Random pictures!!

 Two pictures of purple crocusses in the back garden (the bastard pidgeons keep trampling on them though, so they look rather wilted and flattened now!!!

and here's me with some more stuff that I found on the pavement one day!!!  More bits to make cards with!!

Oh, and that movie review that I posted yesterday??  It got 135 view hits!!!!!!  I got a new job - 

Beanie Mouse, Movie Reviewer!!!

Movie Review - "Waterloo Road".

This is Movie Review number three!

PLOT

This one is an early 1940s black and white movie set near Waterloo Station in London (hence the title!!)  It stars John Mills as an Army chap just about to be sent off to fight in Europe.  He's had a snotty letter from his sister Ruby (who lives with Mum & Dad and John's new wife) all about John's movie wife having an affair with Stewart Granger's character - he's a lay-about-town who's diddled his way out of being called up (forged medical certificate) and spends his time chasing anything in a skirt, drinking and dancing.  Anyway, it turns out that John's wife ISN'T having an affair - it's all made up.  BUT, the movie centres on John Mills going AWOL from the Army to hunt down Stewart Granger to give him a thumping.

RECOMMENDED??

Not really.  Other than seeing John Mills and an extremely young Stewart Granger (who's East End accent is only slightly improved on Dick Van Dyke's!), this is actually a bit of a bore.

SCORE

Beanie gives it 2 squeaks out of 10!!!

RECOMMENDED SCOOBY SNACKS
Save your money.  You'll be asleep before the end of the movie! 

Update on the update....!

I sold another 16 POSTCARDS off Zazzle since yesterday!!!!  Eight more of the NYC tickets ones and eight of the Montmartre, Paris ones!!!

HOW EXCITING!!!!!  I'm sooo HAPPPPYYYYY!!!!

Update...!!

I just got notified that somebody just bought EIGHT of my postcards off my Zazzle shop!!!!!  www.zazzle.com/Andreas_art - the NYC tickets postcard.  I'm amazed!!  (There's a search box on the left hand side, and if you write "Postcard" in there, it'll come up with all the ones available.)

And so far, two people have looked at my Beanie Family Sketchbook on the sketchbook project tour!!!

This is SOOOOOO exciting!!

Movie Review - "Footsteps in the Fog"

This is my second Movie on a DVD Review!!!

This one is called "Footsteps in the Fog" and stars Stewart Granger and Jean Simmons in the leading parts, and they were married in real life at the time.

PLOT

It's set in London ages and ages ago when Rich People (Stewart Granger's character) still had housemaids and cooks and butlers.  Probably around the 1880s.  Anyway, it starts off with Lord Stewart Granger of The Manor burying his first wife, and seemingly despondant.  Except when he's returned home, everyone's left and he has a drink by the fire and starts smiling broadly...... oh-er!!  Then, slowly but surely, the lowly housemaid (Jean Simmons) works out that the first wife didn't die of gastro-enteritis at all..... she was poisoned!!!!!  She tells Lord Stewart Of The Manor that she's worked it all out, but she'll keep her mouth shut if she gets promoted to Chief Housemaid, which Lord Stewart Of The Manor agrees to.  Housemaid Jean then sacks the other two house staff, and manipulates her way into gaining the dead first wife's jewellery.
Lord Stewart of The Manor, being of a similar character, also manipulates his way into A Big Job at a law firm, and proposes to the law firm owner's daughter while he's at it.  The daughters best friend (also working at the law firm) starts getting suspicious about Lord Stewart Of The Manor too.
Meanwhile, Lord Stewart follows scheming Housemaid Jean out of the house one evening in an attempt to Kill Her Off....... on a dark and murky and foggy evening ......... and mistakenly kills someone else!!  Who happens to be the wife of the Local Policeman!!!!!  UH-OHHH!!!!!  Lord Stewart goes on trial for murder, Housemaid Jean lies through her teeth for him and Lord Stewart gets found innocent!!!!!!!
BUT......!!!...... Lord Stewart then tries to set up Housemaid Jean for his own murder, and Housemaid Jean gets arrested by the Police..... and there's some amazing storyline twists and turns at the very end that have you sitting on the edges of the seat!!!!!

RECOMMENDED??

Hell, yes!!!!  It's a brilliant thriller movie that's well worth watching!!

SCORE

Beanie gives it a full 10 squeaks out of 10!!!

RECOMMENDED SCOOBY SNACKS
Classic Popcorn movie! 

Ed's note - this is Post number 400!!!!!

Beanie and The Big French Storm, Day Four!!!

 On Wednesday, we got up and went down for breakfast.  The television was on again showing the French news, and suddenly, there was a newsflash thingy saying that Eurostar was going to be running later that day!!  YIPPEEEE!!!  We can get home!!!  Andrea asked the receptionist lady if they could find out more details, and she said that there may be delays on the train.  That's OK, so long as they're running!

 After breakfast, we went up to our room and packed our things.  We had time to go out for a bit, but because everything had frozen over during the night, we probably wouldn't get far without slipping over, so we stayed in.

 We tied some more tags to the coat hanger in the room, too!!!

Then, just before noon, we went down and checked out of the hotel.  They got us a taxi cab back to the station too, and it only cost 8 Euros.

 Here we are back at the Lille Europe station.  We had an hour and a half before the train, but that gave us enough time to get some food to nibble on during the ride, and to find out when the train would be leaving.

 Then all of a sudden, I shouted out WHOOOPPPEEEEE!!!!!!!  That's our train to London at the bottom!!!

It isn't late at all!!!  It's arriving bang on time!!!  BRILLIANT!!!!!

We're going home!!!

 We went through the security clearance and passport control down to the departure lounge.  It still looks very grey outside.....

 It even started snowing again!!!

 And we're off!!!!  We got a window seat too so we watched all the clouds and snow.....

There was an announcement later to say there was speed restrictions in place so we'd lose 30 minutes on the way to the Calais side of the tunnel.  Actually, that's not bad at all - they were saying an hour delay on the news.....

 We left another tag on the table!!!

And here we are on the English side of the tunnel!!!  We're home!!!

 Here we are!!!  Exit, this way!

 And we saw the big statue again!!

 On the way out of the Eurostar terminal, we changed our left over Euro money back into English.  There were huge enormous lines of people waiting to get onto delayed Eurostar trains going into France..... the lines were half way to the street!!!  We also saw a chap playing the piano too!  That was fun!

 Oh hang on!  We don't normally go this way...... OH!!  Trains to Brighton go from St Pancras??  Really??  I didn't know that - we don't have to spend another hour and a half on the bus going across London!!!  Oh, that's really handy, that is!!

 We got a First Capital Connect train that went to Brighton at 15:09 hours!  It went a completely different route, and we crossed over Blackfriars Bridge and saw Tower Bridge from it!!  (That's the one that lifts up in the middle to let boats through).  Then the train did a U turn on the other bank......

 And we got a totally different view of The Shard building!!

You get some interesting views from this train!!

 Here we are crossing a Viaduct bridge just before Haywards Heath!  We're nearly home.....

 and we're back....... a short walk home, now!  We got home for 5 p.m. too.

And you'd never know it had snowed......

Because we couldn't get any postage stamps, I didn't have anything for my passport.  Andrea said not to worry...... we found a used Lille subway ticket on the floor on Monday, and picked it up.  Andrea had a hole punch gadget that punches out faux stamp shapes with deckled edges, so she cut out a piece of the subway ticket, and used that as a faux stamp for my passport!!  Then she stamped on a rubber stamp that we bought in Loisir et Creations two years ago, when we last came to Lille!!!

Wow, what an adventure!!!

Beanie and The Big French Storm, Day Three.

 When we got up on Tuesday morning, we looked out of the window.  Oh - My - Fart!!!!  Where did all that snow come from??!?!?!

 There's LOADS of it!!!!!

 We went down to breakfast (they gave us TWO Panno Shoko Lah!!!  They must know I like it!!)  They had the French news on telly in the breakfast room.... apparently, there had been a huge storm over France last night, all the Eurostar trains had been cancelled - in fact, ALL TRAINS altogether had been cancelled, even the regular trains!! - both airports in Paris were shut down, all the main interstate highway roads were closed with many accidents on them overnight, and parts of France were without electricity!!!!!  And they weren't going to get the electricity power back for 15 days!!!!!

What are we going to do?????  Are we stranded again???

 Andrea said not to worry, we're booked at the hotel tonight anyway, so let's go out and see what's happening in Lille town centre.  This is the Grand Place square...... people were out and about now which meant that the snow was already getting a bit slushy and slippy.

 We found the Blue Cat chocolate shop..... which was shut because the staff couldn't get in!!

 Coo..... it certainly looks pretty, but we still had that blustery cold wind.  Andrea said the news people said the cold wind made it feel like minus 5 C!!

 We had a look on the map for the Post Office and went to where it was - but even that was closed because staff couldn't get in!!!  We can't even post our postcards to our friends!!!!!  Andrea said we'll just have to post them when we get home to England then...... so then we went for coffee to warm up a bit.

 Then we went to the Meert shop to see if they were open.......

 They were!!!!  YAY!!!  So we went in and bought a box of goodies to take home!!

Then we went down the road to see if we could find any shops at all that were open.....

 We found La Droguerie shop which is full of buttons and fancy trimmings, but they were shut because of the weather too.  Everywhere was closed!!!  Well, we knew one place that was open......

 So we went back to Meert again for coffee and cake!!!

 And we had chocolate too!!!

 It was still the morning but it was freezing cold outside, all the shops were shut, and the metro/subway system was closed down too.  The snow was getting very slushy and slippery by now, so we decided it would be a good idea to go back to the hotel and stay warm and paint some pictures.  So we did!!!

We saw some more TV news all in French, and there was even people stuck on trains at Rouen overnight (that's in between Paris and the Channel) that were handed out blankets to keep warm and fed croissants and coffee in the morning!  Even the Paris Metro system was closed!  Gosh.....

 At lunch time we got hungry, so we went out again to where we'd had our first coffee in the morning.  We noticed they had boards out with food menu written on them, and one of them was that mool ma-rinni-air thing I saw in the phrase book yesterday

 OH!!!!!  It's marinated mussels in a white wine sauce!!!!!

 And proper crispy cooked chips too!!!!  OH YUMMY!!!!!!  This is the best lunch I think I've ever had!!  Oh, I'm glad we came here now, this is FAB!!
(the whole thing in French is Mool Mah-rinni-air oh van plonk ay Fritz)

This is where we had lunch...... Oh, I hope we come back here again when it's not snowing!!!

It was getting colder outside and everywhere was still shut, so we went back to the hotel because there was nothing else we could do.  (besides stay out and slip over and get hurt!)  Eurostar was still closed today and looked like it may be closed tomorrow too.  Andrea was getting rather worried and stressed out by the afternoon so we rang her Dad to see if he could find out anything on his computer.  He rang back later on and said that the first two Eurostar trains the next morning were cancelled but may be working from lunchtime onwards, with delays of up to an hour.  So we decided to go downstairs to reception and order a taxi to the Eurostar station for the next day anyway.  Andrea said she didn't think we had it quite so bad in Lille as they had it in Paris so we may be OK to get home.  We also heard on the news that the windchill factor would take the temperature down to minus 10 C that night!!!!  THAT'S COLD!!!

Later that evening, we went over to the ElephanThai restaurant for dinner again.  It was way too slippery to go any further and Andrea didn't have her clompy stompy boots with her..... we didn't know it would be this bad!!!!!

This time, we had a Shrimpy fried noodley dish for dinner that was rather yummy!!!  We couldn't eat it all though, Andrea's tummy ties itself up in knots when she gets stressed out, so she couldn't eat much...... but I tried to eat more for her!!!

And then it was time for bed.  I hope we get home tomorrow.......

......TO BE CONTINUED......

Beanie and The Big French Storm, Day Two!!

 On Monday, we got up early and had a breakfast basket downstairs!!!  We had Panno Shoko Lah (Andrea knows that's my favourite!!!)  Rice Krispies, coffee, apple juice and a mandarin.  Yum!!!

 Then I tied another weathergram in the loo!!!!!

 And then it was time to pack and check out!!!  Where are we going now???

 That's King's Cross Station over there.....

 Oh!!  We're going to St Pancras!!  The Eurostar trains leave from there!!!

 OH WOW!!!!!

 That's a tiger made out of plastic milk cartons!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Isn't he amazing!!!

 Then we went through customs to the Eurostar departure lounge.  Wonder where we're going.....

 Well, we got on a train, and just as it was leaving, it started to snow!!!!

And we had more snow.......

 And when we got through the tunnel to France, it was STILL snowing!!!!!

 I had another look at Andrea's phrase book..... Mool Marrinnii...... Mool Mronnoi..... Oh, this one's hard.

Mool Mah-Rinni-Air see voo play

Oh, now I get it!!!  Wonder what that means??

 We're in Lille!!!!  We came here before a couple of years ago and really liked it!!!

 We took a different way into town this time and got a bit lost.  We found a new drain cover though, with a Fleur De Lys design on it!!

 And then we found EuraLille!!  This is a huge shopping mall not far from where we're staying, and last time we found the most amazing art and craft shop here called Loisirs et Creations!!  BUT IT WAS CLOSED!!!  It was a completely different shop there now and no Loisirs et Creations!!!  The bastards shut it down!!!  Creative Neanderthals..........

 So me and Andrea stomped off to the hotel because we were both really grumpy.  But we did see this lovely building on the way....!!

 That's really pretty!!!

 Oh here we are!  We're staying in Le Grand Hotel in Rue Faidherbe.

 And it's next door to a chocolate shop!!!  EXCELLENT!!!!  Oh, that's just a stroke of genius that is!!

We got room 25 on the second floor and a whopping big double bed all to ourselves!!!

 Oh, there's a Thai restaurant down there..... could be handy for dinner time.

 Now, let's check the amenities here...... small bathroom but I'm a small mouse so that's OK.

 And freebies too!!  Excellent!

 Andrea showed me my passport - I got another stamp from the youth hostel in it!!!

 And then we wrote some postcards!

 After that, we decided to go for a stroll.  It was still snowing, and a blusteringly cold wind too......

 That's my favourite clock on the Grand Place!

 OH!!!  That used to be a big pharmacy shop and the only place we know in Lille that sold Kniepp bath oil (aromatherapy stuff and wonderfully smelly in a good way!!  Andrea's favourite thing to get in Europe)  But the shop was shut down!!!  Even some of the windows upstairs were broken out!!!  Oh dear.....

There's the Opera House.  That's not me singing - that's my teeth clattering together!!!

Only one thing for it......

CHOCOLATE!!!!!

Ah, that's better....!

 Later on, we got hungry so we decided to go to the ElephanThai restaurant for dinner.  Started with a fizzy drink......

 And then chose from the 23 Euro Menu.  We had a starter of Soup De Crevettes, which is a creamy shrimp soup and rather yummy.  Rather sweet, but yummy!!!

 Then for the main course, we had Thai style fried rice with an unidentifiable meat (some kind of bird we think but not chicken) and veggie fry up thing.  The meat, whatever it was, was very VERY chewy, and we couldn't swallow it!!!  Chewed and chewed and chewed, but wouldn't go down.  So we left it.....

 But for pudding, we had Lychees which were fabulously yumtastic!!!  I love Lychees!!!

 Well, that was, erm, "interesting" I think is the word!!!!

By now, we were both exhausted, so off to bed!!!

TO BE CONTINUED.......!!!