Harry Potter

Larry and I practically gave up spending time alone together when we had Little Z and then made things worse by having Big J. We have no social life and couldn't afford one even if we wanted one.

As the summer holidays are here (and almost gone again!)and I have lots of teacher friends now with nothing to do (hee hee!), I decided to talk one of them into looking after Little Z for a few hours (would I find one crazy enough?) so Larry & I could go to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It didn't take long. My friend Sarah, probably the busiest of all my teacher friends, who is trying to sell her house, buy another house and do several other things besides, agreed to look after Little Z (did she know what she was agreeing to?). So, while Big J was still at nursery and Little Z was playing with Sarah's rabbit, Toby, and making cakes etc. Larry & I went to the Odeon at Leisureworld.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been out for quite some time now, so we were in one of the smaller auditoria, but we did not expect it to be full so thought we were likely to be able to sit where we wanted and have room to move our arms. It seems many others had the same idea. It was full. We did have a choice of seats, but it was limited. The seats were quite comfortable, though and if it was not for the teenage couple sitting next to us who evidently thought they were in a café and it was okay to talk (not even about the film for goodness sake!!!) in normal voices throughout the film, we would have really enjoyed it.

The film was good. As a fan of Harry Potter, I would not say it was brilliant, but I liked it. I think it was fairly true to the book, although I don't think the scene with Sirius in the Department of Mysteries was as big and exciting as it could have been. Somehow it didn't quite meet my expectations. Parts of the story which I thought were important had been omitted or changed, which disappointed me. I think if you have not read the books you will enjoy the film more than if you have read them. Either way, I would still recommend going to see it if you haven't already.

Expecto Patronum.....


What would your Patronus be? Find out here.

Be prepared though. Apparently mine would be an Amoeba! How glamorous!

The Walking Week!

Little Z and I have been very healthy this week:

On Monday we walked about 3 miles from near to Little Z's school (where we parked our car after dropping Big J off at Nursery) to Shirley Library and back.

On Tuesday, as the weather was supposed to be the best we have had for a long time, we drove to Bournemouth and walked 1.5 miles along the seafront from Bournemouth Pier to Boscombe Pier. We then got the train back as it was too hot to walk, stopped in a cafe for a healthy lunch and then went to the beach!

On Wednesday, we walked about 4.5 miles from home to Shirley and back.

Having read Seany's post on his trip to "the pictures", I decided it was about time I went to the cinema too, so on Thursday, feeling tired and not wanting to walk anywhere, I surprised Little Z by taking her to the Odean Cinema at Leisure World to see Shrek the Third. We both thoroughly enjoyed it. I really wanted to go to see Harry Potter, but although I know some poeple have taken their children to see it, I know Little Z would be frightened by it and would either want to leave part the way through the film, would hide her eyes for the whole thing or would not sleep for weeks! I will probably wait for that to come out on DVD unless I can get a babysitter so Larry and I can go together to watch it.

Today we are preparing for our trip to Bridgwater in Somerset to see Larry's family. His mum turns 60 on Saturday so we are all getting together to make it a special birthday for her. I am not looking forward to it very much as lots of family invariably means lots of bickering and petty arguments and lots of diapproving looks about the way people choose to live their lives.

After that the plan is to take the campervan off to North Devon for a few nights. Not sure where we are going to stay yet, but I am looking forward to the four of us spending some good quality family time together.

We will enjoy ourselves no matter what the weather does!