as the boat, we rode a double decker bus around the safari park. Many of the animals had shown more sense than us and taken shelter from the rain. The monkeys, however, were out in their numbers, and caused the highlight of the day for me, when they destroyed a roof rack of car, and attempted to eat a radio aerial on another.
We took a trip to the Dorset coast on Bank Holiday Monday, to watch Bath City play Poole Town. I didn’t get chance to see the donkeys on the beach, so had to settle for watching them on the football field instead. It was a game Bath really should have won, as they dominated and literally did everything but score a goal. I wasn’t at all surprised when Poole scored in the final minute, to claim an undeserved win. It was so inevitable, I wasn’t even disappointed.
Despite the warm weather, the coach trip home didn’t have the unbearable heat of the Margate journey, a few weeks earlier – this was mainly thanks to the driver turning on the air conditioning. It also took have as long to get back to Bath, which meant we were able to treat ourselves to a McDonalds on our return.
I travelled far, far away from Bath at the weekend. We went all the way to a little village called London – you may have heard of it. Sorry I haven’t blogged about it until now, I ended up going to jail and I had to miss three turns, as I didn’t have a Get Out Of Jail Free Card.
Our visit to London was just what you see on the movies. Chimney sweeps, people singing in the streets and eating jellied eels… ok, that was a lie. We did drive through a market though and spent the evening at the dog tracks.
We did ‘the dogs’ in style. None of this standing around out in the rain. We watched all the action from inside, while a waiter brought us a 3 course meal. A lady also came to our table to take bets. I really pushed the boat out and spent £2 on each bet. I think I may have a gambling problem. Like gambling on horses, I know nothing about dogs, so instead of looking at odds, form and all that rubbish, I simply picked the names of the dogs I liked. Out of 13 races, I won 2. Luckily, one of my wins was a no-hoper (probably blind, with three legs). This mongrel ran home to victory and I won over £20. At the end of the night, I was a few quid down. I am not going to find a career in gambling, but I did have a good evening.
We spent the night in a Holiday Inn. When we normally stay away from home, we use Premier Inn (endorsed by Sir Lenny Henry). I can see where the “Premier” in Premier Inn comes from – in the past, we have been spoilt. The Holiday Inn we stayed at, was a dive compared to what we are used to. It was more like a youth hostel. It was dirty, the lift spelt of vomit, there were marks on the carpet outside our room and a worrying white stain on our bedsheets. Breakfast left a lot to be desired too – my bowl and cutlery were dirty. Needless to say, we’ll never be staying in one of those “hotels” again.
While I enjoyed getting away from the busy, bustling city life of Bath, and escaping to the peaceful, slow life of London, it was very nice to come home – especially to a clean and comfortable bed (something we didn’t experience at the hotel).
About Me
So you stumbled across my blog. No doubt after searching for something bizarre on Google. Before you hit that 'Back Button', why not stay and have a read for a few minutes?
If you are after a website which gives advice on how to hack an iPhone X, download the latest Steven Seagal movie, or view nudy ladies, you've come to the wrong place and may now press 'Back'.
However, if you would like a lifestyle blog, written by a 30-something chap, living in Bath (England), feast your eyes on this.
You won't discover how to copy PlayStation 4 games. What you will find is a blog, covering life in the West Country, the highs and lows of supporting two unsuccessful football teams, while sharing a house with a wife and rabbit.
All written by a man, somewhere on the sanity-scale between normal and eccentric.
