Random Police and Shrek Rants

Police. Sometimes I question their powers of deduction. I was reading an article in the Oxford News today, and it was about the discovery of a decapitated man in the grounds of a golf course. When the Investigating Officer was interviewed, he confirmed that the victim was dead, and said that they were treating the death as suspicious.

WTF? Of course the bloody victim was dead. He had no head! .... unless in my ignorance there are people out there who have actually recovered from that particular injury? And of course his death is suspicious!....well, unless he had the worst golf swing known to man........ 

Anyway, that story had nothing to do with today's post. It was just something I read whilst I was in the supermarket exchanging a faulty tube of superglue that had led to me accidentally sticking myself to a child's teapot earlier in the week.

Back to the matter in hand. After Izzy's school holiday jaunts, she was back in Oxford and I was excited about having her for four straight days before she set off on another holiday. I had made sure that all my house chores were done so that we could concentrate on having fun. Yeh, you got it ........ I'm the bloody double of Mary Poppins I am.

I had it all planned. We were going to be doing loads of 'outdoors stuff' because I am a Victorian parent in that I believe that television is evil and if a child watches it too much, when they get older they will do horrible things involving fireworks and animals. The television rule doesn't apply to me, obviously. I don't know what I would do without my daily dose of 'Big Brother'.

So along came Day 1 of our funfest. I opened the curtains and to my chagrin, it was raining. Damn! Actually, it wasn't just raining, it was totally pissing it down. As I peered through a hole in the condensation on the window, I could see Naughty George in the garden having a wee whilst the rain bounced off his head. 

It became instantly apparent that my strict outdoors regime had been washed out, and that I needed to come up with a contingency, and quickly.

I jumped onto my computer and typed; "what the bloody hell can I do with a five year old if it's raining outside?" Amazingly, Google came back with an answer, but I didn't like it; "Shrek Forever After at Witney Cineworld."

Ugh the cinema. I hate the cinema. But Izzy had already seen the picture of Shrek on my screen and had started jumping up and down and nearly spewing with excitement; "Can we go and see that mummy? Purlleeeeaase?"

I sighed....... and reluctantly agreed. Jeez, I'm a total pushover.

 Pic.No.1. The Shrek trailer.... woe is me...............

Two hours later, we arrived at Witney's Cineworld, and it wasn't long before all the things that I abhor about cinemas were pushed into my face. Firstly, there was the queue for tickets. For some bizarre reason, they were only selling tickets at the food counter (seems to be a new trend), so we had to stand in line for TWENTY minutes, watching people buy hot-dogs and popcorn, when all we wanted were the bloody tickets.

Then I had to actually pay for the tickets, and it cost £17.00 ($26.00 USD) .... oh yeh. For that price I could have bought the Shrek DVD and a DVD player to play it on.

So there I was, grumbling and swearing and cursing about the crap customer service at cinemas, but even I have to admit (begrudingly); Izzy abso-bloody-lutely loved it. It was all 3D, so things kept coming out of the screen making her laugh her head off. And I suppose that the film's storyline was moderately entertaining.

But! And I say, BUT! Surely cinemas cannot survive in the long term with their current levels of customer service and price structure? Is it me?