A Coventry Kid's Tale

Chapter 3: Frightening Experience

Saturdays were good, he could go to the cinema (flicks) in the mornings. "Superman" was a firm favourite (even though you could see the wires), "Lost in Space", cartoons and many more. It was hard to decide which pictures houses to go to there were that many. The Gaumont Palace on the corner of Jordan Well and Cox Street was one of the better cinemas to go to. Upon arriving the first thing to do was to buy an ice-cream tub, all the children would sit down and wait for the lights to go dim, when the lights went down it was time to remove the lid off the tub of ice-cream, then from out of the floor the organ and organist would slowly rise up, the organist playing happily away. As if every child knew what the other was thinking, on cue all the children would hurl their ice-cream tubs at the organist. This was good fun. The organ and organist were now covered in about 50 gallons of ice-cream, but on he played until the film started. Then (dripping in ice-cream) he would slowly sink back down into the stage. The cinema must have made a fortune in selling ice-cream tubs. The organist must have liked ice-cream because he always came back the next week for more!

To fund his addiction to the cinema he decided to go into the second hand book market. Having a ready supply of books, one a week was enough to sell, "Biggles" being the top seller of the day. "Girly annuals" being a poor second, but they all went in the end. Now he had to find other means of raising funds? (All books sold, owned by sister and something). Opposite the book shop where the child sold the books was the "Crown" cinema, another one of the "flea pits", the other one being the "Alex" on the corner of Ford Street and Cox Street, the Crown being in Gosford Street. On one Saturday morning all the children where watching the main feature film of the day. Somebody, but no one knew who? threw something at the screen. In the top right hand corner of the screen a small tear started to appear, one along the top of the screen and another going towards the bottom of the screen. The child was very interested in this tear as very slowly it was getting bigger!!! Bit by bit the tear got bigger until under its own weight the tear suddenly went all the way along and also to the bottom of the screen, the children only had half a picture to watch so they all started to hiss and boo. The manager ran out and up onto the stage and ordered everybody out of his cinema. Not a penny back did any of the children get. The following week when all the children were seated the lights went low, the curtains went back to reveal the screen in all its glory. The person who stitched it up must have worked for the N.H.S. The stitches were humongous. In all the time this cinema was called the "Crown" the screen was never replaced but over the years was to get a lot of patches. The Crown was later taken over and was renamed "The Paris".