Going to the Palace Cinema

Interviewer 1: You said you remember going to one of the cinemas.  When was that?

Interviewee: Oh god. I would have been oh, I should imagine I probably would’ve been about 10.  I would’a been in primary school.  I would’ve been able to walk down there myself from Stockingford. So yeah, 10 or 11.

Interviewer 1:  What did you see?

Interviewee:  Oh.  I saw, I remember seeing Bedknobs and Broomsticks there. I still love that film now, even now. What else did I see? Oh God, I can’t remember. Its matinee things. I mean it might not have been the most up to date of things y’know.  It was anything that was put on for children.

Interviewer 2:  What, you mean the afternoons?

Interviewee:  The Jungle Book I think. I saw things like that there, y’know.

Interviewer 1:  So was that one of the old Art Deco ones, in the …?

Interviewee:  Erm, no I don’t think it was the Palace.  It was on the corner of what’s the Roanne Ringway now, which you get to the fourway traffic lights, it was on the corner there.

Interviewer 2:  Its gone now

Interviewee:  Yeah, yeah gone now.  Erm… You used to have to queue up out the back of the cinema, I do remember that.  That was very thr…

Interviewer 2:  Was it the morning or the afternoon?

Interviewee:  Its the morning, yeah, yeah. Saturday morning.

Interviewer 2:  Was it like a club?

Interviewee:  Yes it was, yeah.  I mean, it wasn’t, like I think with the Ritz there was the ABC Minors or something like that.  It wasn’t that at the Palace, but erm, lots of your mates would be there as well.  It’s erm… that’s what you used to do on a Saturday morning.  You know, I was.. I been thinking about it last night cos I was looking through this booklet last night, and I was thinking about the times when I used to go to the Palace Cinema on a Saturday morning. And it was so exciting.  It really was so exciting that sort of, y’know, getting in there, some sweets if you were flush enough and just waiting for the lights to go down.  Even the adverts were exciting.  I think we only had a black and white telly probably still by then, we weren’t a very …

Interviewer 1: …maybe really small…

Interviewee:  …wealthy family. We weren’t very well off.  Yeah, little portable tellies, things like that.  So you know, seeing something on the big screen… I think to younger people nowadays its sort of, y’know… they have so much stimulation from other things that it dun’t seem as exciting as it did to us.

Interviewer 3:  Was the behaviour good?  Or was there lots of chucking of sweets or was that not thought of?

Interviewee:  I can’t remember the behaviour being bad. No.  Although I do remember being picked on once, because what I hadn’t realised is that I’d erm got odd pumps on.  I’d got white pumps on and they’d got like a rubber bit over the toe, I don’t know whether you can remember that, and the rubber bits were different, because obviously one pair were my brother’s and one pair were mine and I’d got them mixed up and erm…

This article was published as part of the Warwickshire in 100 Objects project, part of Warwickshire Bytes.