Such is the sensation that I am reverting to my youth by moving back in with my parents at their new home in Dorset, that I thought I would fully embrace the temporary transgression and get a job in the local cinema. This is around the 478th job I’ve had in my 30 years and none of them have ever come as close to making me feel 15 years old as this. Not only is my main duty to take Henry the Hoover around the auditorium looking for piles of popcorn but the assistant manager is 18 years old. Let me repeat, 18 years old. He is the one that I turn to, the one that instructs me the best way to restock the M&Ms, he is the one that tells me how best to deep clean the hot nut machine – with the hoover FYI – and he is the one that I lean on when I need help inputting a Potato Jacks family combo into the till on a busy Friday night. Without him I would be nothing. He exudes confidence, as only an 18 year old can, particularly one with such high status. During my interview, he even went so far as to explain that while he may be Assistant Manager here, this is just his mere day job, because he is also a mobile DJ and so regularly enjoys rallying a crowd. At this here local cinema in fact, he is often known to give a speech before the film begins; an introduction you might say, the warm up act even. “It makes a difference,” he explained, before playing me a recording of one such rousing sermon. There were a few jokes, a few facts, a bit of banter and a call for a communal cheer. Yes, this local cinema is going the extra mile. The only thing is the biggest audiences we have that might actually warrant such gladiatorial bellowing are normally those on a Thursday morning that shuffle in for the Silver Screen showing which includes free tea and biscuits. 

When assessing these facts it would be quite easy to understand that thoughts of running maniacally out of the Emergency Exit (with the dodgy doors) and straight into the sea might seem like the next, most logical step, but I have remained intact and realised that it is actually a very endearing community to be a part of for a while. It is a ready made sitcom. Characters abound and comic situations and comments never cease to surprise even the most impenetrable part of my brain. This is seaside frolics from fifty years ago. This is a town that has clung on to the good bits, the simpleness of something as plain as patience, and time is not galloped over but cantered through, at a pace in which to take in the scenery and subjects within it.

The speed and lack of common courtesy of which I am used to in loud and loquacious London, is very rarely found here and it has taken me time and effort to adjust. I see myself suddenly loosen, a joint suddenly drop, a focus suddenly shift,my breath suddenly deepen. 

It may well be the complete lack of urgency that lulls me into this state of nigh-on narcolepsy rather than any conscious state of surrender but I try to adjust accordingly. Most commonly I arrive by bursting through the door, usually 4 or 5 minutes late even though it only takes 2.34 minutes to walk from home to the staff room. So I plunge myself into the foyer on a nightly basis, red faced, heart pounding and full of apology. It is weird for once to have nothing other than your own blatant stupidity/complaisance/tardiness to blame rather than the usual, reliably troublesome tube/train/traffic/terrorist that awards the frazzled Londoner up to about 10 minutes of dilly-dallying. I rampage around for the first few minutes looking for tasks to undertake and then quickly succumb to the vegetative preamble before the deluge of Dorset ramblers tumble in, all seven of them, for the matinee madness that surrounds ‘The Lady in the Van’. I can only smile and think how proud and replete Alan Bennett would be to see these characters bustling about as if straight out of his own prolific pages, and how they seem to drop ten years when the manager announces there are free mince pies. 

There is only one screen at the cinema so once you have seen the current film the rest of the time it is a matter of twiddling your fingers until they start eroding and then it is a matter of chewing the side of your mouth until your teeth come through. This sounds an unappealing way to spend a day but there is something soothing about this inertia. The manager and the teenage team take to loafing about whilst staring at the walls or the street. One day we all stood watching the delivery man unload the boxes of toilet spray for around 11 minutes, intricately, agog, as if we were watching a spaceship descend to earth. I found the only thing to do was join in, despite initial feelings of confusion. Coming from London one feels a little like the prince who arrives at the castle to find the kingdom fast asleep.

But they are not without their merry making, for, three weeks before Christmas, I arrived one day to find the Manager and the Assistant Manager/Mobile DJ, both wearing evocative t-shirts, both a little too tight. One as Santa and the other as his elf, to suit the hierarchy.  I felt a trickle of sweat run down my spine, thinking ‘if they make me wear one such ensemble I may never recover and will certainly never be able to leave Lyme’. Thankfully they didn’t ask. But they did wear them, every day, and without ever really acknowledging it so it was as if they had come to work in their pyjamas by accident and no one had noticed. Though to keep things on an even keel, they decided to leave most of their festive cheer at home as if to maintain the same state of insouciance, and therefore these were now the most casual Christmas characters ever drawn.

And so this goes on, and I continue to feel like I am having an out of body experience, observing from the sidelines as usual, a natural inclination to be set apart, longing to be pinned to the wall in one of the cinematic posters, to be on the other side finally and such scenarios as this are remembered fondly, rather than being executed daily with no end in sight other than the possibility of my being sectioned.

But for now these are my dramatis personae and I am the scribbler on the edge. And there must I stop because the Assistant Manager/Mobile DJ/Head Elf is knocking on the stockroom door wondering why I’ve been in here so long, and why is the door is locked? I put my notebook away and tell him I have been sent to do a stock take and I am only half way through the box of Revels. To which he nods, knowingly, as if to say I still have so much yet to learn.