The greatest story ever told

It was the summer of 1991 and I was 11 years old. Primary school was over. No more being kept in at playtime because someone wiped a bogey on the back of someone else’s chair. No more sitting around waiting for the art and music teachers to come to you with their mysterious jangling and rustling cardboard boxes of light relief.

Our ties and shirts signed, we said our weird half goodbyes in the familiar yet mysterious shadow of the huge school that would soon be ours, knowing we’d see each other almost every day of the holidays anyway, if the pocket money was forthcoming and the weather was good.

Just six blissful weeks stood between me and my friends and the gaping maw of High School, ready to swallow us up and sweep us through its narrow corridors full of spotty six-footers who looked for all the world like real, actual men and not boys we should be at school with.

What would we do with our holidays? Read Smash Hits and learn the words to Things That Make You Go Hmm. Do the dance moves to the Shoop Shoop Song. Go to the park and get rope burns from the flying fox. Buy frozen Kwenchy Cups and Lemonade Dip Dabs. Ride our bikes to the end of the street and try to make itching powder from rosehips. Eat rhubarb and sugar and play kerby.

We immersed ourselves in our favourite childhood pastimes for just one more summer. But we were also ready to move on. And that’s how we found ourselves in a matinee show at the Playhouse cinema without our parents for the first time ever.

Then, as now, I struggle to sit still or be quiet for two hours. I have a dreadful memory for films – just hours after watching one I usually struggle to recount the plot. But I remember every minute of that very first time I watched Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. The torture scenes! The witch! The old man who had his eyes gouged out! What WAS this fresh medieval hell?

We might have been just 11 and 12 but even then we knew that this was not Costner’s finest moment. He couldn’t even be bothered to try an English accent. But we didn’t care. Here was Alan Rickman giving the (pre-Snape) performance of his life as the eye-rolling, exasperated but kind of amazing Sheriff of Nottingham! Here was floppy-haired Christian Slater being all angry and sad and doing a shite job of his English accent but hey, at least he tried!

My nose randomly started bleeding halfway through, an occupational hazard for pre-teen girls. ‘Do you have tissues?’ I hissed to my friends along the row, their wide eyes locked on the screen. ‘No, we are small girls, we don’t carry anything useful’ they seemed to say. So I took off my sock (which had reindeer on it because novelty socks are OKAY when you are 11) and used it to stem the flow because I couldn’t bear to leave the cinema for one second.

I’ve written about my love for this film before, here, when Alan Rickman died. With two decades of hindsight clearly I can see the film is shonky AF, but I will defend it to the hilt because it stirred in me feelings of socialism and fairness:

‘I’ve seen knights in armor panic at the first hint of battle. And I’ve seen the lowliest, unarmed squire pull a spear from his own body, to defend a dying horse. Nobility is not a birthright. It’s defined by one’s actions.’

And feminism:

‘Men speak conveniently of love when it serves their purpose and, when it doesn’t, as a a burden to them.’

It also, er, stirred some other feelings. Okay, so we knew the story. We knew Robin would get together with Maid Marian. We were, frankly, NOT BOTHERED about that because WE DON’T EVEN LIKE BOYS OKAY?!

So what, then, was this weird feeling we were getting when Robin and Marian exchanged those cute looks and she asked him to take a bath? And when she gave him the jewelled knife?

Why were we on the verge of tears when he rushed in to save her from the wicked Sheriff? When they fell to their knees and he took her face in his hands why did we feel like this was the most amazing thing that had ever happened or would ever happen again?

Why did we feel like we were going to burst with joy (but also a little bit sad it wasn’t happening to us) when she said ‘You came for me? You’re alive!’ and he replied ‘I would die for you’. Why was our skin tingling when Bryan Adams started giving it the old ‘WALK THE WIRE FOR YOU’ with the F minor chord?

I saw the film another four times that summer, in between getting my braces tightened (what a catch) and getting a brand new school uniform (still won’t wear navy 26 years later).

Everything I Do (I Do It For You) went on to be No. 1 for so very long that everyone lost their tiny minds and started ripping out their car stereos and stabbing their eyes. I would concede to just roll mine, but I was secretly thrilled each time I heard it because it reminded me of that feeling I had in my heart – yes I had established I did actually have one – that first day I saw the film, when I realised that one day, maybe, someone would feel about me the way Robin felt about Marian.

By August, DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince were banging out their ‘new definition of summer madness’ but frankly all their pool party, BBQ and basketball court chat was not really chiming with our experiences of a damp Perth summer with the occasional game of tennis at Darnhall and a picnic on the North Inch.

And frankly, it was just embarrassing to sing along to ‘y’all reminisce about the days growing up and the first person you kissed’ when you still had a flat chest (that wouldn’t actually change to be fair) and struggled to even speak to A BOY.

Little did we know how quickly *that* would change.

Twenty six summers later, I can still recite the movie script word for word. I still hate the torture scenes. I still love Alan Rickman’s black hair. And I still clap like a loon when Sean Connery appears at the end (spoiler alert).

But, most of all, my heart still feels fit to burst when Robin and Marian stumble towards each other and they hold each others’ faces. She does that weird cry-wheeping noise and he just looks at her lips. That is all there is to life folks. That is All. There. Is.

Love wins.