End of term

Stale cornflakes really are not pleasant. But once you’ve put milk on them there’s not much you can do but go ahead and carry on eating. There’s a lot of strange stuff you have to eat when it’s the end of term and you don’t like wasting food. Today’s menu: Four crumpets, baked beans, 2 yoghurts, a third of a jar of pesto, 3 oranges, half a pint of milk. Yum yum yum. And then there’s the sorting of the notes into folders from their scattered places around my room and dotted between various notebooks, the finding the right library books and battles with the librarians to take them out a few days early, the washing of clothes, the trying to fit everything into one suitcase. Fun times. And then off on a train at 12.12, pulling into Stockport at 16.25 for family, funerals and friends who I havn’t seen in 18months or more. And then back to Glasgow to sleep.

Wonderland

Here's a thought . . . isn’t it strange how movies that you watch as a kid can completely change their meaning when you see them again as an adult? Take Alice in Wonderland, the Disney version. I think I always found it a little creepy, but now . . . it’s like some hallucinogenic daydream. One which you can’t get out of. I mean, I love it, but it is so weird. But a lot of the Disney classics are, I don’t think they’re allowed to show Pinnochio in full now because of the kids who smoke cigars and drink beer before they turn into donkeys. In Snow White there’s that terrifying Queen, in Bambi the mother gets shot, The Rescuers is about child abduction and exploitation, in Sleeping Beauty she loses everyone. Does this just wash over us when we are little? They certainly don’t make them like they used to. It’s a shame. I always liked the children’s stories that were dark, scary and a little bit depressing. But I was a weird kid. The most gothicly off-beat kids film that I’ve seen in recent years is ‘Monster House’, and that wasn’t exactly mainstream. Bring back the gloom Disney. You can have the happy ending, but give me a good dose of nightmares first.

And yes, Pogo’s ‘Alice’ remix has been pulsing through my head all day, which might be where this sudden Disney nostalgia comes from . . .