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The caves were just scary enough for the kids with a filmed intro with a ghost of a smuggler who looked a bit like the actor Kevin Eldon and skellingtons that sat up or hung from the ceiling and crevices to crawl through (the kids managed to end up in one of the tableaux when they found a little hole in the rock).
Our friend has lived in Hastings for about five years and in that time has become a gull whisperer. Or at least she looks after baby Herring gulls that have fallen out of nests. She told us that gulls can recognise people and remember them and that if you can get them on side by being nice then they will be your friends forever. When we told her about the gulls trying to get our chips, she informed us that the way to deal with that is to identify the lead gull (should be the one closest to you) and then look them in the eye, give them the chance to remember your face and then give them three or four chips. Then, having extracted their protection chips, she said, the gull will tell the other gulls to leave you alone. I was a bit sceptical that this would work or that a gull would remember me, when most humans seem to struggle to, but they don’t call her the Gull Whisperer for nothing.
Oh wait, they don’t call her that. I called her that. It’ll catch on though.
Our friends house is above the Smugglers’ Adventure and they think that their cellar might lead into it, or would do it they smashed through the plaster, which they are not prepared to do. Free entry though. Plus you could go in at night and look at the skellingtons. Hastings looks like a nice place to live.
The soundtrack on the trip to Hastings and back was the kids’ favourite songs. So that meant a few rounds of Bananas in Pyjamas, but also the soundtrack to the Annie remake.
The Annie soundtrack is the sound of the lockdown for me. Almost my main memory of the whole thing is playing it at breakfast and the kids dancing to “The Sun’ll Come Out Tomorrow”. Their dance was joyous and silly, but of course, the words were pretty poignant in those first few weeks of lockdown uncertainty. They still are. I almost teared up a bit listening to it. The songs in Annie are pretty damn strong, I have to say. Cameron Diaz singing “Little Girls” is a blast, but the lyrics are impressive, especially "Locked in a cage with all the rats/I've slipped in the cracks/And now I'm stuck with the scraps and I can't seem to find my way back”
But we all love the bit where she says "Please kill me, I'm serious. Please kill me, I'm not singing, I'm asking.”
