Millom in the Dock (17 page)

Steel drum
either side of the dance floor, few bits of driftwood and dry grass
inside, light it, get it blazing and then throw in a sufficient
amount of damp grass from up the park (over the fence, but don’t
let the cops see you) … hey presto as much smoke as is needed and
probably quite a lot more in fact that isn’t. A ‘wafter’ with a
standard wafters plywood board 3’ x 3’ is employed at each barrel.
It is usual practice to open the windows a little as it can get a
tad stuffy and hard on the lungs, also if anyone is eating smoky
bacon crisps they tend to lose their flavour which can mean quite a
few bags being returned to the baffled maker with notes saying …
“shouldn’t these plain crisps be in a red bag?” Be warned if you
visit, eat salt and vinegar. At times the smoke production has been
so good the Fire Brigade has turned up after one of the bright
sparks in a moment of melancholic staring at the stars while lying
on the Fire Station roof thinking of a 40% pay rise plus, in the
meantime, gizza a job to break the boredom notices that the moon
has gradually disappeared behind a cloud which is emanating from
Millom Workies … again! Mind you they can only come along if Peg is
available, which she will be … for double time of course.

There you have
it, JR’s ‘78s’ psycho..delic Slade HMV disco. A couple of pints of
alcoholic slush and you will think you are in Peter Stringfellows.
Millom hasn’t got any real professional entertainment? … I somehow
don’t think that’s true, so there!

M’lud: “Thank
you Mr Lassut, Court will now end for today and commence tomorrow,
the final day, at

11 a.m.”.

“All rise for
M’lud”.

***

FRIDAY 11.00 –
THE FINAL SESSION

“All rise for
M’lud”.

M’lud: “Ah,
good morning Mr Lassut, good morning everyone. What a splendid week
it’s been, learning about little old Millom town out there on a
limb on the Cumbrian West coast. I haven’t enjoyed myself so much
since we sorted out the camp management at Nuremburg. What’s on the
menu today then?”

Well M’lud, I’d
like to carry on with, on this the final day, my painstakingly
researched defence of the self-entertainment industry. I am now
going to talk about what were the town’s cinemas.

M’lud: “Really,
I am a little bit of a Barry Norman myself you know, I like a good
flick, I recall back in the seventies going to see ‘Slade in
Flame’. Ohhhh them kind of a monkeys can’t swiiiing! And them
birdies can’t siiiing … Oh sorry! Got a little carried away there …
carry on, carry on”.

The Court
applauds M’lud’s vocal efforts; he stands and takes a bow. Well
M’lud, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, dear reader, I can’t deny
the closing of the two cinemas in the town, I can though tell you a
little about them and the reason as to why they were closed. One
cinema was located above the Co-op, it was called the Ritz. My
fondest and earliest memory there is going to see Bambi with ooooh,
the bit where the adult deer told him … “Bambi, you’re never going
to see your mother again”, very sad, no more nagging Bambi, no one
to confiscate your mucky mags, no one to tell you which girls you
can date, no one to show you up in front of your mates, no one to
tell you you’re the black sheep of the family but … still very sad.
The other was in the Palladium, the home of Millom amateurs, an
extremely mad bunch whom I shall talk about next. My knowledge of
the nuts and bolts of the cinema industry is very intimate because
I worked for a short time (a couple of frames from the movie which
is my life), on the actual projectors, with the brilliant Stan
Twiname, the shaw kite lighting engineer. I have also seen
projection rooms since, in places where electricity is taken for
granted.

The projectors
in these places were large beasts, about 6’ x 4’ (an educated,
faded memory guess ... wrong as I saw them thirty odd years later,
a lot smaller, but powerful). These modern animals were powered by
two carbon rods, set horizontally with a gap between the ends of
about one quarter inch. The electrical current flowed across this
gap and formed an arc light … very, very bright. Because this light
is so bright, it is viewed through a deep green glass window, such
as that of a welders mask. There have to be two projectors because,
when one reel of film runs low, the second one has to be turned on
and the two films ‘merged’. This is done by the projectionist
watching the top right hand side of the screen for the O which
lasts for about a second on the film. The first one is the warning,
to turn on projector 2. The second O gives the signal to open the
metal flap between light and film. Projection one is then turned
off and the spool of film taken out and rewound onto another spool,
before being replaced in the can. During the process where it is
rewound onto another reel, via a rig set up on a bench, the
projectionist’s helper puts their index finger and thumb of the
left hand on either side of the moving film. This was to feel for
rips around the sprockets. If a rip was detected, a frame was cut
out and the film then cemented together again, using a mixture of
one part sand to two parts … fascinating … BUT …

What do you do
in Millom when technology is not your mastermind subject? No
carbons? No electric arc? No modern projector? … You make the best
of what you already have, improvise, use your noggin, you Apollo 13
it. We of course had two projectors and a screen per cinema. It is
amazing what you can do with two second hand wardrobes and four bed
sheets stitched together. The films come already on reels so we
needed only one empty for each projector and one for rewinding. A
couple of highly sophisticated crank handles were geared up using
modified fishing reels which fitted onto the mechanism through
holes in the closed doors. Hey presto! You have yourself a cinema.
The films were acquired by Freddie and Peg, who would take a quick
flight across the estuary to Barrow in Furness, returning with John
Wayne type saddle bags loaded with the cans containing the reels of
that week’s films … borrowed from my beloved ABC cinema (now
closed).

Of course when
the Millom audience saw electric lights on the films they just felt
the same as you do now when you see something like Star Wars …
mumbo jumbo fantasy.

It’s funny you
know, Peg and Fred sometimes have to go to Barrow on foot, the last
occasion being when she broke her wings showing off stunt flying.
She got egg on her face when she got tangled in the Millom flag,
which was flying at half-mast because Freddie Gleaves had just been
elected Mayor (how come no one voted?) She, on these clip clop
occasions when she goes Shanks has to wear a panto cow outfit so as
not to get mistaken for a horse and therefore risk, at status
Devcon 2, being eaten by the Barrowbarians.

The light
source inside the wardrobes was provided by two Spermaceti (Sperm
Whale) oil lamps, the bottled, cinema grade oil provided by Arthur
Ferguson on a special promotional ‘Buy one get another for the same
price’ special, often to be repeated offer. The flame provided by
shaw kite just wasn’t bright enough. The picture was still a little
dim with the spermaceti but the lenses were good and if it was
difficult to see sometimes, the audience would ‘scrum’ up to the
screen and an intimate, almost ‘magic lantern’ evening was enjoyed
by all. So, why did the cinemas close? Well, the reason is quite
sad really and perhaps even more relevant in today’s silly world …
in which the beautiful whales have been hunted to near extinction.
Arthur, being the absolute gentleman he is, kept on feeding the
Haverigg pods good crusty Thompson’s bread (if they had had hair it
would have been curly) but refused to kill the creatures. Sadly one
can’t get good old Ken Thomson’s scrumptious bread any more anyway,
he retired.

The Millom folk
lost their cinemas … but did a very human thing in the process.
That M’lud is all I can say in defence here. The good people of
Millom have no cinema because the world is against them … sad but
true.

M’lud: “Thank
you Mr Lassut, my wife is very active helping to save the planet’s
whales and dolphins from needless annihilation by the abundance of
greedy fools and imbeciles. It is strange that as humans we either
destroy or allow to be destroyed everything that is beautiful and
‘then’ complain. Nothing is seen as valuable until it is rated then
when it becomes extinct … it reaches its highest worth. It is a
strange world we create and are about to un-create. Court will
recess for one hour, back at 12.30”.

“All rise for
M’lud”.

***

12:30

“All rise for
M’lud!”

M’lud: “Welcome
back everyone for the final hour; I must admit I’m feeling a little
sad Mr Lassut. Don’t you know of any other small towns that have
been given a good slapping by the Police and the press which you
could put on the map with your superb writing skills?”

Well, M’lud,
sorry but no. Unfortunate really because I’m charging a King’s
ransom next time. But nevertheless, I being ‘the way and the shaw
kite light’, guarantee that you will enjoy this little recount
concerning the Millom Amateur Operatic Society. So again and,
finally, under the heading of self-entertainment M’lud I would like
to continue with a poem.

M’lud: “A poem?
My God Mr Lassut, such abundance of style and massive charisma for
one so floppy haired, small, plump yet with a fizzog that would
look at home on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with the rest of
Michelangelo’s angels”.

Why thank you
M’lud, you really do have a superb eye for natural perfection …
ahem!

Millom Amateur
Operatic Society! What a mob!

The show must
go on, despite family and job

Lots of talent
on tap in the town

From the
serious actor to the winnable clown.

A Broadway
show! Panto or play

Just givvem a
script and they’re away!

Mesmerise the
audience like wickle bunny wabbits in a beam

Yes, an
entertaining lot … the MAOS (chaos) team.

M’lud:
“Excellent Mr Lassut! Without further ado may I offer you £1,500
for that signed original too? Making that three grand in
total.”

M’lud of course
you may, I will see you after Court just before I get duffed up by
the people of Millom. Now ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, dear
reader, there is no business like show business, or so they say, a
family friend and a significant person in the changing of my life,
the lovely Andrea Horodny (now a Guy, in name only not via a sex
change), arranged for me to go to a dress rehearsal of the local
Amateur Operatic Society, not as an actor mind you, oh no! Forget
that for a start! But, as I was an exponent of the Daguerreotype
shoebox with a lens, which was a modern, updated version of a
shoebox with a pinhole, I was hungrily looking for photography work
and she thought she would help me out, nice girl. This kindly feat
of giant proportions was achieved by arranging for me to take the
publicity pictures for the up and coming show. I went
trepidatounervously to the rehearsal (cissy actors! Humiliation
junkies! Won’t catch MEEEEE doing that!) which was apparently being
held in a ‘hut’.

Hmmmmmmm?

***

Walking up the
ramp I passed through a Hitchcockian ‘cluck’ of peeved hens which,
I assume had been politely asked to leave their spacious house for
a couple of hours while ‘the-spians’ went through their artistic
paces. I was grateful to Arthur Ferguson for downsizing through
rapid pork scratching evolution all those years ago, the 6” curved
beaks of these feathered piranhas, because they could so easily
have shredded my expensive Levis with their incessant trouser leg
pecking as I carefully tiptoed my way through their obviously
‘hennoyed’ group. I bet Bill Oddie never gets pecked so viciously
watching birds from his nice safe hide. Get a proper job Bill! You
don’t know you’re born! It was quite a large hut, with a long
corridor sporting a door with a window lens at the far end. I never
realised that chickens were enthusiastic about windows? (Not
Microsoft, obviously!) Maybe then as natural evolution unwraps its
mysterious package and chickens begin to take on human
characteristics (and dumb down) … they could find that they somehow
get talked, door by door, into cherishing UPVC douuuuu buck! Buck!
Buck! Buck Liiiie glazing?

I crept up, SAS
style, to the lens and glanced through the glass, using a steam
blob to hide most of my face. There were loads of people in the
room, some were sitting around the edge talking rhubarb. Some were
up on two feet in singing and dancing mode. It looked like a big
pillow fight due to the down disturbance of St Vitus feet. They
were using shaw kite lamps because the candles I was to learn
later, kept blowing out as people spun enthusiastically around and
around in spirited, trancelike, almost Voodooeque artistic
movements. Maybe that’s why the chickens had vacated so as not to
have their plumes trampled? A lady came out of a side door; she
looked at me and said “You’ll have to go inside if you want to meet
everyone”. That was Vulcan logic, Hick A level standard. I crept in
quietly through a 1mm gap but, fate which was in a cosmically silly
mood, bumped the camera on the side of the door frame. The Producer
looked around and saw me and walked or rather Morticia’d (it isn’t
in the spellchecker, so I don’t know?) over to me.