IT must have been about 1935 that my elder sister took me for my first visit to our local cinema for the Saturday afternoon matinee; our local was the Gem at the top of Darley Street, writes Mr F. Smethurst, of Bottom o'th' Moor, Horwich.

It was an old penny to go in by the bottom door, but the rich kids went in the top door, where it was two pence, but they had tip-up seats. Down at the front in the penny's you had to sit on forms.

After that first visit I was hooked, so every Saturday afternoon up to the Gem I would go clutching my Friday's penny. It was known as the 'penny crush' because the usherettes would push as many kids on each form as they could, and you had to be careful not to sit on the joint between the forms because they moved a bit, and you got a good nip on the bottom.

The place was full of kids, and very noisy, but you had to behave yourself or the usherette would throw you out.

When the show was about to start, a man came out of a door by the screen with a long pole to close the shutters on each side of the cinema. When he closed the first shutter a cheer rang out, and as each shutter closed the cheering got louder, until the final one - when that closed you would think it was a winning goal at Wembley.

The show consisted of a short comedy, an episode of a serial, and a feature, usually a western, and I remember wondering, after seeing the latest western, where they kept getting all the Indians from, as they were all shot every week.

As I grew older, I would spend many happy hours at the Gem in the evenings, if I had any money. It was quite warm in there, so during the interval between the first and second house, the attendant would come out of his door by the screen and spray the audience with floral disinfectant from a large brass spray cylinder.

When I was 15, I got a job as rewind boy in the projection room on two nights and Saturday afternoon, the pay was 17p in today's money, but I would have done it for nothing, just to be in the projection room in the golden age of the cinema.

The chief projectionist at that time was a Mr Alf Thonely, who lived in Centre Street, Brownlow Fold.

Happy days.