Happy New Year with a Laugh

For many years I have  worked over Xmas and the NewYear and not totally not believed in,  and actively disliked, the celebrations or going anywhere over the “festive period” .. . but the secret I’m told to a long life  is not  to stick to the same old same old…. so arranged to meet good friend Judi Young (check out my Book Links) to catch up and go see “The Quartet”. I  never like waiting for the DVD to be released as I’ve always showed off that a visit to the cinema in Brisbane is a good experience  -especially to a Cineplex which has great screens, inexpensive tickets, easy parking , and the choc tops are to die for. It’s just that going on New Year’s Day is different.

We were running out of time, Judi queuing for our tickets, me in the toilet,  then we rush through to Cinema 5 as directed by a smiling older gent.  Not many seats left and then the man on the aisle seat is eating some nice smelling food from a largish container which prompts Judi to go out to the “candy store” .

Looking around I’m surprised to see so many  young children with young parents . They are there to watch “Parental Guidance”.  So I scrambled on all fours to retrieve my ticket which had fallen down in our hurry to be seated and which my next seat neighbour didn’t see the necessity to help extricate it  from under her feet, grab Judi’s bag , only to have the now empty container thrust in my hands with the request to throw it in the bin on my way out please…

Rushing through the ticket barrier I saw Judi still in the queue so tried to catch her attention by calling to her only to have the seated bespectacled woman ticket collector demand to see my ticket so am blabbering about being in the wrong cinema and on looking at the ticket it’s for “Skyfall”  in two hours’ time and she doesn’t believe I’d seen it last week or anything I say…by this time Judi has choc top, popcorn and coke and her ticket for “Skyfall” – I’m not going ga-ga after all so exchange the tickets with a very accomodating young girl at the Ticket Office and  then spectacles mutters dourly that our cinema is nearly full anyway.

We sit in the front row left- you know those seats which help put a different slant on the faces on the big screen.  “Quartette” is a wonderfully acted and funny film – it became  an extension of our current reality.  I will have to buy the DVD .

Going to the cinema is still  enjoyable but it has to be the right place at the right time. Have fun this year.