Christmas countdown: Revisiting 1966 and the James Bond "Thunderball" movie in 2024

Like most blokes I like to keep in contact with my old friends usually for a quick pint and to talk about the old days. Although we all used to meet up regularly back in the day, we all now only manage to meet-up a few times a year, so our meetings are usually planned well in advance. This particular meet-up was originally arranged for June but was cancelled due to a health issue on my part. As a result the guys rescheduled the meeting for early December (as our Christmas night out) in my old home town where I stayed from 1960 -to the early 1970s in a pub that used to be an old cinema. As it turned out this was the cinema that I watched the then new James Bond release "Thunderball" as a 5 or 6 year old in with my mum. Although I expected to see the revamped pub retain some of the old cinema’s format I was (pleasantly) shocked to see that the pub chain (Wetherspoons) had retained so much of the original Savoy cinema as can be seen below.

Above the upper viewing deck of the old Savoy cinema where I think my mum and myself watched "Thunderball" . Below the view showing the new bar where the lower seating area, toilets and concession stall used to be. I also took a picture of the entrance area but deleted that in error.

This visit really was a bit like time travel for me as it all seemed so familiar and brought back many long lost memories of that time. Below is the original front of the old cinema that closed not long after I saw this movie.

It was realy strange to think that all those years ago my mum and myself visited this place to watch a movie, we may even have stood at the bar area in 1965/6 to buy some sweets before the film started.