Things To Do In England When You're Dead

At Merseytravel I seem to get news not available elsewhere. Today for example word spread that the owner of Woolton Cinema, David Wood, had died. Woolton Cinema is Liverpools oldest cinema, dating to 1986, it's also Liverpools only single screen cinema and still had an original 1930's ambiance, it having advanced only slightly beyond the days of having a man play the piano to provide sound (Even stereo would be advanced in that place). To this day it continued to have an ice cream break during movies, the profit generated from ice cream sales during this intermission being a financial cornerstone of the business.


It's also where I had my first job, as a cleaner, and I remember the place and its owner well. For one thing, he made us get to work very early, 6 AM, although nobody else got to the cinema until late in the afternoon. One night I went to work straight from town, walking all the way there from The Krazy House. It was my first experience of sleep deprivation and I remember watching the original 1960's carpet move and swirl, rolling up my legs akin to a scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.


And I'll never forget his great distaste for Malteasers. We'd start cleaning the cinema from the back and with ever chair we pushed down some sweets would roll with the downwards gradient of the auditorium to be either hoovered up or to roll right to the front. The only snack spherical enough to reach the screen where the Malteasers, and no matter what we did Mr. Wood would always manage to find one down the front after we left. This was reported to our cleaning supervisor on more than one occasion and went on to be reported to the area manager who made a personal appearance at the cinema to make sure we where cleaning properly. And of course I was, he found no evidence of rouge Malteasers at the bottom of the scene, yet when Mr. Wood came in they had magically appeared! We all had images of him sneaking in after we left and flicking Malteases around the place, an image hard to forget once you've got it into your head.


Malteasers would figure prominently in my life once again a year later when I went out with a girl who had a phobia of them. Suffice to say, she was a bit nuts.


It's sad for someone to die before thier Golden Years like this and it struck me that I've reached a stage in life now where past employers start to die, a sign that I'm getting older myself. Having given me my first taste of employment (The proceeds of which where spent at Glastonbury 2000 and on the then new Rico album, Sanctuary Medicine, and the Iron Maiden best of "Beast of the Beast" (2CD)) he will have a lasting impact on my life, and I think of him to this day every time I eat Malteasers.

The more pressing matter now however is the fate of the cinema. Its certianly a retro style cinema, bound to struggle in this age of surround sound eight screen mega plex super cinemas, and being located so far from town also does no favours to business. My Grandma tells me stories of going to the cinema in her youth, and tells me how it was popular with American soldiers stationed near by during WW2. And for me, it is where I saw movies such as Liar Liar, I Robot, Mission Impossible 2, one of the Lord of the Rings movies (I forget which one) and more recently The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe, which weren't really my choice. I did however see Clockwork Orange there, which traumatized me for life.

The cinema itself deserves to be protected from developers keen to knock it down or turn it into a Weatherspoons. It's architecture is unique and memorable, and its atmosphere is unique, right down to the still present ashtrays. It should also be maintained as a memorial to Mr. Woods hard work and old fashioned work values in making the business work in increasingly oppressive times. I also feel that its photographic history needs to be preserved and made avaliable to a larger audience it is sadly missing from te cinemas web site (Link above).

I'll keep this site up to date on any developments regarding the cinema, and I'm going to try get down there at the screen of the next almost respectable movie to enjoy it one last time