PENSIONER Doris Parton was looking forward to her first visit to the pictures in many years. At 87, with a friend, she was keen to see Mamma Mia! at a Warrington cinema.

It would cost her a fiver - much more than the odd copper or two it used to cost her to visit the old Pavilion at Earlestown, back in the 1930s.

She was twelve when her family moved to Earlestown in 1933. And the famed picture palace was then known as The Rink, because it had earlier been a skating venue.

Doris, from Billington Avenue, has fond memories of the old-fashioned place, which was shut down and a police station later built. She remembers the old cinema manager, Fred Harrison - “a funny little man.”

Later, the much posher Curzon, near the railway station, was built (only to fall into dereliction in recent times).

“It had a balcony, there were always two houses and for your money you also got adverts. There was Pathe News and an interval when ice-cream and chocolate was served. The B film was screened first and then the main attraction.”

Doris’s mum used to queue on Friday to get tickets for the second house on Saturday. The tickets cost the equivalent of just over 7p.

Each cinema changed programmes during the week, with up to five new programmes in the one week.

“There have been a great many changes in my lifetime”, says Doris, “and not all ood! It was a pleasure getting dressed up to go out to the pictures, instead of sitting in a chair and pressing a TV remote control.”