Swansea born Richard 'Beau' Nash (like the old man a couple of centuries later) was a Welshman who took the sleepy backwater of Bath by storm. This dazzling dandy and talented cultural entrepreneur - Beau Nash, not the old man - became Master of Ceremonies in 1704, and over a span of fifty-eight years used his flair, charm and panache to smooth away a few of the rough edges of this brawling/belching/elbow-them-out-of-your-way cut-throat urban jungle.
When an art-deco cinema opened in the city in 1929 it had to be named the Beau Nash. The doormen it employed might have been expected to try and emulate some of the original Master of Ceremonies' qualities of flair and panache. Au contraire! as the slick salesman in prefab number forty-six would be sure to say. So when they overheard 'Tubby' Lard making a joky aside about having plenty of razor blades ready to slash a few of the cinema's seats led to us all being given an immediate life ban. (Unknown to 'Tubby' a band of razor-slashing Teddy Boys had paid a visit to this very cinema just a few hours before!)
This meant our future cinema visits had to be confined to the Fort Rum Cinema (built in 1934 to double up as an air-hanger), the 1930s' constructed Arty Little Cinema and Willowby Road Cinema based in Goldfield Park. (By a strange coincidence George Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) mentions a Willowby Road which was "not definitely slummy, only dingy and depressing.") In April 1942 an air-shelter opposite the Willowby Road Cinema took a direct hit in the Bath Blitz and seventeen people were killed. Twenty years later the cinema was bulldozed down and a supermarket was built on its site. Goldfield Park has been on a downward slide ever since.
After hearing about the air shelter bombing 'Tubby' Lard complained of feeling ill whenever he visited the cinema in Willowby Road. He decided to go on long walks in Pennyquick Woods instead. And it was during one of these Pennyquick Woods walks that 'Tubby' first hit on the Buddhist idea of imagining he was watching the movie of his own life. 'Tubby' has been going for long walks and watching this favourite movie ever since.