As part of a post-Lent celebration (which also involved spending £3 on an *amazing* vintage-style tea tray in my favourite charity shop) I finally saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland on Saturday and I have to say, contrary to the views of almost everyone I’ve spoken to, that I absolutely loved it.  It was a complete feast for the eyes – the setting, the costumes (drool, drool and more drool) and the make-up were all totally incredible and the acting wasn’t half bad either.  I particularly enjoyed Helena Bonham Carter who portrayed a hilarious yet simultaneously pretty darn scary Red Queen.

What disappointed me about the evening had nothing to do with the film itself, but with the price of the cinema experience (there’s a surprise).  The movie has been out for a while now, which meant that my boyfriend and I had to clench our teeth, tighten our fists and grudgingly enter the hallowed halls of one of Edinburgh’s big multiplex cinemas to see it.  In terms of costs I was by no means expecting miracles but it nevertheless came as quite a shock to be hit with a single ticket price of £10.60.  I mean, seriously, just where do they get off!?  Ponder, if you will, the sheer pulse of human traffic throbbing across the threshold of these places up and down the country on a typical Saturday evening.  If each person pays, as we did, around £10, the profits accruing to those at the top of the picture house tree completely escape my imagination.  Even the thought makes my blood boil, especially when there are so many small, independent cinemas visibly struggling to get by at the moment (if you are ever in the Edinburgh vicinity do please visit the Dominion cinema in Morningside – leather couches, reclining seats and a jolly barman with a *bow tie*, all on the cheap).  I would without question have gone to one of these over the big branch, but sadly it wasn’t an option on Saturday.  I instead paid the snotty, poloshirt-clad cashier with gritted teeth and spent most of the trailer time inwardly huffing about how ridiculous an expense the cinema has become.

It’s true when you think about it.  When I was a student, the cinema was a cheap and cheerful alternative to a night out at the weekends.  The cost of a ticket was roughly the same as that of two drinks, and if you didn’t buy any snacks the whole evening would set you back less than a fiver.  With the incessant hiking in prices, however, it’s probably a lot cheaper nowadays to get ingloriously drunk than it is to see a new film (something about typing that sentence just made me feel queasy).  What a great message to send to young people – ‘oh don’t worry about expanding your horizons kids, better to buy some cheap cider and get off your faces instead’.  It’s my guess that the cinema is just a no-go zone for many people these days, and I wince at the thought of how much it costs for a family of four or five.  After my experience on Saturday I can’t say that I’m overly enthusiastic about the idea of rushing back there this weekend myself.  It’s so painfully disappointing to witness what was once a completely affordable means of entertainment become so inaccessible that I almost can’t watch anymore.  I’m just glad that this time I enjoyed the film – paying £10.60 for two hours of dark room boredom would have left a particularly sour taste in my mouth.

Image above courtesy of Flickr – Wahlander.

Lent Lesson 2: Need versus want

I’m actually really thankful that I’m into the last week of Lent.  I don’t think I have a single pair of black tights left that don’t have at least three holes in (I think they waited until Lent began before they started sprouting ladders all over the place), the black pumps I wear in the office everyday are threadbare and falling apart and the wicker bag I carry with me everywhere has bust a strap, thus rendering it useless.  Oh despair!

For the sake of the challenge, however, I’ve managed to get by.  I’ve been wearing trousers to work slightly more than usual, I’ve dug out a replacement bag (free with a magazine several eons ago) and I’ve walked around the office in my stocking soles thus avoiding having to wear the shoes of eternal scruffdom (I prefer the tattered Cinders look anyway).  Sounds a bit drastic I know but I just plain refuse to break Lent after having come so far.  As of Saturday, however, I will no longer be able to churn out the old ‘but it’s Lent and I’m not buying anything’ excuse.  I must accept my fate blog readers – I’m going to to make a trip to the shops.

Lent has got me thinking about the idea of needing things.  What do we actually need in life, and what is simply a case of want?  It occurs to me that the lines between these two ideas have become, for many of us, extremely blurred.  When money flows, life becomes more than a case of simply surviving from day to day and our evaluations of what we consider really necessary change dramatically.  No longer is it a case of food, warmth and shelter, but shoes for every fathomable occasion, bed linen for every conceivable type of guest and a different serving dish for every type of cuisine to come from the kitchen.  How often have you heard someone justify buying something frivolous on the basis that they ‘really need it‘?  All the time, right?  I’ve done it myself.  Many shoppers are plagued with the notion that it’s OK to spend a fortune on something as long as they can somehow say they needed it.

This bugs me.  Why do we do it?  I think the answer is pretty simple.  Deep down, we know it’s unnecessary, we know it’s over-indulgent and we know the money should really be going towards something better.  ‘I really need it‘ is an age-old excuse, and it’s churned out on high streets up and down the land every Saturday afternoon without fail.  Of course it’s true that sometimes our lives would be considerably easier if we had certain things, and it’s for this reason that I’m going to buy new tights and a bag this weekend, but that’s not the same as really needing, is it?

Lent has reminded me not to misuse the word ‘need’.  It has reaffirmed to me the idea that I don’t actually require very much in life that money can buy me.  I have somewhere to sleep, food on my plate and more clothes than I could shake a reasonably-sized stick at.  My other basic needs are the things that can’t be bought (well, not in the mainstream, non-creepy sense anyway): friendship, love, time and peace.  I’m going to try my best to remember that when I start buying again.  When so many people in the world have so little and really do know the difference between need and want, I think it’s more than just slightly shameful that so many of us have yet to grasp the big picture.

Image above from Flickr – incurable hippie.

Check out this recipe for leek and smoked cheddar tart (found via the Guardian website).  Doesn’t it look amazing, and utterly perfect for Spring?  I’m sorely tempted to scrap tonight’s dinner in favour of trying this out – cheese, leeks and pastry…what a combination.  I think I’ll resist, however, until next week – I’ve got big plans (and most of the ingredients) for carrot and coriander soup and another cheese-laden pizza tonight.  I also don’t think I have the right kind of baking tin to attempt something like this with any recognisable degree of success.  So it’s with a heavy heart that I have to say beautiful tart, you do look delicious, but sadly you will just have to wait.

Anyway, it’s a pretty dismal Thursday here in Edinburgh – it’s raining, but it’s that kind of wishy-washy drizzle that I always find difficult to deal with.  Give me big, fat, voluptuous drops over this anyday!  It’s one of life’s little conundrums – on the one hand you feel like a berk holding an umbrella because the rain is so light but on the other, if you are umbrella-less you somehow still end up completely drenched.  Nothing is ever simple is it?!

Nevertheless, contrary to most other rainy days I’m actually quite open to this one.  I’ve been teetering on the brink of finishing my current book (The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver – reviews here) for a few days now and this type of weather provides the perfect opportunity for going home after work, indulging in some hearty comfort foods and several cups of tea and settling down to nothing but a few hours of uninterrupted page-flicking.  I’ve been reading constantly for the past few months but nothing has really captured me in the can’t-put-this-down sense for a while (with, perhaps, the exception of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi).  Although it took me a while to get into The Poisonwood Bible it has turned out to be a remarkable and beautifully-written story about postcolonial Africa, the Belgian Congo and the devastating destruction of an entire family.  Sad, but incredibly poignant nonetheless.  I’ve no idea how it will end (perhaps I will tell you tomorrow) but I’d highly recommend a read to anyone wishing to learn a little about Africa’s complex but intriguing history.

Also, as the conclusion of Lent appears on the horizon I’ve thought of a couple of things I’d like to get my hands on once I’m free to spend again.  All non-frivolous purchases, of course!  First off, I’m going to invest in a three-tier steamer for cooking vegetables and potatoes and almost anything else.  I don’t know why this idea hasn’t occurred to me before but I have used a friend’s steamer several times now and I have to say that they are totally genius inventions.  They save bucketloads of energy (think one hob instead of three) and they are also a much gentler way to cook.  I’m sure I read somewhere  that steaming allows vegetables to retain more of their nutrients than boiling does.  If you’re going to be good enough to eat the darn things in the first place you might as well get the full benefit of them!

Second and third on my wish list are a proper pizza tray and a roller-type cutting device which will both, hopefully, help to further my currently infantile pizza-making expertise.  I can’t seem to achieve all-out crispiness of the base at the moment, which I’m putting down to the trays I’ve been using having no holes in the bottom and I’m also having some difficulty hacking the things up with a bread knife which I think a proper cutter might solve.  No longer will I be serving half-mangled doughy slabs but perfectly crispy, even triangles which you might be forgiven for thinking came straight from Italia herself.  Here’s hoping anyway.

Roll on Good Friday!

PS: As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about breakfast, this morning I had a raisin, apple and cinnamon bagel with lots of cream cheese and a glass of pineapple juice.  Different and interesting!  I’ve decided to canvass Lidl on my way home later for interesting cereals and some Deutsch-themed pizza toppings!

Image above courtesy of Flickr – tworm.

OK so I’ve finally found something that Lent is preventing me from doing that I really want to…I am literally *dying* to see Tim Burton’s latest offering of ‘Alice in Wonderland‘ at the cinema.  I haven’t found giving up the cinema difficult so far, even though I really enjoy it.  Usually I’d happily wait to rent the DVD in a couple of months’ time (or, ahem, download it on the, er, downlow a bit sooner than that) but some films are just made for the cinema and the trailers I’ve seen for Alice thus far tell me that this is going to be one of them.  There’s also the added bonus of the 3D novelty at the cinema which in my experience enhances animated films like this tenfold.

It occurred to me when thinking about this that what I’m really hankering after is an experience, rather than a material ‘thing’.  As I’ve said before, I haven’t found it difficult to relinquish buying ‘things’ at all -- the charity shops have posed nothing like the problem I thought they were going to.  The only thing I feel I’m really missing out on is an experience -- the cinema -- which in a way is rather nice.  It shows that I place a higher value on enjoyable experiences than I do on material goods (or something like that).  This line of thought links in well with an article I was alerted to the other day about happiness.  Well worth a read if, like me, you find this kind of thing fascinating!

The article (which comes courtesy of sciencedaily.com) basically addresses the idea that spending our money on enjoyable experiences as opposed to material possessions is more likely to bring us lasting happiness.  To me, this makes perfect sense.  If I think back over my 23(.5) years, most of my fondest memories are of experiences I’ve shared with family, friends, boyfriends, colleagues etc.  I don’t recall a single occasion where getting my mitts on ‘a thing’ has brought me anywhere close to the heights of happiness that a shared experience with another person has, whether that time is spent watching a good film, enjoying a beautiful sunset (isn’t the one above incredible?) or laughing over a few cups of tea and a mountain of biscuits.  Moments like these make a life and, in my opinion at least, the person who thinks that buying a new dress, or a camera, or a car comes anywhere close to that dizzying feeling of joy that other people are so capable of providing us with is so unutterably misguided I can’t even describe it!

Phew, it’s good to rant…

All in all, I’m quite upset to be missing out on Alice in Wonderland but at the same time it feels good to have uncovered something about myself which I’ve always suspected was there anyway, but have never really put to the test.  It’s also really quite nice to have found at least one thing marginally difficult to sacrifice during these six weeks of Lent.  Here’s hoping the film is still around in the cinema come Easter!  I’ll just have to drool over the trailer in the meantime…

I’m not sure if it was the challenge, or just me.  But almost every fast food place or take-away I passed on the way home to Edinburgh last night seemed to speak to me in that semi-hypnotic way they used to do at 3am on a Sunday morning when I would be suffering from a severe case of the post-tipple munchies.

I’m not a huge one for take-away generally (intoxicated kebab-guzzling aside), so I was quite surprised by this sudden urge I had to dive into the nearest greasy Chinese and order up everything on the menu.  In a manner of speaking I was actually quite delighted by it, and took this wanting of what I can’t have as a sure sign that Lent is going to be challenging at times.  Which is good.  What would be the point otherwise?  With the first two days sailing by without a beckoning cloud of temptation in sight I was beginning to think that I hadn’t set myself enough of a task.  I was actually mentally re-considering the lists I had made with a view to placing further restriction on what I might and might not buy.  So in a way it was quite reassuring to find myself craving take-away, strange as that might sound.  Instead of indulging, however, I quenched my thirst for carbs and calories with shop-bought pepperoni pizza, some garlic bread and a healthy dose of salad, which did the job nicely.

I also felt a bit of a pull towards the cinema yesterday.  I’m not a movie buff by any means, but films are one of my classic Friday night activities, and as luck (or rather misfortune) would have it there seems to be a fair amount of interesting-looking stuff around at the moment.  As with take-away food, however, cinema is a definite no-no, so instead we rummaged around for one of our own films we haven’t yet watched, dug out a blanket and snuggled down on the couch with a bowl of microwaveable popcorn, a couple of beers and the heating turned up – nothing short of completely delightful.  The added bonus to this, the most properly authentic of home-cinema experiences, was not having to face the cold for the walk home afterwards.  You can’t put a price on that really!

And so to Day 4.  The sun is out in full force here in Edinburgh today, and although I’ve not yet stepped outside I can already tell that it’s bitterly cold and winter-like.  I’m planning on my favourite kind of Saturday – quiet and relaxed with coffee (from an independent retailer of course!), books and some nice food.  Laurence (who is also in the throes of the Lent challenge) and I are also going to climb Blackford Hill later on this afternoon to make the most of the beautiful weather.

Happy Saturday everyone!

Image above courtesy of Flickr: Vanessa Pike-Russell. [...]