Extract from John Fowler's essay
In February 1995 John Ford of Eastbourne, East Sussex saw an announcement about Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain in ‘Mature Tymes’, a monthly magazine for pensioners. He was born in Bristol in 1923, and on leaving school at the age of eighteen joined the Royal Air Force ground staff for war service. His subsequent jobs included twenty years as a College of Technology lecturer.
Mr Ford was inspired by the ‘Mature Tymes’ feature to write a “motion picture autobiography”—recollections of his youthful cinemagoing—and send it to the project office with a covering letter. .”I can still recall the smells, the tobacco smoke from hundreds of cigarettes, the thick pile carpet in the plushier cinemas and the scent of the ‘Flit’ air freshener sprayed in the older ones. Happy days!”
Later in 1995, Mr Ford took part in CCINTB’s postal questionnaire survey.