The big screen is the true way to experience films | Matt Mohan-Hickson

A teenager dressed from head to toe in red emerges from a seedy underground and climbs aboard a futuristic looking bike, while a song is cued up on a jukebox.

After charging off into neon-soaked city streets, the rider and his friends clash with a rival gang.

So begins the seminal animated cyberpunk masterpiece Akira. It is a scene that I have watched before on a computer screen and on my TV.

But as I watched it again in a darkened theatre on a towering screen it was a transcendent experience.

My jaw dropped, under my face mask, during the iconic bike slide moment in a way that it hadn’t in my home viewing experiences.

After all, that is the power of cinema, it strips everything away and leaves you alone with just the simplicity of sound and moving pictures. There really is nothing like it.

All too often in this modern age it is hard to stay focused on one thing, especially as you are constantly bombarded with distractions urging you to check your phone or tablet or laptop.

I can only imagine what it would be like to watch The Godfather on a big screen instead of on a laptop in my living room, broken up into chunks at sporadic intervals.

Much has been written and said in recent years about Netflix and the likes being the pale horse signalling the death of cinemas, but in the age of coronavirus it does really feel like cinemas face an existential threat.

A Thanos clicking them out of existence, if you will.

With studios pushing the likes of No Time to Die, the latest Bond, Dune and Marvel films to 2021, there is the real possibility that when true normality returns, many of our cinemas will not.

As a cinephile I am clearly biased but it would be a true travesty to let cinemas die.

For most people outside of London or major cities, the chance to see plays, musicals or opera on the stage are very slim, so cinemas are the main way for mass audiences to experience art the way it was intended.

They make life richer and to be left with just Netflix films designed to be half watched while you scroll away would be heartbreaking.

Is Shakespeare writing the script of 2020?

It was bound to happen wasn’t it? It was practically written in the stars that President Trump would get coronavirus at one point or another.

He has been so dismissive of the pandemic from the off, constantly trying to play it down and squirm out of any responsibility.

So of course he had to fall victim to his own hubris, in true Shakespearean tragedy style. Although if the bard was penning the story Trump would have probably fallen to a far more gruesome fate.

Though it does put an exclamation point on his failings re the pandemic just a few weeks before the election, which could spell the end for his hopes of a second term.

So I guess in true tragic fashion that could spell his own downfall. A twist that would have made old William smug about coming up with, I imagine at least.

If only he had worn a mask – and listened to his own scientists – he could have avoided the fate that he has brought upon himself. And the 212,000 lost souls.

What is going on with football right now?

The idea of watching football matches without fans to cheer – or jeer – the players on seemed a grim prospect a few months ago.

My memory was still tainted by that anaemic behind the doors England vs Croatia game from 2018, which was basically unwatchable.

Yet the reality has turned out to be far different. It is almost like we are watching an arcade version of football.

In the last few weeks alone we’ve seen Leicester put five past Man City, Spurs put Manchester United to sword and score six, and then Liverpool leak seven against Aston Villa.

I remember turning that game off at half time because the conventional wisdom being a game that is 4-1 after 45 minutes is going to be a drab affair in the second half.

It is totally baffling and almost silly, yet I can’t wait to see how much more comical it will get. Will we see a team score 10 goals in a Premier League match before 2020 is out?