Loved Mother! (Hated IT)

One of the bestest presents I've ever given myself is a Cineworld pass.

I need to stop there. Because just writing that, I feel I am a proper sad git, spending lonesome evenings with the other single seaters, interspersed twixt couples and groups, me with my single cine-seat pressed against the wall so I don't spoil the atmosphere.

But it's not like that, not at all!

I have wrapped myself in the experience of the pictures since I discovered this wondrous art form along with the rest of the Bash Street Kids, aged five, at the Saturday morning ABC minors club at the Metropole.

Towed at the ragged edges of the kid crowd I learned how to flow into the cinema all arms and legs, past the ticket seller and into the musty dark.

If I made it that far, and wasn't collared on account of not having my tanner, I was in, and it was heaven. The place stank of sweat and damp. We had to find the route past the long red curtains hung with dead smoke and old scent, and into the close darkness choose a seat with an eye not to the screen but to the curl of the balcony over our heads. The kids up there would rain missiles down at any point of the drama, beginning, middle or end, and if it was a lighted match, be hopeful it wasn't coming your way.

But the ABC minors was safe, relatively speaking. I was surrounded by other kids, and we ran as a pack. We could, to some extent, look after each other, and pass on wise advice like, don't sit at the back row. But if you want to earn ten shillings, sit in the row just before the back, and wait to be tapped on the shoulder. Those were perils indeed, because what came next was bargaining, and I hadn't any confidence in that skill.

But from the pictures, I was never deterred. That wondrous screen was the best ever. Into my life it brought cowboys and Indians, magicians and talking cats, space rockets and submarines, death-defying acts, betrayals and double-crossings, loyalties and bravados.

I still keep hold of that moment of anticipation as the screen shows me the contract, the movie name, the BBFC rating, the signatures. Then, kapow! And what a film to love! Mother!


Mother! You give, and you give, and you give. The more you give, the more is demanded. The more you give, the less it is respected or valued or acknowleged. And the more you give, the more you simply become a stepping stone to something else and someone else. And to my thinking, that is a bastard song of truth of how male/female relationships can pass. Thank you to the man who made that film.

IT. The Goonies are now ruined forever.