I’m well aware how long it’s been since there was a cinema in Trowbridge: what I hadn’t realised was the effect the lack of one was having on some of the population.

I have sadly concluded that the older generation (by which I mean people old enough to be my parents, not my good self – age is all relative) have lost their cinema manners. So my recent outings to the Odeon have been plagued with people, all old enough to know better:

* Forgetting to turn off or mute their mobile phones, so they ring during a film, and then, worse, actually answering them. It completely ruins the dramatic tension of the dragon stalking Bilbo Baggins when someone in the row ahead is hissing ‘Can’t talk now... I’m in the cinema... ring you later... well all right, tomorrow then... okay, in the afternoon... bye’ after a rousing electronic Post Horn Gallop of a ringtone.

*Turning up late to a streamed live performance. It’s okay to wander into a film during the trailers but not to hunt for your seat once a play has started. With these lovely live screenings, the time on the ticket is really truly the time it starts.

* Making blindingly obvious and very loud (presumably because at their age they can’t hear themselves otherwise) comments on some aspect of the plot, action or characters. I think we had all worked out they were loading the war horses on a boat to go to France, thanks: though it did make the later remark, greeting the arrival of the carrion crows on the WW1 battlefields with ‘Ooooh, vultures’, actually rather funny.

* Failing to observe cinema etiquette on eating and drinking. Never mind that cinema operators encourage you to treat your visit as one long graze, it is possible to consume treats in relative silence. It’s a trick younger cinemagoers have learned, even if only because they either had a mum like me who would remove the treats if they chomped too loudly or have come across, and been reprimanded by, someone of like mind.

But the oldies! I love the fact that you can take a drink or a coffee into the film, but for goodness sake, please use the cupholders provided. Then getting to your reserved seat does not become like negotiating a minefield filled with cups of liquid, in some cases scaldingly hot and with the spillproof lids mysteriously discarded. It would make a good game on Celebrity Big Brother.

My verdict: new cinema good, ‘old-fashioned’ manners better.