Get your kicks on Route 66

I know many of you may disagree with me, but I think Grease is an amazing movie. It captured my heart as a child with the songs, the dancing, the friendships and the fashions, but it retained its special place in my affections after I grew up. Why? Because it has so many sub-plots that I was too young to understand previously, because the female characters are so strong – I even wrote about this for The F-Word 10 years ago – and because I was fascinated by how different life was for teenagers in the US. I know this was actually the 1970s pretending to be the 1950s, and none of the actors were teenagers any more, but this movie showed me things I didn’t have in Britain in the 1980s. Diners that were open late, shiny cars that looked bigger than my dad’s truck, and… the drive-in cinema. “Stranded at the drive-in. Branded a fool. What will they say, Monday at school?” There were a few songs in Grease that I wasn’t really all that keen on, but I was never able to fast-forward through Danny’s emo ballad about getting dumped, purely because I was so fascinated by the concept of the drive-in.

The point of sharing all this excitement about one of my most loved films is because I have been offered a rather fab giveaway for readers of Rarely Wears Lipstick that I think fellow fans of Grease might be rather keen on. The prize – kindly provided by Carole Nash classic car insurance – is a voucher for the Route 66 Drive-in Cinema in Manchester, the only outdoor digital cinema experience in Europe. The voucher is for the car, not for you, so you can take as many friends as you can legally fit into it. No hiding friends in the boot like they did in Grease, OK? The prize also includes some snacks in case you get hungry, blankets in case it gets cold, and a few car-themed movies on DVD for when you get home (Drive, Thelma & Louise, Italian Job and The Fast & The Furious).

To be in with a change of winning, just leave a comment below making sure you include an email address so that I can get in touch to tell you if you’ve won. (Please Note: Facebook likes and Twitter retweets that my social plug-in automatically adds to the comment list will not be counted.) You have until 6pm on Monday 27th May to enter and I’ll pick the winner at random after the draw closes. Good luck! If you don’t win, you can always check the Carole Nash Facebook page for more competitions.