The air is sticky with popcorn as the door swirls me in.
The vast atrium, arrayed of garish colours, plastic, multiple screens,
buzzes with a confusion of people in coats, jackets and jeans.
They form star-shaped queues in sundry directions.
I have no idea which one goes where.
A machine invites me to Buy Tickets or Collect.  I buy.

Down a dark corridor maze of doorways I swing myself into Screen 10.
Row G seat 22.  It’s plush, blue and reclines.  I sit back, breathe away reality,
but am hurled out of my seat as the auditorium roars into life.
The narrow frame of a 5-year old jolts upright beside me.
Thundering voices, music, clatter and clash reverberate.
Surround-sound shakes our bones.  Do they think we’re all deaf?

The crackle of crisp packets intrudes the dramatic pauses
the glow of tiny screens competes with the draw of the main feature
texts call for response from distracted minds unable to focus on one thing at a time.
Glamour-chilled young things pour endless alcohol onto cool ice cubes,
glossy hair is swept beguilingly back and forth with perpetual mirth.
Senses bombarded, the mouth waters, heart beats faster, lured into this digital Utopia.

***

The Plaza in my town was tiny, cramped, no multi-cinema box offices here.
The meagre kiosk offered only fruit gums; the stern woman doubted our age.
The darkness wrapped us like a curtain as we tripped into torchlit seats,
innocent fumblings and wet kisses at the back of the stalls,
on stale-smelling fabric grubby from the lustful wear of youthful years,
the final climax of hastily buttoned blouses, zipping jeans as we stood for the Queen.

Nostalgia fades as a lingering cloud of tobacco smoke floats into view:
the screen blurred, our eyes prickled with tiny flicks of ash
from the man in his lone mackintosh with the wandering hand along the row,
the bored blackness of interval moments of frequently broken film,
flickering images of Chinese restaurants, barber shops and the local garage selling Vauxhall cars.
Lights dim in the fleapit, supplanted by subliminal 3D precision in our bright new world.