Remember the golden days of cinema in Cirencester

UNLESS the reader is the same age as me, they probably wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about if I said I was ‘going to the flicks’.

That’s the term we used to use for the movies, the word ‘flick’ coming from ‘flicker-show’, because early film projectors had a rather large advance time between frames.

As an aside, the word ‘movie’, is also slang, a shortening of ‘moving picture’.

Going to the ‘flicks’ meant seeing a film at the Gaumont or the Regal Cinemas if you lived in Ciren, and before TV became ubiquitous, many Ciren people would visit one or the other at least once or twice a week.

Adults and children were equally catered for in the choice of films, but children especially so with the cinema club at the Regal, the ABC Minors, which was held every Saturday morning.

An Old Ciren group member remembers: “We even had a song we sang before the films began.

“It cost sixpence (a ‘tanner’) to get into the cinema and we had another tanner to spend on ice lollies or ice cream that was sold from the counter between the entrance and the doors into the theatre.

“It was always noisy in that area as it was the place to meet up with other kids you knew and see where they were going to sit.

“I remember the westerns with Hoppalong Cassidy, The Cisco Kid and The Masked Ranger with Silver, his horse, and his sidekick Tonto.”

Does anyone remember the words to the song of the Minors of the ABC (sung to the tune of ‘Blaze away’)?

“We are the boys and girls well known as Minors of the ABC,

And every Saturday we line up, to see the films we like and shout aloud with glee,

We love to laugh and have a singsong, such a happy crowd are we

We’re all pals together, the minors of the ABC.”