I saw a stage show on Friday night and went out to a birthday dinner on Saturday night.

My eldest went to dance lessons on one side of the border and worked three shifts on the other side.

My youngest went to a friend's birthday party at the cinema.

It felt like a long time since all of those everyday, normal activities had been allowed to go ahead over the same weekend within the ever-changing Border Bubble zone.

Centre Stage Event Company opened rock musical We Will Rock You to a rousing reception at Albury Entertainment Centre on Friday night.

Three years in the making amid the stop-start rules of a global pandemic, the polished performance would have done Queen and Ben Elton proud!

Its seven-show season was sold-out to the 50 per cent capacity allowed under NSW restrictions.

Under seat capping at the venue, the adjusted allocation of tickets was exhausted weeks ago.

Opening night's audience wore face masks, checked-in using QR codes and didn't hang about in the foyer.

Given even half a chance, most people willingly play by the rules in order to do the normal things we once all took for granted, pre-pandemic.

For those of us who never related to Sporty Spice, the arts and entertainment sector may just be our refuge.

Studies have long shown theatre caused audience members to synchronise their heart beats.

The University College London study showed synchronised heart beats continued into the interval, meaning they remained engaged.

At a time when we're required to socially-distance, work from home where we can and keep our hands to ourselves, the shared experience of live shows is more important now than ever.

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Still with We Are The Champions stuck on high rotation in our heads on Monday morning, rules around the Border Bubble changed without warning yet again!

With Victorians only allowed to cross the state border for one of six essential reasons, theatre did not make the cut.

We Will Rock You will now have to reallocate as many as 1000 tickets this week as its last four shows play to a NSW-only audience.

With no COVID-19 cases in the Border region, the politicking continues to cause more disruption than the virus!

Frustratingly, this will be the case until the federal government can accelerate the country's vaccination roll-out after an at-best sluggish and at-worst entirely incompetent start.

Its four-stage plan to return to "normal" aims for a target of 70 per cent of the eligible population to be vaccinated before Australia can move to the next stage of easing restrictions, while state government lockdowns will end once 80 per cent of the population is vaccinated. (Seventy per cent of the eligible population equates to about 56 per cent of the total population; the same as what has been achieved in Britain.)

Yet as of August 1, 19 per cent of eligible Australians, and just over 19 per cent of eligible people in NSW were fully vaccinated.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian pleaded with NSW on the first day of August to help break records for vaccination numbers this month and secure the state's "ticket to freedom".

On Monday night Catholic not-for-profit hospitals in Sydney launched a city-wide, month-long advertising campaign to promote the benefits of taking up the COVID vaccine.

The Get Back to the Life You Love campaign will remind Sydneysiders of the valuable human interactions they are missing out on because of the restrictions they face during lockdown.

For now, we will have to appreciate those fleeting "normal" weekends in the Border Bubble.

Oh! And buy a theatre ticket if you can.

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