Prison was Maxim Gorky's university, and the Arty Little Cinema was Ronnie Roger's. Tucked away in the quiet alley that led to the elite weightlifting gym - Le Club Musculation -it opened on the fortieth anniversary of the first public showing of film in Paris in 1896. Ronnie's driving ambition - he called it "the fierce urgency of now" - was to review films in New York for Vanity Fair. He posted a formidable work of fiction (it was called 'My CV') off to America, signed up for
evening classes at the local technical college, bought a duffle coat, drifted along to jazz nights at the Bell Inn, and sipped glasses of barley water in what 'Tubby' Lard called "that citadel of posers" - the Salamander coffee bar - while leafing through a red and white covered 1962 edition of Yevtushenko's poems.
There was one Yevtuschenko poem which held Ronnie Rogers in its grip for the next seven years. In 'Encounter' the poet describes how he was once sat in the aerodrome cafe in Copenhagen, a place where "everything was brilliance and comfort." Then he saw an old man with a white beard (a beard stained with flecks of blood from hundreds of ' I am a hell of a tough guy' hunting expeditions) plough "a furrow through the crowded room." When he reached the bar the old man with a white beard demanded a Russian vodka. He waved "away soda with a 'No'."
The old man was Ernest Hemingway.
Within two months Ronnie Rogers had grown a beard of his own. He strode into the Bell Inn and demanded a Russian vodka. (but had to make do with a pint of scrumpy instead.) Ronnie had to wait for a vodka until another time, but in that moment he knew he had left his beloved Twiverton behind perhaps for good. He had succumbed to the charms, limited as they were, of the arty wing of the neighbouring city's petty bourgeoisie (semi-intellectual segment.)
Residents on the prefab estate furrowed their brows. They could sense he was losing it.