The plan was perfect: get the tickets for the 5:30 showing after the market. Good, that left plenty of time to get back to the apartment to book the tickets and recharge before venturing out onto the swift London transport. I’d heard someone say that it might be hard to get a ticket because all the screenings had been selling out, but I thought considering it was the film’s second weekend we would have no trouble. No trouble at all.
After a leisurely meander back to the flat, a quick break to recharge and relax, we got down to booking the tickets for the Saturday. Hmm, that’s strange. The tickets aren’t even available for the Saturday. Shit, they were right. It is selling out, still, a week later after release. So, to avoid any more upset, we booked tickets for 5:30 showing the following day. Surely that would work out, no problems forecast because we already had all the tickets.
After a night of good clubbing, good company, and even better cucumbers, tomorrow became today and today was Barbie Day. We started with an exhibition at the Tate Modern showcasing works from Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint, with the latter of whom being a new name for myself. The whole show was excellent and gave us an ample opportunity to flex the art-criticism part of our brains – a muscle that, for me, had started to feel a little rusty. I suppose all you really need to feel reinvigorated in life is good friends to spur you on, even if they are not consciously doing it. Anyway, the exhibition served not only as a wonderful experience in and of itself, but also as the perfect primer for what would be an unforgettable day.
For the most part in my long weekend stay in London, we had avoided the temperamental British summertime weather. For us so far, it had been long days filled with sun and warmth. Upon exiting the exhibition, nature decided that it had been to fair to us, needed to show us what British summertime was really all about. The rain seemed to never end once it had started, the watery munitions coming down like an incoming attack from an unknown, unseen enemy far above. The smoky London rain infiltrated all parts of my clothing, fusing my humble canvas trainers firmly to my feet and reducing my trousers to panels of dense fibreboard. This kind of wetness has some sort of psychological effect where you quickly understand that it is futile to avoid it. Embracing it, moving forward in it, is really the only option when this kind of wet settles in.
Our idea of a saviour, the bus, did little in ways of helping. For an unknown reason, we were ordered to leave the vessel and make the rest of the journey on foot. The clock in my mind was ticking down as 5:30 approached. Would we have enough time to make it? It was looking unlikely, but I had to have trust in my friends who lived here. They would surely know … wouldn’t they? Luckily, I had brought enough spare clothes and managed to borrow a pair of shoes to be a whole new, significantly dryer, man for leaving the house. We with good enough time, but there was just no way of knowing exactly what the cinema would be like when we got there.
After a short trip on the overground that seemed like an eternity, we arrived at the cinema of our choice: the esteemed Peckhamplex. After somehow getting front row seats, what followed was potentially the best cinematic experience I have ever had. A packed-out theatre, with wall-to-wall enthusiastic fans; the cinema itself, an old-school, £5 ticket no matter what local that doesn’t really seem to exist anymore kind of establishment; the best company of close friends all as excited as I was, if not more. A wave of relief so intense that I felt as if I could cry rushed through me. It felt like the contact high you get when you step out of the boiling depths of the sauna into the arctic water cold shower. The whole weekend had been leading up to this moment, the perfect moment to end my stay in London. As soon as the light dimmed, I knew that this would be a memory I would cherish for all of time.
Comments
Post a Comment