Game of musical chairs before the film

You may remember how a few years back Cineworld in Ashford got a lot of stick for introducing a system where customers were allocated a particular seat when buying/ booking a ticket rather than the previous free for all system which allowed them to sit anywhere that wasn’t already occupied.

Yet despite this there’s still the occasional upset over seats.

A member of the Nuts and Bolts team who is a regular cinema-goer went to see a none too popular film last week, bought a ticket for a back row seat and was surprised, and annoyed, when entering the cinema to see someone sitting in his seat.

He went to the seat and pointed this out to the woman, who was with another woman, who seemed rather annoyed to be asked to move but did – a couple of seats along the aisle.

Then the inevitable happened. Another lone man entered the auditorium and the same woman had moved to the seat he had booked. He said it didn’t matter, told the woman and her friend to stay where they were, and sat in the aisle seat immediately in front of them.

Two minutes later a couple arrived, and surprise, surprise the lone man was sitting in one of the seats they had booked. So he then moved further along the same aisle.

Considering all this happened in two rows of seats in an otherwise almost empty cinema, with a capacity of about 250, this was a ridiculous chain of events (like something out of a Charlie Chaplin silent movie) and all caused because two women hadn’t sat in the right seats that they must have selected when they booked.

Bananas ... good for you, tasty and amazingly cheap.

But, why is it that a banana grown in somewhere like the Caribbean and shipped or flown over here from a distance of around 4,700 miles away costs 20p in Ashford’s Tesco Express in the High Street, while an apple grown in Kent and delivered to the same shop, a distance of probably 20 miles, costs twice as much (40p)?

How daft is that? Well quite frankly it’s bananas!

Can you believe that it’s 10 years since the ban on smoking in enclosed public places was introduced?

How time flies when you’re enjoying yourself – by not breathing in other people’s fag smoke on buses, trains and planes and in pubs, restaurants etc etc.

Smokefree legislation was implemented in England on July 1, 2007. In the year following there was a 2.4% reduction in hospital admissions for heart attack and in the three years following the law’s introduction, there were almost 7,000 fewer hospital admissions for childhood asthma.

Support for the smokefree legislation has become even stronger in the decade since its introduction. The current level of public support in England has been measured by YouGov surveys at 83%. Even the majority of those who smoke every day support the legislation (52% support and 25% oppose).

But since the ban was introduced there’s been a massive increase in the use of e-cigarettes (presumably because smokers think they will not kill them).

However e-cigs aren’t included in the Health Act 2006 that led to the smoking ban and there is no law that says vapers cannot use electronic cigarettes in pubs.

That’s a great shame because why when enjoying a pint do you have to inhale the foggy steam that emanates from an e-fag.

Ban them too!