Life under Lockdown: Stay Home-Wash Your Hands-Be Kind

This blog post begins on day 19 of our Level 4 Lockdown - 13 April 2020

We're into week 3 of our fight against Covid-19 and have enjoyed a quiet, sunny Easter break tackling our garden, oiling the house and baking.  Also delighted in eating some yummy chocolate Easter eggs as the PM has said that the Easter Bunny is considered an essential worker so is permitted to deliver joy to households around NZ! [Even Lufthansa acknowledged Easter Bunny on their repatriation flight taking Germans back home!! Called their bunny Jacinda. Cute!]

I had no time before now to begin a blog on our experiences of lockdown as was busy just getting 'working from home' and the other routines sorted. So how's it going for Caroline & me?

Just fine really. I am certainly not short of things to occupy mind & body during these 4 weeks (or more). I now realise I may not get round to doing all those things I thought I'd have time for when planning things in that first week of lockdown!! The travel photos may get sorted but the sewing & knitting projects may just have to wait a while.
The big difference for Caroline is that I am home each evening, and we get to enjoy relaxed, tasty home-cooked meals.

The Level 4 lockdown was announced at 1pm on Monday 30th March - we would go to Level 3 immediately AND into Level 4 at midnight on Wednesday 1st April for at least 4 weeks. I completed the task I was focused on then packed up my gear for working from home & headed away from ECan by 5pm that day. On my way home I texted Cycleways to see whether I could buy on Tuesday the ebike I'd been looking at for a while....... and that's just what I did Tuesday morning! Meet my new step-through Specialised Turbo Vado

On the 31st I popped along to Cycleways near the Tannery to test drive once again the bike I had been eyeing up; I rode it up home & back again satisfied that it would do the hills no problem. Already the city streets were beginning to feel strange - many more cars on the road at a time people would normally be at work; drivers looking slightly anxious, back seats full of toilet paper! As Caroline had gone into her work with the car so she could gather up work IT gear I was able to leave my old bike locked up at Cycleways & ride my new trusty steed back home in time for lunch and our first online team check-in. I really felt that I need never use the car again particularly during lockdown. 

Wednesday dawned - my first real day of working from home; Caroline went into work office again for half a day. Whilst I had got myself pretty well established, Caroline decided that it would be best if we moved the desk from the living room into the spare bedroom so we had a space apart from the bedroom that was not associated with work. With that sorted it was time for a cuppa .... then a bit more fiddling around with work things ... then lunchtime .... then another Zoom meeting. And, then I signed out of the remote desktop by closing it down (WHAT! YOU FOOL!) so Thursday spent trying to get hold of one of our splendid IT chaps still in our building to ask them to turn my desktop computer back on. Shame .... the instructions had clearly stated to take care NOT to do that :-{  Funnily enough Caroline did the same thing the next day so ......

The rest of my work days until 9th April were spent creating Google Slides (with voice overs) of in-class presentations I would have been doing with school groups during the week in the lead up to Easter. I adapted my usual Science Fair plus River Care presentations adding lots of links to useful educational videos & activities. I followed that by creating a new presentation on the field activity I usually do in a stream local to a school - SHMAK macro-invertebrate monitoring; so many good videos from BOP, UK & US on stream health monitoring that I think I've learnt more than I usually teach to the kids! With those three adaptations completed & some work on carbon footprinting your school begun I could relax into the Easter Stay-cation.

I did manage to break the work days up by going on walks or bike rides with Caroline as well as doing some Les Mills workouts from TV1 and following instructions sent via Facebook by our gym instructors. I'm sure we'll both be fitter than we were before the lockdown once we're released. I've also attended our Monday night choir online - hilarious!! We tried singing together initially but now just sing along to Jillie's playing & singing with our mikes on mute!

The first weekend of lockdown we went for a bike ride up to Summit Rd but as it was a bit chilly we high-tailed it back home pretty quickly and ended up doing some pretty serious cleaning of cupboards, the kitchen whiteware & kitchen floor for the rest of the time. Oh, we also baked & cooked up a storm! And Caroline & I gave each other a haircut ... hilarious & both turned out okay. 

I also ventured out to the supermarket on my e-bike - to Redcliffs New World the first Wed morning (8.30am) to line up for 25 mins & the following Wednesday to Countdown to line up for another 25 mins. People mainly keeping a good physical distance and some using masks, gloves and sanitiser. 

I've used the ebike to pop down to the community garden to water it and gather produce from it. A bit on edge doing those tasks as perhaps breaking a lockdown rule but gardens need tending!!

I also to visit Glen with baking treats, gathering up the newspaper & Listener from her regularly. We enjoyed a Sunday afternoon chat in her local park sitting in the sunshine a good 2 metres from each other, again probably breaking some lockdown rule but both Glen & I are somewhat concerned that she doesn't get too lonely.

Easter long weekend saw us both toiling in the garden and delighting in the glorious weather. I think I knocked the top garden into a somewhat tidier state whilst Caroline nearly completed oiling the house.  The winter seedlings are coming on & we aim to swap some of our cabbages & broccoli for different seedlings other folk may have spare so have emailed the old Swappie list with that in mind. Anything spare I will plant out in the community garden. 

 

Easter also gave us more time to relax by reading the books we had bought in preparation for the lockdown, and I also took the chance to connect with friends so organised a couple of Zoom calls with old school mates - such fun to connect & find out how we're all doing in our bubbles. [Don't know why we haven't done this before Covid-19 really!!

Barnesy, Me, Rose M, Freddie, Heeni, Bales

I spent some time catching up a bit more on the news about Covid-19 around the world .... so interesting from geographic and scientific perspectives but also politically. The more I read online articles the more I realise what a superb job that PM Jacinda Adern, Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield, Director of Civil Defense Sarah Stuart-Black, Commissioner of Police Mike Bush, and Finance Minister Grant Robertson are doing leading our Covid-19 response.  A number of other countries are finding that they are rudderless with poor or late responses to the pandemic, leaders who do not listen to, or believe, the science that is presented to them, that prioritize the economy over people. Seems countries need a woman at the helm to lead decisively as this Guardian article describes.  I've watched a couple of Trump press conferences lately - he's completely bonkers & so narcissistic that he just can't see that the response must be coordinated nationally and collaboratively. He brings everything back to the "nasty Democrats" holding him back or the media spreading fake news.  At least in the UK Boris's bout of Covid-19 has made him take the crisis more seriously ... love the irony of him being nursed by two foreign nurses including Jenny from Invercargill considering the anti-immigrant, anti NHS lies of the Brexit debacle.  

Both Caroline & I like the clarity of our Covid-19 information site - one is left in no doubt what one needs to do in each level of the response.  And of course, the daily updates are a must listen to. Love the cult or fan club (on Facebook & Twitter) that has arisen around Dr Ashley such as this love song by Maxwell Apse. And Jacinda has drawn acclaim for her leadership from around the country and the world. I am a very proud Kiwi.

I also feel very lucky to have traveled safely during my years of journeying as it is certainly going to be a very different landscape for tourists or travelers in the next 12 to 18 months or until a vaccine is found. Recovery will see a number of changes; my hope is that we do not try to return to BAU but look to recover in a may that ensures we live more lightly on the planet ... are kinder to Papatūānuku, to the other creatures we share this planet with and to our fellow human beings. 

[Lockdown Blog to be continued]