A beacon of entertainment

From the prompt: ‘The Island remained a beacon of non-conformity and a place of refuse for the conventional.’

The tall, tile-clad building in the Coneries was once a cinema called the Odeon. My only experience of it in this guise was the year the Brush held the Christmas party for employee’s children there, the place in its last throws of life as a cinema, I think. 

The 'party' wasn't a party as I'd previously understood them but involved watching a film whilst eating bags of sweets we’d been given, followed by lining up – girls in one aisle, boys in the other – to collect a present from a too-thin, harried-looking Santa or his helper, before exiting the fire-doors into the arms of waiting family. 

I remember snatches of the film we watched – a British Film Foundation number for children about a robbery, which I’ve neither seen nor heard of since – and have a vague awareness of the shabbiness of the auditorium at that time. There were huge holes in the walls beside the staging which I found unsettling, as if some giant mouse was lurking behind them, ready to jump out.

I was an anxious, overly-imaginative little thing, bothered by the lack of adult supervision and hating all the noise. It’s questionable whether the worry it caused me was worth the present I was made -  without the protection of my brother - to queue up for and collect.

Many years later on my fortieth birthday, our neighbours decided to introduce my husband and myself to the joys of bingo – an activity they were obsessive about and took part in every Saturday night. The setting for this was the old Odean – now rechristened Beacon Bingo. Our Formica table in the balcony gave us an excellent view of how the place had changed. No mouseholes now, but all slickness and bright lights, the babble of the players around us muffled by thick carpets in bright primary colours. We were linked up with ‘national,’ like some Eurovision parody, with a big rollover pot of money up for grabs.  It was my birthday and I’d have beginner’s luck, we joked, so I was pretty much guaranteed to win.

Sadly, playing bingo meant total concentration on a game which we – used to busy chatter and continual trips to the bar in our local - found difficult to muster. Despite playing four ‘books’ each themselves, our neighbours prompted us continually, pointing out numbers we’d failed to dab through lack of paying attention. It wasn’t long before they gave up and took the tickets from us, playing them themselves. Neither myself nor the husband could understand their passion.

At half-time, the husband sorted the dryness-in-the-drinks situation by buying us all four pints each, tottering back to the table with a grin and a tray inch-deep in slops mere seconds before the games kicked-off again. The neighbours were incredulous, the bingo tickets soggy and our concentration, fuelled by boredom-gulping alcohol, took another dive downhill.

The night ended – unexpectedly – with a karaoke session in the bar, though empty of bingo-diehards, who’d bussed home in their coaches the minute the caller switched off the mic.  More birthday drinks - the neighbours yawning in the corner - and an ill-advised turn on the karaoke later, we left ‘the Beacon’ ourselves.  My head hurt like hell the next day, as did the lining of my stomach.  Fifteen quid each, those tickets cost us, and not a single win between us all.

To our surprise, the neighbours asked the next week whether we’d like to join them again.  As tactfully as we could, we declined.

AM