Having kids has changed my cinema experience

There was a brief moment when my two lives overlapped in the uncanny space that was “baby cinema”. These are early-morning screenings open to people with babies under a year old, where the lights remain dim and the films are punctuated with the sounds of cries or mass defecation, not unlike the John Waters triple bill I saw at college. In 2015 I breastfed my baby through a 10am showing of Fifty Shades of Grey. Today, though, while I still go to the cinema regularly, it is largely to see children’s films.

Which is why last Sunday I was sitting with my daughter, son and seven-year-old niece in a prominent Vue as a blur of girls in cat ears performed an under-sixes ultimate fighting championship in front of the screen. There had been a party in the foyer, with cupcakes in the shape of technicolour cat turds, and face painting, and iced biscuits and popcorn. And as we were being herded into the cinema, we followed a wet trail of icing. One blue cupcake fell into the mechanism of the escalator, to be discovered at a later date, a parent spilled an entire glass of orange juice down the stairs, and a girl somewhere kept shouting, “MY NAME IS NOT SIMON!”

The experience of going to a kids’ film as an adult continues to bewilder and overwhelm me as I enter my second decade dedicated monthly to the project. It feels not unlike standing beside a speeding train or being shot in the face by a glitter gun – an almighty rush, but one that contains the light, bright promise of death. In the past, going to see a film felt like an escape; as a parent, it’s more like being chased. Quite often, sitting too close to the screen as a cascade of liquid rainbows bursts open and a child somewhere screams, I’ll think: “Oh, this is what it feels like to lose your mind.” Which is not always unpleasant. No, cushioned in a reclining chair in the womb of a cinema, there’s a comfort in the idea that you might allow yourself to simply relax your grip on reality until the lights come up, once all the lessons have been learned, all the quests completed.

We were seeing Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, in which the fourth wall is broken so many times there is the impulse to climb up and rebuild it. To reinforce it with clay or girders. Perhaps to build a fifth wall, in fact, to prevent further fractures. In one scene, the titular Gabby (a character whose enthusiasm I fear is pathological) turns to the audience and asks us to hold hands with the person next to us – I saw the blonde girl in front shyly reach out to a strange dad two seats over, who stoically refused to notice. My son asked what was happening during a scene about glittery kitty-litter, and I hissed through my sugared daze, “Submit, baby!”

Halfway through the film I fell asleep, still holding a child’s hand, and briefly dreamed that I was late to a sitting for the artist Beryl Cook. I awoke during a sequence where the characters had fallen into, I think, a bowl of apocalyptic cake mix and were chasing a sad bear. The popcorn had given me the grim clarity of a hangover, and the air felt gummy. All cinema experiences crack you open – some to welcome in emotion, some knowledge, some simply bacteria. I felt the very moment a stye formed on the lid of my right eye.

I have a friend who is undecided about whether to have kids, and talking to them yesterday, my experience at the cinema emerged, unintentionally, as an awkward metaphor for parenting: a bleak search for meaning muddled by moments of psychedelic joy. Was the film any good, they asked, and I told them it was a film about texture rather than plot and then (still somewhat destabilised by metaphor) that was not suitable for adults.

On the walk home, I proudly kept the children all completely alive – even crossing roads, even as they asked why that grey man had fallen asleep standing up, even on a busy tube train – no injuries, no kidnappings. No lunch either, but who was counting? Outside we called my sister to warn her of our approach. I passed the phone to my niece, and when asked how the morning had been, she said quietly, turning away as if to protect me: “Chaos”.

Beauty schooled The Histories, at the Royal Academy until mid-January, is the largest show of Kerry James Marshall’s work ever held in Europe. Taking up its own wall is a painting called School of Beauty, School of Culture – it’s 9ft tall and 13ft wide and shows a busy hair salon. There’s a signed poster of Lauryn Hill on the wall and a distorted version of Sleeping Beauty on the floor, a nod to the to Hans Holbein’s painting with its distorted skull – while death was ever present for Holbein’s figures, so is whiteness to Marshall’s.

Yule tides I have stopped fighting the tides of Christmas. What tipped me over was Gail’s white chocolate and mandarin panettone, £35 for a kilogram, which joins the chocolate sourdough and pistachio and lemon as a statement of festive intent.

Fancy feet Essen, the sustainable Australian brand (its name derived, of course, from the word ESSENtials), has collaborated with Whistles on a collection of elegant shoes in black or plum crinkle patent leather and soft chocolate suede. I am keen on the dessert-like glossy flats.