Sweets for my sweet...

Mrs S and I have been desperate to go and see that new film about the Channel Islands and the King Edwards, and on Wednesday night, we finally made it.

Now Mrs S and I have very busy jobs, and both of us are loathe to still be up after 10.00 on a school night, so it took some coercion from both sides to go and see the film.  For a start we had to go further afield because the two more local cinemas had given up on this piece of whimsical romance, replacing it with films with odd looking superheroes who've never got their heads around how pants work.  I was surprised it wasn't still on at Henley though if I'm honest.  This is the sort of film which could run for years down there, along with Churchill and Their Finest (in fact, I think that The Dambusters can still be seen on a Thursday afternoon) but it looked like even they had bowed to pressure from the younger residents of the town.

I promised Mrs S that I would have her home by 10.30, so with tickets booked online, we drove over to Oxford on Wednesday evening.

'I fancy a few pick 'n' mix tonight', I said.  Mrs S agreed that this was a good idea, so we stood at the stacked drawers of the different sweets, and I picked up one of the cardboard containers they give you.  We had agreed to share our sweetie stash, which isn't as scary as it sounds as we have very different likes and dislikes where the sugary stuff is concerned.

'What do you want then?'  I asked Mrs S, tub and shovel poised.

'I'll have one strawberry bon-bon'.

'One?' I asked.

'Yes, and a pear drop'.

Popping the bon-bon into the empty bag, I reached into the box for a pear drop.  'Not red.  I like the yellow ones'.

Amazing that after all these years, your best friend can still surprise you...

She eventually warmed up though, and shovel after shovel of tooth rotting, artificially coloured crap went into our tub.

'One more thing', I said, putting the shovel back in its holder.  'I want a jelly snake for the husband'.  'Sounds like a fair swap', quipped Mrs S as I manhandled a foot long snake into the already full tub.

We then had to wait for fifteen minutes while the lad behind the till made our coffees.  We decided that he'd probably been to the Mrs Overall School of Table Waiting as he was that slow, and at one point, I was doubled over banging my head on the counter as he puffed and wheezed backwards and forwards.

We just made it before the adverts started.  Those would be the twelve minutes of adverts, preceding the ten minutes of trailers, which came before the three minutes of 'We've got Dolby' showing off which finally heralded the start of the film.

Ten minutes in, I reached across to the tub of sweets.  'I'm putting the snake in my handbag', I whispered.

'You don't have to worry,' whispered Mrs S, 'I won't eat it'.

I wasn't worried about that, but the bloody thing was blocking access to my chocolate raisins, pink mice and one yellow pear drop.

The whole tub lasted another seventeen minutes...