Skip to main content

Palace of Dreams

 



 

South Molton’s cinema, The Savoy, stopped showing films in the 1970s, and after a long period of dereliction was finally totally demolished some twenty years ago.  The site lay bare for ten years before houses were built on it.


The Savoy

 

Just here it was

I’m sure a cinema

palace of dreams

I cannot see now

a name from romance

where people like us

were transported elsewhere

exotic exciting

real fears tears and laughs

white-toothed good-lookers

smooth shaven and smart

inaccessible beauties

to capture your heart

jerky cartoons

news from abroad

with fanfares and

announcements from

voices assured

local advertisements

both shaky and still

hands held in the dark

giggling children

nights to look forward

to Saturday mornings

meet on the steps

holding your money

queuing to see something

we won’t see again

I know it was here

though there’s nothing

to show where

the frames told the future

what was coming tonight

and tomorrow next week

did we wake up to find

it was all of it gone

disappeared like a promise

this palace of dreams?

 

  

Progressing into a new year brings thoughts about the future, and the past – what lies ahead, and what's gone forever.

Here's a good example of something that was once important which is now completely lost.

I don't mean to get sentimental. This small-town cinema was little more than an asbestos roofed barn, behind its attempt at an imposing facade.  It had stopped showing films before my time. And no doubt it had got pretty run-down before then.

Nonetheless, once upon a time it must have played a major role here with its ability to transport local people – quite a few hadn't travelled farther than Barnstaple – to some pretty exotic places, before the age of television (which must have been one of the main reasons for its disappearance).

Films are as powerful now as ever, and if anything even more widely enjoyed; cinemas have reinvented themselves. Ours is predominantly a visual culture. So we see (see!) newspapers turning into images on a screen (even if it's a tiny individual one), games taking the same route and all of us, adults and children alike, learning how to do things – as well as finding our entertainment –  by watching what are in effect little films on our own screens.

Maybe this is a, if not the, future for poetry too. Watching and hearing it makes it immediate and live, true to its origins. So this new year will see me for one working out how  my own poems may be presented in this medium – perhaps even offering this poem as a little film.

Watch this space!

So, looking back, looking forward, the South Molton Savoy (love the alliteration!) may have vanished – that's what happens to palaces of dreams – but welcome to videos, now so cheap, easy and accessible.

 All of which adds up to some pretty impressive advantages over the printed word, hard copy and books.

But I still think it's a shame that our very own Palace crumbled, then vanished...







 

Comments

  1. cloggie1 January 2022 at 15:53

    Reminded me of trips to the old Carlton Cinema in Okehampton. One never felt that warm in there. Not helped by the musty smelling furniture and tatty red curtains. Then the VHS player arrived and we had cinema nights at home.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous8 June 2024 at 23:41

    It closed in the 1970's, became a Bingo hall, but then reopened as a cinema in 1979 and stayed open till at least 1981. I was trained as a projectionist there!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rake Daddy Rake

  As with lots of good stories, there are many versions. Basically this one's about a pair of Wiltshire yokels raking a pond for kegs of smuggled brandy.  They feigned lunacy when surprised by the excise men, saying that they were trying to rake out the full moon which was reflected in the water.  Their ruse was successful. The officials had no trouble in deciding they were lunatics, so left them to their raking. Interestingly, the Lunacy Act of 1842 defined a lunatic as someone ‘afflicted with a period of fatuity in the period following a full moon’. I suppose any time falls into the category of a 'period following a full moon'.  As for fatuity, that might include all of us on certain occasions, not least since it's not stated how long 'a period' is.  Perhaps then we're all occasionally lunatic... Be all that as it may, on this occasion the lunatics (I've put inverted commas round the word and taken them out several times) outwitted the sober and sane, ...
5 comments
Read more

A Concatenation of Catchwords

    My daughter’s cat has captivated her family. Even I – being more of a dog person (Timmy our Jack Russell hates cats) – found myself admiring his grace and beauty, and all those skills a cat deploys and enjoys.  Thinking about their cat, I realised how many words contain 'cat'; so it was that this poem took shape. Predictably, I then thought I should write a dog poem. I didn’t actually get very far, having identified only a few dog words: after dogma/dogmatic, dogged, lying doggo and Venetian doges I began to run out. So the dog poem had to wait, its tongue hanging out. But having just gone to my (big) dictionary and found a long list of dog words and phrases, ranging from a certain Shakespearian Dogberry through dog collars, dog days and dog-eared to a dog’s dinner, the Dogstar and dogwatch, I now feel like telling Timmy something can be found to be thrown, and he can wag his tail – even chase a cat.    A Concatenation of Catchwords   Where ...
5 comments
Read more

Bear Necessities

  Coming back to an old work place can be startling, especially if it's been abandoned. Abandoned not just by you, but by those who might have followed. Forsaken for good, even if circumstances had made it impossible to continue. It might not help much to remind oneself that part of the reason for all this was that the work was inefficient, clumsy and had become outmoded. Maybe worst of all would be to find amongst the ruins and abandonment an entirely inappropriate new clueless set of incumbents who could never have understood how hard we'd tried? But perhaps after all, that might be consoling. A comforting realisation that all has not been wasted, that new uses have been found for what we've left behind – in short, that life goes on. We hope. The Forecaster   This was where we lived and worked – a weather station way up north – Wrangel Island, to be precise Kolyuchin – north of Chukotka.   We made observations, carefully measured the various meteorolo...
3 comments
Read more