Storm shelter

The wind moaned in the bathroom vents this morning, but didn't really get going until we were thinking of walking into town to catch the new version of Mary Poppins.

I looked out at the seagulls surfing on the invisible hurricane gusts roaring across the school field, and listened to the windows rattle. It was only the second day since Mary Poppins Returns opened, and I thought about being surrounded by tiny movie-goers at the matinée, but I had promised elder daughter that we would go see it as a family.

And it wasn't bad. I found the plot a bit cheese-clothy, flimsy and full of holes, but P.L. Travers' books didn't have plots so much as episodes, and this was striving to stay closer to the spirit of the sequels of the original, by being set in the 1930s (as it originally was), and with Mary Poppins being rather more snarky and forbidding.

Actually, although Emily Blunt played Mary Poppins less sweetly than Julie Andrews, she was still quite a bit more amicable than the nanny of the books. And who could complain when Dick Van Dyke showed up, singing and, heaven help us, dancing in his nineties?

The lights came up during the final titles, and I could see elder and younger daughter swaying to the music. As the endless track of gold-lettered credits spun out, a young boy appeared on the stage in front of the screen, spinning and leaping to the music. He was joined by five other children, all about seven or eight years old. They began cart-wheeling across the stage, as the music played on. We watched them, entranced.

I thought about being seven or eight, five days to Christmas and the second-to-last day of school, and having just seen Mary Poppins. Will the cartwheeling kids remember this? I think they might.

Some days, it's the right choice to go to the cinema, even if the hail stings your neck on the walk home.