Morag from Manama

It was a first (and last) experience for our family on Friday evening. Believe it or not, we decided to visit the cinema, such a fun and relaxing way to spend our time together at the weekend, or so we thought.

The husband remembered one of our favourite restaurants, Wagamama, had just opened at the mall… dinner and a movie … what could be more perfect?

There always has to be a start and ours came almost to an abrupt stop as soon as we hit the highway. Where on earth had all the traffic come from?

Then we realised that this was indeed the first time we had naively ventured out to the mall on a Friday tea-time. Surely it’s not always this bad – is it?

The husband compared the queue into the mall car park to that of his daily journey across the Saudi Causeway. I now understand his frustration!

Eventually, we made it inside.

With no time to spare, we abandoned our dinner plans. We went straight to the ticket kiosk where we are met by another queue.

Our kids, by this time, were grumbling with blood sugar levels low and the husband was jumping from one queue to another; why does he always do that?

If only he had stuck to the first queue we were in, we would have had the tickets by now, I thought.

I took a deep breath and mustered up my best ‘happy mummy’ voice, suggested popcorn … and set off with the children to join the popcorn queue.

The husband, with tickets in hand, spotted us in a sea of cinemagoers when our daughter announced that she really needed to join the queue for the bathroom before the movie started.

Whilst battling our way into a toilet cubicle I asked myself … why hadn’t we stayed at home with a DVD?

All was not lost though, we were thoroughly entertained amidst the constant ringing of mobile phones, noisy children running wild in the aisles and people getting up-and-down from their seats throughout the entire movie.

Of course, the ‘perfect’ end to our evening was joining an hour-long queue out of the car park!