these days but not because of the plague, it started long before that. I always got edgy in a press, remember being in my early teens terrified at a Leeds game standing on the terraces, hearing the endless roar building and swelling around me, so loud you could feel it on your skin and pushing in on you, a pressure change. I had a strange memory flash of that experience last week when I stepped out into the winter-blasted garden and a squall of little birds flew over the house, hundreds of them but silent, and I swear I could feel the downdraft from their wings on my upgazer face. There was no terror in that, more a flicker of the sublime. I didn’t often go to clubs unless I was playing and you don’t feel in the crowd if you’re behind a monitor, watching the hi-hats. I always preferred a pub or bar, a group around a table, the pathways of a conversation. So I caved on cinema a while back. The huge screens and rich colours of the London arthouse glory days are gone anyway, the digital palette looks washed out to me. I’m a bluray recluse, just me and the dozing cat and a whistle from the wind.