The Adjustment Bureau

Jill and I just managed to watch the DVD of The Adjustment Bureau, which is an adaptation of a Philip K Dick short story, The Adjustment Squad. Actually getting the time to watch it was no mean feat in itself, as we have a ninety minute window between the boys all falling asleep and Aidan waking up wanting a milk top-up. We ended up watching in two sittings over consecutive nights, but it didn't ruin the effect.

It's a romantic SF thriller which revolves around free will. The two protagonists, a politician (Matt Damon) and a Dancer (Emily Blunt) seem to be made for each other, but a shadowy organisation called The Adjustment Bureau is trying to make sure they are kept apart because it will upset their plan. Although that should probably be Plan with a capital P.

It's a quiet, thoughtful movie with doses of the sinister and action and good chemistry between the leads. We enjoyed it and I will watch it again. Four out of Five.

Great Yorkshire Show

We had a lovely day out today at the Great Yorkshire Show on the outskirts of Harrogate. Nominally an agricultural show, it has long expanded to include a celebration of the best of everything from Yorkshire and beyond, and in doing so it has become the biggest such show in the UK. Along the way it avoided the fate of the Royal Show, which failed to adapt to the changing world and has since disappeared.

Of course, with a tractor-mad four year old, this was always going to be a good day provided we could manage his excitement and tiredness. Nathan had a brilliant day, visiting every stand that sold tractors and pretty much every tractor toy in the show. He went on the big show ground wheel ride which gave a view of the whole place, something he used to plan his visit to the tractors, identifying which ones he wanted to see first.

We visited some of the food stands, the Black Sheep Ale Tent and the ever entertaining Sheep Show (in reality Sheep Show III). It was a lovely family day.

Aidan seemed to be happy too, but he appears to have his first cold, the poor mite.

The journey home (usually takes ten minutes) took an hour, thanks to the traffic, but we didn't notice it in part because Jill was entertaining me with comments on a Facebook comment war that had broken out on one of her friend's walls. It was a classic case of someone arrogantly and stupidly making a sweeping statement on something that would affect maybe 90% of their audience, and then not knowing when to let it go and kill the thread.

All in all, a lovely day!

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I realise I haven’t posted for a while, but holiday and exams intervened. I’ll post some more as time permits to fill in the gaps.