Going to the Tiv

Being rationed to one visit a. week, it was an agonising decision to choose a cinema. When Buck Jones was chasing Indians in the 'New', Boris Karloff was rising from the dead in "The Mummy" at the 'Old' -- a decision that would have tested Solomon. The cinema would start filling about half an hour before curtain-up. Excited chatter would build up as raucous greetings and insults were exchanged. Here and there high-spirited skirmishes would erupt, rapidly quelled by immacu­late usherettes, Dolly Chugg and Olive Kostromin. Miscre­ants were threatened with the direst of penalties— ‘Vin­egar,' ‘Trailer! I'm going to tell your mother about you!’ and ‘Tiddy' Talbot, take that half soaked grin off your face!’ This usually did the trick but when hard cases like Georgie (Pudgie) Jones resisted, it resulted in a bang on the head from a torch. The last line of defence was to call in Mr. Sermon, the uniformed commissionaire, who, like a latter day bouncer, would eject the young hell-raiser.

At 2.00, cheers would greet Roley Thomas, who resplend­ent in green page-boy's uniform would swagger down the aisle, mount the stage and pull a rope to raise the safety curtain — a curtain emblazoned with Mumbles' trades-people's names, such as T. & G. Davies, Bakers; Lowther's, Stratford's, Varley's, Peachey's, Kemps etc. Roley would then saunter back bestowing a wink here and there on a favoured few.

Then the lights would dim and the curtains part to reveal the famous Gaumont-British News composite of small action pictures surrounding a central town crier, ringing a bell. The news was about a fortnight old, not that this mattered because we were hearing and seeing famous people, from Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin to Duce Mussolini. We saw long-shorted soccer players always, seemingly, playing on dark, foggy afternoons and such things as the RAF team flying over Everest, which evoked cries of ‘My father was driving that first plane!’ or ‘My father AND my two uncles were driving the front planes!’ and so on. Soon the main feature would be on and invariably we were transported on the magic carpet of total absorption, screaming our rage at villain, Lon Chaney and our encouragement to Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller) to swim faster and save Jane. We marvelled at H. G. Wells' epic "The Shape of Things to Come" and we laughed at the Hulberts, Sydney Howard and a young George Formby And, at the end, we stood dutifully for ‘God Save the King’.