Movie outing

It's lovely to have Rachel and Jasmine here. The aroma of pancakes cooking for a late breakfast treat fills the house in the morning. Then the girls went to the swimming pool, and after an early lunch, I went into town and booked tickets for an early evening showing of the 'Minions' film, at Cineworld.

Today is when the bus station closures hit the working week. I wondered how the traffic was going to be managed, and chatted with the driver on my way into town. There are new drop off bus stops and bus lanes in Westgate Street, and now certain buses destined to return from the opposite side of Westgate Street must go left into Lower St Mary Street, and do their turn around in Callaghan Square and then make their way back, as there's no longer entry into the bus station. It seems to be working well. It needs to, as it'll be a couple of years before the new bus station is ready for use.

 

Then, I went to the office to complete the task of making Ashley's new PC fit for work. It wasn't as easy as I'd hoped to set up the email client to access a BT account, so it's a matter of continuing to use webmail for the time being. Gmail set up with Windows 10 Mail was easy, but I was was amused to receive a security notification from Google, declaring the account had been accessed from Internet Explorer, not from Windows 10 Mail So much for the all-new operating system that does away with I.E.!

At six, the four of us met outside the cinema and ascended to the dizzy heights of the top storey, with its fabulous townscape views, to plunge ourselves into the deafening darkness of the movie studio for 'Minions'. The hi-fi surround sound was too loud for comfort throughout and detracted from the enjoyment. I like to listen and not be bombarded acoustically. I lost count of the movie trailers we saw first, five or six I think. All the advertisements were the same as those we get  pestered with a dozen times a night on TV, in huge HD versions. Boring. They soon cease to be entertaining or informing.

The film's certification said it was fit for children (true) but contained mild comedic (?) violence. Well, like all cartoon movies since the genre was invented I guess, but so much gets tiresome. The film was hilariously funny, a 'prequel' the cartoon movie 'Despicable Me', whose sequel we watched last night. To my mind was better at satirizing American culture than its was at satirizing Britain, the monarchy and the church. It's not something I would have gone out of my way to watch, if it hadn't been an occasion for a family outing. But then the same is true of most things that pass for 'entertainment' today.