Big Days

I've known my girlfriend for a little over three years now, we've been dating for about two and living together for just over one... And her folks had been asking about meeting my folks for quite a while. We finally got it all organised a couple of months ago, and it actually happened the weekend before last.

The build-up had been quite stressful for me, for no real reason... I mean, my folks tend to be fairly laconic, while my girlfriend's folks are extremely talkative. Both fathers have a tendency toward being stubborn and opinionated. Both also have military backgrounds, in traditionally rival outfits (my father spent some time in the TA, her father was in the RAF) so I imagined all kinds of potential sparks-flying situations. I also had a nagging little voice in the back of my head wondering why they should all meet up, but I tried to put that down to my preference for the life of a hermit.

Perhaps it is an important step in a relationship... and I'm sure it'd be weird if a couple's parents' first meeting occurred, for example, at the couple's wedding... but why now? And why did it keep coming up just about every time my girlfriend spoke to her parents..? Couldn't we, y'know, leave it a little bit longer?

Still, it happened... My parents took a weekend trip to Lincoln (though my girlfriend's parents had offered to put them up, that seemed to me to be taking it all a little bit too far), and a table was booked at a restaurant we'd visited over the Christmas/New Year break (that little voice in the back of my head kept telling me that was a terrible idea, since the restaurant is out in the sticks, and needed everyone to be driven over... it felt that, for the safety of all involved, it would have been better to get together in a place we could walk away from, if necessary). The precise timings were only pinned down on the day, via text messaging, but we met up with my folks at their hotel, in town, and they got into my girlfriend's parents' car while she and I rode along with her sister.

Dinner was actually perfectly friendly and, while there were a couple of RAF jokes at the expense of paratroopers, my father actually saw the logic of the argument (possibly not even seeing it as a joke) rather than being upset by the sentiments expressed.

Histories were exchanged between both sets of parents, but my folks tended to simply answer questions, offering little in the way of elaboration. The didn't give the impression that they felt interrogated, just the usual sense that they don't really 'do' chat... Even so, it went quite well... as far as I can tell. Now I think about it, I don't think I've spoken to my folks about it since we got back... Hum.

The strangest part of the evening was when my girlfriend's mother, peering intently at my parents and at me, wondered aloud who I most resembled, and my girlfriend and her sister simultaneously named different parents. My girlfriend thinks I look more like my mother (I have her nose, certainly... and her teeth... but I've actually been mistaken for my father (at a distance) on occasions when I've word a beard), while her sister had apparently said that my father and I move the same way. That's actually something I've noticed myself, on occasion - the way we walk is scarily similar, and some of our facial expressions and quirks are basically identical.

My folks, unsurprisingly, did not engage in a similar examination of my girlfriend and her parents... but I have to say I normally struggle to see any resemblance in her to either of them. When she got her hair cut most recently, there was a moment when I thought she almost looked like her mother... but, for the most part, all they seem to share is an approximate shape and a certain chubbiness of their cheeks when they smile.

So I guess that's another milestone passed...

There was another momentous occasion this last weekend, after my girlfriend snagged a couple of tickets to a live revival of one of her favourite TV shows, 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' (she proudly says that she's seen every episode of the US version, and quite a lot of the UK version). To celebrate, we had planned to go into town a little bit early, visit Forbidden Planet (where we first met after corresponding for about a year... but also just a really cool shop for geeks like us), grab some dinner in Pizza Express (to make use of a voucher she received) and the pop along to the Adelphi Theatre for the show.

Just for the sake of spontaneity, there was a late-ish addition to the day's scheduled activities, in that a new Sherlock Holmes movie - titled simply 'Mr. Holmes', but based on the novel 'A Slight Trick of the Mind', by Mitch Cullin - has been released recently, but was already being phased out of the big cinema chains to make way for Terminator Genisys. We ended up booking seats at the Picturehouse cinema near Piccadilly Circus - a completely beautiful venue, as it turns out, with very nice seats.

The film was brilliant and, while it had some quite affecting moments, it didn't quite manage the emotional impact of a Mitchell & Webb sketch with the same basic idea (seek it out on YouTube - it's the 'Old Holmes' one, not the other one about two bickering actors - and I defy you to keep a dry eye to the end). Still, Ian McKellen played the part brilliantly, the three storylines intertwined quite pleasingly and, if Laura Linney's variable accent was the only problem with the movie, it didn't cast too dark a shadow over the proceedings. I may have to look up the book, as I'd liked to have had more insight into Holmes impressions of the devastation of Hiroshima, since that was touched on only briefly in the movie. I also quite liked the conceit of casting Nicholas Rowe as the cinematic version of Sherlock Holmes in a movie about Holmes' twilight years, considering one of his biggest roles was as the titular character in the 1985 movie 'Young Sherlock Holmes'.

Forbidden Planet yet again received some of my hard-earned money, though I was slightly weirded out when a foreign tourist urged me to look up an old TransFormers TV series (Cybertron, aka Galaxy Force) when I grabbed the last Generations/Thrilling 30 Sky Byte on the shelves. I'm never quite sure what to say in these circumstances because, as a fan of TransFormers for 30 years, I'm well aware of Cybertron - and have even seen a few episodes - but it didn't seem polite to say so... I also picked up the talking plushie K-9 I'd intended to get my girlfriend as a birthday/Christmas present, but failed to find at the appropriate time... I'm sure they weren't in the shop last time I was there, and they never seemed to be in stock on the website... but it was nice to finally find one. We also found a Sherlock Holmes-based card game, and brought it home with us... though we've yet to give it a try. Could be fun... but possibly not as much as the game of Cards Against Humanity we played at my sister's house earlier in the year...

Since we finished our dinner slightly earlier than necessary to get to the Adelphi in time for the show, we popped in on Orbital Comics as well. Only a brief visit, but long enough for me to put another dent in my wallet, picking up a twelve-year-old TransFormers convention exclusive set.

Whose Line..? was a hell of a lot of fun. We've seen live improvisation comedy before, but this was almost structured as a game show, with Josie Lawrence, Brad Sherwood and - two of my girlfriend's favourites - Greg Proops and Colin Mochrie on the 'panel'. While Clive Anderson was meant to be hosting, a sign in the entrance hall announced that he was 'unavailable' that evening, and was being replaced by one of the creators of the show, Dan Patterson (later in the evening, a note written by a member of the audience was revealed to say "I wish Clive were here"). Highlights of the evening were Lawrence belting out a song about an industrial sander in the style of Celine Dion, Sherwood serending a member of the audience in the style of a Rock Anthem, and the enthusiastic fangirling my girlfriend exhibited throughout. It was also cool that the two musicians from the US show were 'special guests' at this live event. The only disappointing aspects of the show, for me, where those where members of the audience had to take an active role, because the folks who were chosen to go on stage really didn't seem to get into the spirit of things... Either that, or they were trying to be funny themselves, and just making a mess of it.

It was quite a long day, all told, and our tentatively planned visit to a Zen garden in Acton (there's a juxtaposition!) on Sunday was put off because we were both exhausted, and the weather was a bit rubbish until the early evening.