Yes, And…
On growing up, moving out and learning when to step back
He is growing up and moving out and away.
In the bigger scheme of things, this is not such a big deal. People do this all the time. Children grow, leave, return (sometimes), leave again. But in the microcosm of our life, this is enormous. It represents a fundamental shift in the dynamics of everything I have known for the past eighteen years.
It is the movement from youth to independence, well… within reason. He is still yet to convincingly demonstrate that he can cook regularly or do his own washing without reminders, but time will tell, right? It is also the beginning of that wonderful, terrifying phase of who knows what is next - of where life might take you, of what you might become, of who you might meet. All the adventure of it: the hope, the fear, the excitement, the inevitable missteps. Everything.
And yet, alongside all of that, there is a reckoning for me.
This moment is a very real marker that I am no longer the young thing. No longer my own dream. There is something quietly confronting about recognising that the time has come to pass that dream on - to see the world now through the eyes of those I have created. To acknowledge that I have lived, hoped, feared, tried, failed, loved - not just for myself, but for them.
And that I am now, in their expanding universe, becoming a smaller piece. A necessary one, I hope, but no longer the centre.
There is a particular kind of disorientation that comes with realising that for someone for whom, for so long, you were everything, you are now learning how to be less. Less central. Less essential. Less consulted. It is both exactly as it should be and oddly bruising to the ego.
Parenting, like life, turns out to be what everyone said it was: a long game of improvisation. Something shifts, something unexpected arrives, and you are invited to step forward or step back. To resist or to play.
You walk into it and say,
“Yes, and…”
And then you keep going.
Hallmark Movie Review
Leaving one's home is already an act of faith. Inheriting another, especially one weighted with expectation, history and the promise that it will somehow make sense of who you are now, is something else entirely. We tell ourselves these places will explain us, anchor us, offer a continuity we didn’t realise we were seeking. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they simply reveal how unprepared we are to receive them. Which brings me, reluctantly, to To England With Love.
🏙 To England With Love
A treasure hunt, an inheritance and a reluctant return to a place that remembers you better than you remember yourself.
📅 The Details
Year: 2024
Screenplay: Grace Knight
Production Companies: BH Movies, White Lantern Film
Cast: Georgia Hirst, Sean Pogmore
🎨 The Setup
Aly, formerly Alissa, a name she has decisively rejected as unfit for the “real world”, has it all. She’s made partner. She’s polished. She’s efficient. She’s also inherited an estate in England, on the not-at-all-stressful condition that she solve a puzzle left behind by her great aunt and locate a hidden treasure.
Off she goes, back to the English countryside of her childhood, armed with impatience, entitlement and a profound dislike of places without gyms, sea views or immediate gratification.
💕 The Meet-Re-Meet
There’s Hannah, who remembers Aly from when she used to be around, warmer, younger, possibly human, and who wants very much to help her succeed. Aly does not return the enthusiasm.
Then there’s Matthew, a historian, whose first meeting with Aly confirms that we are firmly in enemies-first territory. He is local, mildly sceptical and inconveniently positioned to know things Aly does not.
📜 The Conflict / The Quest
Aly must decide whether to soften - to people, to place, to the idea that inheritance is not simply something you claim but something you enter into.
This is where the film promises growth, romance and discovery. This is also where it largely… stalls.
The treasure hunt ticks along mechanically. The emotional beats feel implied rather than earned. Aly’s resistance to the countryside is so total that it borders on parody, without ever tipping into self-awareness.
🍁 Cultural Check-in
There is an unmistakable American-meets-English tension at play, but it’s treated more as aesthetic contrast than cultural curiosity. The countryside is picturesque but inert; the locals are friendly but underwritten. England becomes less a place than a backdrop, a set of clues rather than a lived environment.
For a film about inheritance, it shows remarkably little interest in what it means to belong to a place across time.
😘 How Hot Is the Kiss?
3/10
Was it there? I missed it…
👀 POC Check
Limited and largely incidental. Diversity exists, but without narrative weight or specificity.
🥨 Final Thought
I struggled. I stayed - partly out of professional obligation (you’re welcome), partly because I wanted the film to redeem itself, and partly because I was already there and had committed.
To England With Love wants to be about home, inheritance and becoming. Instead, it settles for surfaces: clues without depth, romance without spark and a protagonist whose arc never quite lands.
Leaving one's home is hard. Inheriting another should feel momentous. This film makes it feel like an administrative inconvenience.
Funny how leaving the nest is different for everyone. My father died when I was twenty four years old. So he left first. Then my mother decided to move to California. She lived on for another thirty years. Nagged me until I came out here myself. You never really leave