Screening 1st Nanny Mcphee for bloggers this Friday (plus entertainment)

I had the following email and thought I'd pass it on:

The details of the event are below, any bloggers can RSVP to me at stella@thinkjam.com as we have a special reservation for bloggers – anyone else can reserve seats at events@foyles.co.uk.


To celebrate the release of Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang, in cinemas on 26th March, we’ve teamed up with Foyles to organise a fun filled afternoon for all the family at their London Charing Cross Store this Friday - day of release! To put you in the mood for the return of everyone’s favourite magical nanny, we’ll be screening the first Nanny McPhee film in The Gallery at Foyles Charing Cross on March 26th from 4pm with refreshments and entertainment for parents and kids alike!

If you would like to reserve a place for you and your family at this event please email events@foyles.co.uk to reserve your seats.

In Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Oscar®-winning actress and screenwriter Emma Thompson returns to the role of the magical nanny who appears when she’s needed the most and wanted the least in the next chapter of the hilarious and heartwarming fable that has enchanted children around the world.

In the latest installment, Nanny McPhee appears at the door of a harried young mother, Mrs. Isabel Green (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is trying to run the family farm while her husband is away at war. But once she’s arrived, Nanny McPhee discovers that Mrs. Green’s children are fighting a war of their own against two spoiled city cousins who have just moved in and refuse to leave.

Relying on everything from a flying motorcycle and a statue that comes to life to a tree-climbing piglet and a baby elephant who turns up in the oddest places, Nanny McPhee uses her magic to teach her mischievous charges five new lessons.

For more information on Nanny McPhee And The Big Bang please go to official website: www.nannymcphee.co.uk

Nanny McPhee

We took the children to a preview of Nanny McPhee And The Big |Bang and they loved it. I really admire Emma Thompson who stars at the wart-strewn nanny, and wrote the script. It was as English as a film could be, and sunny and set during the 2nd World War, when children took pleasure in picnics with ginger beer, and watching pigs fly (there is an amazing scene in the movie when pigs fly and dance and swim). It made me nostalgic for that era, when children didn’t have the need for computers and Wii’s and top end gadgets. I know I could choose not to let my son play on things like this, but he would be a freak amongst his peers so we give him limited periods of time when he can. He’s nearly nine and it is quite depressing, but at least he really enjoyed the film, more than Alice in Wonderland but less than Avatar. It was strange seeing Maggie Gyllenhaal as the harassed but rather beautiful mother in a gloriously innocent children’s movie, as the last time I saw her, she was playing a secretary who was having a sadomasochistic sexual relationship with her boss. He whipped her on the bum as she leant over his desk and that was the least of it.

I have started writing a column in the Times called Marriage, which let’s face it is based on my own with a few little twists and turns. It comes out on a Tuesday in the Body and Soul section. My husband is very cool about it, as I passed it with him several times and of course its exaggerated and things are taken out of context and manipulated but still its quite strange writing candidly about our life. I felt the need to do it after talking over the years to my girlfriends who are either married or in long term relationships and are comforted to know that not everyone has a perfect relationship. I used to write a single girls column and it was entirely fictional, the girl was maddening, mad, wild and weird, but people still used to think it was me!

Wedding Belle

My five year old daughter Belle got married about two weeks ago, to a little boy called Adam who lives round the corner and is also in her class at school. She told me proudly that they had snogged!!!!! Well first she said they had kissed, then she said, "and you know, what's that word? Snogged? We snogged." I was quite shocked, as you can imagine and asked her what snogged meant, hoping,praying, that she didn't think it meant a full on kiss with tongues. Luckily she told me it meant kissing on the lips.

A few days later she said they had an argument and she no longer wanted to go for a sleepover. I was slightly relieved, as was worried what they may get up to in the same bedroom. Yesterday she said they weren't friends any more. This morning, my husband walked to school with his mother and he said they prowled around each other, Adam, asking Belle to chase her etc. and then getting cross when she did. His mother said that at breakfast Adam said, "I don't want to set eyes on Belle again," his 7 year old brother retorted, "that's cos your marriage broke up!" Hilarious.

This is a link to my second column in the Times. Its about the real stark dark, funny, up and down reality of being married!

Marriage column in the Times

My first column on marriage started in the Times last Tuesday. It's a lighthearted look at the difficulties of living with someone day in and day out. I know from talking to girlfriends that not everyone has the perfect sex life or the most amazing marriage all the time, and who would want to read about that anyway? Surely that would be boring and slightly smug.

So far the only two comments underneath the article have not been positive. Clearly though these people want to read about a loving, perfect marriage but I just don't think that's a true look at the reality of a long term partnership. They say that it is a depressing look at marriage, but its meant to be funny and sad and true. I think the last line shows that they still love each other. If anyone manages to read it I'd love to know. There will be more on Tuesdays.

Heating and Haiti

We have been living without heating for eight long days. This happened after a series of errors on the part of our boiler insurance company. On day five my husband telephoned the CEO of the company. We didn’t actually get to talk to him, but we left a very severe message with his PA. My father always told me that if you have a problem, go straight to the top and yes he’s right. Afer the call, things started to move. But we still had eight days huddled together in the sitting room, where we ate, played, argued and cooked. My husband even slept on the sofa, as my daughter had to bed down with me because her room has an outside wall and was literally freezing. The cold began to get to me: my husband and I argued, the children went stir crazy in the one room. The sitting room was relatively cosy, if we kept the the heater and the oven on, (our kitchen and sitting room merge into one) but the corridors and bathroom were freezing, like being suddenly thrust into Antartica. But at least we had a roof over our head.

After I read the following account of what it is like to be Haiti, right now, I was ashamed to complain about my heating. This message was posted on facebook by a friend of a friend: “My 
four sisters, brother, and father are down there; (Haiti) they have lost their 
home and are now sleeping and wondering on the streets with a bunch of 
dead bodies, rapists, and many more. My sister had a 3 storey building fall on her, and was trapped for 18 hours. She 
now has a really bad infection in one of her legs. She told me that she is at the airport asking the air-force people to 
help her, but they told her that they are helping Americans first, so 
they refuse to help her. Having an infection is really bad, it could 
even kill her. I hope she finds 
some antibiotics or sees a doctor right away. It
’s really hard to see all that happening and not being able to do
 anything.”

My children’s primary school are holding two fundraising events today and tomorrow, for Haiti. I wish I could do more.

Tis the Season to Be Festive

I have been very busy being festive: Buying presents, hanging a wreath, and also making my own paper chains with the children which for one wonderful moment made me feel like a woman who knits her own socks and bakes her own bread. I have also spent a good deal of time searching desperately for costumes for various nativity plays and end of term drama productions. My son was bad santa and insisted on a black santa costume. I was just about to slog off for the dye, when somebody mentioned Poundland and yes, unbelievably they sold black santa hats! My daughter was a dancing cat yesterday, but on Friday at the after school drama production, she will be a duck. I haven’t got any further than buying a big yellow squashy envelope and deciding that she can wear her brown sleeveless shaggy jacket from I Love Gorgeous, because it kind of looks like duck feathers. If I was someone who baked bread, I would know how to make the yellow envelope into a beak, but I don’t bake and have no idea what to do next. For one awful moment in the middle of the night, I wasn’t even sure that ducks do have yellow beaks.

I’ve been buying presents here, there and everywhere, starting in November at the Victoria and Albert shop and finishing last night, when a lovely girl called Clara delivered some beautiful hand made bath bombs, made from natural ingredients. ref="www.beauty-by-hand.com/">://www.beauty-by-hand.com/ and presented in a stylish brown box with a silver ribbon. I’ve spent so much money that I now have the definite feeling that I couldn’t possibly buy anything for myself. For a long long time I’ve wanted a new vacuum cleaner. Mine is old and smelly and cumbersome and I somehow dread it. My husband would definitely have said keep it, so I planned to get a new one secretly.

The new one arrived in a box and I was confused because it was so light. It’s a thing of great beauty, like a piece of sculpture, and it makes my old Henry seem quite archaic. It has a battery that you charge up and then it races around, bagless and beautiful. Even my disgruntled cleaner agreed that it was divine. I feel like I’m living in 2025. ://www.vax.co.uk/shop/product/upright-vacuum-cleaners/life/LiFE-Cordless-Upright-U91-LF-B"

One Minute to Save the World

Apparently since 2000, the recycling rate in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham has shot up from %8 to %25. And if you are the kind of person who doesn’t particularly care about recycling you maybe interested to know that H and F council spends an incredible £4m each year sending waste to landfill and landfill rates have doubled in the last two years. If the council were able to recycle twice as much as they already do, it would save 2m a year in landfill charges and mean lower council tax charges for us. It makes me angry that people can’t be bothered to put a can or some newspapers or a glass or bottles in the orange bags. It’s so easy.

On Sunday I was one of four or five member of Wecan . who watched about 50 shortlisted, one minute long films that had been entered for our film competition, One Minutcome to Save the World. The 50 had already been whittled down from 200 entries that have been entered from filmmakers all over the world. There were films from amateurs, professionals, companies and under eighteens. One of my favourites shows a little boy playing with a paper boat, flying it in the air as the earth has dried up and is barren and parched. We then see him dragging it along by a string. It is really poignant. We chose 27 which will now go to our panel of judges including Franny Armstrong, director of Age of Stupid and Bruce Parry. Some of them are brilliant, some charming and some very sad, but they all make an important impact. You can view at http://www.1minutetosavetheworld.com/ The winning entries will be shown at the United Nations Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December.