summon to unwelcome bed a melancholy maiden

I do enjoy going to movies with friends, honest I do, but there's a completely separate and idiosyncratic pleasure in going to movies by myself. Sunday mornings are my favourite time: if I'm lucky I'll be the only person in the theatre, and can dangle my feet over the chairs in front of me and comment on the action at the top of my voice without anyone throwing popcorn. I can also sit in the back row, which is my preferred movie space, and which cuts neatly through the necessary compromise of movie-watching with friends (jo&stv are my favourite people in the multiverse with whom to do almost anything, but they like to be in the front third of the theatre where I like to be in the back third, and we usually compromise on pleasing no-one somewhere in the middle).

This morning I was the only person in the theatre for the first 20 minutes of the film and could heckle the previews with demands for Iron Man, alas without effect. Then I was rather weirdly (I don't understand people who miss the start of films) joined by a couple with a small child, who sat down in front and allowed the wretched infant to kick the back of the chairs loudly and with a slightly tragic lack of rhythm at random intervals throughout. Insofar as the film was Burton's Alice in Wonderland, there were moments when I almost sympathised. ( Not madly spoilery musings follow. )