Dispatches from Lockdown - Week Twelve

The three month mark is approaching from the time when the UK first entered lockdown. Restrictions are starting to ease and when I head out to the local high street, you would think that collective amnesia has descended, given the mass disregard for social distancing. It's as if some have forgotten that we are still in the midst of a global pandemic caused by a virus that has no cure. The UK death toll continues to rise, the 'official' figure hovering somewhere between forty to sixty thousand, depending on which news source you believe. Government incompetence is staggering, causing a behavioral free-for-all socially because no-one trusts or listens to them anymore. International commentary derides the UK for entering lock down too late and now exiting too early.

I agree.

However, whilst the first wave of infection was out of our control, the second wave isn't. People know what they can do to try and minimise infections but whether they choose to or not is another matter. So I think the UK will have the second wave of it's choosing. 

The things I have missed over the last three months have been surprising. Or not. I didn't think swimming would rank in my top ten list of missing but I'm not surprised that small talk features on the not-missed list. What surprises me the most is how much of the London lifestyle I don't miss. At all. 

Instead I miss the sea. Breathing air that smells a bit burnt, tinged with the scent of eucalyptus. Raucous birdsong and a sky that makes you mute. I miss the edges. I miss feeling rubbed raw by nature.

A Blurry Picture of a Big Sky

I've heard many comment about when things will return to normal but I don't see how you can live through something like this and not have it change you.

Or maybe it's not change at all. Maybe it's just a reminder of what it is you valued all along.

I guess we'll see. 

Space Invaders

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away (circa anytime before Mar 20, 2020), the Husband complained often about my walking style, especially if he was behind me trying to follow my lead.

You don't walk in a logical fashion, he moaned for the umpteenth time.You swerve all over the place. You walk like you're being followed, like you're trying to shake someone off.

Draw what conclusions you will but I didn't point out that the only person following me, was him.

He's right though. When I walk through a crowd of people, I like to pretend that I am in a video game (eighties arcade style) with the aim of avoiding all moving targets (bumping into other people) whilst getting to my destination as quickly as possible.

Oldie but a goodie

It hones your kinaesthetic sense* and makes walking through a crowd really fun. It's even better with headphones on as then you have a soundtrack. I have been doing this a long time.

Unfortunately, due to lock down I have not walked through a crowd for awhile.** Still, I have  ventured out each day for my government mandated exercise quota. In the early days, I ran or walked on the footpaths, just as I had done pre-Covid and if I came across another soul, we would do an awkward dance of denial; manifesting a duet between opposed magnets, trying to keep as much air as possible between our bodies. But we would both be on that footpath, our body movements institutionalised by the fear of being run over by cars.  A few weeks later, this changed as the roads became quiet and pedestrians, runners and cyclists reclaimed the streets.

The freedom to run, walk, cycle down the middle of the road, for the most part unhindered by traffic has been one of the unexpected highlights of lock down.

My daily outings into the world made me notice that people generally fell into two groups.The first were courteous and diligent about social distancing. These are the people who would spot you from afar and if they could, would cross the road or pause to let you go first. Basically move in such a way  so you would not get too close to one another.

Not so the second group. In this Dante's circle are the mobile phone users, looking down at their screens whilst walking, with zero concern about anyone else in the vicinity. Sprawling families who act as if they are on a country ramble, meandering along, taking up the full breadth of a walkway so no-one else can get past. Joggers who spit. Joggers who can't deviate from 'their route' even if this means brushing right up past you. Pedestrians who mustn't have studied metrics at school, mistaking two centimeters for two meters.

I also noticed that the kinaesthetic sense is sorely lacking in many people. I suppose this because it is not something you wouldn't  need to use regularly unless you play team sports or perform in some sort of physical ensemble. But perhaps by the end of this, we will all have finely attuned senses of where others are in relation to ourselves. Let's hope.

I also noticed that the walking style needed in lock down was something I was born for! My swerve-duck-dodge walk is in vogue. The only difference is that there is now a two- metre radius around each moving target.

I guess for all of us, there comes a time in life where your weird quirks or odd habits come into their own.

If only my Husband could see me now (he can't because I left him for dust)


*my definition of this is the awareness of one's bodily movements within space in relation to the environment

**apart from the supermarket where social distancing seems to have been abandoned

Constant Craving

We are entering Week 4 of lock down in London and the weekend weather has been kind, giving us sun and light in place of muted grey and drizzle. BBQs and sunglasses have replaced jumpers and socks. People are out sunbathing while others are dying.

It's very odd.

Our household, for now, is free of illness and so I have been reading in the sun. Newspapers, books, magazines. One particular sentence that zinged through me was by columnist and author Deborah Levy who wrote:

We will have to investigate the magic of the universe from home.

Surveying my To-Read pile, I pulled out two books that have been gathering dust for many months, mainly because I had never felt in the mood to read them since purchase - Island Home: A Landscape Memoir and Land's Edge: A Coastal Memoir, both by fellow West Australian, Tim Winton.

Who knew that it would take a global pandemic to put me in the mood?

I was less than a third of the way through Island Home when it clicked that the sentences were slaking a thirst I didn't realise I had. I drank it whole and moved swiftly onto Land's Edge.

Both books took me to a place and time outside of corona virus, lock downs and social distancing. They evoked a craving for the West Australian landscape that germinated in me as a young child exploring bush land near our suburban brick and tile home. They made me long for a coastline that leaves your mind blank when you look at it.

I wrote about this longing after my first few years of living in London; about missing the brand of wilderness that raised me. It took about five, six years of London life for the oasis of a coastline to ebb in my mind.

Fifteen years on, I thought I had adapted to my new environs and that the zest of daily London life had put to bed the craving for wild.

I was wrong. It was just subsumed. Waiting.

As Mr Winton wrote in Land's Edge:

In Europe I tried the landlocked existence. In Paris I experienced my first apartment and my first truly dispiriting body of water, the Seine. The city itself was a revelation, an astounding and beautiful place, but after six months I found myself crazy for the margins.

It's no coincidence that during this marginal existence we are living, waiting on the edges of our lives for the threat of covid to recede, that I yearn for the spaces that make me feel outside of myself. To be overwhelmed in nature as opposed to being overwhelmed by a virus.

Something has come full circle. And it's only week 4.

Oh No. Bojo has the Covo.

CoVo world moves at a rate of knots. Things change with a blink.

A few days ago, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson was hospitalised in St Thomas' Hospital with 'persistent' symptoms of coronavirus. He's spent the last two nights in ICU and apparently is in 'good spirits.' 

Bojo's a no go. He's in Tommo's laid low with the CoVo. So now, we've got Dommo leading the Toro's.*

I'm no fan of Bojo but I wish him a full recovery. In this unheralded time, we need stability, even if it does come in the form of Boris Johnson. The irony of him receiving the very best of NHS care; care that his party has systematically stripped away from many others less fortunate is glaringly apparent under the world spotlight.

What isn't changing swiftly is the Husband's recovery from suspected CoVo. It's been 18 days since he fell ill and he is 6kg thinner and too weak to walk out the front door and do a socially distant stroll to the end of our road. Although he is improving slowly, I have never, in the 25 years I've known him, ever seen him this debilitated.

And he is one of the lucky ones, to have had a 'mild' case of CoVo, if that is indeed what he had.

I hope that it was.

Because going through it once was enough.

*I have been watching a lot of Kath and Kim

And on the Second Day...

It's blinding how fast things can change.

It's remarkable how quickly you can adapt to that change

Our family are in the tenth day of self isolation due to the Husband developing symptoms of corona virus, just as the schools closed. Overnight I became the sole parent to our nine year old as she was tipped into the wormhole of homeschooling and not being allowed to leave the house for two weeks apart from daily exercise, far away from others.

I also became the sole carer for an adult who could do nothing apart from lock himself away to avoid infecting us. Our correspondence has been carried out via text messages and my knocking on his closed door to alert him of the meals I have left outside.

Ten days have felt like three weeks but what I have noticed is that being in this domestic situation is like having an newborn baby. I disinfect the house avidly for fear of corona germs. I cook, serve, clean, cook, serve, clean; ad infinitum. My hands resemble claws, so much have I washed them.

The patchwork nature of my days going from chore to chore to chore means I have found myself unable to think in an linear or in depth fashion,. Instead I have snatched thought syndrome; something I remember from the newborn days.

In this new world order, I have observed the following things over the past few days:

• Freedom is a state of mind. But it helps if you can feel daylight on your skin and outside air on your face, even if for only a few minutes a day. 

• I am not the technophobe I thought I was. It turns out that when technology is needed, I am a fast adapter. Zoom is the current raison d'etre of online connection and I became a Zoomer in seconds. 

• I've always thought that it is important to know how how to be alone. And to be comfortable being alone. This helps at times like these.

• I am innately, a frugal person.Turns out I was listening to Mum all those years ago.

• But it turns out, there is a LOT less that I can live without. 

• The morning sun in our back garden is glorious.

• Nature becomes everything during solitude

• My dreams are very, very vivid. It's as if I am living my real life while sleeping and on waking, return to a dystopian Groundhog Day. 

• Structure is important. There is no freedom with structure. I can't remember who said that but I have always agreed. 

• I'm not sure in the months to follow what I will miss more - free  movement through the world or physical contact with others. We'll see.

• Seeing a plane flying overhead right now is a marvel, like seeing the articulation of possibility made into a machine.

• The view from the rooftop outside my loft window at sunset remains untarnished

• I'm enjoying street noise because it has become rare. 

• Being a writer is perfect for travelling anywhere and everywhere,when you can't.

• People can be pretty damn marvellous. Or not.

But there is no time to think anymore. Things to get on with. People to see (on Zoom). 

Corona used to be a Beer

Since my last post, a mere few weeks ago, it seems that the Earth has stopped rotating anti-clockwise on its axis and decided to turn the other way. We seem to have entered a new reality usually found in dystopian paperbacks sold at airports or kitsch movies about the zombie apocalypse.

I am referring to the force know as COVID-19, the coronavirus which is rapidly altering the way we live, for now. The core of our social infrastructure, i.e. human interaction, is being unpicked in order to stem the potential deaths that this virus may cause and ease the burden it will inflict on the health services.

Here in London, all schools are now closed.* Citizens have been asked to work from home and avoid unnecessary travel. Restaurants, pubs, libraries, gyms, theaters; all places where people gather in dense numbers to interact have been instructed to close to try and 'flatten the curve,' to allow the NHS to try and cope with the anticipated influx of very ill people.

Squash that peak!

Some people I know feel this social cease and desist has happened too late and that we should have shut down several weeks ago. Others are slightly begrudging of the new social sanctions imposed but acknowledge that we all have to do our bit, whether we have symptoms or not.

In this new landscape, I thought it would be prudent to check on my folks in Australia who, being in their 70s fall into the high risk group should they catch corona and have been told to practice social distancing.

My folks and I are already socially distant, given that we live 10,000 miles apart. We are also very self reliant of one another and phone calls are now rare occurrences, replaced by a family Whatsapp chat. But if a global pandemic doesn't make you call your parents on the other side of the world, then I don't know what will.

Mum answered the phone and after a lecture about mask wearing and asking after the Grandchild, she moved onto the subject on everyone's lips.

Toilet Paper.

I noticed the early signs of the phenomena known as Panic Buying when I was getting ready to leave Australia in early March. Stocking up on Tim Tams one morning in the local IGA, I saw that the loo roll section was bare. When I returned to London days later, I got chatting to a staff member at Morrisons who showed me a photo on his phone of the loo roll aisle just one day before. Empty. He was restocking as we spoke and in light of what he'd said, I put down the 12 pack of bog roll I was going to buy and picked up the 24.

How many bums are they going to wipe?

It's a good thing I did for weeks later, toilet roll has become like gold dust. People are queuing before supermarkets open to try and get some. Corner shops are hoarding it behind their counters, selling it only to 'regular customers.' Psychologists are saying that this global fixation with toilet paper is symptomatic of trying to maintain control at a time where things are chaotic and unknown. A local taxi driver told me he thought it was because people were full of shit.

Freud would have a field day.

Toilet paper has never been in short supply at my Mum's house. She is Chinese and therefore she buys bulk. In a gentler time, pre-Corona, visitors to our family house would gaze at wonder at the Great Wall of Toilet Paper assembled and marvel how we would never, ever run out.

Well.

Due to our recent visit to Australia, my family and I had depleted Mum's toilet paper inventory.

We were down to ten rolls when you left, she reported,'But I didn't worry. All those crazy people. As if we couldn't get toilet paper.

But she couldn't.

I went to Coles. I went to Woolies. None at Aldi's either.

So what happened? I asked. After all, this is a woman who in the 1980s was captured on the evening news limboing under a half open store door so she could be one of the first inside during a Boxing Day sale to nab a microwave that was 50% off.

Your Father and I woke up early one morning and he said, 'lets go shopping now before breakfast' so we went to a nearby Coles. But we didn't know where the loo paper aisle was because we don't usually shop there. There were already about 30 people waiting outside when we arrived.

So what did you do?

I said to your Father, it's easy. As soon as the shop opens, just follow the crowd. They'll lead us to the toilet paper.

And did they?

When I saw where the crowd were headed, I slipped around and went the back way. Got there before most of them.

How much did you buy?

36 rolls. It'll do.

It's reassuring to me at a time where so much is changing in an unprecedented way, that Mum always come up trumps when faced with a challenge. Loo roll or locusts, she'll find a way to overcome.

 I hope in the months to follow, I've inherited her moxie. 



  *Most schools will remain open on a skeleton teaching crew for children of key workers

Highway to Hell

I was having brunch yesterday with an old friend in the Canvas cafe courtyard at Fremantle Arts Centre when she asked me:

Why don't you write your blog anymore?

A little oasis

I rambled on about focusing on my umpteenth rewrite and getting to the end of the draft (which is developing at the pace that if I were racing against a snail with my writing speed, the snail would win) and as I heard the words come out of my mouth, I thought:

This is bullshit. You could keep blogging if you wanted to. It's good practice for writing short pieces quickly and the Husband will be happy that you are ranting here again rather than at him.

But what could I write about?

Coincidentally later on that day, Highway to Hell, the much heralded finale of the 2020 Perth Festival was taking place. On the 40th anniversary of the death of Perth local and former AC/DC lead singer, Bon Scott, the event intended to be a homage to his legacy. A logistical feat, it involved closing down 10 km of a road called Canning Highway, a strip immortalised in the AC/DC song, Highway to Hell. A convoy of eight trucks, each containing live acts would motor the length of the highway from 4pm - 9.30pm, entertaining the crowds and stopping at three key points to play one full AC/DC song of their interpretation.

Truck trundling
Pic courtesy of the Twitterverse

Everyone in Perth knew about the event because for weeks leading up to it, event information had been splashed all around the city and you couldn't drive anywhere in the areas surrounding Canning Highway without seeing road signs stating:

CANNING HIGHWAY CLOSED MAR 1. HIGHWAY TO HELL

It was the ultimate form of advertising for Perth is car central, so much so that eventually the citizens will lose their legs and grow wheels.

My friend knew I was going but she had no plans to. Her sentiment was that she didn't understand why the Perth arts community would go to such lengths to commemorate a drunk bogan, rock icon that he was.

Why can't they have chosen someone with better qualities to honour? she asked, rather than someone who used to drive around pissed, shagging lots of women?

I could see her point but it was a question I didn't have an answer for. By definition, her description of Bon Scott probably could have been found in the dictionary under the words ROCK STAR (of a certain era. Or not)

But who else do you know that would draw the mixed crowds? I asked.  Who else would three local councils AND the state government work together to shut down that road for? I can't even think of a sports person they would do that for?

I really couldn't.

Later that evening, I gathered with thousands of others under the freight container rainbow sculpture in East Fremantle, the last stopping point for the trucks where each band would play a final song. The crowd was mixed, there were families, students, pensioners, tourists, the odd bogan and everything in between. The fact that it was a free, unlicensed family event created an easy going atmosphere amongst the punters. Local acts and DJs entertained the crowd while we waited for the sighting of the first truck.

East Fremantle Rainbow

When it came, it was the Pigram Brothers; a much loved local Broome band singing a version of TNT followed by Long Way to the Top. Musically they were fantastic but their expressions suggested that they all wanted a nice lie down.

They look knackered  I shouted to my friend R, just as one of the band spoke to the crowd:

We have been playing non stop for four hours. 

That explains it  R replied.

After that the trucks kept coming showcasing the following acts:

Dom Mariani with the Tommyhawks / Steve 'N' Seagulls / Carla Geneve with the Floors / Shonen Knife / Odette Mercy with Mathas / Amyl and the Sniffers / Abbe May with The Southern River Band.

It was a treat for me to hear the array of Australian music on offer, and also enjoy the acts from Finland and Japan. My favourite of the night was Carla Geneve and the Floors performing a sublime version of Hells Bells. I also loved Odette Mercy singing High Voltage in Tongan

The last truck came with Abbe May with The Southern River Band performing Can I Sit Next to You Girl. As they rolled off, the event ended and the barricades opened. It felt anticlimactic as we all started walking down the said Highway to Hell to wherever our next destinations were.

Freo showed up for AC/DC
Pic courtesy of Twitterverse

Is that it? I thought to myself. I wanted more but there was none to be had. Later I realised my post AC/DC malaise was due to the lack of momentum caused by the event structure. Each truck appeared for a moment and then was whisked away. It was like swiping on Tinder (I've been told), seeing only the briefest idea of a person or in this case, the band. I had gone expecting a live gig and what the event was, was AC/DC on Tinder. There was no chance to get stuck into the act or their music.

In the end though, the only music that really mattered that night was Accadacca's. Beloved by the hundreds and thousands of Perth citizens who swarmed to hear it played, it showed the power that songs can have through time and space. And that you can still be the life of the party, even when you're dead.


And the music was good and the music was loud
And the singer turned and he said to the crowd
Let there be rock

-Let There Be Rock - AC/DC