Valentine’s night is notoriously busy for cinemas, and the premiere of the Simon Pegg / Nick Frost comedy “Paul”  just happened to fall on the same night. So, on a predictably busy night, some bright spark elected to close all the tills at the main ticket desk, and get the popcorn sellers to double as ticket sellers for the night.

Here’s the scene at 7:50pm on Valentine’s night…

Odeon Cinema Southend Queues 14 Feb 2011

We saw some fairly angry people queuing, and in some cases abandoning the queue to trek up to the top floor for snacks, only to find that… hey, they’ve closed the kiosk upstairs too. Back down the snake to Square One and the ever-growing queues downstairs.

Full marks too, to one of the sales assistant behind the popcorn counter. When a customer couldn’t get her Odeon points because she’d not registered her card online, he tried to help her sign up to the Odeon Film Club from her smartphone… oblivious to the massive queues forming.

Here at Sarfend, we’d like to send our sympathies to those who missed the start of their films while they queued for 15 minutes to buy some over-priced popcorn, thimbles of ice-cream and cartons of watered-down carbonated liquid.

We’re hoping this is some strange experiment they tried for a night (although why Valentine’s night, guys?). With luck, they’ll realise this wasn’t such a hot idea, and will now abandon it…  otherwise, we fear, this may be another reason to stay away from the big screen and save some cash.

Waze is a social GPS application that has a big following in the US, and is now over here. The idea is simple. Drive around with this app running on your phone, and a map of roads and average road speed is built-up. Users can report speed cameras and accidents (with photos) and share that info with others. Problem is, the map of Southend is a bit thin:

It looks like most of the mapping effort has been done by one ‘HonourableKilla’ – Southend thanks you. So – can the readers of these news pages rise to the challenge and help build up Southend’s map? The Waze service rewards you with road munching points, and bonus points for driving around areas marked with little pink fairy cakes.

Go on – give it a try. If you’ve got an iPhone, go to Waze at iTunes, otherwise Waze is in the Android Market store and in Nokia Ovi. Full details at www.waze.com

Come on gang… get driving! (More: Waze in Southend)

Those images are now live, and by typing an address into maps.google.co.uk , you’ll be able to see and navigate around to see what the cameras picked up.

If you’ve not used the service before – the trick is to type in a street address or postcode into maps.google.co.uk, then drag the little icon of a person from the controller on the left, and drop the person onto the appropriate street. You’re then in a scrollable view of that street and can move around, pan up, turn around and zoom.

Found anything interesting happening in Southend? Let us know below

 Favourite locations include Bournemouth, Brighton, Blackpool and Morecambe Bay. Sadly, not a mention of our own Sunny Southend though.

Pam, if you’re reading, and we know you’re an avid reader of the sarfend.co.uk forum – don’t forget to give our humble town consideration.

We have the world’s longest pleasure pier, miles of sunny, sandy beaches (shh… don’t tell her), two Costa coffees, London Southend International Airport and Tescos.

You’ll love our friendly town’s sights, sounds and smells. Come and give us a try!

Think Pammy should move to Southend? Add your Pammy pitch in the comments below…

Image © Glenn Francis, www.PacificProDigital.com

Yes – that’s right – we’ve had reported sightings of white stuff falling and settling on surfaces, in turn turning those surfaces a white, snowy colour.

As a real insult to your intelligence, here’s a photo, taken from the Sarfend.co.uk office window mere minutes ago. We’ve discovered that turning the flash on lights the snowflakes as they fall.

There – true eye-witness news live and direct from snowy Southend.

Our advice? Have a cup of tea and look out of the window – if you look closely, you too may see some snow.

If there are any further updates on this story, we’ll let you know.

UPDATE: It’s still snowing.