My Saturday Morning and My Palace of Black and White Dreams

My own celluloid heroes

Waking up, I immediately knew that it was Saturday morning. Saturdays looked, tasted, and smelt different, and they were that because I was free. I’d been waiting the whole week for it, counting the days, and wondering if it would ever come. Saturdays were my time, my chance to escape the world of grownups and allow my imagination free rein.

I had a hiding place, a small tin that once held Senior Service cigarettes. In it were my pocket money and other precious things. I’d hidden my tin under my socks and underwear in the big chest of drawers.

Getting it out and opening my tin, I’d count out enough change for some sweets, an ice cream, and most importantly, my ticket for the Saturday Morning Pictures. Sometimes, if I didn’t have enough money, mum would give me what I needed from the change in her purse. I think she was glad not to have me underfoot, or perhaps she knew how important Saturdays were for me.

‘You’ll be too early,’ was mum’s predictable good-natured reproach. I knew that she was never serious, and nothing in the world could dampen my excitement. Gobbling down my breakfast cereal in half the time it took me on schooldays, I rushed across the street to my friend Peter’s house. I knewSadly he’d be ready because I got cranky if anything made us late for the movies.

We’d stop at the sweetshop on the way to buy our sweets My favourites were sherbet lemons and gobstoppers. Peter’s were bullseyes and peppermint humbugs, and we’d argue over which to get until the lovely lady suggested that she do us a mixture of them. I suspect that she always gave us extra. Mum told me the woman had lost her sons in the war. Perhaps that’s why she was so nice to us.

Saturday mornings were special because we had the movies and all our treats and felt as rich as kings. The moment we’d handed over our money and taken our ticket, we raced inside to get the best seats. Peter and I always arrived long before the doors had opened and were usually among the first dozen or so kids. When the Mascot Cinema’s doors swung open, and the lady was waiting in the ticket booth, there was a long queue of kids behind us snaking along the footpath.

The show would start with cartoons, and then there’d be a serial, often a western with cowboys.

We lived on a diet of Hopalong Cassidy, Billy the Kid, Texas Rangers and Range Buster serials and movies. We both agreed that we weren’t too keen on the singing cowboys or when they got sweet over girls. It was okay for the cowboys to rescue them but getting too mushy couldn’t happen.

We enjoyed it best when there were gunfights, bad dudes getting shot by the good guys, and falling off buildings. The soundtracks of stampedes and stagecoach robberies were boosted by the loud whoops and cries of the prepubescent boys in the audience.

It never troubled us that most of our movies were in black and white with grainy footage and sometimes crackling soundtracks. It frequently happened that the film would break, and we’d be left with a blank screen. Then there’d be an eruption of boos and jeers as chaos reigned supreme, loud enough to raise the old Mascot Cinema’s roof.

Eventually, when the film restarted and a chunk of the movie had been skipped over, it didn’t worry us. We just cheered. It was all a part of the interactive nature of Saturday morning movies. We kids invented it long before the word became synonymous with computer games.

There’d be swashbuckling pirates or soldiers fighting the Nazis when there weren’t cowboys. Remember that back then, the Second World War was a recent memory, and all of us kids were influenced by our dads’ and mums’ tales of hardships, the blitz, and separations.

I loved the funny men. Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, Charlie Chaplin. British comedy had us belly-laughing in our seats. Educating Archie, Life with the Lyons, The Lavender Hill Mob. We thrived on our diet of black-and-white celluloid movies, colour cartoons, sweets, and ice creams.

When the main movie finished and the houselights came up, the Mascot Cinema suddenly lost its magical power to captivate hundreds of kids. It was like a bucket of icy water had been tipped on us. We’d been waiting an eternity for Saturday morning to come, and suddenly it was over.

Meandering our way home, Peter and I would act out our favourite bits of the movie, delaying the moment we’d arrive, and the magic would be over for another week.

Occasionally there’d be money left, and we’d stop at the biscuit shop on those infrequent occasions. There they sold the biscuits loose, out of big tin cans. You’d buy your biscuits which the girls would weigh into paper bags. We’d ask for sixpence, or whatever money we had left, worth of broken biscuits. They were half-price, and sometimes the girl behind the counter would add some extra and wink at us when we paid.

We had good appetites, and we’d have eaten them all by the time we arrived home and parted ways. Mum would ask me if I’d had a good time, and I’d tell her all about what I saw. I’d act out scenes for her, and she’d patiently stop what she was doing to watch me all the time, with a hint of a smile on her face.

That night when I got into my bed, I always felt sad because the weekend was over for me. I’d wake up to Sunday, church and Sunday school in the morning. I’d come home, and you could smell the Sunday lunch throughout the house. It was always roast, and I loved the lamb and mint sauce, the chicken with mum’s special stuffing. My favourite was roast beef with Yorkshire puddings and lashings of gravy. Dad would sharpen his knife and carve it while I sat in my seat, drooling.

On reflection, perhaps Sundays weren’t so bad. Sure, I couldn’t get my scooter out and speed up and down the footpath as I did on weekdays after school. There used to be a thing called the Lord’s Day Observance Society, and they used to report you if you played in the street on the Sabbath. They also stopped cinemas from opening on Sundays.

Stuck inside the house on a Sunday wasn’t all bad because sometimes we would play one of our Christmas board games, or I’d read my comics, the Beano, Dandy or the Eagle, and we’d listen to radio comedies while we had lunch. My all-time favourite was The Goon Show.

That said, the weekends were the best bit of the week. Two whole days without school. How good was that! Just sitting here, putting down these memories, I realize how rich my childhood was.

Saturday nights at bedtime, when my mum and dad had tucked me in and kissed me goodnight, I’d surrender to my dreams. They’d be of cowboys, gunfights, cops, and robbers, all without the stark realities. We were innocent children escaping for a couple of hours into the magical world of Saturday mornings at the Mascot Cinema.