The Magic and Madness of 2020

‘The Magic and Madness of 2020…’ by Ms Paige Turner.
Last night Mr Justin Case and I had a gander round some Amazon Prime films as we had signed up. Within minutes we had decided on viewing ‘The Professor and the Madman’ – the story of the laborious making of the Oxford Dictionary. That caught my eye. We had dinner and sat down and viewed.
How swift that all was. As a child my mother, sister and I would regularly trundle on several buses to stand in a queue stretching round corners at the Granada in Thornton Heath or the Odeon in South Norwood. It always rained. But the umbrellas seemed to be part of ‘going to the pictures’. We could never be sure there were tickets available when we reached the kiosk but were truly grateful for our efforts when we managed to get seats. We could be sure we would see Fred MacMurray magnified and that we would have to queue yet again for a Lyons choc ice which was always sold by a uniformed girl during the interval, probably after the B film in anticipation of the A. We three would then queue for several buses and trundle home. (Dad would have been on a late shift at Clapham Junction railway station and anyway his arthritis wouldn’t permit cinema seats.)
Of course, if I was sick in the night from too much choc ice, Mum could always phone Doctor James or Doctor Crouch and one or other would appear in minutes as if by magic.
I pondered on all this when I didn’t like to take my GP’s time in booking a telephonic appointment this week. I was truly grateful to get a text message from the medical surgery reception passing on a piece of advice from a GP I didn’t know about my broken toe.
What has been happening to you this wonderful and mad 2020? Write me under 200 words for the anthology ‘When This is All Over …’ in aid of the Rennie Grove Nurses and send to info@janmoranneil.co.uk