WHEN I go to the pictures my choice of grazing is Maynard’s wine gums.
I do not, when I go to the Palace Cinema, buy popcorn, a confection which reminds of those little bits of polystyrene foam used as protective packing in the delivery of parcels containing goods vulnerable to damage.
I think the taste of both must be similar but I haven’t yet degenerated so far as to eat bits of polystyrene.
We – myself and two ladies, who chose buckets of popcorn – went to see Skyfall, the latest Bond film.
This is a jolly good film for eating wine gums. For one thing it has a deafening soundtrack and lots of explosions, automatic weapon fire and high speed motorcycle chases which means you can get on with the task of opening your plastic bag of wine gums without the noise irritating nearby members of the audience.
Unfortunately I had some trouble with mine. I find plastic packing to be designed to foil penetration, a strangely counter-productive method of manufacture.
As I wrestled with it the bag spun from my grasp, fell to the floor, and bounced as far back under my seat as possible. Retrieving it stirred up restive ripples among people in my vicinity, apart from my two ladies.
They were sitting stony-faced, pretending not to know me.
After this I settled to the essential first procedure of eating all wine gums other than the red and black ones, leaving the latter for later enjoyment.
I had to wait for the brightly lit scenes of violence on the screen to hold up my wine gums and ascertain their colours. This didn’t go down well with my corner of the auditorium either.
We were well into the plot of Skyfall by the time I was able to sit back and work out what was going on. It was impenetrable by this stage which was my fault, not that of the scriptwriters’ cliché-cluttered dialogue. But it didn’t matter really.
After leaving the cinema I found I had been successful in preserving the red and black wine gums. In fact I am eating them as I write these words for the Examiner.
I should add that I once encountered Daniel Craig, one of our more oaken actors, soon after he became Bond six years ago. I was dining with my son at the fashionable seafood restaurant J.Sheekey in Covent Garden when he came in with friends and sat at the next table.
He is smaller in stature than you might think. My son, not readily dazzled by celebrity, said: ‘I reckon even you could take him, Dad.’
Yes I could, if he came after my red and black wine gums.
• THE business news in the Examiner carried a story about a new software company in the Isle of Man, Gryphon Digital, which ‘specialises in the bespoke building and launch of Smartphone apps such as those used by the iPhone’.
I wish them good fortune. Personally I don’t know my apps from my elbow.
• MY old friend Joe Crook rang in to tell me he had seen a butcher’s van going around Douglas with a slogan on the side saying: ‘The Well Hung Meat People.’
That gives one something to chew on.
• THIS week’s Manx crossword clue is: Man is one (4) – ISLE. (Terry Graham, Glasgow Herald).