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Twice as many kids in the house, twice as likely to be woken by one of them crying. I don’t mind my own sexcrement waking me up at 4am - that’s my own fault for giving it sentience - but another person’s sexcrement is a different matter.
It wasn’t the seven hours I had hoped for and then Groundhog Day started again at 6.30am as usual.
We took the dog for a walk in the woods and the kids loved finding all the slightly spooky Blair Witch tree-branch teepees that have been built by some mysterious strangers. We tried to steer them clear of poisonous/magic mushrooms and they turned a tree into a space ship and repelled the adult aliens.
It was wholesome weekend family fun.
Our friends left after lunch and we elected to make popcorn and watch movies in front of the fire, the kids sitting next to each other under a blanket knitted by their great-great grandmother. At last a chance to relax a bit, though I was always on guard in case the little one decided to lunge towards the flames.
We watched Up for the second weekend in a row and then, for some reason, decided to seek out Peter Pan. I had never seen the Disney version - it’s hard to believe that in the old days it was actually quite hard to watch Disney classics. They’d occasionally get a cinema release, but not very often and for some reason Disney guarded their property very carefully. Even when videos came out they would do limited releases. What a load of fucking chumps.
Still, it made sense as far as Peter Pan went as it was somewhat dated and had many things in it that would get it cancelled in this day and age. The music dates it even more - that weird old-fashioned choir singing that’s in all those films, but this movie is 66 years old, so maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised. My daughter was fascinated by the story though and we had to put it on to watch it again as soon as it was finished.
I made my usual comment that everyone who worked on this film would now be dead (not to my kids though they might have overheard) and indeed the actor who paid Peter Pan had died in 1968 at the age of 31, but the woman who Tinkerbell was modelled on is still going at 98. So I was wrong.
But this film is so old that a good proportion of the kids who enjoyed it on its first release are also no longer with us. Peter Pan and the Lost Boys were maybe lucky after all. Age shall not wither them. Sadly the ones in this version are stuck in a shit Peter Pan, but it’s better than nothing.
