So, my dear readers. I have a question for you all. You can answer privately, to yourselves. You can leave me a comment or send me an email. Or you can skip past this bit and get to the frocks, it is totally up to you. Here's the question:
What is good cinema etiquette?
You might recall that yesterday afternoon I said Nic and I were going to see The King's Speech. I was able to finish up work in time to go to the 5:30 screening and I thought this was grand, because there wouldn't be all that many people there and we'd be able to watch the film relatively undisturbed. I was wrong. The cinema was just as full of dicks at 5:30 as it would have been at 7:30, and these dicks made me very angry.
Okay, I am exaggerating a bit. The cinema wasn't totally full of dicks. Nic and I just had the misfortune of sitting close by a group of them. We chatted about it when we went for a drink after the film and Nic suggested that maybe some people don't know how they should behave in a cinema screening.
We were sitting in the middle of a row fairly close to the front. The people all around us were talking through the bajillion adverts and I can't say I took too much issue with that. This is partly because I find the advertisements irritating, and partly because the lights haven't come down yet, and people are still coming in and it's all fine. The house lights came down and the trailers started. Now, I consider this to be part of the cinema experience and I wish people wouldn't talk through the trailers but I concede - it's not the film itself, it's not what I've paid my money to see so I can live with people chatting and making sure their phones are on silent and whatnot. Partway through the trailers (annoyingly it was in the middle of the trailer for True Grit, which is a film I actually do kind of want to see) a group of girls were shown to their seats at the end of our row. They asked the woman who was sitting at the end to move up and she did, ending up next to me. Both these girls and this woman irritated me for the entire film. The woman didn't make noise, but she spent most of the film sending text messages so the lit-up screen of her phone was in my peripheral vision all the bloody time. Now, I check my phone a lot but I couldn't understand this. She'd paid to see the film, it wasn't that long, why did she need to keep looking at her phone? She irritated me further by sitting between me and the girls on the end, because as the film progressed I really wanted to have a quiet word with them.
I'm not exaggerating here, now. These idiots talked the entire way through the film. The whole way. They whispered, so maybe they thought nobody could hear them, but they just would not shut up. In one of the closing scenes, when the Royal family are waving at the people from the balcony of Buckingham palace one of them sat up in her chair and waved as well. During a scene where someone sings, one of them sang along. One of them would not stop slurping her drink. I was murderous. Murderous, I tell you, because I liked the film and wanted to be able to concentrate on it.
As far as I could tell these girls didn't think they were doing anything wrong. And no-one around them was telling them to stop. I include myself in this, and I am angry with myself for it (although I usually will ask people to stop talking in a film - when I did this during a screening of the first Sex and the City movie I was called a 'fucking bitch') That said, stupid phone woman was in my way which was making it difficult. I wonder if it is simply the case that no-one has taught these people how to behave in the cinema. I often think that in public spaces, that people behave exactly as they would at home with no understanding that there are other people around them. You know, when you see someone talking loudly on their phone in the library, or someone taking up two seats on a crowded train because they're doing their make-up, or when you see people going to Tesco in their pyjamas. The cinema thing might be like that, but it is tremendously off-putting. It didn't totally ruin the experience for me, because I did enjoy the film, a lot. But I would be interested to hear what you guys think - what constitutes acceptable behaviour at the cinema?
So anyway, after the film Nic and I went for a drink in the Sausage before coming home to have something to eat. I hope my rant above doesn't give the impression that I didn't enjoy my evening, because I did. I enjoyed the film (when I could bloody hear it grump grump) and I really enjoyed talking it over with Nic afterwards. After dinner and some Laurel and Hardy we had an early night in bed with our books. I've been reading two books this week, one of them being Barbara Trapido's most recent novel Sex and Stravinsky.
In the past few years, Barbara Trapido has become one of my favourite writers. Her novels all have a fairytale taste to them, like a sprinkling of magical realism and Sex and Stravinsky is no exception. I was sort of hoping to encounter some of her previous characters as her other novels are all linked, but instead was charmed by all of the new characters I met. I finished the book this morning in bed and it's given me the notion to revisit her others.
After reading the last chapter and having breakfast, I finally got dressed and started my day. As I mentioned a while back, I have quite the girl crush on the fabulous Sarah Nixey and spent some of my teenage years wishing I could look like her. So today I took inspiration from the cover of The Worst of Black Box Recorder:
Sadly, I don't even own this one and it is disgustingly expensive on amazon. Sigh!
The rather beautiful Dita dress by Fever Designs arrived on my doorstep on Monday. I actually wore it to work on Tuesday, but couldn't photograph it. Still, it was no hardship to wear it again:
Fever Dita dress and Bertie Sardinia shoes
I adore this dress. It's why I have three of them (for real) and I think these photos don't really do it justice. It's super comfortable to wear as well as being figure-hugging in the right way. I love the shade of red here too, it's deep and luxurious. The neckline has some nice detailing as well, with interesting diagonal seams:
I was getting dressed up for the sheer fun of it because Nic and I had a traditionally relaxed Saturday. We did the grocery shopping and had a browse in the charity shops before coming home to do some housework and watch a film. It might not make for terribly interesting blogging, but I love spending Saturday in this way. With that I'm off to bed. Goodnight all!
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