Alan Roddick
On the afternoon of Lockdown Day 16, I woke up from my siesta feeling as though we were all in a kind of suspended animation, with brave grins on our faces. I went outside to trim the hedge, but realised after a few minutes that, inside my skull, something had been at work, and needed my attention. So I went back indoors, and in five minutes had written down the words for a poem (finding the title took me two days). I was glad to snare these words as they came to me, because poems often take me weeks to work out.
In theory, this period of Lockdown ought to be useful ‘free time’ to get done what we really want to do: to write that family memoir, or put together a photo album for the grandchildren – or maybe re-decorate the spare bedroom. But Lockdown can be filled with distractions (think of all those addictive news-bulletins!), and somehow the normal domestic tasks take longer to finish, every step seems to need careful thought, because we just find ourselves proceeding more cautiously – suddenly more aware of other people, and what our actions might mean to them if we do the wrong thing. (And of course, we can also lose the plot: I realised this morning that the birthday cards I wrote in a rush last night won’t be needed till this time next month!)
What is the COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2 virus? Compared to most threats we encounter, the virus is small and simple. It doesn’t have sex, possess limbs or gills, or fill its lungs with air on a hill top and shout “It’s great to be alive!”. So is the virus alive, or just an organic robot? We talk of ‘killing’ the virus by washing our hands or using disinfectants, which means most of us think of it as a living creature of some sort. Whether we classify it as the ‘living’ or the ‘undead’, it is still a parasite that steals into our cells and helps itself to our enzymes and cell materials to make thousands of near-perfect copies of itself that go on to infect other cells in our bodies.
The news has been read, the weather forecast follows. Nothing unusual: highs and lows, temperatures, fronts, expectations for the week ahead. A menacing southerly is approaching, snow to low levels, icy roads. A warning for those who have to travel is broadcast:
Bread is such an essential part of the foodscape of twenty-first century New Zealand that, apart from food preference or allergy, it is often spared little thought in people’s day-to-day lives. That was until now – people who usually bought bread regularly are now baking it (if they can get enough flour) and rediscovering the pleasure of a freshly baked loaf from the oven. We now might worry about touching the bag the flour was bought in but we don’t distrust a bought loaf. This was not the case during the 1940s, when a number of major acts regarding food hygiene were introduced. One of these laws in particular – the bread-wrapping regulation – had the attention of the Ministry of Health, bakers, grocers, and the New Zealand public for a period spanning 1946 to the end of 1948. Fears concerning an earlier dreaded virus, poliomyelitis, were at the root of the issue.
Our current global situation with Covid-19 and our nationwide lockdown has reminded me of the many forms that isolation can take. Bullies, health conditions, geographic locations – among other factors – can cause barriers to pop up between us, socially, physically, and mentally. I remember, for example, when fifteen years ago a friend was diagnosed with celiac disease and had to change to a gluten-free diet. Gluten-free food was scarce then, compared to its ready availability in supermarkets today. I imagine that her diagnosis would’ve been isolating, not only in terms of the food she could eat, but also in terms of what her family and friends could understand about her new reality.
I’ve always loved the word ‘bubble’. It says what it is: a puff of air in a tense bracket of plosives finished with a liquid gloss. Bubble bubble bubble bubble bubble. Say it five times fast and hear the pot boil – a sound so ancient that it was probably heard by your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother, when she was a little girl. If anyone had asked her about her bubble, she might have assumed the soup had stopped simmering because the fire had gone out. In 2020, though, bubbles have taken on a whole new meaning, and a new social greeting has entered the language: “How’s your bubble?”