Roll up, Roll up, experience the wonders of the moving pictures!

I am slowing catching up on all the sleep I lost over the weekend and my hearing has returned to normal which I am really pleased about. Trouble is, I have a cold now from getting caught in various summer downpours over Saturday and Sunday and being generally run down.
I don’t care, it was worth it, I think of the weekend now and it all seems a blur of drinking and laughing and rock ‘n’ roll.

Friends of ours caught a bit of the Spitz gig on their phone and have placed it on YouTube.
It’s a section of ‘Living with Unemployment’ and considering that it was filmed on a phone and that the PA sound was ropey it’s not all that bad.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRymxFJkF6s


It’s bizarre to have such a good time and yet know these are our last gigs. On the other hand, everything comes to an end eventually and it is better to end it the way you want it to than have other events bring the show to a close. So now we only have the Rebellion Festival gig to go and par for the course we have to have something to fret about as it gets nearer.
I emailed the organisers to get our accommodation confirmed and they replied that one of their hotel block bookings had pulled out and now they had to look around for other accommodation. They told me not to panic, (which gave me the impression that maybe I should be) and said they will sort it out and then email me the details when they have. I am awaiting further news.

1963

The following day I had one of those awakenings, those unpleasant ones, they are cruel and I hate them.’

You start to come round, your eyes open to a sunny morning and for a moment, just a moment all is well and a new day of excitement and discovery is about to begin. The next moment is an explosive flash of what happened the day before and then a sinking feeling that makes you wish you hadn’t woke. I rolled over and faced the wall as the events of the following day replayed in my head.
My wall was painted a pale yellow and it just so happened to be much the same colour as the illuminated Cinema screen at the Harlow Odeon in that moment between when the curtains were pulled back and when the feature began to appear on the screen. When the first image began to shine through (usually a black certificate with a massive ‘U’ on it) the yellow light was faded down and we entered another world.
I would stare at my wall and it would dissolve into a screen and then my imagination would play out all sorts of scenarios as though they were features being projected into this space.
My earliest memories of the huge somewhat futuristic Harlow Odeon was going to Saturday morning pictures. The programme began with a God Save The Queen clip (not the Sex Pistols one!)played every single week, a Scouts or Brownies advert then the real stuff. A cartoon, a serial and then the main feature. My real love was the serial, a black and white re-run of an American TV show called Captain Video and his Video Rangers. This programme, being a cheap filler, a TV show long ago axed by the American syndicated networks was a revelation.
Into this brave new vision of a newtown in which I lived, in this huge Odeon which in itself was an architectural statement of modern living, this serial space adventure was the first sci-fi epic which depicted technology not so much of the future but more like tomorrow.
This cinema was huge, later to be turned into a muti-plex, later to be bought by a local entrepreneur (polite term) to thwart the Council’s redevelopment plans for the area. It now stands an empty sulking hulk drowning in a sea of DVD movies and flat screen televisions being purchased in the town.
It was designed with a big square in front of it seemingly just to accommodate large queues of people waiting to get into it. And they did, when the first James Bond films were shown there, it produced a queue so long that it snaked back and forth through the square and around the corner. Hundreds of people escaping the black and white programming of their little valve televisions to be bathed in Technicolor where the blood was really red, and the 007 travelog gave breathtaking glimpse of countries we couldn’t afford to go to and killings we were sure we would never be capable of. Although most of us, when we got older, eventually managed the first (and I dare say there might have been the odd person sitting in the dark with the light flickering in their face who achieved the second. We will never know for certain fortunately).

Saturday morning pictures were different being for kids but I remember the ceiling being so high that the little recessed lights looked like stars, and hanging from that ceiling all the way down at regular intervals were spuntnik like shapes with a series of spindly arms springing out from the sides and then facing downward each with a bulb in it’s end. It was like fireworks ejected from body of a 'War of the Worlds 'machine.

I liked sitting at the back where I could survey all below me, the slowly descending rows of seats disappearing into the dark and illuminated again in what seemed miles away, by the light of an enormous screen.
I also knew that if you sat right at the back you were not going to get a half consumed Jubbly (sold in a orange cardboard, pyramid shaped container, sold by IDRIS) thrown at the back of your head.

You learn fast when “you come along, on Saturday Morning, Greeting everbody with a smile”.