>Geek: Cinema!

>AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAaaaAAAaAaAaAaAAaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAArgh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry.

*Takes a moment to calm down… straightens his tie*

What I was trying to say is that they have finally opened the Silverbird Cinema at the Accra Mall… and – even better – they have picked a way better choice than W. for their first film:

Quantum of Solace (the new Bond flick).

I have been waiting for ages for this cinema to open, especially after my trip to Lagos where I had my first Silverbird Cinema experience. Heard this one is a five-screen multiplex too: probably a first for Accra.

I never understood why cinema died in Ghana. We used to have a few – Rex and Roxy spring to mind – but after the advent of VHS and then DVD, the cinema shrunk into private viewing rooms where couples treated each other to a little more than celluloid.

The way I see it, there is no substitute for the full cinema experience. Some of my favourite childhood memories are of trips to the Tufnell Park Odeon with my Dad (or my best friend Ben) to watch films like Never Ending Story, Labyrinth or Indiana Jones.

Today I can watch drama on a small screen but if you want me to persuade me to watch any genre that makes use of sound, special effects and spectacle on a laptop, it had better be a big ass laptop.

• With a screen the size of the front of my house.
• Sound loud enough to affect my hearing if turned up one more notch.
• The laptop screen will need a curtain that automatically closes and opens again for the main feature.
• It will need to come with someone serving me a hot dog (that I will finish before the trailers but anyway…) and a drink. Preferably sugary and unhealthy.
• Butterscotch popcorn to get stuck in my teeth.
• Oh and, of course, darkness: I want my attention to be on nothing but the huge laptop screen

I know this will cause more traffic but, in this one instance, I really could not care any less. Unless the person in front of me gets the last ticket to a film I badly and immediately wish to see.

Feels good to strike ‘cinema’ off my list of things I miss about London.

Now if I can just find a decent park, an extensive and up-to-date bookstore, persuade the Jazz Cafe to open up a Ghanaian hall, and some of my London friends and family members to move down, I will be all kinds of content.

This will do for now though.