Misjudging time...

Keith tackled a huge pile of ironing this morning while I prepared tonight's dinner of sausage casserole. We were going to the cinema this afternoon so I wouldn't have had time to get it all ready when we returned this evening, as it's Halloween!

After I'd cooked the sausages, pancetta and vegetables I left everything to cool and sorted out the pumpkins for this evening:

Jeff is looking a bit bleurgh, while Caroline looks on in horror!

I put them outside, cut back some of the bushes and swept up. Mike appeared and asked if he could have a lift to Brixworth and I told him we were leaving at 12pm as we were taking Sophie to Riverside before going on to the cinema to see Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old.

I faffed around a bit more, went upstairs and then noticed with horror that the time was 11.46 and I needed to have a shower, wash my hair, get dressed and put some make-up on...all by 12pm! There was no way I was going to do it and I had seriously misjudged the time!

I had the quickest shower of my life and asked Keith if he could drive so I could put some make-up on in the car! We dropped Mike off and dashed off to Brackmills but I knew we were going to be late as we caught every red light and had the slowest of all drivers in front of us, a woman in a Mercedes who kept braking at everything!

We finally got to Sophie's office at 12.45 and sped off to Riverside where I bought a candle and some batteries in Wilco's. I needed a sandwich and a coffee so we went to Costa where we had a sit-down for twenty minutes, and before leaving Sophie tried on a couple of coats that were more like dressing gowns!

We dropped her off and braved the traffic into town, hoping we could park in the small car park near the theatre, but although there were a couple of spaces,  manoeuvring into them was impossible. We abandoned that idea and tried Morrison's car park instead but you were only allowed to park there for two hours, so in the end we decided to try St John's which declared it was full. We drove up and up and finally, on the eighth floor we found a space.

Despite all the driving around trying to find a space we were still early for the film but at 2pm we went in and took our seats. It was a popular showing and the cinema was full. I'd been really looking forward to seeing the film and it started off with images of young men enlisting (some as young as 15) and training before they were shipped off to France and Belgium. At this point the black and white jerky images were replaced by the colourised version and the footage had been smoothed out and slowed down so it made a real impact.

However, despite the harrowing scenes (some of them really horrific) the film left both Keith and I emotionally cold. The film never really told us where the film footage was taken, at what stage of the war and which battalions were shown. It was just a continuous stream of scenes of men, horses and fighting but we never really got to know who was on the screen and the men narrating were disembodied voices whose faces we never got to see.

I had expected to feel very emotional whilst watching it, and some scenes depicted fallen men and horses, but at the end we looked at each other as if to say, "Is that it?"

We left the cinema and drove to The Britannia pub about two minutes from where Sophie works and had a quick drink. I had a glass of wine and the price was astonishing - £6.79 for a small Shiraz! As soon as Sophie was finished we sped home to prepare for - hopefully! - hordes of children coming around to trick or treat. I found our little light-up skull and our lantern and Keith put the batteries in for me. I lit the tealights in the pumpkins, emptied all of our sweets into a bowl and we were ready!

However, tonight was a bit of a damp squib as we had far fewer children visit than in previous years and the crowds we used to have simply never materialised. I was hoping to see some of my after-school club children but apart from a handful, they never showed up. We were left with loads of sweets!

However, the sausage casserole I'd prepared earlier was delicious and went really well with the baked potatoes which had been cooking slowly in the oven since we'd arrived home. Lovely!

After dinner Sophie and I watched the original Nightmare on Elm Street which was very silly but very bloody!