Cinderella flew through the air, far from all things ugly and ordinary...

This week has been very kind to me. But even sitting on rooftops with dearest friends, watching fireworks light up the sky on one side, and the university firsts playing rugby on the other, cannot compare to watching Peter Pan for the first time with the camerado.

I loved it so much that my screeches of delight and "howls" of horror reverberated through my entire flat, and my friends cautiously opened the door to check that I was OK.

It is just the perfect sparkles and crumbs movie. Magic and dreams out of sad things.

I love all of the Peter Pan movies [what is your favourite? Finding Neverland? Hook? The Disney original?], but this one is special because it is a love story between Peter Pan and Wendy. They have to choose between true love and high adventure - between growing up and Neverland. As Nolah puts it, "to be who he is, he needs to forget anything that would change him. He isn't allowed to love, or to remember sad things." To really love Wendy, he would lose who he is...

Aunt Millicent: Have you not noticed? Observe her mouth. There, hidden in the right-hand corner, is that a kiss...? A hidden kiss.
Wendy: But what is it for?
Aunt Millicent: It is for the greatest adventure of all. They that find it... have slipped in and out of heaven.
Wendy: Find what?
Aunt Millicent: The one the kiss belongs to.

Lost Boys: The Wendy lives!
Wendy: It's my kiss. My kiss saved her.

Peter: Wendy? It's only make-believe, isn't it? ...That you and I are...
Wendy: Oh... Yes...
Peter: Wendy? You see... it would make me seem so old to be a real father.
Wendy: Peter - what are your real feelings?
Peter: Feelings?
Wendy: What do you feel? Happiness? Sadness? Jealousy?
Peter: Jealousy? Tink!
Wendy: Anger?
Peter: Anger... Hook.
Wendy: Love?
Peter: Love?
Wendy: Love.
Peter: I have never heard of it.
Wendy: I think you have, Peter. I daresay you've felt it yourself - for something, or... someone.
Peter: Never. Even the sound of it offends me.
Wendy: Peter!
Peter: [Shouting] Why do you spoil everything? We have fun, don't we? I taught you to fight and to fly. What more could there be?

Wendy: There is so much more!
Peter: What? What else is there?
Wendy: I don't know. I think it becomes clearer when you grow up.
Peter: Well, I will not grow up! You cannot make me! I will banish you like Tinker Bell!
Wendy: I will not be banished!
Peter: Then go home. Go home and grow up. And take your feelings with you!
Wendy: Peter! Peter, come back! Peter!


Narrator:
Peter did not want Wendy to leave. Once again, he visited Wendy's home, to see if Mr. And Mrs. Darling had closed the window yet. But, as before, he saw Mrs. Darling in her chair by the window, her eyes tired with searching the heavens.
Mrs Darling [in her sleep]: Wendy... Wendy... Wendy...
Peter: We can't both have her, lady.







Wendy: Peter, we've been talking. What if you came back with us?
Peter: Would they send me to school?
Wendy: Yes.
Peter: Then... to an office?
Wendy: I suppose so.
Peter: Soon I should be a man. You can't catch me and make me a man!
Wendy: Peter.
Peter: I want always to be a boy, and have fun.
Wendy: You say so, but I think it is your biggest pretend.









Hook: Growing up is such a barbarous business, full of inconvenience and pimples.
Wendy: Things were simpler when I was younger.
Hook: And then the mess starts, the feelings come. Pan is so lucky to be untroubled by them. Oh, no. He cannot love. It's part of the riddle of his being.



Wendy: Once upon a time... There was a boy named Peter Pan... who decided not to grow up. So he flew away to the Neverland where the pirates are.
Hook: What fun he must have had.
Wendy: Yes. But he was rather lonely.
Hook: Lonely?
Wendy: He needed a Wendy.
Hook: Why a Wendy?
Wendy: He liked my stories.
Hook: What stories?
Wendy: Cinderella. Snow White. Sleeping Beauty.
Hook: Love stories?
Wendy: Adventures, in which good triumphs over evil!
Hook: They all end in a kiss. A kiss... He does feel. He feels about you.
She told him stories.
He taught her to fly.




Hook: I know what you are!
Peter: I am the best there ever was!
Hook: You're a tragedy!
Peter: Me? Tragic?
Hook: She was leaving you, Pan. Your Wendy was leaving you. Why should she stay? What have you to offer? You are incomplete. She'd rather grow up than stay with you. Let us now take a peep into the future. What's this I see? 'Tis the fair Wendy. She's in her nursery.
The window's shut.
Peter: I'll open it!
Hook: I'm afraid the window's barred.
Peter: I'll call out her name!
Hook: She can't hear you.
Peter: No!
Hook: She can't see you.
Peter: Wendy!
Hook: She's forgotten all about you.
Peter: Stop! Please! Stop it!







Wendy: Peter.
I'm sorry. I must grow up.
But... this is yours.
This belongs to you... and always will.




[All kisses should do this!]

Narrator: There could not have been a lovelier sight, but there was no one to see it...

...except a strange boy who was staring in at the window. Peter Pan had countless joys that other children can never know, but he was looking at the one joy from which he must be forever barred.

Wendy: Peter!

...You won't forget me, will you?

Peter: Me? Forget?
Never.
Wendy: Will you come back?
Peter: To hear stories... about me.

Narrator/Grown-up Wendy: But I was not to see Peter Pan again. Now I tell his story to my children, and they will tell it to their children... and so it will go on. For all children grow up...
except one.

Peter: Forget them, Wendy. Forget them all. Come with me where you'll never, never have to worry about grown-up things again.

Let's find Peter Pan's statue in Kensington Gardens, and fly away to Never-Never-Land...

"We’re going to live like we’re telling the best story in the whole world. Are you ready?"
-The Brothers Bloom

We'll listen to the mermaids sing and escape from Skull Rock with Tiger-Lily, and lie in pink clouds to spy on the pirates...

...and we'll dress like the fairies...

...and dance like them, too.

...and when the end comes, darling [except it won't, not for us], the fairies will fill our sails and fly us out amongst the stars to sleep...

"I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!"

I believe in Never-Never-Land. I believe in Wonderland. I believe in Narnia. I believe in the mermaids singing beside Cair Paravel. I believe in Camelot. I believe in broadswords. I believe in bows and arrows. I believe in knights in shining armour. I believe in the Lost Boys. I believe in the Merry Men. I believe in pirates. I believe in Sir Pellinore and the Questing Beast. I believe in the Scarlet Pimpernel. I believe in Diagon Alley. I believe that it is only a wardrobe's walk away.

I believe in magic.

And I believe that one day - maybe in another story, maybe in another life or another universe...

"Michael believed longer than the other boys, though they jeered at him; so he was with Wendy when Peter came for her at the end of the first year. She flew away with Peter in the frock she had woven from leaves and berries in the Neverland, and her one fear was that he might notice how short it had become; but he never noticed, he had so much to say about himself. She had looked forward to thrilling talks with him about old times, but new adventures had crowded the old ones from his mind."
-J.M. Barrie

Love, romance and high adventure xx