The end is nigh - and, on the 100th day, Her Majesty's begins

Day 95
Wednesday, June 10

WALK. TOGETHER. We of the walking group who have met on Zoom every Wednesday morning since lockdown…we meet in the flesh at Victoria Park and walk together again.

It’s a freezing morning but sunny and beautiful. There is no sense that we have not seen each other for ages since we have seen each other face to face every Wednesday and talked for an hour. We are up to date. But pleased to be in the fresh air again.
We keep a social distance. John wants to bump elbows but two of the group won’t even do that. They are still strictly social distance. I bump, though.

I rush home to have the other Wednesday Zoom meeting - the international one with the Brainstorms Community. It is a marvellous session. Several of our number are in Minneapolis where the BLM action continues to throb and pulse and. They are defunding the police there, imposing a new force of

counsellors and drug specialists, people who can deal with a lot of the things which chew up police time. Violence becomes a category. They are unclear about the details. It is a brave experiment. Peter fromAdelaide hosts the meeting. Sarah from Victoria is there, along with Tom and Janice and Kate and….

Clearly, this is no longer an iso journal. The world is turning. I am out and about, even with extreme caution.
Nonetheless, somehow, I will get this up online and on the record, just because the world needs such domestic records from this particular period.
Another variation on the theme of The Decameron. Stories from the plague.

Strange that the sequestration amotived one. I reflect on that adrift feeling.
I simply circled around the real work on my desk. Dodged it because I could. I tried to dig into my father’s biography to edit it. I thought I could edit it. I thought I was the person who could and should do this. But the more I delve into the copy, the more I see it needs rewriting rather than editing. Betty Snowden was one of the great researchers of academe. Fastidious. But the darling woman’s prose is moribund. I struggle with it. Then I walk away. I just walk away in despair. I need funds for a pro.
The guilt for this comes over me in waves from day to day.
I buy another lottery ticket online and hope for dollar salvation.

Meanwhile, isotime seemed to have raced by around me.

Boy, I have been seeing a lot of Zoom theatre and Zoom people and Zoom stuff. Thank heavens we had it but I must say I am a bit over it.
We have the biggie coming up. The SA Media Awards. A big ceremonial event which is to be broadcast via Zoom. The clock is ticking. I have written citations and the Hall of Fame speech which is to be given by Dana Wortley. I just need to write my own wee speech.






Day 96
Thursday June 11


I have a big delivery from Woolies. Lots of heavy stuff - laundry soap and drinks, tinny tomatoes and the provisions for the Friday night dinner party. I do the sorting, sterilising and putting away regime.

But this is a BIG DAY. My much-needed haircut at Orbe. This is the end-of-iso special.
When I rock up I am taken to the sink and supervised in a fastidious hand wash. Then I am asked to fill in a form swearing that I am not sick and have not been overseas or in contact with covid. I am offered a pen from a big bucket of pens and told to keep it. You don’t have to tell a journo twice to keep a free pen. Yes, thanks. Janelle rocks up looking like a Spanish goddess, her raven hair centre-parted and pasted to her head and drawn into a bun at her neck, her lipstick flame red. She’s a pretty girl who is looking like a movie star. We slip back into hairdresser and client relationship and it is not until I have left the salon that I realise she did not wear a mask when she washed my hair. After all the forms and washing on my part. Hmm. And that was the most intimate spatial encounter of these last several months. We talk of what we have not done and are not doing thanks to the virus. She had to postpone her wedding and her honeymoon, after years of planning. She’s philosophical about it. They own a house and have renovated it. They can wait, she says. She gives me a superb haircut and I leave feeling reborn.

The shops are busy. Everything seems to be open. The Parade is bustling with people. Back to normal really.
I take the plunge.
I go to the supermarket. Thanks to Woolies, I only need a few luxury items. Cheese, mainly. Low carb bread.

There are markers for people to queue in social distancing, but they are unused. Everything is as it used to be. People are just going in. The only difference is the big handwashing and trolly sanitising station.
The aisles are one-way. People steer wide berths around each other.
It is lovely to be back into the world of choices. I see smoked eggs. Huh? I buy half a dozen.
I pop in to the fruiterer and buy some flowers.

When I get home, I find I can’t get the smoked eggs out of the carton. They seem gummed in. I take them back to exchange.But all the boxes are the same. Oh, well.

We have a rehearsal Zoom for the Awards. I spend the whole session struggling over the background image Gemma has prepared. Finally, I have it right. Except that she is going to give me a different one tomorrow. And I have also to organise the one for the Lifetime Achiever…and having two Zooms going and sorting out sound and echo etc. I feel decidedly intimidated.
A G&T is welcome.

I’ve made a Pea Kima curry with some cheap mince we had in the freezer. We have it with some naughty rice and a big Indian onion and tomato salad. It is too divine.
.

Day 97
Friday June 12

Historic Day. Hereby ends iso. We are having guests.
The Lifetime achiever is my friend Rex Leverington. I have invited him here so avail him of my technology and bandwidth. I’ve decided he will use my b ig desktop computer and I’ll use the lappy. I am antsy for the background images. I won’t feek comfortable until I have the technology in place. I write my speech and send it to Gemma. I comes back incorporated into the running sheet so the MCs have all the perfect cues…and so do I. Eventually the backgrounds come through for both computers and I successfully install and test them. Serendipitously, Gemma comes online while I am testing and confirms they look good. Phew.

I lay the table with all the trimmings for the first time in seeming aeons.
I trot down the street to Foodland to get last-minute special things, Berries. Fresh bread.

I cook Puttanesca Chicken to have with rice and a big green salad. I set out nuts and dips, lay out a mighty cheese platter with fruits and crackers.

Rex arrives with Tony “Pilko” Pilkington, a veteran radio personality, one of Rex’s best mates and another who, with me, had nominated Rex for the award. We pour drinks and chatter excitedly. I show Rex the ropes with the desktop and I move into the Morning Room to get online with my Media Awards colleagues for what they have dubbed “pre-drinks”. People keep arriving on Zoom, some with video images, some just sound. The comperes, Mike Smithson and Tracey Lee are somewhere in the Premier’s Department where a special studio has been set up for them. They have drinks and scripts and seem happy with the set-up. And, as the time ticks to 7pm we start the proceedings, the comperes being pretty smooth and professional. Gemma’s AV content is really good, so photos and captions and videos pop up at the right moment. Suddenly there is a glitch. An “intruder” scrawls “fuck me” on a screen. Gemma whips it down pronto and disables the culprit.
I run between rooms checking that the others are seeing everything and that the Zoom App is working properly. One wrong move and the screens can whoosh off, which they do a couple of times when one of the boys tries to control the viewing. But I recover it OK. Dinner is served and we eat watching the event, just as we do at the real-life awards. Except that I am on my own eating discreetly on camera. OMG, that chicken is delicious. I have the running order printed out and set beside both computers so we can all see what is coming up. Come my turn, I make my President’s speech and then into the Young Journo and the Max Fatchen Awards, and throw back to the comperes betwixt and between. It is not as fast as it is when we are all on stage together, but it works. I get text messages saying I am looking good. Phew. Then into the living room to get Rex set up for his big moment. Dana reads the citation I have written. She seems unfamiliar with it. Pity. Then Rex reads his acceptance speech and I hand him the trophy. And everyone has drinks. I return to my corner for the final award, the Journo of the Year, and am thrilled to see Ben Avery come on live from London to accept it. Bloody hell. We have pulled off a major event as an online happening. It looked good, Sponsors were well aired. Audio was clear. Cues pretty good. The comperes had good, warm-hearted funny banter. Phew! I turn off the computers and call for a real G&T and bring out the cheese and fruit platter. And we sit around the table for the next few hours, chewing the fat with Pilko telling amazing yarns about growing up with an arsonist for a father.




Day 98
Saturday, June 13

Another big deal end-of iso event. Yum, Cha with Sam and the girls. I have booked us into Eastern Garden.
There is a big queue outside the restaurant. We respect social distancing and wait for them to open. The girls are impressed that we are expected and given a fabulous table. Others, who had not booked, were sent away. The restaurant is restricted to certain numbers and the tables are well separated, some with big Chinese screens. The usual Yum Cha trolley-service menu is not on because of the restrictions,. We choose from the special Yum Cha menu. We are ravenous., We choose heaps. We are so happy to br together. Rosie runs around the table just to give me extra hugs. We are family. We are allowed to touch now. The food is stunning. We devour everything. Happiness.

Afterwards, we wander down the Parade and into the clothing shops the girls like. Sanitiser, social distancing. This is the new order.

I return to Bruce and chores. We take a walk.




Day 99
Sunday, June 14


Walking. Toenails.




Monday, June 15
Day 100

I have delayed going to Encounter Bay for this big day.
We get to see inside Her Majesty’s Theatre for the first time. It is finished. Festival Centre CEO Douglas Gautier has offered to show Peter and I though the building.
We meet at stage door at 3.30. Inside, once we have signed in at the doorman’s desk, we encounter the massive honour wall, the lovingly preserved signatures by many decades of performers who have worked in the old theatre, which was once known as the Tivoli. They are now in a wonderful vast expanse with some bricks untouched, waiting for the next stars to sign their names as the theatre moves forward. Of course, we don’t know when that will be. There is much heartbreak and distress that the gala opening had to be cancelled because of the pandemic. A Slingsby youth show has been programmed in to create a soft opening, just a small show with a small audience.
And here is the great theatre. It is huge. We meet a familiar tech working on the stage wings. The techs are all in getting the place ticking over. There’s a wall of ropes there. Spectacular. Intense. They reach ever upwards to the dark of the flys world. We stand on the stage and look out on the bright red of the great arcs of seating. I am thrilled. This is better than I could have imagined. I have had a sneak peek through my friend Cheris Oaten’s fabulous photo timeline but the real thing is the real thing and it has air and dimensions and a spaciousness that I could not anticipate. We go down into the auditorium and walk the wide rows. No having to stand up to let people get to their seats in those front stalls with no aisle. The problem I dreaded is absent. It is bloody brilliant. Gorgeous. Smart. And notr only nbut also there are aud vents under the seats, the air flows up individually, fresh air and not foetid dense old enclosed air. Wow factor.
Douglas takes us around the foyers and up the lifts. I run up the grand stairs. It is quite a way. We look for Peter's name in the celebrity floor tiles in the bar areas. Phyl Skinner is there.
We look at the auditorium from the dress circle. The handsome lines of the wooden handrails stands out. Lovely design feature.
We go up into the Gods, Oooh, it is high up there. We walk across a bridge to the flys and note how strong and stylish things are, even in those aerial features.
The only unfinished area is up in the top where the Performing Arts Collection is to be installed. It still has a stylish feeling to it. The whole building does. It is sublime. Such attention to detail, such subtle arched window respect to the architecture of the old market building across the road, such sumptuous velvet-upholstered banquettes for waiting and drinking upon….

Give us patience

Day 84
Saturday May 30

Oh, this is not going to be a good day. The weather predicts wind. Rain is one thing. Gusty winds are another. Our thought for the family covid-reunion walk was the linear path but I refuse point blank to take kids under gum trees in high winds. No way. Anyway, the projected picnic walk depends on Rosie. When she wakes, it is to a restless night and a painful back. We defer the walk.

P is emptying his Norwood storage unit and delivering to Sam the precious of Medieval cheese rack we had at Norwood Farm. Love that nigh-fossilised piece of history. we bought in Dorking in the 70s . P helped us to save it by keeping it in his storage unit ever since Sam had to leave the Edward St house for little rentals. Sam is thrilled to be getting it back - to have in his roomy new home. I am thrilled, too. P is a rock in our world. We are lucky to have him.

Rosie texts me her version of her injury and how she feels. Very sore. Nasty when she rolls over in bed at night. We get Sam to take a photo of her back so we can see the bruising. It is not as bad as I had feared.

B has his big Yale reunion Zoom morning. This would have been the main reunion day. It is a very big Zoom gathering, orchestrated by our mate Jim Conroy. I overhear bits and pieces of their remiscences and greetings.

We have the living room all cosy and keep on eye on the weather.
B and I go for a district walk, down wide suburban streets with safe treescape. The gusty wind is nasty, whipping up bursts of leaves and dust. Wind is my utterly unfavourite weather phenomenon. And it is death to a clean house. In this near-desert environment, dust is an issue even when it is not windy. Blech.

Sam kindly drops in some wayward shopping.
I make meat balls in rich tomato gravy listening to the reports of growing mayhem in the US. The death of George Flloyd over a forged $20 note. He was buying cigarettes. Probably high on heavy duty drugs according to the reports B has been reading. Fentanyl, B suspects. Police identified him from the shopkeeper’s description. Pretty easy, really. He is 6ft 8in tall. A massive man. A bouncer. And he was just around the corner from the shop sitting on the roof of his car, of all things. They said he was unsteady when they got him down. He sat on the sidewalk pretty peacefully. Then they escorted him across the road. He still seemed passive. And we don’t exactly see what then occurs except that the police are holding him down and one burly cop has his knee on his neck. For almost 9 minutes, it turns out. Ffloyd says he can’t breathe. Then he stops breathing. B digs into the physiology books to see how this pressure kills and says he thinks it was only contributive to the breath suppression of fentanyl or opiates he may have taken. An autopsy will determine this. But it is too late for America. This is a racial issue. White cops, Black victim. Another one. And the kneeling on a man’s neck like that it just utterly beyond the pale. Utterly. No matter what drugs may have been in his system. It is a crime. A tragedy. And, on top of the covid crisis, America begins to unravel.

So are we. B and I have a terrible row.
I also feel deeply damaged. Sleep is elusive.



Day 85
Sunday May 31

I must have peed five times in the night. I brave the pre-dawn and make coffee.
The world is heaving with the news from the USA. Scrolling through Twitter I see that city after city is in riots. Arson and looting, Police shooting tear gas, rubber bullets, pepper spray. Journalists being attacked. White supremacists out in force, fuelling the racists fires. The national guard called out. Curfews imposed. Trump blaming the Democrats? Trump declaring anti-fascists as enemies of the country. OMG.
It makes the Queensland conspiracy theory retards who are today protesting over G5 and vaccines seem irrelevant. Just idiots bloody obstinate in their ignorance. I would not give them media oxygen, if I had my way. They are an embarrassment in an educated country. I read reports that a lot of their gullibility is fuelled by Russian bots on social media. For heaven’s sake.

The weather is cool with showers. The wind has abated.
Sam reports that Rosie is feeling way better and that the picnic family social distancing reunion will go ahead. He and Ru are out shopping for it.

B and I have a lovely Zoom session with our friends Jim and Irene in Philadelphia. We would have been with them now were it not for the pandemic. Irene has big news. She is retiring from her senior curatorial role at the Philadelphia Art Museum.
I do P’s Sunday Smart Arts segement with Steve Davis. We are all in good form today and it is a sparkling 15 mins. We decide that drag queens should be delivering Meals on Wheels. Steve dubs them Meals on Heels.

I drive over to S’s and find the three of them waiting outside in the street for me. It is so hard not to run up and hug. We all feel it. With S pulling his black granny trolly, we cross Hackney road very carefully and walk into the beautiful Botanic Gardens. I have a girl either side of me regaling me with news. Rosie sings me the We Are One Australia anthem in the Kaurna language. Oh, my. The sweet, pitch-perfect voice and that beautiful cultural melding. With our kids getting the sort of racial harmony education that primary schools now teach, the future sense of equality of races should be assured . It is a far cry from the US.
It is lush and green in the Gardens. Just a hint of light drizzle. We wend our way around the winding paths. There are a few people around. Some teens in matching outfits are doing a dance thing under a tree. For TicToc, concludes Ru.
The girls are experts on coronavirus and want to talk about it. Everyone is talking about it, of course, and our lives are controlled by it. They know that smokers have rare advantage against the virus. Ruby does not want her mother to know that because she so wants her mother to stop smoking. It’s a dilemma. But, she says, the big finding of covid19 hospital patients has been the deficiency in Vitamin D.
We don’t hold hands or touch. And when we come to the shelter of the latticed pavilion in th Garden, we spread out in social distance on the bench as S lays out our picnic. What a feast.
Finely sliced Barossa ham, finely sliced Gruyere, mustard, crackers for me and crackers for the girls, celery sticks, divine hummus, watermelon… Best kambutcha in disposable cups. And, piece de resistance, plastic bowls and spoons and massive serves of fresh, sweet blackberries and raspberries with keto birthday doughnuts and lashings of fresh dollop cream. I thought I couldn’t eat it all. I was wrong. Yumm. It is the celebration for both his and my May birthdays, he says. An extravagant treat all round. With added hand sanitiser. And it is a celebration of us being together again. Of me coming out of iso to be with the ones I love. It is an all-round happiness. I have brought the dodgy selfie stick in the hope of getting some group shots. Sam makes it work,. I knew he would. We take a happy snap as the rain starts to move in.
And we meander happily, albeit damply, home.

There B is making much needed chicken stock. I have rearranged the freezer ready for it. We have worked through most of the iso-stockpile of food. And, we don’t have to feel so anxious about supply any more. I have actually liked the delivery phenomenon and am not sure when I will brave the stores again. But, the way things are now, one has to feel more relaxed.

Rex texts to say he has been told about his award win and is over the moon. But how are we going to do it, Zoom, and all. After much to and froing with B, it is decided he must come here for dinner and Zoom with my media. June 12. Another big date in the pandemic history.
Next, we will return to EB and have Merry in for dinner.
If the pandemic stays the way it is - which is largely in Victorias and overseas. If there are no imports or spikes….

B has cleaned the kitchen. I do my LucySquad exercises. I have kept my pedometer steps in the green for 55 straight days now. Exercise remains vital. I work on computers with review and media awards. G&T. M talk. Salmon with cabbage and salad. Atkins chocolate. Food coma.

Day 86
Monday June 1

America is in appalling strife. The death of George Floyd has stirred the masses to their core.
Angel cancels zoom media awards meeting. Another paper is going down. Centralian Advocate in Alice Springs.


Day 87
Tuesday June 2

I can’t help it. I spend all day watching CNN - and just a little bit of Fox to see if and how the arch conservatives can twist the facts into some sort of Democrat blame game. Of course, they are busy doing that. They are just repugnant. I don’t comprehend them.
History unfolds in front of me as city after city comes out.

We walk across the Parade and see the world almost as it used to be. Not a mask to be seen.Shops all open. Still with social distancing lines outside, of course, The virus is still out there. But the world is turning again. B thinks we may go out for dinner this week. Yippee.


Day 88
Wednesday, June 3

Zoom with the Secret Seven who are just the Famous Five today. Lovely session. We agree to start walking again next Wednesday, weather permitting. Social distancing, of course.
Problem zooming with Brainstorms.
Keeping warm. Writing citations. Really agonising over how to be positive about the negative state of the media today.

B and I do a big walk around the smug streets of Toorak Gardens.



Day 89
Thursday, June 4

Still making orders from Woolies for delivery and Sam is still buying in for us. But one wonders how long the iso thing needs to go on. I am feeling way more relaxed. B, on the other hand, is still wary. Nicole and the kids have come down with horrible colds. Maybe flu. They did not get shots. Ry is OK so far. B notes that by not going out, we have not caught anything. That is a plus. Indeed. Touch wood.

Such a lovely day. I struggle with a quote for the Media Awards winners’ presser, to get that balance of good news against the horror story of the myriad closures of regional papers and redundancies across the industry. It is a tricky juggle and I stress about it, realising with a flash of irony, that hardly anyone will read, listen or care in the end of the day.



Day 90
Friday, June 5

Sunshine. Quick. Beach walk. I nag B out of the house to Grange where we steal a glorious walk against the incoming tide. Shoals of shells. I find my very favourite of all beach shells. It is a rare thing. I’m thrilled. We walk out on the jetty and talk to a lovely young Indian fellow who has just pulled in a puffer fish, No, he is not planning on killing it. He has it in the bucket to photograph. He has a saltwater aquarium at home and would love to take it home but fears he may not be able to care properly for it. I ask to take a photo, too. It is a beautiful creature with blue spots and the most glorious orange-patterned fan tail. And he is my sort of fisherman. What a pleasant encounter. Not so the two old chaps on their bikes who call us to get out of their way. They did not abide by the no-cycling sign on the jetty. Cyclists have become a plague of boorish entitlement. They make pedestrians feel constantly intimidated.
But the beautiful beach and the khaki coloured winter sea did the soul good. As always. The beach is my happy place.

The world is turning again. Things are back in production. Work resumes, even for me.
Jim Elder pops along to collect a thumb drive of my writings for his next art catalogue, bringing a folder of the next and last lot for this catalogue. I have a deadline.



Day 91
Sat June 6

Massive rally in Adelaide today for Black Lives Matter. Still in the oldies’ vulnerability category, we remain wary of crowds, so I watched avidly from afar throwing my support online through my Twitter feed. I was proud of everyone and particularly glad for the First Nations people who are clinging optimistically to this global anti-racist sentiment. The reservations I have, as I watch the world coming together, is the anti-white backlash. I’ve copped quite a lot of racism in my time from hostile Jamaicans and Aborigines, blamed for being part of the invader race etc. I was raised in a spirit of human equality, a universality that embraced colour, gender and age. Injustice and cruelty to others was a cause of grief and frustration. I’ve always wanted to solve the world’s problems/ I’ve always had difficulty understanding the mindsets of bigots and rapacious right-wingers. I’ve been happy to wear the label of “bleeding heart Kumbaya leftie”, even when it was slung as invective. But we Kumbaya types are not always liked by the people we support and defend.I was cut to the quick by my Jamaican mates in London years ago when they said they and their cause did not want my support. I loved those people and felt shocked and unjustly rejected. They were guests in my house at the time and I have always wondered why they accepted my friendship and hospitality if they felt that way.
My politics has not changed and I am heartened seeing its viral spread in this time of the great virus. There is a whole generation out there defending our fundamental human equality. There are also gun-toting far righters out there who are defending their right to hate. I only hope the balance will weigh to kindness and compassion.
I hope these rallies around the world are making others think about these things. Fairplay.

With my heater and fire on in the living room, I settle down to writing up the catalogue.
There is a pile of work here. Media Awards still needs some writing. Oh, and there is the Max biography sitting there in front of me, digging guilt and anxiety into my soul. I just don’t know how to cope with it.
So, I just don’t. I talk at length to Peter about it. I need money to pay someone. I simply don’t have it. Impasse. I need a miracle.

Take a walk to clear the head - out through the streets of Norwood, the old beat but down different roads.
Back to the desk, a G&T, a talk to M, dinner, TV.





Day 92
Sun June 7

Still having trouble with sleep. Listening to audiobook most of the night. B’s Yale friend’s friend. A surfing pilgrimage. It won a Pulitzer. It is fascinating. Gawd, surfers can be masochistic daredevils.
The moon has been bright and clear and the morning is dark and bitter cold. I turn up the heat and make the coffee.

Turn on the ABC for latest. Patricia Karvelas is on Insiders, alone because of covid, of course. She’s my pinup. Lucid, lovely. The US continues to protest. Here there is a backlash, of course. I tipped that the paper would carry football or at least find footballers in yesterday's protest to feature on today’s front page. Yep. The paper shared the front page protest/football with the strident cry that if people can protest racism they can cheer footy. Same thing. Footy first. Yay. Yay. This childish spoilt brat footy obsession sours my stomach. They are using a tragedy to advance their fun. I am right off AFL.
Meanwhile, it is ABC 891 Adelaide radio Smart Arts day and, as resident critics, Steve and I have watched the National Theatre of Scotland’s Survival fundraiser series of short solo plays. They have been expertly done, fine actors with fine scripts and directors and production values. Steve and I have slightly different takes on them but generally celebrate their professionalism and their relevance as perfect time pieces of life in sequestration. I am particularly moved by the sense of claustrophobia many must feel in Scotland, living in tenements, in small apartments up stone stair wells, apartments with no back doors. I lived like that in Edinburgh for a year or so and have vivid memories of the good and bad of it.

I waste no time getting back into the catalogue and, apart from doing a few exercises, stick with it solidly for the next five hours. Interesting doing some of the research. There’s an unknown artist called Robert Young who is little recorded with this lively party-style crowd scene illustrative art, but one little obit from perhaps a neighbour which is a few words describes just the lovely eccentric fellow and my heart it warmed. He lived in a converted petrol station in a Victorian country town, devoted to painting and fly fishing. I think of Francis Roy Thompson, the artist I knew so well through childhood, who lived upstairs in the loft of a barn down the road and so regularly fell out the loft door that the owners of the property put a mattress underneath it. A beloved and wonderful eccentric artist who once cooked lunch for me on a bunsen burner in that loft. I ran into him the day he received his first aged pension check and he hugged me with glee saying this was the richest he had ever been.
Then I am researching Brian Seidel. Oooh, this really gets my blood boiling. Who the hell is Peter Quartermaine? His coffee table bio artbook on Brian Seidel is the most insulting and appalling piece of biased crap I may ever have read. It is obsessed with hostility towards Adelaide. Page after page contains snipe after snipe. The artist was beloved here. He was a popular man. Friend of my parents and their circle. He was even art critic on the Tiser for a while. What? He hated every minute of everything here? Was held back by this city? A racist city? He had Silesian blood and suffered for it. I have bloody Silesian blood and it has never been anything but a point of proud history from our strong Lutheran German culture, our wonderful German wine culture. I can’t believe the artist wasted all his time with this author crushing sour grapes all over decades of life among the arts people of SA, albeit at a time when traditionalism and modernism were colliding. The book makes me steam with anger. It does disservice to the artist and objectivity.

I am glad we have committed ourselves to going out for dinner. Chinatown has been sending out messages of despair, saying no one is going there and it is in strife. They were doing that when coronavirus first broke out and they were feeling anti-Chinese sentiment. So we immediately went in for dinner to show support.
That was the last meal out before we went into iso.
Now, with the same crie de coeur, we return. We take our exercise in a brisk walk around the surrounding streets. It is pretty quiet, Sunday night on a long weekend. And it is brutally cold. Biting. Wicked.
We arrive at Wa Hing the restaurant where we last dined, an old favourite, to show our loyalty, albeit there seemed plenty to choose from. We roll in effusively announcing our joyful return. Oops. No, we didn’t book. We’ve never had to book. Didn’t think of it. Oh, limited numbers because of social distancing. Full. Oh. Of course it is empty at this time. It is only 5.30. OK. we can a table if we are out by 7. Well, yes, we just want to eat. The proprietor says she won’t give us the menu. She knows what we always like. Thus do we order. But we feel not really all that welcome, especially when I ask for a second glass of wine while waiting for the food. Is that a hint of disapproval? The food is exquisite. We wolf it down. A couple more people have arrived but the restaurant is still 80 per cent empty when we pay and leave. Just a bit subdued. I would have liked to have given my support to Hsin, our local, or Eastern Garden, our other local. Just as fine for cuisine. We don’t actually need Chinatown. It was a gesture. I feel just a bit conned.

Back home we do something we have never ever done before. We drink mugs of hot chocolate in bed.



Day 93
Monday, June 8
Queen’s birthday holiday

Ugh. The news is full of Queen’s Birthday Honours. The right-wing indulging the right-wing once again. Tony Abbott, Bronwen Bishop. Oh, really. There is a certain ugliness to these awards. P and I have a grouch about them. Of course, he already has one, anyway. I know I will never get one. They would crush me dead in the disapproval process. I may have an epic string of "firsts" as a woman trailblazer in journalism but I just don’t have the right friends to endorse me. And by right I mean “right”. I count my "firsts" -- first woman news reporter on The News in the 60s, also The Evening News in Edinburgh funnily enough, first woman Aussie Rules footy columnist in the country, first woman online editor of a metro daily...um..there are some others, but who cares? 

The big new White House fence has covered in George Floyd posters and BLM messages, so many that you can’t even see the White House any more. My heart bursts with love for those people and their initiative.

But not for the businessman boy brigade who are bellowing and bellowing to have football matches. Oh, it is so tedious and overwhelming. I feel as if they are shouting in my face. They have kept this up non stop and will do so until they have their way like children in the toy shop.


Another nippy day.
I spend most of it at my desk, some of it with chores and cleaning.
Take B out to the parklands for a walk. They have announced they want to fell the ancient giant gums in the south east corner, a favourite walk featuring arguably the most magnificent gums in the city. B has never walked this trail before. Of course, he loves it. It follows a creek which every 100 years can cause flooding in the suburbs. They want to fell the trees and replace them the water plants and a wetland. Oh, and a butterfly park?

The radio has said that there are massive crowds of people at all the scenic spots around, the post covid madness to be out and about. Bakeries have queues a mile long. You can’t move at Glenelg or places in the Barossa. But here there are very few people. It is incredibly beautiful and the winter greens as richly vivid in the winter sunshine.
I take lots of photos which I post on FB to show the world what trees they are targeting for this new flood mitigation scheme for the suburb of Mitcham.

Back to the desk with me. M phone. G&T. Big Brother starts. I love BB. A secret weakness. Roast chicken and gravy for dinner.





Day 94
Tuesday, June 9



Another nippy day. At least the sun is out. I do a Lucy Squad routine and some chores.
The paper is nothing but football.

I am back at the desk, this time working on Rex’s citation speech for the SA Media Awards. When I finish, I flick it to Rex for a fact check. I am really pleased it is all correct and that he is really pleased with it. Qe discuss the Zoom awards. It still is a bit of a mystery to me how it will work.

B and I take a walk to Office Works. I need thumb drives so I can give Jim Elder my catalogue copy. It is a pleasant walk until the Magill Road/Portrush Road intersection which is terrifying. Thundering trucks and rushing cars. Huge banners on street fences accuse the premier Stephen Marshall of taking homes from people. The intersection is slated for major redevelopment and the compulsory acquisitions have been stingy, I gather.
Officeworks has hand sanitiser and social distancing. But is ticking along as normal otherwise.

Media announces that football will have its way. Crowds of 2000 are approved. Footy footy footy, stamp feet we come first blather blather blather. My respect slides with their spoilt brat insistence on body contact at a time when we should restrain a while longer.
They get their way, of course.
Further BLM protests are not approved. Aboriginal groups have been keen to have follow-up movements for deaths in custody issues. One massive exception is enough, say the authorities. Let’s be careful.

A banal politician, Tony Passan, is given hours of afternoon radio in which to carry on about the state going back to normal. Business. Business. Why does he have the air on this? Why is it not the health authorities? Why is no one respecting the official health decisions on crowds and social distancing? It is all men with agendas. Not women! Women are cautious. But loud-mouthed men champ at the bit and push and push and nag and nag. It annoys me deeply. I whack off a text. My texts are always ignored.

I am not ready for the supermarket yet. I hear such stories of how nasty they have become. I still like Woolies deliveries. I put one through for Thursday drop off.

A Zoom meeting with Gemma, Angel, Shauna and Meredith for the SA Media Awards. I discover that my big old desktop is not up to scratch for the backgrounds we need. I struggle with it and find myself a ghostly image on a photo background. Hmm. Problem.

G&T, Marg talk, pork sausages and cauli mash, Big Brother.

and we change houses...

Day 64
Sunday, May 10
Mother’s Day.

I’m revving up to talk about Michael Gow’s wonderful play, Away, for this morning’s Smart Arts. I’ve rounded up quite a bit of meaty content for Steve and my critics’ corner of the show.
The doorbell rings. And there are both my darling sons with flowers. Big gorgeous chrysanthemums, the classic Mums Day flower and all I ever want for Mum’s Day. I don’t like it being a heavily commercialised consumer day but I do love the tradition of flowers and, of course, I love, love, love flowers.
R is wearing his face mask. Covered against covid.
It is pure chance they have arrived simultaneously but just lovely. I take a photo and miss hugging them.
Oddly, I somehow curtail my sterilising precautions when bringing them inside.
In a hurry to be ready for the radio. Have to do checks with the producer on the phone app. Sometimes it is problematic. It seems to be working well.
But B is not. I am all set up with laptop, phone, notes and a cup of tea and he wants me to leave the bedroom so he can listen on the radio. He can only hear half the show if I am beside him. I say I am all set up and don’t want to move, would he., He says no. It becomes bitter. I move my set-up into the living room and the day is damaged. Somehow it is all my fault. Spite shafts the air.
The show goes well, although my sound cuts out and I am deeply disconcerted wondering where the odd wee distant sound is coming from, wondering whether to say something or just keep talking. I do the latter and then, after a while the sound resumes its normal volume.
I remain in the living room by the fire busy with writing and reading.
Late in the day he comes and asks if we are going for a walk. I am still damaged by things he has said but I am trapped with him in iso and must keep coping so I bury the hatchet. And we walk. It has rained. The day is cool and the air fresh.
Usual evening ritual. Phone with M for long chat. G&T..

Day 65
Monday, May 11

B’s phone pings at 4.30am. We bolt out of sleep. It is a message from his ex announcing there will be a birthday Zoom for his grandson Archer’s second birthday. We already knew this. Of course, sleep is impossible to recover so we are in good time for an 8.30am Zoom, all showered and breakfasted. And there was the American family in gallery layout, Cathy and the kids, Izabel, Grayson and wee Archer. Very dark and ill-focused, B’s ex, Ellen who is hosting the Zoom. They autistic son Robert it perfectly lit and focused and seems to be really happy at the whole Zoom event. Not so the other American grandparents, each in their screen box, each looking surly and unwilling to be there. Also, Ellen’s brother, Tom, whom I have never seen before. Father Dan does not appear. Cathy brings in the cake and puts it in front of the kids and we all sang Happy Birthday. It is a fabulous icecream cake insofar as it is a marble sponge with an icecream come suspended over it and dripping melting icecream in the form of icing all over the cake. Fabulous. Cathy is amazingly talented with cakes, among other things. Iz and Archer eat some cake self-consciously and Grayson is taken and given some other treat by his father. And we all say goodbye.

I’m putting the recycle bottles out for Sam to collect when a wonderful man, Maggie Beer’s son-in-law, the brilliant distiller of Durand at Maggie’s Farm, surprises me…delivering Matriarch gin and some ethanol and a spray bottle as a birthday bonanza from Marg. I bounce with joy.

Decent walk around the streets. The sun is shining weakly. There are very few people around.
I gather they are all at the shops. Some restrictions have been lifted and the public has gone mad. The world has rushed back to shop and play as if the whole coronavirus has gone away. Yes, we have had no new cases. Yes, it is looking good. But it is not gone. The whole issue lurks. The danger awaits. The media keeps warning but the people are not heeding. They know best.
Apparently, the city is busting at the seams and shopping centre carparks are packed solid.






Day 66
Tuesday, May 12


Sam does some difficult shopping for me, Bless.

MEAA Zoom for SA Media Awards, Gemma running us through how it can all be done on Zoom with her at the controls. She is a pretty girl, very smart, utterly humourless and with the worst vocal fry I have heard in years complete with upward inflections. It is hard to listen to her. But it is a good meeting. Excellent to see Shauna and Meredith along with Angel. The idea of a virtual awards ceremony to replace an epic, luxury dinner at the Wine Centre is challenging. Gemma has worked out running orders and presentations and added audiovisuals. Tasmania is having its awards Angel tells me I am speaking for the Max Fatchen Award.

Pleasant walk with B around Norwood.
I do my exercises.

Emma’s Gorgeous Gaggle of Girls Zoom party is a gentle affair. Only five of us and we can talk clearly.
Everyone is concerned about the sudden shopping crowds. They have tales to tell. Each of us is uncomfortable with this. Not understanding the impetus and the lack of apprehension.

Day 67
Wednesday, May 13
My Birthday.

Phone birthday messages in all directions. P calls and says he had a bad night and things are crook and chats about this and that and does not mention my birthday. I don’t either. I am a bit confused and don’t want to embarrass him. Ruby rings full of sweetness and light. I leap into the shower to be fresh for my Secret Seven Zoom which is utterly lovely. Quick break and then Brainstorms Zoom which is utterly lovely. Fellow Adelaidean Peter hosts it, Poppy there and Janice and Tom and … and we rabbit on about spiders and snakes and viruses and books and the history of Brainstorms, Phone keeps ringing and pinging birthday love.
Sam has had to go to Family Court. I wait anxiously. Sam calls to say that Lucy’s lawyer has not filed something or other and the whole thing has been adjourned for two weeks. Shameful waste of everyone’s time and money, I think. I just want it all resolved with shared custody and peace.

Then I assemble the ingredient and make my birthday cake, a keto lemon cake made with coconut flour and eggs and iced with Philly flavoured with lemon and vanilla. A funny little cake it is, but very filling and the exact thing that I want. Barb pings to say if I am not outside at 2pm there will be dire consequences. She rocks up with dog and we talk in the street. She gives me a lovely crystal paperweight she found in an op shop saying that if I hold it in my hands until it is warm, a wish will come true. Hmm. But I love her for coming all the way over to make that gesture.

Sam and Ru come after school to bring birthday bounty. The two goldfish I’ve been wanting, Ru has called them Ella and Ava. They also bring me perfume. Naughty, naughty. But lovely. I put the fish in the pond in their bag to adjust to the cold and pop out from time to time to gradually add pond water to their shop water and, eventually, submerge the bag and give them freedom. Fingers crossed it is not to much shock. They are very small.
Marg on the phone.
Birthday treat. Dinner from Hsin. Our first outside food. I overorder greedily. I am allowed. It is my birthday, We set the table and pour wine and wait. Oh, my, it is a glorious feast.

I’m in bed when P calls. He has arrived at Willsy’s and I supposed she mentioned that we would usually all be having party dinner at her place on myt birthday and he has realised that he has forgotten me. Mea Culpa he says. I am still so very sad that I have fallen of his radar after all these years. The hurt is deep. For 30 years we have never failed to observe each other’s birthdays no matter where in the world we are.



Day 68
Thursday, May 14

The new little fish are doing OK. Yes. Happy. Tough little things, goldfish. I remember how they kept swimming under the ice on the pond in winter on Norwood Farm.
P calls. Justifying himself for forgetting. Not using a diary in coronatime. I am still feeling cut.

Reading and writing and reading. Corona rules.
Woolies delivery…up and down and up and down
Washing as well….
Sam gets extras. I wash and sort.
Preparations, B does cleaning. He has been solid in the kitchen throughout this period.
We seem to have a natural share of duties. The kitchen is his domain these days. I shop and stock it and cook in it. He runs it.
I make B come with me to run and fuel the car. I am nervous to go alone. I use my new Caltex phone app to pay for the petrol from the car. It works a treat. I love it,
But the roads are really busy,. The world is out and about like crazy.
I just hope that the state can maintain its zero new cases. There is only one active case in SA now.
Mind you, the footballers are making such a fuss about wanting their own special dispensations to train and play it is making my blood boil.
Power around the house and then suddenly lose energy, I think I have not been drinking enough,
Start to force myself to exercises…but M calls so talk for an hour with M who is very pleased with life and folks in the Barossa. I am very glad she is happy. One of these days we shall be glad together over a table full of spicy ox tripe.
We both take this pandemic seriously and worry at the corvidiots.
I rally energy and cook up chicken and capsicum dinner. It is gorgeous.
Zoom community meeting in evening and watch the zoom play.
the Youtube Colbert from home. His birthday. Same as mine.

Day 69
Friday, May 15

This is it. Break the Lockdown day!
A sunny autumn day rises from the dawn.
I explain carefully to Dexter that he will be going in the car to the other house. He needs to know this to travel well. B queries that a cat understands such messages but he does. He has quite a vocabulary and we have been doing this house-changing ritual all his life, nearly 11 years.
And thus, after a hearty breakfast and a steamy shower, I power forth with the chores, packing books and computers, changing cat litter, deep watering the pots, assembling the provisions… Bruce packs the fridge. I pack the freezer contents and my flowers. There is a lot of stuff. I can’t remember what provisions were laid in down there. I hope I have enough tonic water. Oh, well, too late.
And we hit the road around midday. The car opens right up and hums through the Adelaide streets and onto the Southern Expressway. The traffic is appalling. Not only is it dense and full of trucks, there is impatient and reckless driving. It is two months since I’ve driven in the big wide world and it is quite challenging. Lucky I love to drive, eh? Dexter is very settled until heavy truck fumes seep into the air system. He bleats in protest. The radio tells us that it is corvid happy time, people are encouraged to have regional adventures. You’re not kidding. It is madness.
Things thin out on the perilous old Victor Harbor road but it is clear, when we reach Encounter Bay, that there are lots of people down here.
Unpacking is a major project, up and down the stairs. I check on my garden and note that for the new house being built behind us, someone has been in and chopped off all the thick hedge foliage which has been our back boundary. Privacy is gone from the back of my little forest. Hmm. Someone has invaded our property to do that.
Good news is that, oh boy, did I stock up before we left. It was about March 2 and 3 when we were last here. But, tonic water? There is an impressive stash. There is plenty of most everything, including cat litter. I was a busy pre-pandemic possum.
But the house is oh, so cold.
People are out and about walking in packs and couples. Kids are on the path on bikes. It is more holiday mode than pandemic.
Grant and Merry pop down bringing a bottle of gin and lots of golden delicious apples fresh off the orchard tree. We maintain social distance and thank them.
They are having friends down for pizza at their place. We are invited but they know we are not yet as blithe as many about the safety of gatherings.
We repair upstairs to drink our welcome-home-to-WrightlySo G&Ts, revelling in this peerless sea view. And the sky turns mauve as twilight draws in. Calm and cold.
We have enough leftover chicken and capsicum for an easy dinner.
I pile wheat bags into the bed to take the chill off it and layer my precious cashmere blanket on top. And we snuggle down.
But first, I open the curtain to await the morning light and there, breathtaking in its beauty, is an immense “lucky moon” hanging low and silver bright over the mystery of black sea.

Day 70
Saturday, May 16

Dexter and I love the dawn light. We are both awake and expectant. We share that first low purple glow on the horizon, the rising of the red… And what a red. We go in and out to the freezing balcony and I take photos. The sea birds are in wild and raucous celebrations out there. A willy wagtail fusses in the garden undergrowth. The first magpies carol. It is an orgy of gorgeous. And finally, the sun itself makes a blindingly exuberant appearance over the form of Granite Island.
I have missed these marvels of oceanside mornings, I can sit in bed here and revel in the view.
It is a far cry from the walled world of our little city house where I see but a snatch of rooftop sky from the bed.
B prepares for his Yale reunion Zoom while I read the online news which is laden with corona warnings. Please, people, don’t get carried away. Keep your distance. We may not have it here now but the phenomenon has not gone away. The Eastern states are not doing so well. They still have new and active cases. Things are opening up but remember the rules. The world has changed.
It’s a gorgeous sunny autumn day. Boats are out on the water. Dogs and people are walking. Kids riding. Holiday mode out there.
B and his Yale mates are deep and meaningful about the significance of their era at Yale, about the historic importance of the 60s. Memoirs and papers are discussed. Memories unearthed.
I go out and sit in the soft sunshine on the back deck for some weak Vitamin D. I find myself not reading my book but listening to the birdsong, feeling the sun, feeling just alive. In the moment. A sentient being sentient.
I have posted my dawn photos on FB and friends are realising we are down. Di wants to get together, I agree to a Sunday social distancing walk on a beach. I am still not comfortable about mingling. But everyone down here seems pretty confident that corona is just not here. Never has been. It is a seductive thought.
Then another torrid story of covid suffering pops up on my phone feed.
We are agreed that Merry comes for a G&T. We are agreed that we take a walk.
We choose the old back roads and around the wetlands walk. There are lots of oldies out with small dogs. We all give each other a wide berth. But unlike in town,  here everyone greets each other as we always did.
We come back along the beach.
The sea is calm and clear.
I make ratatouille and roast almonds, then spread out cheese and snacks while B sets up table and chairs downstairs,. Merry arrives and we drink health in the fading light. She describes the Yilki Store’s special distancing rules, only three in the store at once, and the loud hailer its proprietor, Ashley, now uses to call in from outside the people to collect their takeaway. “Dave, your chips are ready!” M rings and we put her on the table to join in. We sit around our table gorging on goat cheese and guacamole, catching up on life in this strange time. This outdoor social distancing thing is not suited to autumn. Cold drinks, cold food, cold air. As soon as the sun is gone we freeze.
So, we can’t make it late. Too cold. I make Merry a take-away and walk her down to her house on the sea path, looking in on the illuminated lives over the people in their huge holiday houses along the way. The light over the sea is superb. The calm sea merges with the sky, There is no horizon. Just a vista placid pastel interrupted by mounds of islands.
B and I watch a worrying doco called Coolgardie, about Finnish backpackers taking a job as barmaids in a rough country pub. It shows the worst of crass bush Aussies. It makes one weep and cringe.
Still not too warm in the house. Even three wheat bags seem insufficient to thaw my feet. But somehow a sleep is found.



Day 71
Sunday

I’m awake early waiting for the spectacle of first light. There’s a roar of distant surf. Shrieks of seabirds. Dexter goes out to peer at the early birds through the rails. And the willies fuss in the shrubs as the colours begin to line the horizon. Magpies announce the day and the crimson hues rise to fill the sky. Then as the sun arrives, the sky lightens to a wondrous gold. The whole world is a glorious gold.

The Sunday morning ABC news is all corona. Football and cricket. Sports are impatient. They want exceptions to border rules. The arts want exceptions to bring in foreign companies. Everyone want exceptions.
There are still about 500 active corona cases in the country.
Lots of testings.
But FOGO - Fear Of Going Out - is vanishing. People want to party.
So many are in denial and so many in stupid. There may never have been a time when the population was more confused and confusing, more perverse or more protective. The deniers all shout that “people have to work”, which means drop the restrictions, we are not listening. But we have been warned that spikes and second rounds. There are indicative stats from all over the world. Then again, other countries are loosening up, too.
Meanwhile, China is hostile with us because of the investigations into corona and Wuhan as the originator. Trade war. Economic blackmail, they say.

The Sunday Smart Arts spot goes well. we are discussing https://www.broadwayworld.com/article/The-Public-Theater-Now-Streaming-WHAT-DO-WE-NEED-TO-TALK-ABOUT-Through-June-20200513 - the first Zoom theatre work written, directed and acted for Zoom. Very American indeed. It depicts five siblings waiting out the pandemic in their different locations, very scared, telling each other stories to distract from the plague outside. Steve, Peter and I have different takes on the show, which makes it a good discussion. My take is its parallel to the Decameron which was a series of stories told by people hiding from the Black Death in the Fourteenth Century. Of course, that book was banned when I was a gal. Naughty bits.

The sun is shining and I take my book outside. B and the cat join me. We admire the trees and the wattlebirds feeding on the Coastal Banksia which is full of bloom.

Any arrangement to walk with friends quietly dies. I don’t call and she doesn’t call. I am so relieved. I am just not feeling gregarious at all. I don’t want other people making decisions for me. I just vont to be alone with the old B. And if I am going to get sociable, it will be with my family and Merry first.

B and I drive into Victor to have a look around. Most shops are shut, There’s a huge socially distanced queue outside the fish and chip shop. And, down on Warland Reserve, wow. It is covered in picnickers. I swear there are about 40 groups gathered around tartan rugs spread across the lawns. What a sight. I should have taken a photo. The government said that eased restrictions encouraged people to go to the regions and to have picnic gatherings of up to 10 in the fresh air. And they did!!!!!! They are all here. I love it.

But I don’t like the crowds on the walking trails. B and I return home and take the wetlands walk. It is divine. The birds are deafening in some sort of party in the trees. Glorious. We walk the whole path and see not another soul, unless one counts the kids feeding the birds off the little deck.

And gentle chores at home. Lots of washing. I make rissoles. B makes drink. M talks on phone. We ease into the night and go to bed really early just to be warm. I find Chinese news channel and am engrossed for hours. Learn a lot.

Day 72
Monday, May 18

Another glorious dawn.
Another lecture from P that I am some sort of complete phobe and this whole virus thing is over and is just giving me an excuse to continue to be a phobe. Indeed, the world seems to have really relaxed thanks to the lack of cases here in South Australia. “It’s not here,” they all say. Meanwhile, the government has just spent $900,000 on nine new modular Covid treatment beds in Adelaide. Why one may ask? Because the government is well informed that the virus is not gone and it will be hard to keep it at bay once businesses and borders reopen. It is a global pandemic. Until the vaccine, it is a threat. And, the more I read about it, the less I want to experience it. Let the friends do what they will and think of me what they will. I shall play by the official rules until told to do otherwise. I do not know more or better than the national health authorities. Of course, it is possible my sniping friends are trying to put me down so that they can assuage the guilt they feel at their risky behaviour. Anyway, I really don’t care. B and I are happy reading and writing and learning things. But, oh, shudder, I will have to go into the world soon enough to get to the dentist. Argh.
Meanwhile this is a simply beautiful day and I spend most of it in the soft sunshine on the back deck reading a review book The Tiser has sent me. It is about the Chinese in Singapore in years 1942 and 2000.
B and I take a walk along the cliff path from Petrel Cover. It is breathtakingly lovely but when we come to Dep’s Beach, there is barely any sand. Massive storm erosion has uncovered a beach of jagged rocks.
There are very few walkers on the trail and just one lone surfer in Petrel Cove.




Day 73
Tuesday, May 19

Another lovely Autumn dawn and another lovely morning. I recline out on the back deck with my book, enjoying the raucous birds. Wattle birds have a vast repertoire of songs and most of them are strident and harsh, despite the fact that they are really elegant creatures to behold and the most acrobatic of fliers. They are feasting on the Coastal Banksia tree right now, but they are very territorial about this garden. As are the magpies.
I’m loving Jing-Jing Lee’s How We Disappeared, a book about Chinese Singaporean generations.
The day remains cool and sunny. Just gorgeous. There are few people out and about.
B and I take a lovely walk to Kent Reserve and sit a while on the little boardwalk seat looking at the stretch of coast from Granite Island to the Bluff and then we walk back along with beach, dodging the incoming waves which reach out across the sand like stealthy cat’s paws.
Dinner of Atlantic Salmon and veggies from the stockpile of food we brought from town, after, of course, my nightly G&T time talks with M. And then a nourishing night of intelligent ABC TV, interrupted by P’s radio program asking me to “talkback” about the Victor Harbour causeway controversy. I am among the many people fired up about replacing an historic wooden causeway designed for walkers and a horse-drawn tram with a huge cement bridge designed for cruise ship coaches, cyclists and the hapless horse tram and walkers. Picturesque? I think not. That all the expertise and technology of 2020 cannot find a way to rebuild and restore a classic wooden causeway is a complete con. Of course, they can. If they wanted to. But what they want is to play dollars with their mates, the cement contractors, and lure cruise ship tourists to take them to the wineries. It’s a dishonest scandal and it also is fait accompli, no matter how much we gnash our teeth and object.
The night is nippy. There is wind and rain outside. In the city, there is hail. I get pix on the phone from Rex and a report from Jason next door. Fierce white balls in carpets. A white-capped sea is preferable, methinks.

Self-isolation - a rona world in who knows how many days

Day 12
Friday 20th March

Darkness. Silence. No morning plane passing overhead.
Overwhelming sadness. Amotivated. Body feels leaden.
But there is an affectionate cat gently asking me to rise.

I make the effort. Morning routine. Coffee, cat soup, read the news, shower and dress and make the bed. Have keto toast with vegemite.
P on the daily phone call says he was pleased with last night. Much talking about awfulness. Post mortem of Fringe season. A triumph.

But my ensuing day is fiddle faddle aimlessly in a general state of agitation. I chat to step-daughter C in Maryland. Oh, how we loved her video of A, her son and B’s grandson, walking on their deck with a phone having an imaginary conversation. What was a classic, gorgeous mimic of how adults behave these days, pacing while talking on their phones.
C has deep anxieties about the way the US is reacting to Corona, noting that the kids’ grandparents are totally defiant about social distancing, continuing to go to their church activities. And the custodial kids are shunting to and fro from a mother who was in the workforce and childcare, which is still functioning. And how A has woken with a fever and is sick and miserable. She sends a selfie of them, poor little toddler hunched into his mum. I recall such times when my bubs were sick.

B sits in his chair reading the horrors flooding in from the world. I don't know how he does it.
My phone keeps me up to date with it. No escape.

I start taking apart a big storage drawer just because it is there and because it has been annoying me for ages.
I make an almighty mess.

Get B to help me take down the bathroom shower curtain and wash it. Another thing I’ve been meaning to do for ages.
Freeze some milk.
Worry about the food supply. The fridge looks unusually empty.

S has taken my car because his has broken down and he has to have a nose scan for a persistent problem. He sends pix of the Sports Med corona temp-taking precautions etc. Smiling nurse holding out a temp thing.
I send money for him to buy a laptop for R1 as she starts homeschooling at “Hackney Heights”. She has only ever had a phone and that is no good for schoolwork.
Have blackberries and yoghurt and vegemite crackers for lunch. Make jelly.
Ring an old friend to check on her world. She is just going along as usual, Shopping and looking after failing hubs.
Then make a cup of tea and go to the desk to write a piece for Barefoot.
It is going fine until S brings the car back. I collect the keys and am sterilising them when I think to peek out the gate and see where he had left the car. Oh, no. It is in the neighbour’s parking permit spot. The only permit place in the street. Oh, no. The car will have to be moved. S has gone. I have actually been stressing out about the car and how long I would leave it to sanitise it before we used it. 24 hours at least. And now I have to get into it immediately. I go out with Glen 20 and start spraying in it when the neighbour comes to her gate and starts calling out that her husband would be wanting to park there. I know. I know. I stop and explain how Sam had borrowed the car and I am just cleaning to move it. She starts repeating herself angrily. I am incredulous. Have you not heard a word I just said, I ask. She repeats her recrimination. I repeat that I am just trying to spray out the car. She then says she could not hear me but her husband would be coming and wanting to park there. I am totally freaked out. Against my better judgement, I get into the car and backed it into the next parking space trying not to breathe. And then I had a total panic attack. My cocoon was broken. I was out of the house and in a dangerous zone. I melt down, I am a total mess. And my resentment of my neighbour is monumental. I am bewildered by her lack of patience, especially since I note that the husband does not come home for hours. She could have let me finished spraying. Bruce tries to reassure me but I am utterly discombobulated by this popping of my safety bubble. I am pretty upset with S, too. What was he thinking parking there? He wasn’t thinking.
After sending him a series of angry texts, I phone and tell him not to be too upset. I was overreacting and hysterical We all need him to be strong. He has responsibilities.

I want a stiff drink but B says no. Too early!
I take myself off for a long hot shower.
Jim drops off the next pile of painting pix and calls on the phone to explain them.
I try to get into the swing but can't. I nag for a drink. Finally, I get my frazzled way.
It helps.
Tell M all about it on second drink.
Chicken dinner, turnips and red cabbage, Jelly and yoghurt.
House of Cards on TV.


Day 13
Saturday

21st March

It is pitch dark at 6am when I awaken. There is a crescent moon shining hopefully out the window. A proper “lucky moon”.
The cat comes in from the courtyard the moment he hears movement and twirls around my legs as I have a pee. Why do cats do that?

I don’t much want to get up but what else is there to do? Dexter is ravenous for his “cat soup” breakfast. He never eats the solids in it but laps up the soup with relish. I make coffee, not too strong, to ensure the supplies are eked out.
It is a still, lovely, hot, new day. I listen for the morning planes. None, of course. Dark and silent. Dexter cries loudly by the cat door. Asking for treats, it seems. This is a new behaviour. He seems to love having us around all the time and is usually close to one or both of us although he spends a lot of his nights on black-eyed vigil out in the courtyard. There are possums to watch and geckos to hunt.

I still feel soiled and traumatised by the episode with the car yesterday. I feel I am starting the whole isolation thing again. Anxiety level is heightened. No amount of reassurance can seem to wipe it away. I read an article on anxiety sent on a link from the Yale chancellor. He sent out a very impressive letter to all the Yale alumni, albeit there has still been no official cancellation/rescheduling of B’s 50th reunion event around which our now-cancelled US trip was planned.

When you feel anxious, here are steps you can take to put those feelings in perspective:

Information is useful—but too much information can be unhelpful.
Limit news intake to what is actually providing new information, and stick to reliable news sources. There’s no benefit to watching the same news over and over.
Take the necessary and recommended precautions, but don’t try to “innovate” new ones.
As with all dangers, the trick is to be ‘careful enough.’ When we try to ensure 100% safety, we get caught up in unhelpful behaviours.
Keep up daily routines, and make changes only when necessary. Maintaining regular schedules and routines is a good way to keep anxiety at bay and feel normal. Even if some changes need to be made, maintaining the overall routine is helpful.
Don’t completely isolate yourself from other people. Fear of contagion can cause some people to withdraw socially, but maintaining relationships and social support are good ways to combat anxiety. Even if you are in self-quarantine or mandatory quarantine, keep up social interaction using FaceTime/Skype, phone calls, or text messages.
Stay physically active. Be outdoors if you can. Maintaining physical activity and spending time in fresh air can help to keep anxiety down.
Limit screen time. Too much time on the phone or computer, on social media or websites, can lead to less activity and more anxiety.

The problem is motivation. I feel adrift and somehow able to fritter time as never before. Lack of deadline!
I just don’t want to do things right now.
I am literally killing time waiting to die.
Spend a lot of time thinking about other women, isolated women, old women, worried women…
Justifying why I am doing this instead of doing something frontline, but what? I am supposed to be doing this. I feel young but I am old. Dammit.

I make keto bread toast with cheese and tomatoes for us both. The full tummy lifts the spirits.
When P calls, we rant on for an hour and end up crying with laughter. Silly mirth. A tonic. Oh, yes.

Some actual reading online now. Vanity Fair features. Worth the subscription price.

Shower, dress, make bed. Load of washing. Get back to sorting the dresser drawer.
Lunch on blackberries and yoghurt. I can make a punnet of blackberries last for three days, if they are good and fresh when bought.

The orb-weaver in the courtyard, whose anchor lines I’ve accidentally broken several times forcing her to move her web, has spread her web across the far end of the courtyard and stayed in it into the daylight. She is very hungry. Not many insects around.
I stay away from her territory, although I am wanting to chore out there. Take a photo, tho. Always hard to photograph spiders with the cellphone.
I fuss around cleaning things. I clean the cat window and window sills.
When the wind comes up, the spider moves and I get into the corner of the courtyard to do a clearup. I am careful not to ruin the cat’s night jungle while at the same time organise stuff and get access to pots in which I may grow vegies.
Good physical activity. I need it. It feels good.

B makes early drinks.
Call M for usual catchup and talk for ages, making sure I do the old phone pacing thing to get the steps and exercise up.
Just as calls with P start my days, calls with M finish them. Comfortable bookends of friendship.

Woolies notifies that my delivery is on the way. It is duly dropped off by handsome young Sikh with very long beard.
No meat today but a goodly sized chicken and some nice veggies. More yoghurt and milk.
Marg has unfolding drama in Barossa with news of 18 American tourists quarantined with news of 10 testing positive to corona. Suddenly Marg’s secure community looks less secure.
B has chopped veggies while I sanitised and trotted the delivery items down the house. I then put them together with our carefully leftover chicken and make another fabulous Goan green curry thickened with almond flour.
And so to House of Cards. The series is dropping away a bit now and getting scrappy in the plotline but one is so grateful for the distraction.
When I waken in the night, I put audiobook on and Simon Reeve reads his book Step By Step and it is riveting…a journo in the Stan lands.


Sunday

22nd March
Day 14

I roll into the morning listening to Simon Reeve reading his book on Audible and realise I am not feeling all that flash. Headachey and stuffy. Oh no.
Dexter gets very attentive and snuggly. Pushes in under the bedclothes and purrs snoozily for a long time - until my bladder is bursting, actually. One never wants to disturb a contented cat. Even Mohammed didn't do that. He cut the sleeve off his robe rather than waken the cat, or so the story goes, So who am I to make this sweet creature move. Oh, boy, am I keen to pee when, finally, he does get up!

Talk to P. I’ve left sanitiser and a book and his thumbdrives outside for him. He says he has found a lot of sanitiser in a tidyup yesterday. I am not short yet and I am sure supplies will open up. Everyone is keen to turn a buck. M tells me that with all the pure alcohol in the Barossa they are all out to make sanitiser quick smart.

I am supposed to do Sunday Arts radio with P doing postmortem of the Fringe….but the PM calls a corona press conference in the middle of the arts show and the critics don’t get on. Since I have no shows to review, I am not stressed.

Read a great article about the Royal family in The Atlantic,
Check out the corona community FB pages as they evolve. Everyone is being very neighbourly and outgoing. Telling stories about kind gestures, especially in supermarkets which have become volatile places, it seems.

Make bed, shower, still feeling not great. Bit throaty. That’s a worry. Try to convince myself its psychosomatic.
Madly do stuff. Scrub front cat door. I should have done it ages ago, Ugh. Bad Sa. When I go out to check his litter box there’s a nasty surprise. A very sickly, stinky abnormal poo on the mat, and a lot of poo in the box. Clean up and sterilise mat just as B calls to say cat has been sick in the living room. He kindly cleans that up and I realise that the cat is clingy because he is poorly. I wonder about the duck and fish treat I gave him last night. He has not had those for ages but the last time he had a loose stool was after one of those very threats. I throw them out.

Then we strip the bed and remake it. Sigh.

Make peppermint tea with lemon and take my book and dodgy throat into the garden for the watery sun.
Leftover Goan curry lunch, more tea.
Feeling a bit improved. Hang out washing and do more organisational chores, up and down the house,
Get a phone call from Shanghai. Do not answer. But it leaves a message. In Chinese, of course.
Clean corner table and SaziBarbie in corner of garden and set myself up with more tea and my book and greedily soak up the late sun.
B brings out our drinks. I find that I am waiting for my G&T all day long. It is the highlight of the day.
Lots of lime, diet tonic, dried orange slice on top. The supplies won’t hold out but I’ll love them while I can.
Talk to M again about how things are feeling in the Barossa following the corona American tourists. Radio reported that Four of them have now been taken to hospital. Not good. M relates a rich vein of Barossa community news.
I pace up and down with the phone getting my steps up. Indoor walks.
S texts bad Corona news. Suddenly he has stopped racing around getting his world ready and it is all hitting home, badly. It is an ugly reality. He has no job or money or govt support and his and he has dependants….
He is petrified and almost in shock. It is a dire situation for a young family man. Dire. I vow to help as much as I can.

B and I have cooked a gorgeous huge silverside dinner in which I eat my first potatoes in over a year. Twice cooked a la B. What a treat. Jelly and yoghurt and three eps of House of Cards taper us off into the night - which, for me, is restless, worrying about Sam

Monday

23rd March
Day 15 

Bloody dark. Ugh. It’s still real. I don’t feel as bad as I did yesterday. Throat a little tight. Bit on the old breathless side again.
Make coffee and read and social media .
.

Have usual meaty morning call with P. Bless. It is a welcome routine. B brings me fried eggs and bacon. He is the best egg cook in the world.

Get up and shower and make the bed and even put on lipstick. Just making an effort to front the day. Why not? I’m a bit shaky inside, tho.

I am an addicted radio listener but now I can’t bring myself to turn it on. I do for a while and Ali Clarke is doing a valiant job of keeping the mood up. Sports commentators commentating old guys kicking a ball in the park, people crossing roads… People are ingenious in this perilous time. But everything is stopping and so many are financially desperate.
The government announces a relief package for the unemployed. MyGov website promptly crashes with the response and now there are massive queues outside Centrelink offices. Sam sends me a vid of the local one. The line streaming down Edward Street. He tried to apply online but the site has crashed.
The news is full of it. shocking

I delve out the face masks I managed to buy online earlier in the year. Not enough but they were very expensive and B baulked. I share what I have to try to protect my brood. Ry is optimistic because he has some on order,

S drops off a loaf of keto bread and a bunch of pink roses. How I love a house with flowers. I am smiling.
But N is still very sick. Woe.
There is a little sun. I grab it. Pull a couple of weeds.
Reach out to my fellow journo Cousin J in Sydney for the catch-up call of the day. Long nourishing talk.
G&T time comes and a phone chat with M.
Silverside again with veg sitting up on the bed with the telly.
Finish house of cards.


Tuesday

24th March
Day 16

It is early and oh, so dark but there is no going back to sleep. Another day of internment. Coffee will help, I think, and it does but then the shortness of breath. I gulp for deep breath like a fish.

It is cold and cloudy day outside. light rain. Long discussion with P about what he might write this week. He wants to do working from home but everyone is doing the same thing, I suggest Cuba's stand on corona, sending its teams of doctors to help in Italy, he likes that. we talk about how to find content for forthcoming arts shows, we chew the fat...

B makes bacon and I have a bacon, tomato and cucumber sandwich in toasted keto bread.
It turns out to be an interesting social media day. My dental hygienist sends me a friendship ball on FB messenger. It is a charming and playful message written in a ball to bounce around among one’s friends, not at all like the usual saccharine chain messages of the Internet, So I bounce it along to a couple of nice friends, among them an old school friend. she responds and a delightful conversation ensues within which, of all things, she offers to make me a patchwork quilt.

The outside world comes in from various directions all day, busily,
People are home and keen to talk.
One old friend is holding a live online African dance class. I take the laptop into the living room and join in. It is all sorts of stretches, new to me, - falun gong, taichi...
S and daughter R1 on Facetime, R1 demonstrating what S had taught her in the morning lessons, S in his dressing gown, comfortable in their new home.
He has been applying for jobs and battling for hours on the government’s website for assistance the government has offered but which has created terrible, desperate havoc among frightened workless people.
It’s late when I have my shower, do the bed and make my official start to the day. I have to finish the story I am writing for Barefoot,.
But there is a bad cat smell under my desk. The cat has done a spite revenge for clipping his bum fur yesterday. I get to with shampoo and odour masker and then move on to different chores .. bring in washing.

N has been to the specialist and the diagnosis remains uncertain but the conclusion is that her immune system is in strife. This is a terrible worry with corona all around. She has no defence at all.

Busy doing nothing. Sometimes I find myself just standing and staring.

Snack lunch of yoghurt and blueberries and a slice of cold silverside. I like to eat lunch standing at the kitchen window and gazing at my colourful little courtyard. And the tops of the gums over the high white wall in the distance.

Phone calls. The phone system is rocking with the added demands, Sometimes one gets the “network is unavailable” message. I make a long call to Merry about not getting down to EB and the many reasons, Mainly my inability to leave here and fear of being out on the road.

S sending pix of himself and R1 in Botanic park getting fresh air and exercise. wearing masks. happy photos.
Friend calls with a story she feels needs to find a journalist
I chase up an old colleague and discover she has just received a redundancy. I am gobsmacked.

B makes G&T for me and Bloody Mary for he, and we sit in the cool garden and admire the sunset clouds.
M rings on her regular spot. She’s drinking Semillon. Her world is busy with people catching up. Barossa has ample supplies of needed things like pure alcohol and her friend’s B&B supplied with enough for complete sanitising.

I hook in to Emma Hack’s Gaggle of Great Girls on Zoom.
It works fantastically. About 12 women, all powerful players in the city, their images lined up at the top of my screen, all talking over the state of the world. Most have glasses of wine. I have what’s left of my weak 2nd gin.
They are career girls in their prime. I am the only oldie, the only gran. I don’t know them all but they seem to know me., I like getting to know them. It is strangely intimate, face to face inside their homes.
it is revelatory hearing their various aspects of incarceration and work at home and financial expectations.
They have insider knowledge, saying that this state of affairs is expected to last until December.
There are dogs and kids in the home views, other worlds in lockdown, rich worlds, glamorous women. Kelly Noble talks of trying to keep people employed while losing the backing she needs to run her website Glam Adelaide which has become the primary local independent online power. it specialises in lifestyle but is now reporting politics.
Mums have kids with birthdays, exams….some with big families at home.
b bring a tray with veg and viennas and a tomato salad I’d made earlier and I eat while watching the girls who aee generally amused by my roomservice husband, Bruce is enjoying the zoom event vicariously
Clever Emma to bring this gathering together. It is the new way, the new houseparty, the new coffee club, borne from committee meeting format popularly used by Zoom.
We wind up about 8.30.

S texts the worst govt news yet. No open inspections, No auctions!!! Oh no. Oh no. Poor R can never take a trick. That lovely Walkerville condo which he has made so classy and which they badly need to realise to refinance their build. Oh no.
Also no weddings and max of 10 at funerals. The logistics of all this fuddles the mind.


The horrors cascade. The people try to keep spirits up but the odds grow.
Watch the OJ Simpson series we dropped….and I realised why we stopped watching. Cuba Goodings, So crass and miscast. I just want to drop it again.


Wednesday

25th March
Day 17

Black morning. Bed is cosy. Face the day. We have to plod through it, through the voyage of weirdness, The voyage of fear and worry.

I turn on the radio as I make coffee to hear a child having a tantrum of distress because all her favourite fast foods are shut down and she will have to eat Mummy’s food. It could be funny but, of course, it is not. It is a child confronted by a terrifying enclosed world, a marauding virus which rules that one cannot touch anything, not even one’s friends.

I now rarely listen to 891 or news radio in the morning. Don’t need the barrage of horror. It is coming via the phone and computer, anyway. I worry about the journalists who are having to cover coronavirus day after detailed day after day in ever more difficult circumstances. They will be suffering. There will be some form of corona PTSD

It is nearly 7 when the first plane goes over, So extremely comforting, that sound, Normality. A world going on. But the airports are empty, the borders closed. Who is on it?
The stock market is a bit happier that the US is pouring some money into the airlines. Me, too.
Had a personalised newsletter from my financial advisor yesterday advising to ride it out. There is no choice. I hope there is enough money to keep trickling through for bills and groceries. I see the window cleaner has sent in his account for Encounter Bay. I yearn to wake up to that view. I miss the house. But the logistics are flawed. This place is better for the cat because he has his pieces of enclosed yard. Art EB there is only a windy balcony and no cat door. I’ve planted pots on the balcony to make it more verdant for him for when we go away and Merry takes care of him - but that is not like his wee potplant jungle here.
My mind dwells on my family and the sense of helplessness. I want to spread my mother hen wings and tuck them underneath and not let the world touch them. I want them to be happy, not afraid. I don’t want Sam out in the workforce. Not that he has a job. But he has applied for lots and they are all dangerous and bring the outside into his home haven. Oh, money, money, money.

Another plane

Another plane as the sky lightens.

So much going on in FB. This is the parish pump of our times. Here everyone shares fears and ideas. We try to cheer each other up. We gather, all day, every day, so long as the technology allows us.
Llysa Holland posts Toronto Symphony Orchestra playing Aaaron Copeland’s Rite of Spring from their home, superbly tech “conducted” by the double bassist. It is sublime. And such a favourite piece of music or me. Bless Llysa, I post it on my page and soon find others also gaining pleasure. Such pleasure. It makes me very happy.
Usual long talk with P, he reporting on the tech nightmares of radio world and I on the boon of online society and the way it is evolving.
It is strange how the memory opposes the minutiae of these sequestered days. Not for the first time. I struggle to remember the day’s activites a few hours later.

How did this day pass?
Big event is the Secret Seven meeting via Facetime. We are a group which used to do aquarobics together and now, since the loss of our marvellous teacher, he have stayed connected going for walks and breakfasts together. Now it is via apple phones. My phone calls at the given time but it asks for my password and kicks me off the facetime connection. I try to reconnect and pick up Loretta. We chat a while and decide to try again. Now we picked up Anne Monceaux, mayor of Burnside…so we are three of seven. When we disconnect, I try again and am able to join, voice only, three of the others. We are nearly there. Not quite. But we are not giving up. Same time next week.
Chores. Vacuum around my desk defiled by bad cat. Washing. Shopping.
Lovely neighbour has brought our rubbish bin in. Heart warms.

After shower and dressing and bedmaking I take a peppermint tea outside to read the ’Tiser review book in a pleasant sunshine. Loving my garden but the book is hard work. It is get another of the new literary vogue of getting inside the head of “spectrum” children. The last book of this vein that I reviewed did it better. This book is Dutch. Of course, the world is gaga with the idea that this is an amazing original new literary cutting edge. I persist, looking for a semblance of coherent thought.
Phone calls with R. His prescience and calm is brilliant.
WTF with sale of his condo?
Worry re N.
Washing. Window washing. Snack lunch. Vacuum desk area.
Busy, busy. Hang out. Bring in. Think. Fret. Rouse myself. Cheer. Fret.
Spend what seems like hours online trying to shop when Woolworths seems unable to supply sausages, cabbage, zucchini…
A food writer friend has recommended on her FB page a restaurant supply company. I finally overcome link issues and hook into the fruit and veg and then the meat and European sections of this business. Wade through a mass of options. Overwhelming really. Order rather a lot. Go back to Woolies to order soft drinks and miscellaneous. It is all very time-consuming and expensive, but I have done it. Three deliveries. We’ll be heavily supplied for about 10 days, I reckon. Just a couple of negatives. No oat bran or ginger.
This whole thing is really complex if you are not going out to shop. I wonder about other old people with less net and market savvy. I hope they have caring neighbours. My heart aches.
This is not just us; This is the whole world struggling to find ways to cope.
As an habituated radio listener, life is odd. I won’t listen. It is all news. More of the same awful news.

N calls in post doctor. She is very unwell. Little M turns up on camera clutching her head possessively. OMG. Tell them they need to go shower before talking to me. N has been out at medical and blood clinics and all over the place in her quest for assorted tests and diagnosis. Darling girl looks so sick and so stoic and indulgent in the face of a very demanding 9-year-old. They must both shower. She rings back later to hear “Dr B’s” views on the intravenous Vitamin C treatment her doctor suggests. B not impressed with this. He reports on his research and thinks that the antibiotics and time may yet cure her. She has had myriad tests. Blood in the urine…
When I am back oh the phone, N looks utterly spent and very sick indeed. Poor, sweet N. I can see how sick she is and how awful she feels. I encourage little M to be a mum-carer. Unfortunately, she is whispering special deals in her mother’s ear. Promises of stories…N assents to little M. I can recall that fatalism in sickness when my kids had needs, way back in the day. Sooner N gives little M what she’s waiting for, the sooner she can rest. I say goodbye.

B has been saying that, for us, we must try to see this stop-the-world isolation as our planned road trip to the US, but at home. He wanted long-stay accommodation with kitchens. Here we are, very long stay with kitchen And between our cooking skills, we can have fabulous dinners night after night.


Thursday
Day 18

Ooh, what a night of weird dreams. Woke in the dark and had a refreshing thought, “Bugger it”. So I did not get up but wrapped the duna around me and actually dozed. Am I getting used to this ordeal?
The answer is a big “no”. None of us is. There are so many problems and worries on such a vast scale.
Money and food, principally.
I have my usual morning call with P talking about, well, you know. Corona life.
But my darling S is my worry. He is in panic mode about money. He is in a predicament worse than most insofar as the govt stubbornly has found ways never to assist him. He has been through years of hell and has rebuilt his life and now is at last happy with family, house and casual work which he loved and was looking steady. Now? He has applied for every job going in the virus economy. Coles advertised for 5000. He had an online interview response and was told that something like 70,000 people had applied for those 5000 jobs.
Mothers will feel my aching anxiety. My babies and their babies.

Discover that the Woolies home delivery I am expecting is not coming because their entire online system has crashed. Spend hours on the website trying to recover it. Fail.
Sam says he is going to the shops so I ask for a few things.
Immerse myself in the clamour of grief and fear and valiant goodness of heart online. Facebook, the Parish Pump of this HiberNation.

Emma Hack again impresses with her intelligence, entrepreneurial spirit and constructive outreach. Her Gaggle of Great Girls group is turning into a powerful support. She is analysing the emotional reactions to stopping-the-world quarantine - fear, anger, confusion, acceptance…
We are all at home afraid of an invisible enemy out there. It is a strange war.

It is hard to stay focused because our directions have been impeded. We are not going anywhere.

I saw the idea of sequestration as a creative opening. I have so very many projects on the go. Plenty to do.
But I am not doing things. I fritter time being busy at frittering. There’s an ennui. Ennui.
And then there’s the worry about others, my adored kin out there.
There is a daily routine. Walking up and down the hall briskly to get exercise. I try to make it to 5km a day.
It’s a bit tedious. My arms need exercise. They are used to water resistance in aquarobics and I have no resistance equivalent. There’s another project. Find an exercise.

The sun is out. I take my review book and sit with a cup of peppermint tea. Dammit. I am hating this book. It is ugly, depressing and pretentious. I have doggedly persisted with it and, suddenly, my patience with it is done. It is s new “thing” with mew writers to play at being inside the heads of spectrum children. Last year I read a very good book of this genre. It had a narrative thread and some heart. This is grotesque. I flick to the ending and find it as tedious as the rest of it. I would not recommend it to anyone.
I go and get the other review book. A Japanese Australian discovering the identity and life of her grandmother though inherited possessions. OMG. Last year I reviewed a Chinese-Australian book with exactly the same theme. It was wonderful. But this is copycat. I decide to read it later.

Walk the hall. Do a load of washing. Handwash my silk cardigan. Clean a window.
It looks as if the black house spider on the kitchen window has been consumed by a white tail. She looks like a husk. Oh, no, another spider gone. The garden insect life is almost all gone. Spiders are starving.

Bruce does some vacuuming for me. I hate vacuum cleaners with a lifelong vengeance.
Sam rings the doorbell alerting to his drop-off.
Damn. I was just on my way to leave to envelopes to be posted. A fun card for Phyl Skinner and a postcard to Nisa Bella who had put up a FB challenge to revive letter-writing.
I message lovely next door and ask if he would mind posting them when he takes the dogs out. He merrily agrees and proffers further offers.
I do my old friend reach out of the day, an old journo mate I’ve known since 1965. She is 82 already. She is a vibrant, clever, generous-spirited human being and the best conversationalist I have ever known. Our catch-up chat goes on for hours. She lives alone with serious health compromises but is beloved by many so has lots of people shopping for her.

N news is not good. Still v sick, she needs a scan and more expert diagnosis. R is taking her to appointments tomorrow. Oh, dear.
S messages sadly that he did not score one of the 5000 jobs the Coles.
Oh, my poor darlings.

P calls reporting in on his research on Maggie Day. Brilliant idea he has had to write of this old theatre identity. I knew her because she was in my parents’ circle and always at parties. She was “prompt” in all the theatre productions of their era, a hard-drinking gravelly-voiced, well-informed woman always with a cigarette dangling from her lips. She was a hoarder of books and newspapers and allowed no one into her house. It ended up uninhabitable. I dropped her off there once or twice.
G&T, the prize of the day. B comes to sit but I am still on the phone. A plane high up making a contrail. Then M calls for our daily exchange. She has gloves at the back door for people to bring things in. We laugh. The Barossa folk are helping each other. They have plenty of everything and the marauding supermarket hordes have abated. I walk the hall as we talk to get my steps up.
B makes a terrific version of last night’s dinner with a mass of cauliflower and frozen spinach. We gorge ourselves.
And see eps of a silly show called Cops-99 or some such before realising we never actually did see The Post.

Friday March 27
Day 19

Oh these black, black mornings. But I am so grateful to have slept. I am terrified that when my Normison supply runs out, there will be no more. I am a bad sleeper in good times.

No planes have gone overhead this morning.
People send Facebook funnies. It’s a desperate sharing thing. I love them for it. I find myself trawling through a seemingly endless stream of them, some of them dog rescue stories.
Wonder if Woolworths can be persuaded to deliver. Fill in the vulnerable oldies page again and not that among the conditions thereon is the stipulation that they will only do one delivery per house. Oh. And I have had it? Oh, my. My cheerful expectation that we would get through this with Woolies as our umbrella slips away and I feel a chill of fear.
I have put in orders to Marino Meats and go-fresh veg and am praying they will work out. We are about to have our third meal of the huge chicken Woolies brought us a week or so ago.

Crows are calling outside.
The cat is restless. He comes and goes, purring loudly. He senses the strangeness of the times.

The fruit and veg order is delivered early. A ring on the doorbell and two bright green boxes outside. I callout thanks and the deliverer in the street calls back “no worries”.
I leave the boxes a while before spraying them, putting on gloves and bringing them in. It's very exciting. There is a followup phone message thanking me for supporting them. Thanking me? I’m beside myself thanking them. And inside the boxes, not only asparagus and pears and fennel etc but little gifts of micro salad herbs and edible flowers. Oh, so cheery.
The meat order comes quite late in the day. I’ve screwed up a bit. I thought I was ordering silverside but it is cooked and

sliced and lots and lots. I could open a kosher deli. The bacon lots, too. Two and a half kilos.
After I have washed all the plastic vacuum packages B and I divvie up the delicious excess and share it with the kids.

I am waiting to hear how N went with her medical scan. Finally she calls and says that they had found it is endometriosis cysts causing the blood in the urine and the extreme pain and she is to be taken straight to hospital. She urgently needs surgery. Ryder takes her to Flinders. Poor darlings. Worry.

Make a chicken curry and look at Unabomber series - and hate it.


Saturday March 28
Day 20

What day is it? It doesn’t really matter.

I’ve been on tenterhooks all night worrying about N and waiting for news.
Very tense and on edge. Hard to get moving. Try to exercise to pick up spirits. Worried sick. Try to do Zoom for Robert’s birthday.

Finally, get news that they did not operate at all and are sending N home because all elective surgery has been stopped as of this very morning due to coronavirus. They want her out of the hospital ASAP. She will have to wait until the pandemic is over for surgery. Meanwhile, she will have to be bedridden and on strong analgesic. Oh, my. Poor N. Poor R. Woe.

I find myself wandering around the house, pacing, without purpose.
I put music on to hep myself up a bit.

Later, when I have called R to check on how things are now at home, poor boy sounds exhausted and stressed but plodding on doing all the things he has to do, and hew says he had a long talk with hee gynae and there is hope. Expensive new drug is expected to give her some gradual improvements. And, she had been undergoing on her analgesia and will be feeling a lot better on the prescribed dosage she now has.
This gimmer of good news puts a bit of a spring back in my step.

There's a loud kerfuffle in the street. Hooters and shouting. Turns out that it is the 50th birthday of our neighbour and his friends are doing an over-the-fence corona party. Cute.
More corona iso-action on FB - and I watch a couple getting married in their back yard. Off attending the wedding of people you don't know. But a wedding needs a crowd, even of invisible strangers.

S drops off some groceries, B makes G&Ts which we drink in the "Hawaii" of the courtyard. Ritual Marg chat, followed by fantastic sausages with silverbeet and salad and a binge on Tiger King, the hit doco de covid jour.