Waterman's is an arts centre by the Thames in Brentford, on the High Street before you get to Kew Bridge.
This is the past world that lines my brain, my imagination.
Waterman's opened in the mid-80s, I remember it opening, but I'm not sure it ever seemed shiny, new and chic. It was just there.
We popped in quite often, though I'm not always sure for what. Maybe children's theatre or a modern art exhibition or maybe just a cup of tea after going to Kew Gardens. I'm not sure it always filled me with joy to go there. It seemed quite a grown-up place.
My mother used to go to Almodovar films there, which is quite a cool thing for a mother to be doing.
I only remember going to the cinema (which was just a small screen downstairs) myself three times, though there may be more I've forgotten.
Firstly, The Little Mermaid, in 1989, the year it came out. This is significant to me because it's the last Disney animation I saw at the cinema (until Frozen 2 a couple of years ago) and indeed marks a landmark moment where cartoons, and by association "childish things", were over for me.
I definitely liked The Little Mermaid but by the time Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin came out, I was past it. I think I did end up seeing The Lion King on TV in the late 90s, but didn't love it, and really, between 1989 and 2016, I watched very few cartoons of any sort - more fool me, you'd say.
So that trip to see The Little Mermaid as a 10-year-old feels significant.
Secondly, Dead Poet's Society. Although it came out in 1989, I'm pretty certain it wasn't until 1991 that I went to see it at Waterman's. Come to think of it, I reckon it was the 90/91 Christmas holiday, a period when I'd been in a degree of disgrace over a shockingly bad school report, so this was one of the few times I was let out on a leash.
We had an English teacher who'd taught us for the last couple of years who had delusions of Williamsisms, and there'd been lots of chat about Dead Poet's Society in class, so I guess I was catching up. The damage that that English class did to many of us, with an angry man coming up against the limits of his personal charisma and gradually unloading it on a set of boys he thought ought to be responding to his brilliance with their own brilliance, well, that's a whole 'nother story.
Anyway, we stood on no tables for him, let me say that.
I loved Dead Poet's Society nevertheless. Was manipulated to sobs of anguish. As I left the cinema, barely composed, I was confronted by a boy from two years' below, a boy who was large, camp, excessively mature, had probably been having a rough time in the immaturely homophobic environments of an early 90s English prep school. "It was a lovely film, wasn't it, David?" he smiled as I tried to avoid him. "Mmmhmm" I grunted as I scuttled off, recognising even at that moment how much more grown-up than me this kid was, that he had one over on me but unquestionably wouldn't use it.
Lastly, The Big Lebowski, in the summer of 1998. I'm not quite sure why I took myself down to Waterman's on my own that afternoon. It was a solid half hour's walk, through Little Ealing, down South Ealing Road, under the M4 past the GSK builiding and Griffin Park, past the Pepperpot, past that grotty pub on the corner.
That was the way to drive to lots of places, to Chiswick, Richmond, Sheen, Barnes, to my grandmother's in Walton-on-the-Hill where we went very regularly up until she died in 1994. That Ealing/Brentford/Isleworth bit is (or was) a real mix of fancy and grotty. The flyover, the tube and train lines, the tower blocks and giant office blocks and their neon signs, the factories and hospitals set against the Grand Union Canal, the Thames, the many parks founded on grand old homes. That's the world where I know the back routes, the nettles, the cracks in the pavements, the duck ponds and dog mess.
I'd not even seen a Coen Brothers film before. I was interested in the Coens without having seen what they'd done. I loved reading about them in Time Out. I must have liked the sound of The Big Lebowski from a review. And honestly, that month, back from university in Scotland in early June, I had nothing, absolutely nothing to do except watch the World Cup matches which usually started up late afternoon.
Maybe even I (back then quite a king of boredom) was bored, or my mum demanded I get out of the house a bit.
Anyway, there it was, The Big Lebowski. My favourite film, as I've said for the last 20 years or so. Funnily enough, I probably hadn't watched it for about 10 years, saying that. but I caught some of it recently, and, yeah, it's still perfect, however much of a cliche it is now, and probably marks me out as a certain kind of man. So that was probably a) my first Coen Brothers b) the first time I went to the cinema on my own c) the first time I found out what happened when you find a stranger in the Alps.
Well, there it is, Waterman's, probably quite a happening place, in its own way. I also remember one day, probably about 8, on the towpath beneath it, on a torrential day, standing directly and deliberately under an overflowing drainpipe, so I guess I was quite a happening boy too.
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