It’s the opening day of the Cannes film festival, in some parallel world where everything remains right side up. This means that the cafes, bars and restaurants are all open for business and that the old men play boules on that strip of dirt by the bandstand. There are films inside the Palais and sideshows on the Croisette. At the morning press conference, that excitable Scandinavian reporter is again on her feet asking Brad Pitt if he has any message for the people of Finland. Seeing as we’re in Fantasyland Cannes, let’s say that for this one time only he actually does.

Cry me a river and break out the small violins but I’m going to miss the Cannes film festival this year. Even its glaring manifest faults now feel like marquee attractions. So what if it’s confusing and crowded, noisy and vulgar? How was this ever seen as a bad thing? Who cares that it’s exasperatingly French in the way it juggles arthouse austerity with glitzy Eurotrash and appears to see no distinction between the two. Again, that’s part and parcel of its charm. “All anyone does is argue about film,” a pained fellow journalist once complained as we guzzled rosé wine at some reception or other. I’d now like to go back in time and push him into the pool.

In Cannes – yes, admittedly – people argue about film. They argue in a variety of languages, on the steps and in the corridors, on the street and in the bars. Thousands of people from hundreds of nations arguing about hundreds of films for 11 days straight. Sometimes they’re not even sure what films they are arguing about – either because these films are so new that their titles have not been locked down or because a critic will mistake the name of a restaurant for an obscure movie in the Un Certain Regard sidebar and start claiming that yes, they’ve already seen it; didn’t think it was much cop. Genesis tells us that the Tower of Babel was a vast terraced compound inhabited by confused men and women chasing an impossible dream and disapproved of by God. It makes no specific mention of the Nespresso bar.

The first time I went, back in 2005, I stood in the wrong queues and walked miles to the wrong venues and vowed that one day I’d understand exactly how the place worked. But the key thing about Cannes is that no one understands how it works and they are largely making it up as they go along. Nobody knows anything, to quote William Goldman. “Chaos reigns”, to quote the fox out of Lars von Trier’s Antichrist. Press interviews might be cut short after 10 minutes or you may well be left there for two hours or more. The films are unknown quantities and even the credits can’t be trusted. It’s a festival of discovery. We’re literally and figuratively in the dark.

I suppose the ultimate goal of Cannes – if such a thing exists – is to be among the first to sight the masterpiece (Parasite; The White Ribbon; No Country for Old Men) that everyone will be discussing six months down the line. More thrilling than that, though, are the pictures that simply floor you, the ones so outlandish and dazzling that you need a moment to decide whether you love them or hate them. I always think of the learned American critic who reeled out of the evening screening of Leos Carax’s Holy Motors shouting, “Will somebody please tell me what I thought about that?”

For several years, the Guardian budget was such that we were able to produce a daily video round-up from Cannes. This largely involved us running around the back of the Palais, being pursued by security guards as we searched for increasingly photogenic backgrounds to distract from the increasingly un-photogenic presenters.

So we planted ourselves beside oligarch yachts, or on beaches and red carpets and argued about films for 15 minutes or so. And if anything these distractions became too successful. They gave the impression that we were all prancing around the Riviera like absolute tossers, spinning roulette wheels and smoking Cuban cigars in the manner of Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in the opening credits of The Persuaders. Colleagues would scoff when we returned to the office. “Yeah, we saw you hanging out on the beach”. And this was my cue to angrily point out that actually, the only time I stood on a beach was to shoot that damn video and that the rest of the time I was clawing my way through the crowds and working really hard. Except that looking back now, I see that I was totally wrong and that those colleagues had a point. Yes, the festival could be exhausting but it was never less than a joy. Only a churl would complain about covering Cannes.

Which brings us back to the here and now. The festival has been mothballed and the bars and restaurants are shuttered. Everybody’s stuck at home, bouncing off the walls while mentally projecting ourselves somewhere else. In recent weeks, for instance, I’ve caught myself pining for the Isle of Arran, which I haven’t actually been to since I was about 10 years old, and an excellent bookshop by a river in Massachusetts that I’ve visited maybe twice. But mostly today I’m thinking of the press balcony, which sits at the front of the Palais, overlooking the promenade and the red-carpet arrivals. This is the place where people tend to gather at the start of the evening. They stand in the sunlight checking their phones, checking the schedule, trying to decide what to do with their night.

The scene on the press balcony takes the same shape every evening. The same knots of people; the same gathering of breath; the same collective air of anticipation. It’s a moment that always reminds me – of all the weird things – of the ending of Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World, which is one of the great endings in all children’s literature. On the last page of the book, Danny tries to outline his plans for the day but his imagination fails him. So he simply says, “And after that something else. And after that something else”. Because he’s trusting enough to believe that the future will provide. Because he knows enough to know that the not-knowing is OK – or rather that the thrill of discovery is what makes life so exciting.

That’s not a bad outlook to cling on to right now, whether it applies to your work or your home or an elitist film festival on the south coast of France. Cannes has been cancelled. Pretty much this whole year has been cancelled. But maybe that only makes 2021 feel more precious. So I’m looking forward to the next edition, whenever it happens and however it looks. It will be good to stand on the press balcony again and then step inside to see whatever is playing. The next Parasite, the next Tree of Life, the next Un Prophète, and after that something else.