Mamma Mia

Unlike my friend D, I do belong to the Abba generation. I can still remember years and years of watching the Eurovision Screech Contest. At this point we will not get into why a person like me with a modicum of intelligence would ever have watched that Song Contest, but I did for years and years. I watched a series of songs with titles like "Bam bam Bam bam" and "Bong Bong Nong" won the stupid thing.

And then, one day, out of nowhere came Abba and Waterloo.

There was a time, a year or two later, when we were on one of our school trips to France. That year we were staying in Deauville and Trouville (Yes, both at the same time.) One night, we went to the Casino. I'd never been to a Casino and was astonished that I could not see any Roulette or Cards or anything. I never did find those things and a glass of wine cost a fortune. But I do remember them playing an Abba song over and over in the background.

I think that I fell in love with Agnetha and Anna-Frid (I'll own up to the fact that I never fancied the blokes, but grief, those girls were sexy.)

Then, in 2000, we decided to restart taking School Visits. We hadn't been for a year or three. We decided to take a group of girls to London and we arranged a variet of things to do. Being that it was the Millennium we took them to the Dome, the Tower, all that touristy stuff. I had promised the girls that we would take them to a show and promised them "The Lion King". But we couldn't get tickets to that show, it was too new. But the ticket agents said that they could get us tickets to Mamma Mia, which was quite new at the time and for some reason it was easy to get tickets.

I did not know what to expect. The kids were really disappointed but decided to enjoy whatever the show turned out to be. We talked about it before we went and we all decided to get dressed up and enjoy an evening out at the Theatre. So there we were, going to a Soho Theatre. A group of 40 Teenage Girls and five teachers, dressed up to the nines. The kids looked wonderful, I'm not so sure about the adults, but we set out to have a fun night, no matter how bad this Abba show turned out to be.

We found our seat, settled in, the lights went down.


AND WE WERE BLOWN AWAY!

I still get messages from some of the girls who went, on Facebook, saying how they remember that show.

It was breathtaking, exciting, gorgeous, hilarious, wonderful. And the music! Oh wow.

So when I saw that they had made a film of it, I obviously wanted to see it. We saw a couple of clips on the TeeVee on SuperWonderfulTeeVeeShows like "RICHARD & JUDY". I have not seen every film that Meryl Streep has made, but I have never been disappointed by one. I think that she is one of the best actresses that there is. I love Julie Walters and I think that Christine Baranski ROCKS! Colin Firth is a cracker, and the rest were unknown quantities. Except of course James Bond who clearly had the part of the song mangler in the movie.

Had to go and see it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pat and I went one day when we had been going to have a day drive into Derbyshire, but when it RAINEDANDRAINEDANDRAINEDANDRAINEDANDRAINED that day we decided to go to the cinema instead.

We went to the 4.30 pm matinee, on a Thursday, when it was raining, five weeks after Mamma Mia had been released.

When we entered the cinema it was empty. Utterly and completely empty. So we sat in the middle of the back row in the courting seats. By the time that the movie started we had been joined by THREE other souls. We watched Mamma Mia in a 300 seat movie cinema with five of us present. HOW COOL IS THAT!

D writes about going to see Mamma Mia in her blog. There is a link over on the left of the page. It's called Zermo's Blog. Ghod knows why, but there you are. She is, after all, French so you have to make allowances. D obviously knows what she is talking about when it comes to films. After all I go to the Cinema once in two years and the last film I saw at the Cinema was "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe" whereas D sees 237 films every week! So she knows what she is talking about. So if she says this movie is "merde" (which she doesn't, but it's what she means if you read between the lines, which is quite difficult when you speak as little French as me) then that is almost certainly the case.

But on that rainy Thursday afternoon I wasn't going to see an arthouse movie, I wanted something that was fun, and mamma Mia fitted the bill.

I absolutely loved it. OK, Pierce Brosnan cannot sing. If he believes that he can then he is fooling himself. But I thought that the film, Mamma Mia was great. If you read this, and let's face it, I have no evidence that anyone ever reads this at all, and you want to see a bit of fun, not a cinematographic masterpiece, but a fun movie, then mamma Mia gets my vote.

Oh, by the way, in the middle of last week, Madame la Presidente de la Republique Francaises, whose name I forget, appeared on the Jazz Music Show "Later with Jools Holland". I tell you what, she can sing a hell of a lot better than Pierce Brosnan!