JOYCE   Go on, Mother. Sit on your seat.

MOTHER   (looking round) Where?

JOYCE   (panicking) Go on. I’m going up. Oh, Mother.
We cut to a wide shot of the cinema as the curtains close on the screen and Joyce rises to light and glory at the console of the cinema organ. As she rises, Joyce looks over her shoulder and flashes a beaming smile at the audience. The effect is somewhat spoilt by the dour figure of Mother, still sitting beside her. She too looks round but does not smile.

EXT. COUNTRY ROAD. DAY.

A moorland road on the edge of a small northern town. Joyce’s husband, Gilbert Chilvers, cycles along on a heavy, old-fashioned bike. He is a pleasant, mild-looking man in his thirties. In his bike basket is a little black bag. Piano music, hesitant in the playing and cheap and romantic in tone, begins to intrude upon this scene.

INT. SUBURBAN HOUSE. DAY.

Joyce is looking with somewhat self-conscious melancholy through the window of their semi-detached house. The cheap and romantic piano music now falters and stops. Joyce half-turns. Sitting at the piano is Veronica Allardyce, a child in pigtails. They look at one another and Joyce closes her eyes in despair. Veronica is beginning to practise her piece again when the doorbell goes.

EXT. CHILVERS’ HOUSE. DAY.

A delivery man waits at the door with an ungainly parcel. Joyce’s mother watches him. Standing in the garden, she is eating a sandwich. As Joyce opens the door she puts the sandwich behind her back.

JOYCE   (having signed for parcel) Mother. Are you eating?
Mother shakes her head. Joyce closes the door and Mother takes another bite of the sandwich.

EXT. COUNTRY ROAD. DAY.

Gilbert stops to eat his packed lunch, with a view stretched out before him. He pours some coffee from the thermos, and opens his newspaper, which is headlined ‘BACON DOWN AGAIN’. Gilbert sighs and opens his lunch box. Wonderingly he takes out a couple of crochet hooks and half a crocheted dishcloth. There are no sandwiches. Looking even more glum, Gilbert takes an apple from his pocket and begins to peel it with a small surgical-looking knife.

INT. CHILVERS’ HOUSE. DAY.

Gilbert is seen cycling away down the drive. As the lace curtain held up from the window is let down, we see that the lady watching Gilbert leave has a stocking crumpled in her hand.

EXT. STREETS. DAY.

Gilbert bikes along, passing several queues outside shops, one of which is Barraclough’s butcher’s.

EXT. THE PARADE. DAY.