The plants travel again. Classic film watching.

The snowdrops saga continued to a sensible conclusion. Our daughter's two younger offspring were coming to stay overnight on Saturday while their mother went out to celebrate her birthday. Because our grandson was supposed to be going to a birthday party at the Manchester Climbing Centre I had the car to take him there. Whatever happened to birthday parties? When did they morph into great adventure epics like this? Whatever the answer to that question, in the end he did not go to the adventure party as he was suffering from some kind of tonsillitis - a mild kind as he seems to have recovered now. 

Anyway, because I was supposed to be driving close to my friend Heidy's bit of Manchester, I had arranged to take the snowdrops which went to Manchester and back on Friday. When the plan to go to the climbing place fell through, I decided to take the snowdrops anyway, taking the middle grandchild with me and leaving the tonsillitis king with his grandfather. As we drew near my friend's house we went past a huge, really huge, cemetery. My granddaughter commented, "I wouldn't like to live around her when the zombie apocalypse happens!" I was somewhat gob-smacked. The snowdrops were successfully delivered though, and all was well. We did, however, have two grandchildren to entertain. We also had a plan. 

More than twenty years ago we sneaked our daughter into the cinema to watch the film "Dances with Wolves". It was certified as 12+ and she was only eleven. She was quite a tall child though and we pretended she was already twelve so that we could all watch the film together as a family. And what an amazing film it was. Thundering buffalo (or should we call them bison?) heading for the edge of the big screen and having us all ducking before they hit us. Panoramic views of the American Indian camp. Splendid sunset skies. Kevin Costner dancing round a camp fire, doing his own American Indian ceremony with Two Socks the wolf and earning his Indian name: Dances with Wolves. 

Well, it just happened that we had recorded the film onto our digital biz some time ago. (I almost said "videoed" the film but the technology and terminology has moved on.) So we decided to give the two grandchildren their own version of their mother's experience. The older child is old enough to see it even in the cinema but the younger is not quite ten, so he would have had to be sneaked in too. 

This "old" film certainly bears re-watching. Both children appear to have appreciated the experience and were moved to laugh and almost to cry but certainly to think. So many films nowadays, especially films aimed at children, have a saccharine happy ending or promote a world view where everyone is "entitled" to behave in unacceptable ways and obtain whatever they ask for, or they lead children to believe that a zombie apocalypse could actually be a reality. 

What's more, we watched the film without popcorn or fizzy drinks! 

We feel it is our duty to introduce our grandchildren to a different world view!