A Bit Of Light Relief

We took a day off from clearing Marion's mum's flat today. Marion had an appointment to have her hair done so I caught up with a huge pile of ironing (no don't stop reading, it will get better - honest). After a really good lunch at The Vincent on Lord St we headed to the local Vue to see 21 Jump St.

Looking at others in the audience Marion wondered if we had chosen something that's perhaps aimed at a slightly younger market. I started playing with my iPhone in an attempt to signal 'Hey kids we may be oldies but we're cool oldies' but then let myself down by switching it off when the film started. 

The film (21 Jump St) came highly recommended by reviewers across the whole spectrum of tabloid and broadsheets (although I seem to remember the same for Jackass 3D). This time the reviewers got it right as it has all the ingredients of a great comedy - superb performances from leads Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, a strong story line (based on an old TV show that we don't remember), a good script with plenty of  intelligent jokes thrown in amongst a minimal amount of the gross out stuff usually associated with this genre. 

Hill and Channing play a couple of rookie cops whose "youthful" looks leads to them being chosen to go undercover as high school students. Tatum was a jock at high school while Hill was the geeky kid that he bullied. They're chosen to reprise those roles in their assignment to bust a drugs ring but, as in most good comedy from Shakespeare onwards, things don't go exactly as planned. What follows is fast moving and laugh out loud funny and it certainly gave us a lift from a week of flat clearing.

As we left the cinema I got an email with the surveyor's report on our proposed house purchase in Suffolk. While the man from the architect said yes, the man from the surveyor's says yes ...... but;  and then gave us a pretty long list of buts.   

All Cleared

We sold Marion's mum's flat recently so this week we've set aside four days to empty it before the new owners move in. It hasn't been the happiest job sorting everything Flo owns into just three piles - keep, charity shop and tip. We made a few journeys to the tip and we've given a selection of things to various charities and now we're left sifting through the "keep" pile. Going through everything that Flo and Marion's dad Doug kept - all the little personal mementos, cards, certificates, photos and nick nacks - is extremely sad but it has to be done. And it has made us realise that we don't want our own kids to have to do the same one day in the future. So, when we sell the house, we're going to do it for them. Whilst it's nice to have things like the lovely anniversary cards that we gave each other, our school certificates and reports, souvenirs and reminders of things that meant something to us in our lives, we never look at them; they're simply gathering dust in boxes in the attic awaiting the day when someone does what we've just done and takes them all down to the tip. So we've got a big de-clutter to carry out soon. We're going to be ruthless so Paul and Sarah don't have to. We'll keep plenty of photos in case anybody ever wants to make a family tree but the rest is simply sentimental and we'll have to rely on our memories instead.

My blog about my model mum resulted in an email from my sister linking me to an American used car seller's website. There's Mum again. This time with a megaphone and the catchy slogan "It's sale time Honey".   

   


We had planned a day out at our favourite cinema FACT in Liverpool tomorrow. We were going to see the Polish film In Darkness, the new Robots and Avatars exhibition and 21 Jump St. But clearing the flat has been so draining , both physically and mentally, that we don't think we could cope with the journey and a subtitled film about refugees hiding from the Nazis. So we're going for a lighter option of lunch in Southport and 21 Jump St at Vue. It's been getting great reviews so maybe it will give us something to smile about. I'll let you know.