A night at the flea pit

Rangiora is the main town in the Waimakiriri district which lies just north of Christchurch. Its 8 km north west of Kaiapoi, and the two towns seem to be a draw for the Poms...the amount of Kiwi's that comment about the amount of Poms that settle here confirms this. I think the short distance into Chch is nothing to the Poms, and the community feel of both towns are the draw.

Rangiora has a tiny cinema in the Town Hall. It is literally 8 rows of 8 seats, and has the tiniest of kiosks selling both cinema tickets and small packets of popcorn, coke etc. We arrive to see Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire. The compactness is not the biggest shock, the piped Muzak delivers that. It must be a packed night as another 6 people join our 4 for viewing. Anticipation grows as the curtains draw aside and the muzak rendition of Abba's Fernando is faded.....takes me back to Cranfield and a night on Vermouth and OJ. Unfortunately there was no 'pah pah pe pah pe pah pe pah pe pe pah' intro, but plenty of old skool adverts for the local car dealers et al. And then the main feature, which was enjoyed immensely despite criticism for deviating from the book and scaring Alex a bit.

There are plenty of multi-identiscreen cinema's here, there's at least 6 in various malls I can recall without consulting the paper and certainly way more than Milton Keynes' 2 cinema's for a similar population. I have to say the experience in Rangiora was good and will be repeated.