Day 6 -Monday
I wake up and make a fresh pot of coffee and admire the stunning view of the garden before me. It is a sunny winter day and the birds are singing in the trees as I take coffee outside. This all sounds a bit Oscar Wilde “The importance of Ernest” to me. I half expected a man in tight pants and a puffy shirt to emerge and recite a poem for me. This was such a time when people idled their days away with witty banter over trivial matters and there was always a ball happening soon. Let’s face it in Austen’s world Mrs Bennet meddled with Elizabeth’s love life not just due to social status but because she was bored. We also need to face it that Mr Bingley was a much better choice than Mr Darcy. Mr Darcy was all skulkly and grumpy. He would have been impossible to live with. Mr Bingley was friendly, “liked wherever he went” and was an open book. Anyway, as I was admiring the view a friend called me and we sat chatting for ages about books, film and life until it was about lunchtime. He lives about 10 minutes from me and it seems strange to video call someone so close by. He was making an omelette and this made me hungry (even though I had eaten in the last hour) so I went to Countdown to get some food and A4 paper to print out my offer of employment for work.
I saw some ready-made meals as I we perusing the supermarket and thought of my Grandma. The sweetest lady in the world and she would never say if she didn’t have enough to eat. But when I checked her fridge before lockdown it looked very sparse. I put in pesto chicken, lasange and beef stroganoff all freshly made so that at least I knew that she would have dinner all right. I also got a range of fruit she likes and some cheese and gourmet yoghurt. I drive there to deliver it she loves to meet me at the rest home. She is not allowed on the other side of the door and I must place the food in a shopping trolley outside. But I see her waiting to catch a glance at me and wave and I wave back and yell out that I love her. I know there is a café there and they can put in orders from their village with New World but that doesn’t compare to her smile when she saw me. Call you grandparents or parents. They need your help through this.
As I was driving back my phone beeped. It was an email. I hadn’t realized that my job would start today and would mean that I would actually have to do something. I was invited to a zoom meeting at 1:30pm so as soon as I got back to me place I joined the meeting. It was a bit surreal meeting all of your new work colleagues over a zoom call (particularly as I have all but ditched make up). It took the pressure off me and I didn’t have to worry about any of that awkward shaking hands introduction stuff. My brother had emerged from his room which seems to be his permanent hideout at the moment. He is a bit of a swamp monster that emerges periodically for tea (he has given up coffee I can’t even talk to you about I am so upset). He had just had a bad call with a customer and was dealing with the fallout. My brother, my Mum and me have all worked in customer care roles and it is never fun to get one of those customers. I always saw it as a challenge to be super nice to them the nastier they got. Usually they would eventually calm down after a while of not getting a response back enough for them to be helped. My brother in this instance seemed a bit rattled though and I don’t blame him. Meeting with that level of entitlement and aggression over the phone is not fun. At the end of the day some people are just toddlers who haven’t grown up hearing the word “No!” enough. I spend the evening checking over the mountain of paperwork that is required for starting my job and sending it back to accounts. In this tech savvy day and age I still do not understand how the same information has to be entered on documents so many times. Some documents will have autofill and other can be clicked to sign but I am sure printing and scanning must become redundant eventually. Maybe in a few decades our retinas can scan documents with on sight (don’t ask me where we would print from).
Day 7 – Tuesday
I may or may not have food poisoning. It would be self-inflicted if it was. Disclaimer: I have cooked for many people never given anyone food poisoning. I put what I though was pre-cooked enchiladas into the oven and when I was eating them later I noticed the chicken was looking a bit raw. Luckily, I had only had a few bites but this could end with me sleeping by the toilet tonight. As with most good things only time will tell. I seem to have increased my meals to about 5 a day.
It is bucketing down outside. Why are all of our terms for heavy rainfall inadequate? I mean ‘It is raining cats and dogs?’ That doesn’t even make sense. Ok I just had to look it up because it was bothering me. “Cats and dogs” may come from the Greek expression ‘cata doxa’ which is said to mean “contrary to experience or popular belief”. So essentially one day an Englishman was talking to a Grecian under an apple tree when it started to rain and the Grecian said ‘cata doxa’ and the Englishman said ‘it is raining cats and dogs?’ and centuries later it is still used. That’s a comfort and a concern in many aspects. There is beauty in consistency in tradition as well as something immovable and stifling. I personally agree with Stephen Fry’s approach to language. While correct grammar is important in certain situations comprehension is far more important. It does not matter if my autocorrect changes “Meet you at the shops” to meet you at the hops” if you still understand that I meant shops. If it changes it to “meet you at the cops” this might be an entirely different situation as you might have thought I have been arrested and start calling police stations. The youtube clip is below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY. Grammar does not conjure the feelings of emotion of Wordworth’s “Daffodils” or Poe’ “The Raven”. So while important language evolves and texting has already changed modern language significantly. “Whatevs” and “chillax” being added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2019 is a good indication of this.
Day 8 – Wednesday
My brother is stirring his coffee with a knife. The knife is scratching the bottom of the cup making a sound like finger nails on a chalk board. I jokingly hassle him and he comes closer and makes the sound louder and scratchier. We may as well be kids again fighting over toys or playing corners in the car. Siblings are reminders that we never really outgrow our childhoods. Put a remote for the tv or video game in front of two siblings and watch them regress. A conversation with my other brother he tells me he is about ready to book tickets back to Canada. I am excited for him and morose at the same time. Even though I knew he was always going back there having him back in New Zealand was so normal I was in denial about it. I had become used to us all being the same country again.
I have a webinar in the evening on ADHD to attend. There was lots of information and the person conducting the seminar was very relatable. I really love this job already. There are so many obstacles to learning in a modern day classroom that students have to overcome. If you see your kids struggling get them help, do some digging and find out what is going on. This is the same for adults. When I went to school less was known about different styles of learning and a lot of adults can be undiagnosed. Understanding and compassion can make all the difference in these situations.
I go to the supermarket and on a whim buy a bottle or sparkling and a bottle of red alcohol free wine and dessert. If it tastes like actual wine it is a win win really. I am slack as I can’t be bothered with water most of the time and need more flavour in what I drink. I used to get hassled my male colleagues in my last job for buying ‘Fancy water’ which are flavoured waters with lime or some other extra like lavender or cardamom in them. If you want to know why I don’t own a house yet ‘fancy water’ has a lot to do with it. Sometimes wine seems like an easy option but to be honest I don’t like the feeling it gives me most of the time. I just tend to get sleepy on it and it makes me want to curl up and go to bed. Both desserts are eaten cat sits next to me judging me.
Day 9 – Thursday
I have to remind myself when I get information something that doesn’t mean I have it. I am always googling and self-diagnosing myself. I once had a mosquito bite in Mexico and was convinced for that I had contracted a myriad of tropical diseases. I once convinced myself in Peru that I had hours to live whilst emptying the contents of my stomach onto the dirt floor of a Peruvian winery and trying to explain in broken Spanish that I was not drunk and just had some peculiar grey pasta the night before (never trust meals included in a tramp up Machu Picchu). But it took me a while to go the doctors about my broken rib as there was one thing I did not want to be told and that was that I wouldn’t be able to dance for a while. It was only after an excruciating rehearsal my teammates convinced me to go to the doctors the next day. Luckily, I was told that it should heal itself in 3-4 weeks and that I should be ok to dance during that time as long as I didn’t do any lifts or things that caused too much pain. Dancing has come first in a lot of my life and I couldn’t stand the thought of letting my team down. With lockdown I am forced to rest it and give myself a chance to reflect and recover. Today I am thankful for lockdown for that.
I finish reading the book ‘In order to live’ by Yeomi Park, a women who had defied odds to escape the North Korean regime. This really puts things into perspective to me. At the moment everyday most of us have our basic needs met, such as shelter, food, warmth and rest. Take away one of these for long enough and it consumes our thoughts entirely. 821 million people globally will go to bed on a empty stomach tonight. This lockdown may be inconvenient and we may grumble about the cost of housing in Auckland and the price of tomatoes but we are the lucky ones.
I log into my classes on zoom to get inundated with smiley faces and poetry. I made the classic zoom mistake of wearing casual pants with a shirt as I would not be leaving my seat for the class and then halfway through the class had try and grab some papers without getting up. The Year 10 class were looking myths that were commonly believed about explorers that weren’t accurate. For example, there is a common tale that people believed when Christopher Columbus could not sail around the world because it was flat is inaccurate. Globes already existed and people believed that the distance he was wanting to travel to the ‘Spice islands’ (South East Asia) was too far. They were right to assume so and if he hadn’t accidently landed in the Bahamas his voyage would have hit disaster. Just goes to show you can have all the planning in the world but none of us are immune to that constant factor of change. This year has carried a lot of change with it and there is no going out and exploring new worlds. I would like to say make your own adventures out of this year. Let this year teach you more about yourself than a yoga retreat in Bali.
Day 10 – Friday
I get woken up very early (7:30am is considered early to me in this lockdown state. I used to get up at 5am every morning in Canada) by my mother telling me that she needs me take a picture of her artwork for some art competition at her work as I have the best camera on my phone. I fee like a teenager being woken up for school in the morning (reason 502 why parents and adult children shouldn’t co-habit 😊.) but slightly amused at her excitement I emerge and get my camera ready for an early morning photoshoot and in my dressing gown and bunny slippers start taking shots (the photo kind, I haven’t devolved into morning drinking or pistol shooting). Then I finally get the most important thing in my life, coffee and we compare the pics. 99 percent of them looked the same and it really didn’t matter which out of the 30 photos I had taken the results were hardly going to be impacted. I was really impressed with her though she had been taking an art class recently and had improved exponentially during that time.
My Mum is also excited to play a board game on Saturday night. She had found an old board game called “Mystery Date” that she had found an updated version called “Mystery Date Catfish”. The game itself turned out to be a total fail but we had a lot fun playing it. My Mum on reflection was thinking about ways to improve the game to make it funnier and more engaging by creating better characters and rules for the game. It was good to see her in a such an innovative mood. I had decided on the other hand to make Baileys chocolate mousse. I went the liquor store and supermarket to get the ingredients. There seemed to be people panic-buying gelatin (exactly what people need during lockdown) as I couldn’t find any and just decided in the end we would have to do without it. After all how much can your screw up a bottle of Baileys, cream and a block of chocolate? I made the mousse and left it to set for a bit tasting the ingredients of course to make sure the Baileys and chocolate was of a high standard and left it set.
After the game I hop on our Saturday night drinks chat and people are already well into it. Seeing familiar faces and half my dance team online makes me so happy. I get very tipsy and chatty off G and T’s and then discover Snap Camera turn myself into a range of vegetables and famous personalities including President Trump himself and do a terrible impression of him. It is well after midnight when I finally tire of the filters and decide it is time for bed.
The Corona Diaries 