Packing........

Oh my it certainly has felt like a full on fortnight! We've been catching up with friends that we didn't fit in around the festive season, so a couple of lunches out and an evening out as well as our usual evenings out.

I've had a theatre night and we've had the cinema which I've already told you about.

For SERVSC Bloodrunners there was an evening at The Rosie Neonatal Hospital in Cambridge where they showed us around and fed us well with pizzas and cakes to say thank you for the milk runs that supply their premature babies when mum can't.

And a quiz night held in Ipswich which was good fun and also raised over £400 for the SERVSC charity

I'm out again tomorrow, lunching with friends but today we were home, catching up with ourselves, doing some much needed housework and thinking about packing for two weeks in Florida starting 4th February but first I've another short stay in hospital starting this Wednesday to pack for, plus we did have a visit from Daughter, R, O and the dog, a very welcome distraction! 

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Date Night (part 2)......

As mentioned before, this is our Christmas present to each other.

I'd received another 50% discount at Beefeater which expired Thursday and as we were busy every day of the week before that, then Thursday was decided to be our cinema Christmas date.

It's quite a long film and as we had Daughter, R and O here for lunch and the dog for the afternoon too we decided to go and eat first film second. This time the Tesco Clubcard voucher worked and we learned that you register your car in the cinema and don't pay the parking meter.

I'll not paste the story outline here as those who love Star Wars know it already and those that don't, don't care and to me it is far too confusing.

Seems there are 18 Star Wars films which started in 1977 with Episode IV and this most recent is Episode IX.

So story and maths aside, it was the usual mix of clever film making, loud dramatic fighting scenes both in spaceships and hand-to-hand light sabre battles, familiar music and the occasional very witty line in amongst the dialogue packed script.

As expected there were some amazing "other planet" creatures and they brought back many of the original cast in cameos or hologram messages and they even included the late Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia even though she'd died before this film had been written.

I didn't hate it and Hubby loved it.........now what on earth do I get him for his February birthday?
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Date Night (part 1).......

Hubby and I are definitely finding present buying for each other almost impossible so this last Christmas I suggested we just didn't. It certainly took the pressure off me while I'm having to come up with good ideas for what to buy everyone else, however, I'm the only person Hubby has responsibility to buy for and he seemed a little unsure and did quietly mention occasionally "so would you like this/that/the other".

I made another suggestion "what about giving each other a cinema date night?"
We go to the cinema very very rarely as we don't actually have the same taste in entertainment at all. So I said I'll watch the new Star Wars with him, with a smile on my face, and he can watch Cats with me, with a smile on his face.

It should have been free as Hubby had claimed on our Tesco Clubcard vouchers, but armed with the email complete with QR code we still struggled at the cinema ticket machine and then carried on struggling with a real person and two of her superiors! We gave up and paid for our tickets.

It was an early evening showing which may account for the sparse audience or it may have been the very poor reviews!

I enjoyed it, the clever visual effects, the London's West End surroundings, brilliant computer generated fur coverings on all cats with active tails and twitching ears, and such talented dancers! It had the most amazing star studded cast, which distracted a bit from those that could actually sing and dance.

Some of the songs weren't songs at all, just dialogue in a sing song voice and the story was almost non existent. But overall it was a short time of complete escapism.

Hubby said "It was ok but not purrrrrrrr-fect!" hahaha

We rounded off our date night with a meal in our local Beefeater.....because we had a 50% off voucher. Then home for a cuppa as it was still only 9:30! A couple of old cheapskates but we did hold hands 😉
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A Quick Break in Norfolk.......

For Hubby's last birthday in February I gave him a two night's hotel voucher from Buy-a-gift and we needed to use it before it expired in August and actually hoped to use it before the school holidays started as most venues won't accept the voucher at peak times anyway. We managed it this week.

Not wanting to spend hours and hours travelling Hubby chose The Orangery B&B near Holt in Norfolk. This turned out to be in the middle of nowhere, so lots of driving down tiny country lanes while concentrating on the sat-nav (well done Hubby). It was a rebuilt farm plot with a stable and five buildings. The owners live in one and the others are all holiday rentals. Ours had two bedrooms, we had the downstairs one and although someone stayed in the other upstairs room on Tuesday night we never actually saw them. There was a lounge diner and kitchen as shared space. The continental-style breakfast was laid out on the table each morning to help yourself.

We did lots of walking and unfortunately right at the start I must have had a bit of sand or something in my shoe so caused a big blister grrrrr, thank goodness for blister plasters which was the first thing I applied when we got to the place and unzipped our case!
As well as walking there was ice cream and lunches and regular pots of tea in the following places.

Monday
Stiffkey
Holkham
Burnham Overy Staithe

Wells-Next-the-Sea

There was a film I wanted to see and we never managed to fit it in before so we found the Cinema in Dereham online and booked our tickets (this meant Hubby wouldn't back out last minute hahaha). Lovely small cinema with two screens and small auditorium.

The film was brilliant and we both enjoyed it. Highly recommend it.

Tuesday
Sheringham Park, National Trust, but only had to pay £6 to park the car.

Cromer, this was by the lifeboat station

We are English Heritage members and have been for many years but rarely get our money's worth. So looking through the book we found Baconsthorpe Castle but it was a free entry place anyway hahaha.

Wednesday
Started with a lovely walk around Sheringham, such an interesting town centre as so many small independent shops. By mid-morning it was already feeling quite hot.

Felbrigg Hall next. A National Trust property. Lunch first as you can always rely on NT for their cafe. So nice to walk around inside as these big houses are always nice and cool.

Home about 5pm-ish and out again at 7pm!
So just the two of us for a change and our first holiday this year!

Saw the Queen doing whizzpoppers...........

Bet you've guessed already, I've seen The BFG

I quite fancied seeing this as soon as lead characters were promoting it on chat shows and magazine programmes. So I invited R to the cinema......she declined as she really doesn't like the cinema, too loud and too in your face!

O had changed his mind about being a Tudor and Daughter had brought him home to his dad a couple of days ago, today we had him here while M was running his Creative Computing Club and O said he'd love to come see a film with me.

3pm on a Tuesday and screen 11 was almost full. We both loved it, only problem was O having the fidgits as he's a bit light for the tip up seats, wish I'd taken in his car booster seat. It was also nice to be inside for a couple of hours as it was up to 29°C outside.

Of course it's a great story like all Roald stories are and this Disney production had Spielberg magic. I believed every character and totally fell in love with the BFG himself, Mark Rylance has the most amazing facial expressions and warm loving expressive eyes!
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Cinema: Kingsman, The Secret Service.....

Last night as the usual Wednesday crowd were not meeting up friendH used her "Orange Wednesday" 2for1 cinema offer and we went to see Kingsman after a Harvester meal.

Gary "Eggsy" Unwin (Taron Egerton), whose late father secretly worked for a spy organization, lives in a South London housing estate and seems headed for a life behind bars. However, dapper agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) recognizes potential in the youth and recruits him to be a trainee in the secret service. Meanwhile, villainous Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) launches a diabolical plan to solve the problem of climate change via a worldwide killing spree.


Bit of an odd film which we thought would be funnier than it was, although Samuel L Jackson with a lisp was quite funny, he was the baddy. It was adapted from a comic book with all the characters much larger than life. It could have been light entertainment as some sort of spoof fusion between Avengers/James Bond/Austin Powers if it hadn't had so much blood and guts fighting, far too gory in places for me, so eyes tightly shut for a lot of the time. Although I had to look when exploding heads became a firework display to music..... told you it was a bit odd!
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Granddaughter diary, day 10.....

Was an at home day, and R stayed in bed reading till nearly lunchtime then managed to flit about us while we were doing various jobs not really helping. Hubby is installing some big gates and R had a go at drilling out tarmac and concrete for a post to go in, but she only managed a minute or two.

We shopped for her choice dinner of nachos as that's what she would have had if she was going bowling with Granddad but we had arranged with a friend of mine to go to the cinema.

R cooked the chilli and grated the cheese but left me to assemble and grill yummy!

Then off to the cinema picking friendH up on the way but forgetting to pick up the 3D glasses I'd left on the hall shelf ready so we had to buy more there (friendH's fault as she was texting to say where are you thinking we'd arranged half hour earlier than we had so I ended up rushing out the door).

We all really enjoyed this Sleeping Beauty story told in a totally different way, the special effects were amazing and some fantastic creatures and characters were created, although both R and I agreed that they didn't make any special efforts towards 3D effects which was a shame for friendH as this was her first 3D experience but she really enjoyed it anyway.

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