End Of Week Three

The lockdown continues here in New Zealand, and we are getting used to our various routines. These include:

·       A daily walk. Weather permitting, but so far it’s been fairly rain-free so we’ve been able to get out most days.

·       Infrequent trips to the supermarket. Whilst the news is full of reports of queues stretching for miles and waits of hours, I’m assuming this is purely an Auckland phenomenon, as this is where the news organisations are based. It certainly hasn’t been my experience at Miramar New World.

·        Quiz night (1). We’ve organised our own quiz night, with an expanding roster of teams participating. Each team sets and delivers a round of questions. After the initial quiz, where all the questions were too hard, we’ve introduced a rule whereby the team scores the average of all the other teams on their own round, so there’s no incentive for setting difficult questions. The scores last week reflected this.

·       Quiz night (2). Garage Project run an online quiz on Friday nights. You can either register as a team and compete for a prize, or just play along silently at home. After the first week, it was abundantly clear that those teams playing competitively were googling the answers, so we’re not going to participate like that. We may give them another go at home this Friday.

·       Lenny Beige. On Tuesday and Friday nights, Lenny entertains us for an hour with songs, stories and general nonsense, via the medium of Facebook Live. This, of course, is a breakfast-time activity for me, and since the clocks went back I’ve had to get up earlier for the start time of 8:00am. Whilst everyone else is imbibing wine-style drinks, I’m having toast and coffee.

·       Games. We’ve been playing our repertoire of board and card games on a regular basis.

·       Cookery. Whilst I’ve been managing most of the cookery duties, our guests, Jonny and Sarah, have taken over some nights for vegetarian cookery; they’ve also been doing bakery, so recently we’ve had muffins (both blueberry and spinach varieties) banana bread and cinnamon buns.

In terms of the Government’s progress, there will be an announcement on Monday, 20^th April (Day 26) on the expected COVID-19 status. The initial lockdown period was four weeks, and that will be up on Wednesday 22^nd. On Monday we will learn whether level 4 will continue, or whether we will be downgraded to level 3, or even level 2 as some are advocating. Our level of new reported cases has been falling daily, and the number of recovered cases is now more than 50% of all confirmed cases. Whilst the number of deaths is expected to continue to rise, as this lags by two weeks or more, it is expected to peak at a low number. So far, there haven’t been any from the “healthy” population – they’ve all been people with underlying health conditions, including the large cluster from an aged care residential home, which accounts for six out of the total nine.

Here's that important chart:

What are the most important things to do once we’re allowed to do them again? Firstly, get a haircut! I’m looking increasingly shaggy these days and in need of a good shearing. Secondly, get out to those local businesses which have suffered from being in lockdown for a month – the local cafes, restaurants and other shops. As staycationing becomes a thing it’s likely that Zealandia will become a popular destination throughout the autumn and winter, so there may be opportunities for more guiding during what is generally regarded as “slack” season.

Hopefully life will get back to something resembling normality in the near future.