Cinema
Photo by Nick Bolton on Unsplash
Watching on wide screen, it suddenly dawned on me that the last time I saw this film was at the local Cinema. In the early Naughties. I look at my widescreen and think, to my shock, well that’s that! The cinema for me is now something in the past. That made me sad, for there is something expectant in the air as we show our tickets and get pointed to the right screen some twenty doors along. And that expectancy heightened as I mounted the very, very long escalator upwards. Now? I can even watch the same film on my iPhone and with the same quality. What will it be like in, say, 2080, when these kids are in their seventies and eighties?
Cinema departed overnight
I didn’t even see the credits
How incredible!
Netflix Amazon iPlayer Prime
Move Sky MGM Dekoo Box Sets
… a host of others
here today, ran for a week,
gone tomorrow
imploded
A beggar slipped in
dossed
got missed
stank out the auditorium
Gave them the slip
Moving from screen to screen
easy-peasy
twelve screens
twelve nights free viewing
and a dry roof
… then departed
but left his calling card
his curious sense of humour
Covid’s my name
always at your service
I visit
I stroll around
Yeah. I like this place
I like thins ‘tumble-down’.
*
Dad? What was a CIN-EE-MAR?
Oh! Those were in the old days
You mean lockdown years?
Yep
We’d go to see a film
What? You mean like
those sports stadiums
we see in history class?
Yep
Weird!
Fancy!
All you lot
squeezed in sardine-like
when all you gotta do
is use your App Dad!
I sure am glad
It’s not the olden days, now!
28 March 2021
All Rights Reserved
© Kenneth Thomas Webb 2022
Ken Webb is a writer and proofreader. His website, kennwebb.com, showcases his work as a writer, blogger and podcaster, resting on his successive careers as a police officer, progressing to a junior lawyer in succession and trusts as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, a retired officer with the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve, and latterly, for three years, the owner and editor of two lifestyle magazines in Liverpool.
He also just handed over a successful two year chairmanship in Gloucestershire with Cheltenham Regency Probus.
Pandemic aside, he spends his time equally between his city, Liverpool, and the county of his birth, Gloucestershire.
In this fast-paced present age, proof-reading is essential. And this skill also occasionally leads to copy-editing writers’ manuscripts for submission to publishers and also student and post graduate dissertations.
