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raineandsky · 8 months

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#50

tw: home break-in

The civilian had entered the library with an empty bag and his library card, and he’s somehow walking out with a bag of books, a renewed card, and a hero trailing after him.

“I’m really glad I managed to find you,” the hero is saying, as if the civilian is particularly interested. “I’m telling you, you’re—”

“Dying. Or about to die.” The civilian doesn’t break his stride as he beelines for the bus stop. “Whichever.”

“[Civilian], please, these are serious matters,” the hero says a little desperately.

“Getting these books home before they dislocate my shoulder is a serious matter.”

“[Civilian], listen to me. Your life is on the line.”

“Living in a city with a bunch of idiots fighting in the streets already has my life on the line,” the civilian retorts with a snort. “Business as usual.”

They round the corner and the bus stop comes into view in all its glory. “[Civilian]—” Oh my god, are they still going? “—you need to—”

“Look, [Hero], really, I’m flattered you care so much.” He pauses, the hero almost bumping into him at the abruptness of it. “But I can assure you I’ve never been involved in any illegal activity. I’m not on anyone’s hitlist. Don’t think I’ve ever even seen one of the villains, let alone worked with them.”

The hero seems to be thrown for a loop for a moment, and the civilian takes that as his cue to continue with his day.

“Wait, no, [Civilian]—” They’re coming after him again. GODDAMNIT. “—that’s not what it’s about. It– The villains have nothing to do with it. I’m trying to warn you about the agency.”

That gives the civilian reason to stop, and this time the hero does walk into him. “You’re trying to warn me about the place you work for?”

The hero nods as if that isn’t the strangest contradiction he’s ever heard. “They’re looking for you.”

The civilian frowns, but he doesn’t let it put him off. “Again, I’m not affiliated with any of the scum wandering the streets. No need to look for me.”

His bus is here. He gives the hero a half-hearted smile, more out of politeness than any feeling of satisfaction about this conversation, and starts for the queue piling onto the bus.

“[Civilian].” The hero’s hand closes around his arm, painfully tight. “I’m trying to help you. I can protect you from them.”

The civilian shakes him off, and in that hero brain it’s obviously hardwired as a signal for let go. They step back like they’ve been electrocuted. The civilian asks exactly zero questions and bolts for the bus.

“[Civilian]!” the hero shouts after him, but he ignores them and hops on just before the doors slip closed. The bus speeds away without a thought for the hero, leaving them watching mournfully from the pavement as it goes.

The civilian sets his books on his coffee table at home, trying to ignore what the hero said. They’re messing with him, surely. He has nothing to do with the heroes or the villains. They have no reason to have an interest in him. The hero was messing with him.

He hears his living room window sliding open at exactly 2am, though, and it occurs to him that maybe they weren’t.

#creative writing #writblr #writers on tumblr #writing #writing community #heroes and villains #tw breaking and entering #so. apparently publishers want you to be basically famous to publish your book #so imma need yall to vouch for me when i say people read my writing #just nod and well be fine

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imherongraystairstrash · 3 years

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Holden Caulfield's central conflict was that he was a gemini.

#the catcher in the rye #queue the mess that is my brain at 2am #this is what writing english essays do to students #holden caulfield

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romanoffsbish · 2 years

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Last Call ☎️

Florence Pugh x Fem!Reader

"I'll be home by 2AM darling!" Flo called out to you from the front door, as she went to leave.

"Wait!" You shriek, and sprint to her from the back of the house.

"What is it my love?" She questions with a concerned expression.

"You.. You were just going to leave without my goodbye kiss?" You pant out while trying to catch your breath.

——

Florence smiles adoringly at you, and your perfectly kissable pout.

"Oh no, how could I have committed such an atrocity." She gasps out, then reaches for your hips and pulls you into her body.

She leans in, and pecks your lips, then laughs at she hears your whines.

"Was that not a kiss darling?" She teases you, working to do so any chance she gets.

"Not a good enough one." You grumble, while stubbornly trying to wriggle out of her grasp.

"My apologies, let me make it up to you then." She replies, mischief ever present in her tone.

She swiftly rotates your body, and slams you into the door. Her lips meet yours in an all too consuming kiss, and your brain all but short circuits.

"Better?"

You hum, unable to form a coherent thought, and she chuckles at your state.

"I'll see you in a few hours darling, I love you."

"I love you too, Flo." You say, finally regaining some of your cognition functions back.

She spins your body off the door, pecks your lips once more, then slips out the door.

"Well, Billie girl, I guess it's just us for the night..." You murmur, as you make your way to heat up some popcorn, and queue up your comfort Marvel movie.

You were in the process of cleaning up your movie mess, having just finished your third movie of the night, when your phone began to ring. "Hail's💜" lit up on your caller ID, so you'd answered it without hesitation.

"Hello?"

"Y/N!!! Why aren't you here?!"

"You know the club isn't exactly my scene."

"Well, I miss you..."

"I miss you too sweets, maybe we can get some post hangover brunch tomorrow, yeah?" You chuckle out, simply hearing her level of drunk and knowing Flo's probably surpassed that.

"Please!!!!" She whines out, then you hear a muffling noise, and your curiosity is peaked.

"Who is this!! Why are you stealing my bestie from me?" Florence slurs into the phone, and you smile to yourself.

"Well, hello to you too darling."

"Y/N?! Oh my gosh... Baby, is that you?!” She gasps out, then immediately breaks out into a drunk rambling.

“Did you know that I love you?! Because, I do! I really freaking do! I can’t wait to carry all of our babies! Well, you can carry some too, actually I want them to look like you! Mini Y/N’s running around the house, they’d have your cute nose, and beautiful y/e/c eyes. Oh my gosh, baby, let’s have a baby!!!”

You choke on your water, and start spluttering, and you can vaguely hear Florence tapping on the phone to ‘assist’ you.

“Let it out baby!!” She slurs into the phone.

“Baby, are you okay?” She asks after a few seconds, and you finally catch a break from your spluttering to reply.

“Yes, darling, I’m okay…”

“Do you not want to have babies with me?” She whimpers into the phone, and you can hear the inflection in her voice telling you she’s on the verge of crying.

“Oh, darling, no—.”

She starts sobbing, and you realize your sequence of words was not all that smart.

“Hey, Flossie, calm down, sweetheart—.”

“I’m going to go…” She sniffles into the phone then hangs up.

You groan exaggeratedly, and Billie looks up at you sympathetically. You pat her head, grab your keys, then leave to the pub she’s at, regardless of the fact that you’re already in your pajamas.

It’s now 12:58AM, and you’re stood outside the pub waiting for her to walk out after last call. You’re holding a bouquet of flowers in one hand, her favorite after drinking burger in the other, and you even picked up a cheesy baby onesie that was on clearance to help remedy your sins.

Florence stumbles out of the bar, leaning against a far less drunk Hailee, who locks eyes with you instantly. She glares at you, while you try to plead with your eyes for some understanding. Then Florence starts shouting.

“I don’t wanna go home to her! She’s a dream crusher! She took my mini Y/N’s from me. They were frolicking around the bar, and then they just fizzled away. She’s like a baby snatcher. Why would I want to have babies with a dream crushing, baby snatching, gorgeous woman that I love so very much. I wouldn’t, that would be preposterous…. Why doesn’t she want to have babies with me?“ Florence starts with a shout, then fades into a dreamy state, and ends with a light sob, Hailee catches on to your gaze, and lifts Florence’s face until her gaze falls on you.

She turns away immediately and starts to stumble down the street, so now you find yourself chasing after her in your Yelena t-shirt and Marvel bottoms. Most would think you were a crazy stalker, and that’s what she probably wants right now.

“Flo, my darling, love of my life…”

She continues to “run” away from you.

“Schmoopsie, Flossie, my gorgeous girl..”

Her speed slows slightly, but it’s obvious she’s just tiring, she still wants to “escape” you.

“Florence Pugh! Mother of all my future babies, will you please just stop!”

She halts in her movements, allowing you to catch up to her. You open your water bottle, take a swig, then lift it to her lips. She chugs the entirety of your hydro, and you just chuckle at her antics.

“Oh, my sweet girl, never a dull moment.” You sigh out, as you maneuver your full arms around her body to pull her into your body.

“You really want to have my babies?”

“Yes, of course I do, I didn’t mean for it to sound like a no over the phone, but you hung up before I could explain…”

“I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be darling, I should’ve chosen my words better.”

“Can we have a baby tomorrow then?”

“Baby, I think we’re skipping a few steps here.” You laugh out, and she pulls back with a pout, that you swiftly kiss away.

She hums in contentment against your lips, then she murmurs.

“What did we skip?”

You sigh, then hand her the burger, and she immediately bites into it, and grabs the flowers you extend out as she stares at you expectantly.

“Well, for starters…”

You curse yourself for ever picking up the phone earlier tonight, having not planned for things to go this way. Especially not in the dirty streets of LA, while outside of a bar, but it just felt perfectly timed.

“Florence Rose Pugh, I’ve known you for eight years, we met one summer when I was on a ‘holiday’ in Oxford…” you exaggerate the word, in your best British accent.

“… and everything just clicked for us, we became fast friends, and soon enough we were pen pals. Fast forward four years and you were finally living in the same state as me, even if it was only part time, we became inseparable. Between scenes you’d make it your life’s mission to seek me out, and I’d do the same between shifts at the coffee shop and classes at ‘Uni’. It only took me a year of time with you to confirm that I was in love, but it took you a little longer to catch on. That night at your premiere party, where you let your drunken jealousy take over was honestly the best night of my life. If not for that oblivious guy flirting with me, who knows if we’d have gotten over ourselves. Regardless, here we are, three years later and drunkenly fighting about all of our hypothetical children outside of a bar…”

“All ten of them.” She mumbles over a bite of her burger.

“We’ll circle back to that…” You laugh out.

“Everything has changed, but we’ve somehow stayed the same where it counts. I couldn’t—no I wouldn’t, imagine my life with anyone else. You make my life worth living, so—Flossie, would you do me the absolute honor of becoming my wife?”

“If I say yes, then you’ll have my babies?”

“If you say yes, then I’ll be your wife.” You sigh out exasperatedly.

“I think I like the sound of that, Mrs. Y/N Pugh, it rolls off the tongue rather nicely.” She beams, as she grips your chin, and guides you to your feet.

“I’d love nothing more than to marry you, my perfect angel…” She genuinely coos, as she uses her grip on your chin to pull you in for a passionate kiss.

“My besties are getting married!!!” Hailee shrieks, as she jumps out from behind a bush, that you hadn’t even seen her sneaking into.

“And having babies!!!” Flo cheers along with her, as they hug one another, and jump around in a connected circle.

“Yeah, apparently 10.” You grumble to yourself, as you guide the drunk women to your car to get home.

The following morning you wake up to the sun’s golden rays shining through, and to the sound of Florence groans, causing you to chuckle.

“Good morning darling.” You whisper, as you guide her face to your chest to shield her from the light.

She smiles against your chest, and begins to place gentle kisses to your skin, while you massage at her scalp.

“Did you have a good night?”

“From what I can remember of it, yeah…” She mutters, and you immediately stiffen in her embrace.

“What do you remember?” You stutter out, trying not to sound disappointed.

“I remember dancing with Hailee and the crew, drinking an ungodly amount of booze, and agreeing to spend the rest of my life with you.” She muses, smirking against your skin as she feels your body relax.

“You’re mean…” You grumble, and go to get up, but she pulls you back down, and harshly throws you atop the mattress.

She straddles your lap, then leans down to kiss you tenderly.

“You really think I’d forget such a pivotal moment in my life? I’ve been patiently waiting for you to make this move for ages.”

“What if I’d been waiting on you?” You quip back and she giggles from above you.

“Well, that would’ve been an extremely long game of cat and mouse.”

You don’t reply, instead, you just simply stare up at the beautiful woman. She shies under your gaze, and you smile softly at the affect you’d just had on her. Reaching up with both hands you secure them behind her neck, then guide her face down to yours, and move your lips against hers in a sweet kiss.

Florence has other ideas though, and bites down harshly on your lower lip, and you gasp. She slips her tongue past your parted lips, and moves her hands underneath your shirt to cup your bare breasts, and you moan at the feeling.

“No! No sexy times! Only brunch! Brunch and bestie cuddles!” Hailee shouts through the door, as she starts to hammer her fist into it.

Florence groans at the interruption, slightly pulling back to yell at her to fuck off, but you just immediately start laughing from beneath her and she can’t help but to smile at the sound.

“I did promise her brunch…”

“Yeah, but you also promised me babies.” She lowly states, with a lust filled gaze, and you roll your eyes at her willful ignorance to basic biology.

“Later…” You promise and she reluctantly concedes.

“Be out in ten Hail’s.”

She knocks twice to acknowledge your statement, and you and Flo get ready to face the day.

You heard Flo giggling from the bathroom, so you made your way over to see what was so funny, but she hid her phone to her chest, and you quirked your brow.

“Don’t get mad.” She laughs out, and your nerves begin to bubble up.

She turns her phone, and you groan at the sight.

“FLORENCE PUGH PROPOSED TO BY CRAZED FAN!”

Then there’s dark, grainy photos of a drunk Florence, staring at you in bewilderment while your PJ clad, messy haired form dopily stares up at her with a ring in hand.

“Brunch is canceled.” You groan, and fall back against the bed.

She stands up, and pulls you up against your protests, then leads you out the door.

Yeah, you’ve decided it, you’re never answering your phone after 12AM again…

#florence pugh pov #Florence pugh #florence pugh fluff #florence pugh oneshot #florence pugh imagine #florence x reader #florence x fem!reader #florence x you #florence x y/n #florence pugh x female reader #florence pugh x reader #florence pugh x you #florence pugh x y/n #gxg #lgbtqia

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shepgeek · 5 years

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It was the Summer of ‘96

The UCI at Kinnaird Park, Edinburgh was a 12-screen multiplex which stood outside of the city throughout the 1990s. Edinburgh has a rich history of wonderful old cinemas, with the Filmhouse and Dominion seemingly still thriving, but they were a considerable trek into town and a multiplex was something completely new to the capital. As the 80s ended, shiny new laser-adorned centres appeared on the fringes of the city and it was genuinely exciting when a curious new outdoor retail park appeared promising to change how shopping worked. The mysteries of this enormous cinema complex, flanked as it was by a bowling alley and a Mexican restaurant (what the hell was a “fajita”?) and boasting a preposterous number of screens were impossibly glamorous. When it opened in 1990 the first film I saw there was Nuns of the Run, but later that summer there followed Back to the Future part III, The Rocketeer and Gremlins 2. I was sold on the place and, throughout my teens, it became my cinema of choice and so, when I returned home from university in the summer of 1996, it felt obvious to try for a 10-week summer job there.

My previous summer had been spent working in a hotel, resenting every second spent in thrall to the management’s penny-pinching, living in dread of being asked to serve soup at weddings and, on one memorable occasion, flooding a storage room: in short I had not been a good fit. Getting the job at the UCI proved alarmingly easy and, on day one, a couple of the older and longer-term workers proposed a welcoming trip to the bar besides Asda for what proved to be an alarming number of tequila slammers in our lunch hour. These guys were a mixed bunch- some of them comfortable in their own skins and mischievously keen to mess with new blood (I am pleased, although not proud, to report I held my booze that afternoon) but there were others that were clearly resentful of us swanky summer students. Those gents held 5-star badges, having made it up the ladders to the highest level of subordinate but marooned short of management and, for us 1-star newbies with our air of cheerful short-term frivolity, I can, in hindsight, see how annoying and privileged our attitudes must have felt. It led to unrelenting surliness from a few, lifting growls only when delighting in handing out the crappiest jobs possible, but beyond that they rarely held much tangible sway. All employees also got a pass card entitling us to half price at the nearby McDonalds, something which, after watching Super Size Me, must have affected the longer term workers and probably took a year off my own life expectancy. A group of about half a dozen similarly intentioned students banded together to give an air of demented fun to working there that summer and my trips to any multiplexes were forever changed by having to don the black waistcoat, turquoise clip-on bowtie and flashlight.

Beyond the ticket office at the entrance, there was a large central food court leading to two avenues symmetrically with screens 1-6 to the left and 7-12 to the right. 6 and 7 were the big ones and would be sold out almost every evening, with the entire place packed out on Friday and Saturday nights: if you ever had that final shift you could expect to be locking up at about 2am. In the central hub there was a main food counter in front of you, with an ice cream vendor on the right and the pic’n’mix and computer game area to the left and it soon became clear which was the station to avoid. The pic’n’mix room was tucked into a corner, so if you were manning it you faced hours sat alone in a circular snug filled entirely with sweets to be kept company only by the unrelenting barrage of the arcade games’ yelling at you in a loop of their demo modes: “ITS RACHEL, DAUGHTER OF THE PRESIDENT OF SERCIA!” The hours there were long and draining and, on one occasion, I tried to lift the grim monotony and took the bags of change from the till to see if I could teach myself juggling. I managed about 10 minutes before the camera in the corner of the room tipped off a manager who fired up the walkie talkie to order me to stop dicking about. What was often worse was actually getting a customer, as frequently it would be a kid whose parents had blithely waved them towards the room with permission to “get yerself some sweeties”. I would watch with dread as a child visited scoop after scoop and, despite the numerous signs making the hefty pricing clear, the reaction when I weighed the final submission would often be incredulous anger from the parent. I couldn’t disagree but that didn’t seem to help much either. Still, it meant that, come the end of the day, there were always a few bags left over that irate customers had refused to pay for, which we divided up between us but the quality of cinema pic’n’mix has remained so low for the 2 decades since that I can’t stomach the stuff to this day.

By far the best job was working as an usher, which I managed to sustain for almost the entirety of my time there. Usher’s jobs were vaguely defined and generally had to just keep everything flowing, so if a life size cardboard cutout of Billy Zane dressed as The Phantom needed building, then we’d do so. We were tasked to open each screening, manage any queues, seat the customers if it was busy and then open the doors at the end, tidying up any litter which was left and taking that to the compactor. Beyond that we were to wander round the screens, ostensibly to check that everything was working fine and each day would start with a slip of paper issued to all detailing every start & end time for all showings across the 12 screens throughout that day. This “checking” duty was the best part of the job but it was a luxury than only could be indulged when we were less busy and generally only during the afternoons. The job was simple and trouble was rare, although I did make one big cockup when I allowed in a party of kids with some accompanying adults but didn’t twig that the birthday boy was carrying a helium balloon, which he then let go and it blocked the projection, casting a massive silhouette of Bert from Sesame Street onto the screen. The showing had to be stopped as we messed about with the aircon to try & blow it to one side and the final solution involved a ladder and a pencil on a brush. Aggressive behaviour from the public was similarly rare and the only problem I ever experienced consisted of three guys who pitched up to a bafflingly scheduled late-night showing of Flipper whist completely arseholed and magnificently bellowing the theme song on a loop throughout the show. As there was nobody else in there with them, we left them to it and all we needed to do was gently wake them come the end of the screening.

Littering was far more of a problem, with the worst cases being when someone dropped a drink on the downward-sloping floor which led to puddles of stickiness that spread everywhere when the audience went to leave. You’d also periodically get a couple of kids overfilled on sweets & fizzy drink barfing it all back up, which was always fun, so the trick was to work out when the tidying of a particularly bad screening was due to finish and then volunteer to open a screening that began immediately beforehand: my mastery of spreadsheets allowed me to dodge plenty of pukers. Even without occasional vomit, the mess was always considerable, and I still don’t understand why people feel that, once the light goes down, that all bets are off in a cinema, with some punters leaving mystifying amounts of carnage upon exiting. Some would try to sneak in messy food from outside and, on one cleaning, I picked up what I assumed to be a sweets wrapper but turned out in actuality to be a condom. What made it worse was that the screening concerned had been about half full. Given how long it took to clear each screen, the end credits to each film became our accompanying litter-picking soundtrack to the summer, and David Arnold’s score to Independence Day remains a personal favourite. Once we had filled our bags of rubbish (the trick being to take your time in doing so), we had to then dump them into the compactor, an ominous machine round the back of the complex which, given its daily diet of coke, nacho cheese, popcorn and ice cream, had an aroma of profound horror which I will never forget, nor will I the images of the mysterious brown goop which oozed around its base. It had its uses though- I remember that the compactor was the only safe place to hide undisturbed to listen to my AM radio as penalty shoot-outs defined Euro 96.

We also had to keep an eye out for kids trying to sneak into 15 certificate films, something that the ticket office often picked up but that parents would try to subvert by buying tickets for their children and then buggering off. I fondly recall one set of lads who were plainly aged between 8 and 12 who were desperate to get into The Rock. After firing questions at them about their birthdays and watching them desperately struggle with the arithmetic, we suggested they swap their tickets for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and, when the littlest lit up at the suggestion, we declared this the final proof that they were definitely under age. They genuinely were furious with the lad, convinced that they had come tantalisingly close to actually making it in.

Aside from pic’n’mix, working on the food counter was the least fun shift and I managed to avoid this for almost the entire summer till one of the 5-star badges noticed and dobbed me in. There was nowhere to hide when you were front and centre and what surprised me most was how many customers completely switched their brains off. This is perhaps to be expected: you go to the cinema because you don’t want to have to think, but suddenly you get faced with a myriad of options and offers. By far the most frequent request from a customer was simply for “some juice”, to which I’d have to reply “certainly- would you like Irn Bru? Diet? With or without Ice? Small, medium or bucket? Upgrade to a meal deal?”. More clarification just annoyed everyone- I still believe that nobody ever likes buying food at the cinema. There were plenty other spectacular brainfarts from the public though- one customer asked how many scoops of ice cream they would get in a treble cone, whilst another, in a moment that still baffles me to this day, queued up to ask “What do you get in a packet of minstrels?” Swallowing the instinct to reply “minstrels”, I hesitatingly offered “Er, small chocolates in a crispy shell?” and the gent, in what I can only imagine was mortification at the ridiculousness of his own question, thanked me and immediately moved away.

Aside from the gunfire coming from the arcades, the background noise was provided by a loop of trailers firing from tv screens above our heads. You soon became immune to them, but it is interesting to note that the films which were pushed by the studios the most were those who faded fastest: I can vividly recall the music and dialogue for trailers to Phenomenon, Chain Reaction and Escape from LA.

In the quieter moments between the puking, seating, endless litter picking and outbreaks of sheer silliness (“Nacho, Nacho Man” was often sung ), came the moments of sheer pleasure: sneaking into the films. Under the auspices of “just checking everything is OK” I would creep in for 15 or so minutes and see films in patchwork, sometimes going a week before I had caught every scene and made sense of what was going on. There were rare evening staff screenings for the big blockbusters whilst the projectionist checked that everything was working, but the joy came from discovering films I’d never heard of that often nobody else seemed keen to watch, such as Mr Holland’s Opus, The Truth about Cats & Dogs, Stealing Beauty & Happy Gilmore. Also that summer’s huge tentpole releases saw some really great films to sneak snippets of, with the original Mission: Impossible the early hit that was later outdone by the behemoth of Independence Day, which packed in audiences and left thousands leaving the cinema with wide, knowing grins. The Rock, Hunchback of Notre Dame and From Dusk Till Dawn were each excellent, and I still have a soft spot for Ben Stiller’s darkly comic The Cable Guy. Twister was flimsy but spectacular, The Nutty Professor not my cup of tea (but hugely popular) , whilst Eraser was always a laugh to sneak a moment from.

Once I’d consumed a film, I later realised that the greatest joy came from not watching it over again but watching the audience from the back of the screening and I memorised the timing of key scenes for each film so that, when I got the schedule for the day, I could sneak in to see how a new audience reacted: there is nothing quite like the sight of hundreds of people all simultaneously rocketed a foot into the air by a good jump scare. My absolute favourite was the Langley break-in scene in Mission: Impossible, at the precise moment that Tom Cruise’s rope gives way to leave him dangling millimetres from a floor which he absolutely must not touch: the gasping sound made by the audience was that of vibrant, vivid excitement and different every time. My love of cinema was essentially absolute by this stage, but these moments cemented it.

The UCI was torn down but rebuilt as an Odeon in 2008 in what is now called Fort Kinnaird, but it remains the student job I remember most fondly, even compared to the following summer which I spent in a video shop. My favourite moment came towards the end of the summer, when the Edinburgh International Film Festival was up and running in the city’s more venerable cinematic venues. There had been rumours of celebrities being spotted at the UCI before (I was gutted to miss out on Sylvester McCoy nipping in to see The Rock) but we got sudden notice of a very special event that we were to host in a matter of days. Sean Connery was both a patron of the EIFF and a legend of the city and his newest blockbuster, Dragonheart, was the opening film for the festival. Connery, however, had noted that the movie was a family film and that it was a bit daft having all the bigwigs come along just to marvel at a then-novelty CGI dragon, so he suggested a “family premiere” the following morning, where Edinburgh families could come and see the film for free and we were designated to be the venue. That morning there was a buzz about the place and people had swapped shifts to be there: I was one of the few who had been lucky but, to my horror, the grumpiest of the 5- star badges had been put in temporary charge of the ushers for the day as the managers were distracted by the multitude of other considerations and the sudden exposure of their cinema, and there was no way he was going to let the summer students anywhere near this. I was given the duty to supervise the essentially empty screens on the opposite side from where the hubbub was building. I was gutted but snookered and will never forget the moment when the main boss, who was visibly frazzled, spied us and, confused to find us underemployed, threw us Film Festival T-shirts and told us to get to screen 7, now. Once we had the shirts on our backs the 5 star badge never got a look in as Connery swept past us in a blaze of charisma, dealing effortlessly with the family who had been sat in the front row and attempted to monopolise the Q&A.

“Are you James Bond?” asked a kid’s voice.

“Well, I wash onesh Jamesh Bond but now thatsh played by another actor.”

The same hand shoots straight back up: “But you sound like James Bond.”

Connery milked the laughter, said “So doesh the Dragon”, made a quip about independence and nipped out of the Fire Exit.

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