We’re midway through the school holiday and the end of my holiday before the other half becomes lead parent for the second week.   With all of us around the house this afternoon it seemed a good opportunity to head to the pictures.   

(As I typed that I realised there is a whole discussion on what people call going to the cinema.   I’ve always gone “to the pictures”, my youngest sister goes “to the film”, while my children go “to the movies”.   For all of us it’s the same activity, but how we describe it speaks of the time we were growing up and the people we were friendly with.)

Anyway back to our outing…

To save some money I visited a supermarket reward scheme and used some points to buy two adult tickets for the afternoon.   Then returned to the cinema website paid for the four tickets.   Who knew there was now a “teen” ticket?

At the appointed time we set off from our home, with some excited people – not the female contingent.   Occasionally I think we don’t go out much, given how excited some people were.   Some adults were pre-warned that should they start singing during the film, the rest of us would move to the other side of the theatre.

As we took our seats in the cinema, looking around it looked like our children were the youngest people in the room.   The age profile of those who had come to see the film had us wonder if we had accidentally gate-crashed pensioners’ time.   We didn’t let that worry us.   Instead we sat back to remember that life really is a musical, you just have to find your song and for someone in our party these were his.

So “Sunshine on Leith”… It’s good if you like Proclaimers songs, views of Edinburgh and a bit of a greet.   The story is not bad, difficult to explain to a 9 year old within the cinema, but has some good Scottish pathos running through it.   All in our party, even “the asker of many questions and I’m a bit bored part way through” left saying they had enjoyed it, and would happily watch it again.

Just don’t go expecting Hollywood – notice the title of the film…and the beauty of my home town.