I always think movie makers are a bit lazy - pump out enough movies and eventually you'll produce a box office hit. Kind of like the infinite monkey theory whereby given enough time a monkey at a typewriter will produce the complete works of Shakespeare.
But when they do stumble upon a box office success then that movie gets sequels, prequels, remakes, animated, prequels done in lego... you get the drift. Basically anything to keep the money rolling in. Take "Fast and the Furious" for example. What are we up to now? Fast and the Furious 87: Now reshowing the original movie because we've been going on for so long that everyone has forgotten the 1st one? Something like that anyway.
Not that I dislike movie franchises though - Paddington 2 is brilliant! Not a movie you want to be watching at the cinema on your own as you'll be making parents a bit nervous but it's brilliant all the same.
But here we are in Lockdown 3.0 and I'm starting to get a bit tired of it all. The first iteration was actually a bit of fun - I usually travel so much that spending more than a couple of weeks in my own home was a bit of a novelty, once I'd made it clear to Mrs AC that "working from home" didn't involve me drinking beer and watching porn all day we got ourselves into a routine.
Then the 1st lockdown ended but we were no means closer to normality - I was still unable to travel to the US so apart from a few more restaurants and pubs being open nothing really changed for us. We managed a couple of weeks away in Europe at the end of summer but little were we to know that the sequel was already being planned.
Lockdown 2 came and went in November but it was over pretty quickly - much like Highlander 2 which must be the worst sequel I've ever seen.
Then much like a Taylor Swift album that gets announced 2 minutes before its release we hit the Christmas restrictions. Just prior to the weekend before Christmas there was chatter that the US was about to lift its own restrictions which would have meant me being able to accompany Mrs AC on her trip back to NY. But no. That got swept from under our feet on the Saturday before Christmas when the entire SE of England was put under the highest restriction level (short of a full lockdown) with 24 hours notice and another travel ban was effected. But Mrs AC still needed to travel back (for work which was allowed) so on the Monday before Christmas I took her to the airport and got stopped by the police for the 3rd and 4th times in my life on the same day (the 1st time was nearly 20 years ago and I was doing 98mph so probably actually deserved it then and the 2nd was whilst driving my mother's car and had been reported by a nosy neighbour!).
So a dull and boring Christmas ensued and I did something on New Year's that I probably haven't done in my adult life - I was stone cold sober. I hadn't had a drink since Christmas Day and was asleep on NYE before 10pm but was awake just after midnight in NY to wish Mrs AC a happy new year. Mrs AC was not stone cold sober, or even close to being sober. She'd been catching up with a friend (she'd been in the U.K. since early March and not seen anyone since before then) and they'd obviously had a few drinks. Why would anyone think that booze makes them funnier and more interesting? Oh... wait.... hang on.
Then things really kicked off again - the entire country was put back on lockdown just after New Years and it looks like we'll be in this situation for most of February as well. It's also just been announced that arrivals from certain countries will have to quarantine in specific hotels rather than doing it at home. At the moment arrivals from the US are ok to quarantine at home (which had been our plan) but given how things can change at pretty short notice this has caused Mrs AC to expedite her return from NY to 10 days time, rather than coming back at the end of February as originally planned.
But I think there's some light at the end of the tunnel - vaccinations are being done and hopefully this will relieve some pressure on the healthcare system (which was the true purpose of lockdown albeit not widely understood) and I'm hopeful of being able to get back to normal towards the end of this year. With a bit of luck that will mean being able to travel again and there is definitely a blank space in my diary being reserved for the next time I get to a Vegas poker table and get to overindulge on the free drinks, although I think I'm going to need a bit of practice before I do it as my alcohol tolerance has dropped to the lowest point of my adult life. Or the light at the end of the tunnel could be a train, in which case I'd better get off the line.
Anyway - a belated happy new year to all. Hopefully whoever is running this simulation that we call reality has got their act together and this year will be better managed, if not it promises to be the worst sequel ever.
