Cinemas of old

In The Knowledge magazine of The Times yesterday was an article about The Electric Palace, a cinema in Essex which was there in 1911 and is still showing films today. When you go in it's a step into the past.
Similar to a step my wife and I took some 10 years ago in Ilfracombe.
We were there on holiday for a week (that's quite long enough for Ilfracombe) and turned up one night at a cinema in the centre of town. I don't know how old the place was but it was in the same style as The Electric Palace, pictured in The Knowledge.
We queued for a while to see "Mission Impossible". But nothing was happening, the cinema hadn't opened when it should have, no one appeared to open the doors. Then a solitary figure of a middle-aged man came round the corner on his bike, leant it against the wall and opened the doors of the cinema. But then he closed them behind him.
We stood there waiting for something to happen. Nothing did for a few minutes until the door re-opened and the man emerged, got on his bike and shot off down the street.
"What's going on?" I asked someone.
"O, he's forgotten the film reels," someone said. "Often happens. He'll be back soon, don't worry."
I wasn't particularly worried. Just felt like someone in a surrealistic play by, say, Pirandello: "Six queuers in search of a projectionist" or something.
Eventually he returned and soon we were on our way up the front steps to the ticket office.
There they still had an old fashioned ticket machine where tickets popped up when the girl pressed something.
"Up or down?" she said.
I said: "Ugh?"
"Up or down," she repeated. "Stalls or circle."
"Circle," I said, taking my little ticket.
We sat there in the dark until the film started. The screen was minute. May have looked good from the front seat of the stalls but from here at the back of the circle.....
Anyway, it took me back to my youth in Blackwood where there were four cinemas all like this. You could see eight films per week for a few pence.
And we never sat upstairs in the circle: too posh for us. And the cost then rocketed to shillings.