Disney and Beyond

Veterans of Disney classic features, our kids now know all the DVDs we’ve got off by heart and are looking for something new in the movie stakes.

They loved Racing Stripes, which led them on to race horse movie, Dreamer and then on to Seabiscuit, which we thought might be too adult for them, with all the background of the Great Depression and family tragedies. But that ended up being their favourite of the three. They enjoyed the grittiness of it and the triumph over adversity.

My husband is a great one for recounting the stories of movies at the supper table. He was telling them about You’ve Got Mail the other day and they asked if they could watch it. We both love chick flicks and romance with a sense of humour and that and Sleepless in Seattle are our Saturday night fall backs. A quick review in our heads established that there wasn’t anything too steamy for young eyes and we let them watch it over a two night period. They loved it and I was greatly relieved not to be asked to explain what cybersex is. They are now booking Sleepless in Seattle in for the weekend.

Now we should probably worry about the dangers of indoctrinating an eleven year old boy with chick flicks before he’s had a chance to defend himself with the likes of Terminator. However he’s found his own boy thing to balance it out. Throughout the holidays they all three got up and watched Top Gear before breakfast.

I don’t know what it is about Jeremy Clarkson and the team, but they manage to make car programmes worth watching even if you couldn’t care less about horsepower and gaskets. The girls were just as engrossed.

Coming back from school yesterday, our son mentioned that he’d love to get a Ferrari XXX (my shorthand, I can't remember the letters and numbers actually involved) the latest top of the range model, which is apparently really cool. He told me the price in pounds and we converted it to rand. “OK” I said, “if we sell the farm with all our houses, we could just pay for one. Do you think we’d get nine people and eight dogs into the Ferrari?”

So he’s going to be a sports car driving, chick flick watcher. Should be a devastating combination!