After being around the house all day we decided to go to the cinema in the evening. We were at the GFT last week for the Sparks documentary so it wasn’t quite our first trip to the cinema since the advent of Covid, but it still felt like a novelty as we settled into our recliner seats at the Odeon in East Kilbride with drinks and popcorn. Our film was called Free Guy, which we chose because it seemed the most interesting of the films currently on offer. And indeed it was a winner! It stars Ryan Reynolds and Jodie Comer (from Killing Eve - the first time she has appeared in a Hollywood leading role). It’s about a guy who finds out that he is a background character in a computer game; not one of the heroes, just one of the civilians who tend to get blown up or shot as collateral damage. And so he wants to change his life - there’s a good deal more to it than that but I don’t want to give too much away. Taiko Waititi is in it too and there are some very amusing cameos by some well known actors. It owes much to The Truman Show, Groundhog Day, and The Matrix among others, and it is great fun. We both enjoyed it very much.
A wee Covid update; the vaccinations seem to be working because, even though people are still getting Covid due to new variants, the number of deaths remains low. A while ago, we booked a holiday to Italy during the second half of September, realising that it might be cancelled, but hoping that with dropping numbers of Covid cases it might go ahead. It’s still not clear whether we will be able to go, and we are being philosophical about it. Our flights from and back to Glasgow were cancelled last week but we were offered the chance to book flights from Manchester instead, which we did. Currently the ever changing rules indicate that we would need to quarantine for five days upon arrival in Italy, but not on our return to the UK. Presumably if that’s the case we would have to pay to go to an Italian quarantine hotel for nearly the first half of our holiday, in which case we might decide to cancel or postpone. However the holiday is still more than a month away so the rules may change in the mean time - for better or for worse! We shall see. And as for what Covid does next, who knows? I did expect the second wave last winter in the UK but I didn’t think that it would last so long or that so many more people would die. Now there are breakouts around the world, with New Zealand still locked down for at least the rest of 2021. It means that we won’t see Jamie until next year, and it will probably end up being more than two years since James, Ally, Davie or I last saw him, which makes me very sad. At least we know that he’s safe and we phone him or video call him frequently, but it’s not the same as seeing him in person.
The government says that Covid will not go away completely in the foreseeable future, but I do hope that it can be controlled like flu through vaccinations. Over 60s (and perhaps over 50s?) in the UK are going to get booster vaccinations in the autumn. I hope that we can continue to get back to this newly restored normality of being able to visit people in their homes or go to the cinema, which we used to take for granted but which now feels so precious.
No comments:
Post a Comment