A story that I can empathise with enormously in today’s Guardian. I hate all the chatting that people think they can get away with in the cinema – and also put it down to the advent of videos and watching films in home.
Simon Busch, the author of the story, says that the protagonist in the Julian Barnes short story, Vigilance, tries to trip a concert goer down the stairs. In fact, I once tried something very similar. I was at the Barnet Odeon watching Three Kings, and very quickly became annoyed with a gaggle of girls down the front who were constantly wandering in and out of the cinema going to the toilet repeatedly in massive groups. All the while slurping their illegally smuggled in alcopops. I don’t know why they’d bothered coming to see the film – a total waste of their money. Repeated “shushes” got no response. I got so irritated that, when sitting in the aisle seat I did try to trip one of the girls up as she went down the stairs by my side. I was probably fortunate that I missed as the accident might have been quite nasty. But at the time I was so furious that I was quite willing to put up with the consequences.
These days, I’m quite likely to ask people ever-so politely at first, and then less politely to shut up. But I do feel like I’m in the minority.