So, how was your 2020?

In two weeks time it will be a year since the UK entered it's first COVID lockdown. It's somehow both a lifetime ago and five minutes ago. It was a time of immense uncertainty. We were suspicious of each other, terrified of our groceries and all wondered if we could go on holiday in June *Ron Howard voiceover* "They couldn't". 

Here we are, a year and a mild mental breakdown later, in what feels like a never ending 'final' sprint in a marathon. The vaccine is being rolled out, hospital admissions keep decreasing and the number of people dying per day has reduced to 'horrifying' rather than 'dystopian'. Despite all the false starts, setbacks and spikes, 'Normal' might actually be on the cards this year. 

If I had any sense I would have tried to resurrect this blog at the beginning of lockdown to document this extraordinary moment in history, like a 21st Century Samuel Pepys (If Samuel Pepys spent his time playing Spider-Man and yelling at people on The Chase). I was initially just looking for something to read but to my surprise the last post was ten years ago; a review of the Keanu Reeves comedy Henry's Crime. Henry's Crime, if you haven't seen it, is the most forgettable film ever made. It's tedious, predictable and Keanu doesn't even kick anyone. Ten years ago I threw some snark at it trying to sound clever. 

Today I would give my left bollock to watch Henry's Crime in the cinema. 

I'm aware and ashamed of how trivial 'Not going to the cinema' is when weighed against the unspeakable grief being felt around the world, but for those who (mercifully) haven't been physically, mentally or financially struck there seems to have been a communal shift in perspective. I'm not quite ready to join a monastery but it's the trivial things, taken for granted in the before times, that seem so extravagant and exciting now. These days a session in Wetherspoons might as well be a weekend in Vegas. The overriding feeling I get from friends, family and online discussion is that when this surreal mess is behind us most of us will be evaluating our lives. Not to upend them, but just to enjoy those trivial things, to check in on friends we haven't seen in a while, to catch up with extended family instead of waiting for the next wedding, to take risks, seize opportunites and to figure out what we love doing... and just doing it more.

So in that spirit I've dusted off Got Me A Movie, cringed through the old articles and will try and offer something entertaining, hopefully insightful and undoubtedly very, very nerdy. I'm going to seize the day, and enjoy the trivial things. But I'm not going to watch Henry's Crime again. It was shit.