Used to it now

Day 53
Wednesday 29th

Grey, rainy day. Usual P chat.
Walking group on Zoom.
Make Atkins bread. Lovely aroma in the house but the bread is not as good as the last loaf.
B puts the gas fire on in the living room and I am inspired to move furniture around a bit and make a nice sitting place for me to read. I pull one of the green leather armchairs and suddenly give new life and purpose to the room. It is set up for wintering, now I can no longer sit in my little patch of sun.
B comes in and joins me for our drinks and I feel generally quite pleased with the new arrangements.


An interesting phone call from Lyceum Club secretary, Tiffy. She has been ringing around checking on all the members. What a gem. She turns out to be very interesting and I enjoy the conversation.
I have to use a pack of chicken thighs so I surf up a new Puttanesca chicken thigh recipe. and prepare it. B shreds zucchini to go with it. We eat after the M phone call and it is a triumph. A keeper. Yay.


Day 54 April 30
Thursday

No more cases in South Australia. Again.
It has been raining for much of the night.
The cat and I greet the day in the usual way. I make coffee. He eats cat soup. He snuggles under his nubbly rug as we go back to bed where B and I read the news and I have my morning talk with Peter.
This morning is different, however. With two of my Brainstorms friends, we continue to worry about the atypical behaviour of one of our number. We’ve all known each other online for 20 years and we can’t fathom her behaviour in blocking us and refusing to speak. She has always been very communicative, good times and bad. She is 67 and lives alone in a small rural town in Victoria. Last time speaking with her, she was upbeat about isolation and well prepared/ She was very outgoing to caring towards us. Then….silence for almost a month and then, as we reach out, she shuns us. Why? P, G and I confer on FB messenger and agree, with advice from a BS sage, that we should go to the authorities to get someone in her area to check on her wellbeing. P makes the communications and G and I wait online. When she is done, we meet on Zoom for post-mortem. P found it emotionally gruelling to work through the system, ending up having to file a police report to get the local police to check on our friend. She is afraid the friend will be very angry about it all,. Then again, maybe she will appreciate the care and concern, maybe this will bring her out of some dark place…
As ever, I have lots to do today. Writing and reading and organising and exercising.
End of the month. Time to get the car out of the lane which we share with our neighbours. Since we are not going anywhere, I had said I could just leave the car at the top of the lane and they could use the rest since they are still out and about. But partway through the month, K decreed they would rather park in the street in case of emergency. I was a bit hurt, actually. Don’t understand his rationale. Anyway, I invited B to come for a drive with me - out of the lane, down to the letterbox and around the local streets to tick the engine over. The streets are still quiet but not dead. People are on the move, There are pedestrians on The Parade where the supermarkets, of course, are open, a and the pharmacies and the bookshop... All the pedestrians seem to by carrying take-away coffee. Back home, I am pleased to be able to park across the road in a street spot I like, because I can see the car. Parking is at a premium in our wee back street because few people are leaving it to go anywhere. But, woweeee, what an outing we have had. We walk over to Edward St to see how the creek is running after the rain. Poo. Just a trickle. Odd.
We can hear life in other houses but the world remains very quiet and insular.
We get home just before another downpour.
I do my online exercise class and myriad things online. I am missing an image of a painting I need to write about. I hunt in case it has slipped somewhere but it hasn’t. I search online for it
There was so much puttanesca chicken that we can have it again. It is just as good.


Day 55
Friday May 1

Welcome rain has been thrashing down all night.
Of course, it is always dark when I waken at 6. Dawn comes an hour later. As I put on the coffee I hear the news in which our Premier warns against complacency, against rush, saying the State is not going to push against the clock despite the good figures. I am impressed with this wisdom and strength. I hope the people don[’t get too pushy. I know a lot of people have a sense of entitlement and can’t really comprehend the serious nature of the virus. People want to be together again. "Standing Alone Together" reads a government ad. I think it is for the corona app. Idiot people are smug and know-all about the app, too. They think it is spying on them, giving the government their private information. What private information, for heaven’s sake? What is so special about them? What does the tex office not already know? Maybe there’s the crunch of the app refusers. They have things to hide. Hmm.
With my Brainstorms friends, we gather again on FB Messenger to discuss the overnight fallout of our efforts to check up on the strangely missing person. There have been threatening phone calls to P from a woman who seems to be acting as an intermediary. So odd. I am generally annoyed about it all.
I ask Sam to do some shopping for us, which he does willingly. He buys some fresh fish. First fish we have had except sardines and tinned tuna. Very welcome.
I fuss around with the cleaning, do my exercises, read some, power walk, M talk, cocktails...



Day 56
Saturday, May 2

Another dark morning. More online meeting to exchange about the mystery behaviours of our BS person. P talk in which we are both very argumentative. P very defensive of China. Thinks the corona investigations are all set to make people Sinophobes. Exasperating. I love the Chinese but not some of the government power games. I can keep the two things separate. But P is devoted to China. He hates America and Britain. We have argued our varied views for years. We can disagree and still love each other.
I have been rounding up some wonderful new online theatre and rave on about it. He does not like the whole thing. Of course. It is not live. But it is to be celebrated nonetheless since it is the arts overcoming obstacles and using the tools to hand to create new and different art.

Brainstorms has a Zoom session. I am glad to see some of my favourite BSers and not others. It is a bit tense really and I am decidedly brittle. I take a fellow Adelaidean to task re the Covid restrictions and afterwards find out I am wrong and he is right. The odd thing is that no one here knows that they actually can have up to 10 people at a gathering. The national limit is two. We abide by two. But actually, when I go to the state government website, it is 10 - in a picnic in a park with social distance, of course. I later ask P and B and S and M….and not one of them knows this. How interesting.


Day 57
Sunday, May 3

My Smart Arts resident critics segment goes really well, I think. The ABC phone app works perfectly so the quality of sound is good. And I am excited about The Show Must Go Online and keen to describe its tech skills and recommend its ever-growing season of Shakespeare. Peter thinks the simplification of theatre, the bare bones of it restricted to social-distancing and online, may herald a new appreciation and trend of the most basic, pure theatre with no tech or bells on. I argue that this move would put designers and sound techs out of work and would be against the industry. A few healthy sparks fly. My fellow critic Steve defends Peter. I think it made for a lively segment.

B makes fried fritz and scrambled egg.

I run a gorgeous hot bubble bath and sink into it, listening to the gardening show on the radio.
B has turned the fire on in the living room and I get the Sunday Mail and sit for a read. There is an odd smell, animal smell, I can’t source. I spray animal enzyme gear and it goes. I am so smell-sensitive. It is a curse. Other people can't small things that drive me crazy.

Do the crossword, walk a little to loosen up, bring in and put out washing,. put on an exercise class, and then hit the desk. At long last. My engine is going, I immerse myself in Heysen for a couple of pleasant hours. A bit more walking to music, cocktail hour with almonds, M phone ritual, more of B’s sou vide corned beef with veg, gorge on sugar-free chocolate..




Day 58

Monday, May 4


Crumby serrated night in which Audible, just audible beside me, gave distraction to B’s gentle but distracting snoring. So funny. I put on Audible to distract from B’s snoring. Be puts in earplugs to distract from my Audible. The cat, however, is just a sweetheart all night. He has been behaving oddly and going out the front for long periods and then scampering in in a rush if one opens the door. He has not been staying on the bed. He is just a bit disturbed. But now he is just Mr Cuddly. He has been and is such a joy.
He is almost always somewhere near me. When I do my indoor walking he is utterly bemused. I think I have become his floorshow. He has learnt to find a high spot, on the living room pouffe usually, and he just sits there in all his fluffy glory watching me pound to and fro.

Matt Gilbertson aka Hans had done a concert outside the Pullman Hotel for the quarantined people flown back from India on their last night of lockup. It’s an extravagant affair which is all over the media now. The Premier spoke and the health Minister Nicola also hopped up on stage. She’s been legion throughout this and I am sure there will be a lot of accolades from the govt and Australia Day council etc etc when this is all over.

It is another cold and cloudy day. Dull. My little courtyard garden still looks beautiful in its pink and white floral abundance through the window. But I am emotionally a bit rocky. Tears are often near. I read a sad story or think of young people dealing with this crisis, or contemplate the difficulties of their future, and tears threaten. I know history has dealt with many things and change is inevitable, often by default, as is this case, but….

Bruce has been reading my old SaTrek blog, reliving our road trip, pointing out highlights to me, praising my writing, even. He says this is our road trip at home. We would have been leaving for the next one next week. Four months on the road in the USA. I would have been packing and getting excited right now.
I remind him once again to call the Newhaven Omni to warn them of cancellation. The insurance documents still have not arrived.

I read a well-researched GQ account of the nightmare world of the Diamond Princess as a Covid breeding ground. I had imagined much of it but this account is more detailed, going on to describe the desperate state of Americans being taken off the boat and kept in buses for hours before crushing their desperate way into cargo planes. They were elderly and in dire trouble for toilets. In pain. Weeping. Desperate. Bursting literally. The ensuing excretory shambles was stomach-turning. What a nightmare flight from what began as a luxury cruise.

My fire is lovely in the living room and very inviting. But, with my inevitable endless hunger, I forage for lunch before settling down. There’s some antique chopped up cauliflower in the crisper drawer. Going off. I remember a keto cauliflower soup recipe I’d seen in the paper - simple thing with some onions and stock and milk and cheese - and knock it up. Divine. Divine.
The sun has come out. I grab my book and sneak into my corner spot in the garden. Not many insects but lots of things doing late flowering. The chilis, for instance. And my wee lemon tree is showing signs of going mad with flowers. The cold is keeping them back. If they dare to open before there is any sun, the bees will not be able to come and, lord knows, bees are rarer and rarer even in good weather.

B and I decide to take advantage of this sunshine and go outside for a real walk. I forget my baseball cap which means I am blinded by the glare of the low sun. The streets are not exactly empty. A lot of people are walking. None is masked. We walk on the road when the footpath is not wide enough for a broad space. The world is green and lush after the rain. The creek is not running, though. Just still and shallow.
The air feels good. It also feels good to walk in a straight line, Housewalking is a bit curvy. We loop around backstreets which are less busy and make it gratefully back to our little lockup where B opens a bottle of champagne/sparkling white wine for a real change. It is taking up room in the fridge. It is delicious. “Like drinking stars”, quote Bruce of Monroe. I’ve roasted some fresh almonds. We sit in the courtyard and love it. Take a selfie. Then M phones and I talk to her for the next hour while getting a few last steps in the house.
Dinner is defrosted bol sauce with zucchini spirals, followed by the rest of that strange Netflix series called Unorthodox. Odd ending.


Day 59
Tuesday, May 5

A really busy sleep with dreams about facemasks but at least a real sleep. I wake refreshed.
No new cases in SA. 12 days.
The media is full of hope and bloody football. Oh my, they are in an obscene rush to get football playing.
"Sport is so important to us,” tout the marketers.
It is a cloudy and sunny day. After the morning routine, I grab some moments in the pallid sun with my book. Then catch up with M, my neighbour and friend at EB. She says the traffic down there has been unbelievably heavy and hectic and she can’t understand why. Worse than school hols



Day 60
Wednesday

A good sleep. Amazing. Nonetheless up at sparrowfart with my glorious cat keen to have his breakfast soup. Reading the news with coffee, phone with P when I remember it is Wednesday Zoom morning with The Secret Seven, my wonderful walking group. Gobble breakfast, dash through the shower and set up in the living room for a wonderful hour of catch-up with six wonderful friends.
But, wait, there is another Zoom on the calendar. Another Brainstorms gathering, this one hosted by a fellow Adelaide BSer. Grab a ruibus tea and return to the laptop. And we have BSers Canada, the US and Oz. It is a hearty meeting and goes for 90 minutes. Phew. A morning of solid chat, comparing notes on the state of Coronavirus in different countries and pondering the long term.
Everyone is keen to open things up and it is rushing forward, but the future is strange because this virus is not going to cease existing. It can lurk and be spread by asymptomatic. They are not testing everyone, only people complaining of symptoms. And, it is yet more sinister than previously understood with its shocking impact on blood clotting, having doctors In the US and UK rethink the entire genesis of blood clots. The other epidemic is the conspiracy crap and the know-alls who refuse to believe that it is real. They are loud and dumb, anti-vaxxer ilk. I have unfriended any on FB

The Zoom phenomenon grows. Like the Internet itself, it is without borders. It defies time and geography and brings people together in a fascinatingly immediate window-to-their-world way.
Bruce reminds me of CUSeeMe which was a long time ago forerunner. It has an open access in which people would buzz and ask to connect with you, strangers, pickups from all over. Oh yes. I recalled it vividly. You quickly learned not to accept certain sorts of invitations because when the picture came up, it would be some pathetic perv wanking off to the camera. That sort of exhibitionism became epidemic in those early days of the technology. Indeed, porn was the first big business on the Internet. It always made me feel sad.

Woolies delivers my order. I quickly sort through and do the sterilising routine.

The sun comes out. It is a wan autumn sun peeking through light cloud layers but I grab my book and tea and sit in it for a while out the front.
I hear people in the street and a heavy thrum of traffic from the major arterial road a way away. Business is moving again. Schools are back.

Of course, I see chores all around me. Plant some more spinach seeds in a big pot. Do a couple of loads of washing….usual stuff. Then suggest to Bruce an early walk in the outside world.
We traipse down Osmond Tce because it has broad footpaths and we can have a distance between others. There are not too many walkers out albeit the road traffic is busy. We pass the school where the siren has just brought the kids out for a break in the playground. Squealing joy and fun. No social distancing there.
We dip down Orange Lane to avoid the queue at Centrelink. My grandfather, Vic, was born in Orange Lane but there is not a single sign of old Norwood left there, just tight blocks of two-storey condos. We meet a couple of neighbours and exchange greetings but in passing strangers, it is heads down and holding breath from all parties.

I’m disappointed by fruit and veg order still has not arrived. They are usually early. I keep checking. Do my LucySquad exercises, write up another Heysen painting then settle in front of the gas fire with my book until cocktail tile and my M call.
The fruit and veg does not arrive although checking on the website it says “in process”. I email the supplier. He replies that the order has not completed. I go looking and instead of the automatic completion of previous orders, it wants a new credit card….and won’t take it. I try and try and try. The supplier says he will call and talk me through in the morning.
Meanwhile, my planned dinner has to bee aborted for lack of fresh beansprouts.
So, I make the much-threatened Spam Ragout! Yep, can of beef spam added into a tomato, onion, capsicum base with a bit of chili and lots of herbs, served with low carb penne and cheese. It is fabulous.



Day 61
Thurs, 7th May

Crap night. B accidentally wakens me reaching for the remote which was about to do the automatic switch-off. I’m just into sleep and jump in fright - and then can’t find a way back to sleep. All bloody night. Listen to Audible, Levison Wood on the Silk Road.
It’s a warmish morning with wind and rain forecast.
No planes. But, as they do early each morning, a noisy flock of corellas flies overhead on its way from the city parklands to new grazing grounds.
Phone call. Also, one from Nadine to tell me that Pat Hardy, our lovely Minnesota-born friend from the Lyceum Club, has died. I have to digest this shocking dose of sadness. I call Tessa for details and get the address to write sympathy to her children who have travelled from interstate and are now quarantined at her Myponga farm.
Usual chores.
I have re-liaised with the veg people and now delivery will be tomorrow. B takes frozen mince to defrost. I will make us a Pea Kima tonight. It’s a zesty Pakistani dish, a Pearl Buck recipe I first cooked in the 70s. It has remained a family favourite, served with onion/tomato/mint relish and yoghurt.
There is some sun in the cloudy cool day. I have written a sympathy card and B and I walk out to post it and stretch the legs, walking in a straight line. We cross The Parade and see our lovely Hsin restaurant with all the tables pushed aside just catering takeaways and a wine sale. Such is the way of the world in coronaland.
I talk to Ruby and Rosie on Facetime. They say the only difference at school is handwashing after break. I am not impressed. There are worrying reports about how the virus’s impact on children is little known. They are thought to be vectors. There is another sinister illness affecting children which is linked to the virus….
I am not so sure about the rush back to school, but the children are thrilled.

With dinner simmering on the back burner, I take my cocktail to the computer and join the MEAA National Media Section Zoom hookup, which is working on a campaign to try to give support and salvage to the mortally damaged regional press. We will target local mayors and try to get them to hold up Save Our Local Paper signs for social media pix, as well as communicate with the government and media influencers.
Talk to M. Wolf down dinner. Slodge into the night.




Day 62
Friday, May 8

How come I run out of time in this iso-phase when time is supposed to hang on our hands? I suppose the high-density information content of the email and WWW has a bit to do with it, and the outreach of friends and FB exchanges. Certainly, each morning is heavy-duty catch-up. B and I sit up in bed getting on with it, comparing notes, swapping news. I talk to P. Then there is a surprise brrrring on the phone and there in vital living Whatsapp colour is Rachel and Bob sitting in their living room in Portland, Oregon, treasured friends we had hoped to be seeing this year on the US road trip. I feel embarrassed to be caught on camera in bed looking very scruffy indeed, but we talk on for ages and their son Alden pops in. He and his girlfriend managed to get home for lockdown. She is a good Jewish girl, albeit Canadian, and Rachel is well pleased.

I go on to Amazon to order a birthday present for little Archer in the US. He is turning two already. And we won’t be seeing him. All travel banned. Who knows when we will meet him.

Force myself into the shower and making the bed and moving into the living room where heat is now needed.
The veggies are delivered early. Lots of them. Bulky. I start the sanitation routine. There has been one case of covid today which breaks our run. Nicola Spurrier, our health commissioner, says it is an elderly Englishman recently arrived and who has not been in contact with many people. She is not worried. We will go ahead in relaxing things. The Prime Minister gives a presser about the phases of relaxation the country will be undertaking. More people can visit houses. Restaurants will be able to have a couple of outdoor tables… I would like to think the world out there is clean and virus-free but it is an insidious thing and we must not relax. Doggedly, I keep spraying everything and washing the fruit and veg. It is tedious and time-consuming. But, t is also common old and flu season here now. Flu shots do not guarantee one against rogue strains I know to my misery in the past. These things can invade one’s world on a single sneezed-upon item.
Chase B’s pharmacy order. The pharmacist says he will drop off B’s meds after lunch. I set to watching Michael Gow’s play, Away, as part of my theatre content for Sunday’s Smart Arts Show. There is so much wonderful theatre pouring out of company vaults now they have all clued up to keeping their profiles up during the coronavirus. It is a plus of the epidemic that we are getting to see many of these wonderful works. They would never have released them otherwise. They would have sat, in all their perfection, in company archives. I’m loving Away. This production is very unlike the STC one I saw years ago. Almost another play in some ways. Loving the characterisations and performances. I sit in front of the gas fire absorbed - and annoyed by the many interruptions.
The day has rain and wind forecast but early afternoon is patchy cloud and sunny. I grab B for a brisk outdoor walk. We go down William Street to the end on one side and up on the other, admiring autumn colours and seed pods and gardens and noting happily a man putting up a people’s street library box. William Street is good because its footpaths are wide. And, today, there are very few people. Those we pass don’t look at us or we at them. Everyone holds their breath.

I am just finishing the play when suddenly B is calling the “is it dinner time?” cat clock and making drinks and the day is gone and I have not even done my exercises yet.
Talk to M as usual and cook up chicken and beansprouts, one of the best dishes in the whole world in my gastronomic opinion. Then I find an SBS on Demand movie with Donald Sutherland and Helen Mirren, The Leisure Seeker, a really sad and sweet film about an elderly couple running away on a last fling road trip to the Hemingway house in Key West. We’ve been there and relate to road trips. It is a tale about dementia and love and death, not critically acclaimed, but we love it.


Day 63
Sat, May 9

What was that? I awaken at 5.30 feeling fresh. A good night’s sleep! How astounding. B is stirring. I make coffee and find the cat who is outside still being night cat. He streams inside and enthusiastically laps up his morning soup. Rain has been pelting down in bursts through the night. I have had a tiny open slit in the bedroom window and it is that wee current of fresh night air which has gifted me the sleep. I know this. It is an issue with B who likes to seal the house to keep the temperature even and inexpensive.
Again, there are torrents of news and opinion to read.
Expedia notifies us that the Omni Hotel in New Haven. that which did not want to refund our early payment is now refunding because it is actually closed. We offered a bonus if we want to keep hotel credit dollars with them. But who knows when we might be again in hotels? Sigh.