My Wardrobe Is A Time Machine

I’m not sure how your Sunday started. Perhaps a lie in, breakfast in bed, a pleasant stroll in the spring sunshine or a hearty brunch somewhere. Mine? Oh I just had my cocker spaniel’s anal glands milked. There’s no need to be jealous. All you have to do it mix six-week old milk with fish guts and close your eyes and you too can enjoy that experience.

Bean was at the vets for a check up as she had developed some sort of eye infection last week and they were making sure everything was in order. Whilst she was there we asked that the other end be addressed as the odour was becoming offensive.

So, happy Sunday…..

You will know as I have done nothing but moan about it for three weeks that we have work starting tomorrow. Nine tenths of the house look like one of those TV shows which show hoarders and their houses. The remaining tenth is now our bed room which is almost completely clear of all the crap we had crammed into our wardrobes. It has been a process as painful as I expected and to say I am not looking forward to the next week or two is the biggest understatement since someone said Coldplay were turgid music magnolia makers.

Anyway, whilst pulling dusty stuff out of cupboards, we have of course stumbled across many things we deemed important enough to keep, but had of course completely forgotten we had. Amongst that, and a few dozen trips to the tip, we happened upon some good old-fashioned proper photos from earlier Disney trips. When I started doing trip reports, we were right on the cusp of the whole digital thing and I think for the first report in 2003 certainly we were analogue.

Many of the photos are now long-lost, although we will probably find them when we renovate the next part of the house in the year 2070 (I’ll be ready to go again by then), however a few fell into our laps and I will of course share them now.

The quality is poor, as they are photos of a photo, but it does also show how far technology has come in sixteen years that all of our phones are now capable of much better photos than even the moderately expensive analogue stuff I used to cart around. I’m not sure the girls could now comprehend or contemplate not being able to see a photo they just took until you’d been to Max Spielman weeks after the holiday. As an aside, we also seem to have about half a dozen undeveloped rolls of film knocking around the house. Surely they will be beyond developing now? I’m not sure how long they survive in that state, but we should try to get them done and see what is on them I suppose.

I think all of these I’m sharing today are from that 2003 trip. Rebecca was four and Emily six. Look how Mickey was just wandering about near International Gateway. Now, you need a FastPass, security clearance and retina scans to meet the main mouse.

This one is from the Garden Grill. We were having breakfast I think and we have video footage of this somewhere. That also reminds me that we have hours of such footage that I need to edit and upload somewhere before it gets lost forever.

Here is some young handsome chap stroking a goat. This photo is also likely to upset Rebecca as it features her favourite hat that we lost somewhere in Mexico (the pavilion, not the country) and she cried for about three weeks about it. I should point out that the genie wasn’t in this photo. Many of these were made into a collage that was hung for a while and we had chopped up a photo with him on it for said collage and now if I remove it, the main photo will be damaged. Make sense?

Ah the days of autograph books…..this was taken in MGM Studios, on the steps outside what is now the Frozen sing a long thing. I can’t even remember what it was then. Anyone?

Here, we display exemplary parenting skills. Clearly Rebecca was being blinded by the sun, but the photo needed to be taken regardless.

More Chip and Dale, this time in Animal Kingdom, on the pathway down to what was Camp Minnie Mickey. Nobody mention that hat. The junior bum bags though, matching of course, were another crime of parenting.

 

The thing that strikes me in all of these is how happy the girls look, even when stood next to a giant Pooh.

And we’ll end where we began, with the meeting of Mickey at International Gateway.

Such lovely memories of a time that feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago in equal measure. If you really wanted to, you could go back to that first 2003 report and see if you can match the photos to the actual events. I would….but I’ve got a bedroom to finish clearing and some more stressing to do about two weeks of disruption. Did I mention that?

Till the next time……