Saturday Morning Pictures

A Memory of Loughton.

I went to Saturday morning pictures here every week. We had a club with a badge that said "Grenadier" as it was a Grenada cinema, though the actual building said Century above it.
There was a confectionery shop next door that sold packets of fake cigarettes - they were hollow tubes with foil at one end to look like glowing ash. We filled them with talcum powder and blew it over the kids in front of us. The seats must have been very dusty!
At Christmas we had a competition to make the best decoration. I won it one year but for some reason they thought I was a boy and my prize was a kit to make a toy tank!
I don't really remember any films, It was a social thing as much as anything else, but there was always a serial and I never quite worked out that if the hero dies there wouldn't be anything on next week - was I daft, or what?