998 words of ranting

I went to the cinema today with Mrs Hogart to watch Thor, the latest offering from Marvel.

As a comic book fan, I was intrigued and pleasantly surprised by the end result as the Norse god of thunder is not one of my favourite reads.
But anyhoo... that is not what this entry is about.

I want to go back in time of that fateful day, just a tad, to the point where me and Mrs Hogart were stood in the queue waiting to order our popcorns and massive, massive drinks of pop.

I’d had the ingenious idea of pre-ordering our tickets via the wonder of the internet before hand as I didn’t like the idea of missing any of the trailers while the useless spotty oik behind the counter tried in vain to print the entrance tickets only for me to hand them over to different spotty oik by the cinema door entrance only for him to unceremoniously rip them in two and mutter “screen 3...”
So on entering the cinema I wandered over to the pre-pay magic box and got my tickets without any fuss whatsoever.

(10 minutes to the start of the film)

However, we did have to queue for our munchies and as both counters were occupied we did what any self respecting English people do. We tutted at the inefficiencies of both the staff and the customers and threw the occasional dirty look behind their backs for good measure.

Surely when the options are “large” or “larger” when it comes to ordering popped corn, the opportunities for musing on the different combinations do not under any circumstances require much in the way of thought.
In the Shrewsbury Ceni-world this is not the case and the option of how much dried three day old sugar coated seed you wish to throw down your throat and/or leave stuck on your top whilst sat in a darkened room has somehow escaped most of the film watching audience.

The people in front of the people in front of us who were busy umming and ahhing were we quickly realised together.

That’s right. They were a couple.

Two people who had presumably spent some length of time in each other’s company, had together decided to venture to the picture house together and witness the same film that they both had some sort of interest in seeing at the same time at the same place.

They did not though, think of continuing this protocol of shared experiences when it came to choosing what delights to consume whilst acting out their forged plan of togetherness. Instead they somehow believed that it was absolutely within reason to block the progress of the rest of us by dithering.

These actions did not impress Mrs Hogart one iota. And she loudly declared “that ridiculous. Fancy not buying their stuff together. Idiots!”

The couple behind the people at the counter, who were the couple in front of us, turned around and stared at me as if I were somehow able to control her actions. (Anyone who knows Mrs. H will know full well that this cannot happen and should never be attempted.)

Things didn’t escalate though – again because we are British, the couple in front us, who as you will now be fully aware, had to wait to be served because of the people in front of them, smiled half heartedly in that way that says we totally agree but do not wish to engage in direct communication with you because although we do concur with your sentiments – by verbally stating them out loud as you did – well, it’s makes you both seem like a couple of nutters, which is fair enough and they waited patiently for their turn to be served.

(4 minutes to show time.)

The scum bags at the counter moved, after what seemed like a millennium, thus allowing the couple at the head of the queue to take their place and me and her to stand at the front.... and our jaws dropped at what we saw.

The couple in front of us, the two people who had been held up longer than we had by the morons at the counter, who were together but paid separately, that couple who had smiled in agreement at our sentiments, those two people went to the first counter where gormless guy number 1 was waiting to serve and then the guy... left his partner and was served by the gormless guy number 2.

We had, not moments ago, as a group just shared a moment of disillusionment at the state of the lack of intelligence of some people and they go and do the same damn thing.

Utter madness. (Three minutes to curtain up)

And they too couldn’t seem to decipher the menu which displayed huge colourful pictures and prices of what were on offer.

For those who weren’t paying attention before Shrewsbury cinema offers popcorn and pop. That’s it.

Popcorn and pop.

Unbelievable.

My foot began to tap in nervous panic.

I do not want to miss this film. It has already cost me a small fortune and I
haven’t even sat down yet. Arrgghhh – yelled my inner voice.

As it was all this stupidity had left us very little time to allow the student behind the desk to throw our requests together and for us to find a seat before the end credits.

As it was we did...just.

And all in all the film was good. The people we encountered were not.

There are a lot of idiots out there and I’m sure there weren’t this many last year.

Either they are being allowed to breed or they are going out more.

Either way, the rest of the year could get tricky.

Keep ‘em peeled people. We all need to be aware of these people who make life unbearable for the rest of us.



And just in case you don’t see any.....it’s probably you!

That is all for now.

Carry on.