Electric Cinema

The Electric Cinema in Portobello Road, Notting Hill, West London, is the oldest working cinema in Britain, having begun life in 1909. I bet they'll be having a great centenary celebration next year. I had arranged to see Sex and the City there with my goddaughter yesterday. I got off the bus in Holland Park Avenue at 12.50 - we were meeting at 1.30. Then my goddaughter rang to say she wouldn't be there until 1.45. I was in my element! There were charity shops galore, full of the kind of frippery worn by thin little rich girls. Designer mini-skirts covered in ruffles and bows. Silk trousers, the sort worn on cruises. I dreamed and browsed, then realised it was time to head for the cinema.

Well, I walked - past gorgeous cottages painted in pastel blue, lavender, pink; past shops selling weird clothes and antique jewellery; past a shop full of ancient statues lacking limbs, or even heads in some cases (what strange person would want a headless statue with no arms and only one leg, unless they had a thing about amputees?). And I walked... on and on, between stalls selling smelly handbags of badly cured leather, strings of hippy beads, velvet robes and hot dogs that smelled like gastro enteritis. Where was the wretched cinema?

I walked some more. I was getting hot, tired and thirsty. Goddaughter rang to say she'd be there in 5 mins but I'd been walked a good 20 and still hadn't got there. But at last I saw the blue sign up ahead and spotted her wafting towards me in a salmon-coloured kaftan and jeans. Inside, we sank with an airy squish into soft leather armchairs and put our aching feet up on leather foot-stools and watched Sex and the City whilst sipping iced mineral water from the bar. All the women around us seemed to be drinking wine, like the characters in the movie, and the laughter got more raucous as the film went on. It was really very funny. I loved the sharp wit and the way the characters had aged, yet were all in essence still the same, like all of us, I guess. A bit wrinklier, a bit fatter, a bit faded, a bit more acerbic or self-pitying at times, but still the same old people.

Afterwards we went to the Notting Hill Soho House club, goddaughter being a member. That almost spoiled the afternoon. It was nothing more than a shabby bar, with greasy food, salad drowned in oil, and a kindergarten next door, the screeches from which drowned conversation and turned what should have been a slightly up-market experience into a grotty ordeal. Apparently, the Soho, Chiswick and Soho branches of Soho House are excellent, but the Notting Hill one is definitely a Not-Nott. Don't go there. Well, you can't unless you're a member, anyway, and the waiting list for membership is miles long.

But the Electric Cinema is a fabulous experience and I thoroughly recommend it. Next time, I shall be drinking champagne.