The Greylag geese strutted officiously around in the back field amongst the newly shorn sheep as I filled the kettle, retrieving an individual filter from the silver vacuum pack. Both bedroom doors were open onto the landing and I had switched off the light that had burnt lonely, protective, all night (electricity and sundry bills included in the cost of renting the cottage), questioning the wisdom of recounting the tales of the taciturn visitor (the irony being that he unfailingly appeared in the early morning, lingering just long enough to smoke his pipe before the sway of the tall grass and the cold barrenness of the empty barn impinged upon such comfort). The Hungarian’s snore did not travel the length of the extension into the old cottage and I unlocked the conservatory door to take my place on the green bench and watch the blue tits and finches do the rounds of the empty feeders, bored of insect prey.

I had already determined that today would be the one opportunity during the stay, either that or the next occasion on which I would see him would be once he had been laid out in his coffin, the Balmoral, having promised that I would not spend more on his than I had on my mother’s. The weeks somehow slipped by, never picking up the phone in spite of having resolved to do so whenever an event of slightly greater significance occurred. At the weekend, yes, but somehow once the weekend arrived it remained a mere intention. I had resolved never to set foot in the shared dwelling, as this might imply endorsement. No memories resided there. The music blaring out of our competing stereos (Rory was into Madness, whereas I had been seduced by the New Romantics) had not seeped into its bricks, the desolate peal of the Academy bell did not intrude through the kitchen window, it was as blank and meaningless as the concept of their relationship. I abhor compromise.

I did not wish to warn them of our impending arrival, as this might unwittingly provide her with sufficient time to invent some excuse or “remember” a prior commitment. Even with Fancsi and G combating their travel sickness by surrendering to sleep, the tension during the journey was palpable, manifesting itself in more frequent than usual stops to avail myself of the roadside facilities. The Hungarian has likewise nurtured a deep antipathy towards her since she attempted to deny all knowledge of his existence as he attempted to persuade her to pass the phone to my Father (keeping her new husband firmly in his place by never, ever permitting him to answer the phone, it is her house, after all, and he is there by virtue of her generosity and indulgence). Had he not adopted a more than persistent tone she would simply have hung up on him (though, refreshingly uncontaminated by timid British politeness, such a response would have rebounded on her, as the Hungarian is especially tenacious when riled). Nor did the snub represented by the conspicuously empty top table seat at the wedding with her nameplate and the individual gift box of Cornet Port-Royal endear her to him.

Three hours of narrow roads winding through rain-misted valleys and distilleries and we approached our destination. A handful of drab streets in the typical Scottish council house style, white paint succumbing to the relentless assaults of briny air and gales. The designated parking space unoccupied, but the Hungarian returned from his scout to report that washing had been pegged along the line, from which we could deduce that they were unlikely to have departed on a holiday or even a day excursion given the imminent threat of a downpour. As we drove to Buckie in search of sustenance I reflected on the story my brother had recounted concerning their car, purchased on the basis of a mobility allowance, yet she was extracting payments from him for it, instalment after instalment. Even the Devil himself could not have devised a more exquisitely excruciating punishment for a man who had squandered every penny on used cars, none of which he could bear to keep for more than six months.

We walked the length of the main street before settling on the inhospitably plastic-looking chippie (Emma’s tearoom would have been my preference, but I had no desire to dissipate my energies on a minor skirmish), which possessed greater charm than anticipated and I lapsed back into my native habits with a traditional fish tea (haddock, chips, pot of the beverage, bread and butter) of the kind I had last eaten in Dundee, served by a no-nonsense waitress in black uniform complete with gleaming apron and thinning white hair. G reiterated his disgust at the newspaper clipping my father had saved for us. Whether it should have won the award for the greatest number of factual inaccuracies per line or for the most groanworthy puns had never been satisfactorily resolved (“love at first site” and “they just clicked” being but two examples in the snippet recording their Internet romance).

As I sipped my still scalding tea, G and Fancsi headed for the shore (like so many of his compatriots the Hungarian too is unable to resist the lure of the sea, enchanted both by its vastness and unaccustomed capriciousness) beachcombing amongst the jagged rocks near the fish processing plants that constitute the town’s livelihood and permeate its air. Huge posters proclaiming Jesus’ love evangelically looked out of place in an environment so utterly devoid of tenderness (yet an unmistakable and unsanitised whiff of brimstone clung to every word beneath the message of salvation – embrace Him, or else burn, burn, burn for all eternity). A pair of wellies washed up on an earlier tide and a few shells to slip into the pocket and take back home, nothing remarkable.

Upon return the blue Renault indicated their presence and I dispatched the Hungarian to ring the doorbell. My Father invited us in, forcing me to abandon any notion of enticing him to neutral ground. Zs first, then Fancsi and G. She sat in an armchair, dressed in a turquoise lounge suit. “Pleased to meet you,” she greeted the children, this sparse formula more than adequate for her to convey the utmost insincerity. As soon as she set eyes on me, however, her unsmiling, wart-spattered face assumed a curdled expression of undiluted contempt. I proceeded straight to the kitchen, grateful to my Father for the temporary escape of his offer of a cup of tea. What struck me immediately about the flat was how tiny it was compared to the home he had left behind. No unshared, private space, just the cramped kitchen, living room, bathroom and bedroom. Barely enough floor for a single mattress. Hence the caravan squatting in the back garden for her children and grandchildren (she had assumed that she would be spared the unpleasantness and inconvenience of our visiting in my case because we live abroad, in my brother’s because the petrol would devour too substantial a proportion of the fortnightly budget).

I braced myself when the inevitable could no longer be postponed, but she had already scuttled off into the bedroom having sensed (quite correctly) that her presence was unwanted. A few paltry tokens of the past decorated the walls – his Korean veterans commemorative plate, a photograph of my brother’s children sent by my Aunt as it showed them alongside her granddaughter.

Soon afterwards, she slipped out through the front door to take refuge in the caravan, scrupulously avoiding any contact with us (it would have been quicker and easier for her to walk past us into the kitchen and through the back door, but that would have necessitated the risk of having to acknowledge my existence, even worse of having to exchange a few platitudes to maintain a pretence of politeness). Part of our antipathy towards her stems from her pathological possessiveness, her desperate efforts to isolate him, to erase every vestige of our involvement in his life, to expunge us even from memory. His Red Cross uniform has fallen victim to the purge, banished to the car ostensibly because it takes up too much room, a more plausible reason being that it symbolises an activity outwith her control (or participation) and, more unpalatably for her, one which he engaged in long before they met (and hence tainted by association with my Mother). As long as we are nothing to her, as long as we remain but an abstraction, she can absolve herself of any responsibility and casually dismiss the idea of having caused any pain. The abruptness with which we had shattered this illusion of her boundless ability to manipulate no doubt went some way towards explaining the reception she gave us.

As G later remarked, he had not changed in the slightest, as if the year and a half that had elapsed, even the clothes he wore were the same. He had been out walking Sammy the dog, adopted from his previous owners when he grew too boisterous for them to handle. My impression was that the animal has proven a better, more attentive and loving companion to him (after the loss of Tighson the Border collie he had sworn never to find a replacement, yet another source of bitterness to my brother, who recalled my Mother’s complaints of loneliness that could perhaps have been alleviated by a pet) than his new wife. Sammy’s unflagging eagerness to retrieve his rubber ball prevented the silences from becoming too awkward.

Breaking her self-imposed exile in the caravan, we heard her boil the kettle and stir the tea, interrupting the flow of conversation. Again, she retreated without putting her head round the door. I deflected any serious discussion of sensitive topics, such as G’s future as I was in no mood to talk about any issues of substance with her hovering in the background. Similarly, when we enquired as to whether he was flourishing in his new environment his reply was diffident. He told us that he leaves the bedroom window open every night as he finds the sound of the sea battering against the defences soothing. In spite of all her endeavours, his old surroundings were still on his mind: he informed us that our former neighbour Tam (the Bam) had suffered a stroke and was no longer able to drive. None of us knew whether the new occupants of our former home had demolished the Berlin Wall (as we referred to the tall wooden boards my Father had erected rather than putting up with his prying and general unpleasantness – he has always eschewed open conflict and this was the ultimate cop-out).

As I listened I thought of how he had resolved to spare me the pain of clearing away my possessions and his even before my Mother died, a gradual severing. When I left for university he decided to throw out all of my old toys, books and records, my Mother every bit as stubborn in spiriting away to the boley hole the ones she knew I loved best (which are now stored in my attic here). The process has long since been completed with my custodianship of the precious scraps of paper with my Grandfather’s writings alongside the love letters sent during the months when my Father was stationed in Germany before being shipped off to Korea (her side of the correspondence has not survived), when the dread that she might abandon him for a rival constantly agitated him.

Having eased the front door closed unnoticed, the movement of the bedroom door alerted me to her return. Leaving it half open to eavesdrop proved a most effective method of censorship. It saddened me that my access to him would from now on be limited by the whims of a hostile stranger. That the intimacy of our home was lost, that a certain uneasy formality would henceforth inhibit display of deeply felt affection merely as a result of the setting. This painful realisation was mitigated by the knowledge that her power does not extend to eradicating the past. Her flimsy association cannot wipe away the decades we spent together and no amount of jealousy can dissolve the bond between father and daughter.

It was raining lightly as he accompanied us to the car and we wound down the windows to wave. I could just make out her shadow behind the curtain once we had withdrawn to a safe distance. His voice choked slightly as he reminded G that he was welcome to spend his entire summer in the caravan, knowing (though not openly acknowledging) that as long as it would be on her terms and on her territory his grandson would never accept.

As we passed the entrance to the street he was still there alone against the concrete backdrop. My residual anger had subsided, confronting me with the impossibility of spending anything like the amount of time with him that I otherwise would have. My brother and I had whispered cathartically that scattering our Mother’s ashes on the shore would be more appropriate than carrying her to the peak of Schiehallion, mingling her remains with his in one final union.  Now it seemed like cruelty even to contemplate separating them in such a petty and childishly spiteful act of retaliation.  My Daddy, who gave me cuddy-backs, who rattled his dentures to play the Lone Ranger theme, who pulled his cardigan over his head and rolled his solitary eye in its socket, lurching forward to send us shrieking upstairs fleeing from the monster, was torn from view, leaving me with that visceral, searing love that, if you approach it too closely, singes your eyebrows like a public bonfire on Guy Fawkes Night.

The reverential hush of the reading room would occasionally be interrupted by the squeaking wheels of the trolley piled with books and files conveyed from vaults lit only by naked bulbs. I would grudge the tyranny of my body’s insistent promptings whether to seek relief or corporeal (as opposed to intellectual) sustenance (not even bottled water permitted into the sanctum), both necessitating a temporary abandonment of the pages perhaps only I had pillaged. Emerging into the sunlight from the grand marble entrance halls, I would be seized with a pang, aware suddenly of my pulse, the youthful vitality throbbing through my arteries. Double-deckers would trundle past, spewing clouds of filth from their exhausts. The homeless man we had nicknamed “The Corpse” due to his extraordinary capacity to sleep through any amount of din from revellers stupefied by an excess of distillate-measures in the doorway recesses of major fashion retailers on Princes Street would also lumber by, his gait and his shape distorted by layer upon layer of grease and dust-impregnated coats which had long since ceased to be waterproof, cursing randomly and incoherently at his fate.

My impulse would be to run, to release this surfeit of energy, to seek out the sprawling lawns beneath the cliffs, where the infirm basked in the benevolent summer rays on the benches donated in memory of others who had tarried there, surveying the couples and wandering tourists to the accompaniment of a dissonant symphony of wind-borne notes from buskers’ pipes, guitars and accordions competing for meagre pickings of loose change. Excluded from the buoyant surge of the swirling torrents of humanity I would stand on the pavement as they flowed by, my presence registering only as an obstacle to be negotiated. Minute after minute slipping away like an autumn leaf on the current I might snatch after, yet never retrieve. I ought to be idly watching the northbound trains from the iron bridge, I ought to be wandering through the cobbled streets, the sour smell of brewery yeast filling my nostrils; I ought to be counting the discarded shopping trolleys in the disused canals instead of squandering my best years accumulating knowledge that would not compensate for my mortality. Yet I would always drag myself back to the archives, perhaps because I did not want to let my parents down, perhaps because I felt the burden of presenting our narrow-minded detractors with undeniable proof of our potential, that birth has always been far less of a determinant than social strictures in spite of the most eloquent avowals of those who in jealously guarding their privilege deny opportunity and mobility to their “inferiors”.

My Father would spread his dreams of an itinerant life in a motor home in front of us wistfully. Think of being able to decide on the view from your front window in the mornings, he would enthuse. I had always interpreted these dark mutterings as the expression of a longing to escape, the longing that tugs at us all, the longing which must be suppressed to enable us to stagger on. Instead he has thrown himself willingly over the edge of the precipice. He is marrying her exactly a fortnight before I tie the knot myself and has already removed the new three-piece suite he had installed for her, replacing my Mother’s portrait with her wizened features.

The wall where the framed tourist board poster of Queen’s View reminded us of untainted summers now stares blank for the first time in the fifty-three years of his tenancy (our home is owned by a charity, bequeathed by a bereaved colonel for the use of disabled war veterans in perpetuity; nobody but our family has ever lived there). Its absence signifying my impending banishment (not the exile abroad imposed on me by the need to provide for my dependents), my having been disowned.

“What is it about men that they can abandon their children so easily? How can he walk out on you and your brother for the sake of a mummified old slut?” Harsh words spoken by a close friend in loyalty and exasperation born from unconditional support. I had not realised before how much of a calming and restraining influence my Mother had been on him. That she had stabilised him and mitigated his worst tendencies. He claimed that he had thrown himself into his activities (Korean veterans, local table tennis league and training young players, the Christian fellowship he has been a member of since his conversion in 1981, first aid lecturing) to blunt his loneliness, yet my Mother complained bitterly about how he had deserted her, lavishing more loving care on the ambulance he was in charge of and which he drove to various events than on his wife. The less mobile she became, the more desperate he seemed to stay away from the house, to deny her decline (for a good decade prior to her death he would tell me how, a light sleeper, he would lie awake at night listening to her wheezing chest, the gurgling of her ailing lungs).

When my brother informed me that he had announced a date a bare month after making her acquaintance, that he was flitting about like a “drunken butterfly”, I attempted to reason with him in the mistaken belief that our relationship could withstand the stark truth of my disapproval. I have never openly criticised him, true to the stereotype of the dutiful daughter. Mild teasing had always been my tactic, but the enormity of what I still perceive to be a massive mistake warranted greater forthrightness. His pathological aversion to conflict has resulted in an abrupt and callous severance, we are to be amputated like a cancer with the brisk and clinical efficiency of a practiced surgeon and left, dazed, to ponder why he views us in purely negative terms, as an encumbrance to be resented. He refuses to discern the pain behind my words, lamenting my inability to trust in his judgement – how can I, however, when his response has been so final, so drastic? I have no doubt that he is using her as an excuse (although she is no innocent bystander), that it is easer for him to ascribe his decision to uproot himself to my scepticism about the wisdom of his impetuous and precipitate decision (motivated as much by concern for his future welfare as dismay at the suddenness of the communication of his intent without any room for input or gradual adjustment to the idea). It is less traumatic for him to cut us off completely than confront his share of the responsibility for our rejection.

He prefers to delude himself that I do not care about his happiness, that my only wish is to deprive him of solace and companionship. Whereas what I object to in reality is the rashness of his actions, the sheer ineptitude of his handling of the matter, the failure to take the slightest account of our feelings. All of this anguish could have been circumvented by a slower and more tactful approach. “You’re big and daft enough to look after yourself,” he always shrugged when I was about to embark on some foolhardy undertaking. This usually proved sufficient to prompt me to reconsider. Perhaps he has been so thoroughly contaminated by the church that he cannot help himself but retaliate for the spurning of his patriarchal authority by exercising the sole power left to him, the power of repudiation. For possessing the temerity to question him I am to be punished by being excised.

Other friends have endeavoured to console me by suggesting that perhaps her children and grandchildren will greet the development with equal delight. Apparently they have all been invited to the ceremony (we have not) and have accepted. She has been alone for twenty-six years and he will be fired by a desire to prove our gloomy predictions about their longer-term prospects wrong. He is eager to show us that he has no further need for us; his new surrogates will endorse his role as her spouse, gratefully showering him with all the gratitude and affirmation he could ever hope for.

What he has entirely neglected to entertain is the possibility that they might discover they are not quite as compatible as he initially thought once they settle down together and novelty capitulates beneath the relentless onslaught of mundane familiarity. By relinquishing his bolthole, he is placing himself entirely at her mercy. She will try to mould him, to fashion him in the image she deems appropriate. Ripped away from his family, without alternative refuge and too stubborn to admit he may have been mistaken his choices will be between vegetation in front of the TV set (he cannot assume that she will let him wield the remote control and flick restlessly through the satellite channels as my Mother did) and slow decline in a village where he cannot keep up the pursuits that have given him an outlet, a modicum of independence (the isolation of the partner from contact with the outside world, friends and family the sly but proven tactic of the abuser). If her affection for him were sincere she would surely advise him against creating a rift he might come to regret. Then again, never having been met us we are nothing to her in the same way as she is nothing to us.

I relented and made a gesture of reconciliation: I would pay the rent on the home I grew up in for an indeterminate period so that he would have somewhere to go should the emotions curdle and disillusionment set in. I appealed to him to allow us to meet him on his 75^th birthday (having made it plain in the course of the conversation he has seized upon as a pretext to justify his childish shunning that I would, out of sheer respect for him, be polite and friendly towards her), the main reason for our forthcoming trip home. Once again, he has wilfully misconstrued my intentions, citing the illegality of subletting the property (it was absolutely clear that I was indicating my willingness to sacrifice a substantial slice of my income to preserve his access to a house that would stand empty in case he required it). I have failed to dissuade him from being reckless and I have inherited his stubbornness. Neither of us will be the first to yield. I do not want to lose my Father, but he has made up his mind that she is more important to him than we are. I cannot forgive her for wrenching him from me, for forcing him to take sides when it was never an “either or” situation. For actively encouraging him to turn his back on us.

I do not derive pleasure from daydreaming that I will one day be able to gloat when he comes crawling back. I am too busy reeling from the realisation that our bond was nothing more than a mirage, no more palpable than the caress of a spring breeze. When I lie in my bedroom, restless and aching, the last sounds I hear will no longer be the creak of the stairs, the swish of him drawing the curtains on the landing, the soft “Night, night” and the click of the light switch plunging me into darkness.

“In phenomelogical terms, contends Edward Casey, there is an elective affinity between place and memory:
To be placeless in one’s remembering is not only to be disoriented; it is to be decidedly disadvantaged with regard to what a more complete mnemonic experience might deliver. Places serve to situate one’s memorial life.
The relationship, Casey argues, may operate at a number of levels. Places are containers of memory; simply being in a place can trigger or produce memories. Places also situate memories, serving as a ‘mise en scene for remembered events’. Every place has its own inherent features, its own character; and these are independently instrumental in informing acts of memory. Memory, too, is a topos in its own right: it is a place we revisit, or to which we are transported; it is the road we travel along and also the destination of our memory-journey. To this extent, memory not only has a topography, it is a topography; and the site of production of place-memories is the lived body, the body which traces out the scenes of memory. Memory, in this view, is both emplaced and embodied”

“Cinemas, as physical spaces – as places – embody all these qualities of liminality and heterogeneity; they are very much part of the built environment, and yet they conjoin the mundanity and materiality of bricks and mortar with the worlds of fantasy and the imagination”
Annette Kuhn, An Everyday Magic: Cinema and Cultural Memory

“That such demarcations in physical and symbolic space are not unique to economic activity and the division of labour, that their sole raison d’être is not the rational concentration of resources and equipment under a single roof to maximise profit and efficiency may be shown by the site of a further functional identity, religious identity. The worshipper crosses a threshold into a consecrated, ceremonial space to commune with the divinity in a hushed, reverential attitude. The very act of stepping onto holy ground focuses thoughts on the spiritual, ordinary cares not so much banished as put in a different light, as problems for which the supplicant requests a remedy”
Chameleon, excerpt from doctoral thesis.

During his childhood, my Father roamed the hills, climbing trees and playing with an old bicycle frame. Whilst the women enjoyed the luxury of peeing into a bucket, the men retired to a nearby glade. The dry toilet was situated in a modest hut with shelves on either side of the frame. By the light of the paraffin lamp, he carried out the chore of cutting newspapers into neat squares to hang on the hook. In winter the slops were emptied every two to three days, in summer more frequently. The excrement was tipped on to the midden to rot with the soiled straw from the henhouse and cabbage leaves before being spread on the fields. Although nobody washed their hands after relieving themselves, upset stomachs and related ailments were unheard of. He would gather hazelnuts to crack open in front of the fire, chewing them to the sound of the news broadcast or Tammy Troot. Radio batteries were so precious, however, that such entertainments were as strictly rationed as sugar. When the grocers’ vans trundled up to the Hotel (the only building in the vicinity with electricity), the cottage dwellers would exchange surplus eggs, snared rabbits and the occasional hen for treacle toffee or, more rarely, thick cow’s treacle. The purchase of a packet of gravy powder caused particular excitement amongst the children because it meant a new instalment of the Bisto Kids strip.

One evening a local caught sight of a parachute drifting slowly downwards in the mist. The alarm was raised and the men armed with rifles searched the slopes for hours to no avail. The crew of a German bomber mistook the weir for the power station dam, the resulting explosion leaving a crater long since submerged. A training camp for Polish fighters caused controversy as its occupants insisted on lobbing hand grenades into the river as a means of fishing and mowed down the deer with machine guns in breach of the custom of never allowing an animal to suffer unnecessarily if it had been wounded. On a clear night, the beams of the searchlights above Edinburgh were visible. Whenever an excuse presented itself (such as a soldier returning home on leave), a ceilidh would be organised. Everyone could play an instrument, whether a fiddle or a paper and comb. Fit from the constant toil in the fields, their exertions lubricated by whisky, the dancers never seemed to grow tired.

When he was eight years old, my Father was introduced to one of his enduring passions. The laird, Lady K, who took her obligations to the community seriously, invited all the youngsters of the district to the estate hall on the opposite shore of the loch. Her chauffeur picked them up in a huge car where they squeezed on to the back seat of the passenger compartment (which could be folded down to fit in the carcass after a day’s roe shooting). A stuffed eagle, wings spread wide greeted his eyes upon entering. The lights were dimmed and all fidgeting ceased as Wallace Beery appeared on the screen in a Western. Although ostensibly a villain, his heart was in the right place and when he was hanged for the crimes of his past, the tears streamed down my Father’s face. Unable to distinguish fact from fiction, he was inconsolable in the belief that the entire sad tale had unfolded exactly as shown.

Having moved to the capital when my Grandfather remarried, “going to the pictures” quickly became an obsession for him. Mercilessly bullied at school for being a naïve Highland lad, he would sell anything to raise enough money (usually 3d or 6d) to buy his ticket and would sneak back into the auditorium to watch the A and B features a second time, staying out late until dragged reluctantly home by the police where he would receive a clip on the lug [ear]. The newsreels, Gaumont with its triumphant march music and the Pathé cockerel crowing from the spire, vividly depicted events at the front. Smoking was permitted both upstairs and down, cigarettes on sale when sweets and ice-cream were unavailable. In the gods, his nostrils filled with the pungent odour of stale nicotine and disinfectant.

From the neon’s garish, eye-catching brightness, to the imitation Art Nouveau plasterwork in the foyer, from the ostentatious sweep of the staircase to the mirror panels decorating the walls and columns, from the heavy velvet curtain framing the screen to the plush fold-down seats so unlike the austere, unpadded, wriggle-inducing rows of wooden pews focused on the pulpit, the cinema of the golden age with its unapologetic mimicking of the most sumptuous theatres and opera houses marks itself off in architecture from the mundane space of its dull brick and mortar surroundings. Its brash appeal to the senses lures with the promise of gratification, inviting its clients to shed their burden of cares for the temporary respite of the spectacle.

Every Saturday, my Mother would drive us to the Odeon for the matinee. We would hand over the coins warmed in our sweaty palms throughout the journey before dashing into the stalls (the balcony was closed as a sensible precaution against high jinks, the temptation to drop or deliberately propel items over the edge no doubt would have tested the resolve of a saint let alone ordinary – juvenile – mortals). The usherette guided latecomers to empty places and kept discipline with her torch, shining it in the faces of persistent disruptors and chatterers. An episode of Flash Gordon with Buster Crabbe saving the known universe in his tights usually opened proceedings, followed by some earnest Children’s Film Foundation offering (Kes sticks in my mind amongst the gloomier reels) or the lighter fare of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer (whom we adored) or a Disney live action/animation mix such as Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Boredom (or plain mischief) prompted the older boys to run around the aisles or pelt each other with popcorn (a criminal waste of toffee-flavoured Butterkist), determined to tax the patience of the staff until one of the burlier males was dispatched to pursue and eject the offenders. Amidst cheers and howls, the teenage runner would take a shortcut along the rows, miraculously avoiding feet and the tangle of coats deposited on the floor before ducking through the exit, thereby escaping the ignominy of being grabbed by the scruff of the neck and paraded out in defeat. If the hormone-fuelled audience became too rowdy, the projectionist would impose the ultimate penalty of stopping the film until calm ensued.

As the advertisements played, the uniformed usherette would stand at the front, a tray loaded with goodies lit from behind slung round her neck. The packets of Revels (comprising coffee, honeycombed, orange, toffee, raisin and peanut centres as well as a disc of pure milk chocolate) and Poppets’ chocolate-coated peanuts and raisins were always bigger (as well as considerably more expensive) than their counterparts in the shops. The mouth-watering scent of Westlers hot-dogs wafted in from the lobby when the doors were opened during the interlude. L always purchased a carton of Kia Ora, a thin, orange, purely chemical concoction devoid of the merest trace of citrus because it was the sole non-fizzy drink available.

Mrs. Tweedie, the only woman to rise to the rank of assistant rector who patrolled the Academy corridors in her black gown like an oversized, malevolent raven would recall with fondness the “comfy seats” of her cinema-going youth. Designed to allow some privacy for courting (“winching”) couples, they were constructed to accommodate two. I shunned the back row not wanting to be disturbed by smooching or exploratory fumblings. It would never have occurred to me to squander the price of a ticket on such alternative entertainments.

The vast city-fringe complexes reachable by car with fast-food outlets, bowling alleys and multiplexes within easy distance of one another are nothing more than soulless hangars. The charm of their high-street predecessors has been erased as the new cinemas attempt to process as many customers as possible in the shortest possible interval. Generic pick and mix sweets sold by weight are scooped greedily into plastic bags, nachos presented in trays soaked in vile gloop posing as melted cheese, diluted Coke poured into ice cube piled half-gallon polystyrene beakers with straw poking through the non-spill lid and lightly salted popcorn dished up by the bucketload. The Hungarian, not renowned for his abstemiousness, balanced his jumbo portion precariously on the armrest before turning to insert his caffeine-rich beverage in the holder provided. With all the inevitability of a silent slapstick comedy, his elbow sent the popcorn cascading down the rows in front (thankfully unoccupied). Undaunted, he stood to take a bow at the chorus of sniggers before munching his way through the salvageable remains.