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| People don't wait in the street until Ritz Cinema opens any more. |
In All Creatures Great and Small, James Herriot comes
off as a fairly easygoing person. I get
the sense that, even if they didn’t show the promised movie about the Hebrides,
he might have enjoyed his evening more at Ritz Cinema, had it not offered up
such a wealth of distractions.
As he and Helen sat up in the balcony, or the “courting
seats” as Maggie, the blacksmith’s daughter called them, her giggles, constant
glances at Helen, and knowing expression for James proved the least of the
evening’s annoyances.
Although the
“tender love story” wasn’t the movie he had come to see, he mentions that it
might have been fine had not the boys in the stalls below not accompanied each
kiss with a chorus of long, drawn out sucking noises, interspersed with the
occasional blown raspberry.
Nor did the
farmer sitting in front of him help matters.
James visited so many farms during his first years in Thirsk, that I can
understand his forgetting the man’s face, let alone his name. I can also understand his annoyance at the
man constantly turning around, both before the first film, and during the
intermission, and delivering continuous comments about the cow that had died
due to Herriot’s faulty diagnosis and treatment. Of course, he had known best how to treat the
animal. Why hadn’t the young veterinarian
listened to him?
And all the time, the cinema, already like a “tropical
jungle” when he and Helen arrived, grew hotter.
If one distraction kept us from fully immersing ourselves in
“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” it was the ice cream we had purchased at the
start of the evening. As anyone who
knows me can tell you, my eyes light up the moment ice cream is mentioned, and
it was a delicacy I had gone without my first week in England. The promised half-time came and went, and as
my gaze flicked between the clock and the screen, I almost regretted having ordered
it.
Well into the second half of the movie, probably about
thirty minutes before the end of the movie, the double doors to our right
opened. Instead of giggling Maggie, it
was the attentive woman who had ventured outside to hand me a movie schedule
ten minutes before the doors were due to open.
Like Maggie, on that night so long ago, she carried a tray at her waist,
secured by a strap around her neck, and delivered a little carton of ice cream
to all who had ordered one. Unlike James
and Helen, who had to buy their chocolate ice creams during the intermission to
endure the sweltering heat, my wife and I savored our ice
cream in perfect comfort.
Of all the hundreds, if not thousands of times I’ve gone to
the cinema, this was the first time I’ve enjoyed ice cream during a movie. My wife got chocolate. Unusually for me, I got Strawberry. Mmmmmmmmmm…
What is it about England that makes me constantly try new things?
The long-anticipated treat added to our enjoyment of “Salmon
Fishing in the Yemen,” and was the perfect way to top off our evening at
Ritz Cinema.
Savoring our night at the Ritz,
Dragon Dave
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