The author does PPE practice By Catherine Watson
Monday. July 20
A sign on the book shute at Wonthaggi Library: books must self-isolate for 72 hours after returning to the library. You register at a stand at the door with name and address, use the hand sanitiser, and then you get a 15-minute pass. Only this time I’m asked to show my library card and licence. Enemy aliens, ie. city dwellers, are not permitted inside. My blood runs cold. The librarian reassures me. “If they’ve come to pick up holds we can get them and bring them to the door. And if they tell us what kind of books they like, we can choose some books for them. We can even deliver them.” Good old librarians! Finding some way to subvert the system to get books to the people who need them.
Monday. July 20
A sign on the book shute at Wonthaggi Library: books must self-isolate for 72 hours after returning to the library. You register at a stand at the door with name and address, use the hand sanitiser, and then you get a 15-minute pass. Only this time I’m asked to show my library card and licence. Enemy aliens, ie. city dwellers, are not permitted inside. My blood runs cold. The librarian reassures me. “If they’ve come to pick up holds we can get them and bring them to the door. And if they tell us what kind of books they like, we can choose some books for them. We can even deliver them.” Good old librarians! Finding some way to subvert the system to get books to the people who need them.
Tuesday, July 21
I meet Alison in the checkout queue at Woollies and we stop outside to talk at double arm’s length. We can barely hear ourselves for the racket of the white cockatoos in the trees. Alison’s daughter, a Qantas pilot, is on the dole. Her friend’s daughter, who works for a big hotel group, has been told they won’t get back to normal with local travellers until 2023 and it will be 2027 before international travellers return. Alison’s counsellor has told her she’s not allowed to cry because she’s grown up.
Karen emails: “I have decided that should another lockdown be necessary, I will get Valium. It’s the most sensible way to deal with the situation.”
Wednesday, July 22
Between rain squalls I take Matilda and we walk at Baxters wetlands and do the loop around to the windmills. In places I’m up to my ankles in water. Matilda is covered in mud from chest to tail and thinks it’s marvellous. I can’t let her off the lead because there’s a mob of kangaroos and she’d want to round them up. Forlorn cattle watch us as we trudge through the sleet under glowering skies. The muddy road from the windmills back to the car seems endless. Home is lovely!
An email from Hlengiwe in Zimbabwe: “People are jumping borders from South Africa and they are bringing the pandemic with them and spreading the virus. Our hopes for going back to work are fading. Our country does not have enough resources to equip schools with materials to detect and prevent the spread of the virus. My family and i are fine we are taking care of ourselves by following all the basics to protect ourselves. We are all happy and safe thank god we live far away from the city where a lot is happening. I hope you are all safe.”
Thursday, July 23
I’m between library books so pull a couple out of my bookcase. An Edith Wharton novella Ethan Frome. the tale of a decent man in a loveless marriage. I have to stop reading after 80 pages because it’s too sad. I try a book of short stories by Nadine Gordimer. Too harrowing. I don’t feel strong enough for tragedy. I pull out an R. K. Narayan novel: Mr Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi. Entertaining but not too cute. Just right. I feel like Goldilocks.
Bass Coast Health nurses tests a record 171 people in one day.
I meet Alison in the checkout queue at Woollies and we stop outside to talk at double arm’s length. We can barely hear ourselves for the racket of the white cockatoos in the trees. Alison’s daughter, a Qantas pilot, is on the dole. Her friend’s daughter, who works for a big hotel group, has been told they won’t get back to normal with local travellers until 2023 and it will be 2027 before international travellers return. Alison’s counsellor has told her she’s not allowed to cry because she’s grown up.
Karen emails: “I have decided that should another lockdown be necessary, I will get Valium. It’s the most sensible way to deal with the situation.”
Wednesday, July 22
Between rain squalls I take Matilda and we walk at Baxters wetlands and do the loop around to the windmills. In places I’m up to my ankles in water. Matilda is covered in mud from chest to tail and thinks it’s marvellous. I can’t let her off the lead because there’s a mob of kangaroos and she’d want to round them up. Forlorn cattle watch us as we trudge through the sleet under glowering skies. The muddy road from the windmills back to the car seems endless. Home is lovely!
An email from Hlengiwe in Zimbabwe: “People are jumping borders from South Africa and they are bringing the pandemic with them and spreading the virus. Our hopes for going back to work are fading. Our country does not have enough resources to equip schools with materials to detect and prevent the spread of the virus. My family and i are fine we are taking care of ourselves by following all the basics to protect ourselves. We are all happy and safe thank god we live far away from the city where a lot is happening. I hope you are all safe.”
Thursday, July 23
I’m between library books so pull a couple out of my bookcase. An Edith Wharton novella Ethan Frome. the tale of a decent man in a loveless marriage. I have to stop reading after 80 pages because it’s too sad. I try a book of short stories by Nadine Gordimer. Too harrowing. I don’t feel strong enough for tragedy. I pull out an R. K. Narayan novel: Mr Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi. Entertaining but not too cute. Just right. I feel like Goldilocks.
Bass Coast Health nurses tests a record 171 people in one day.
Friday, July 24
A warm, still day. Such a profusion of winter flowers – camellias, wattles, cyclamens – and the buzzing of bees in the sunshine. Darren and I cut firewood in the paddock. The wood’s for his neighbours in Cowes, a young couple with a baby. The man has lost his job and the only heating in their rented house is a small wood burner that chews through a $20 bag of wood in a night.
While we’re cutting the wood, Leo arrives and tells me he was planning a working bee in Tank Hill but Parks Victoria said that wouldn’t be possible with the current restrictions. So Leo and Denise are guerrilla weeding broom seedlings.
John arrives with a 3 metre hazel nut tree and a cherry tree for Megan and Sam. Last week he gave me 30 sturdy raspberry canes. Distributing fruit and trees is his way of dealing with the COVID gloom. The hazel nut is Megan and Sam’s first tree. John explains that they’ll have to plant a pollinator to the south west so the prevailing winds will carry the pollen to the female.
It’s only as I’m writing this now that I realise that everything that happened today – the firewood gathering, the guerrilla weeding, the fruit tree planting – was connected to the virus. Everything about our lives has changed. But civilisation is still alive and well in our part of the world – so far.
Saturday, July 25
Megan and Sam have decided to be part of the COVID-recovery boom. Seems like the only job for women in construction is holding a STOP-GO sign so they decide to start by doing a traffic management course, especially as it only takes a day and costs $300. These days the courses are being run via Zoom. Sam is very amused by one trainer’s requirement that students wear hard hats and hi-vis gear during the lessons.
A call from David to ask me if I’ll run a workshop for some writers for a community newspaper he’s involved with. We discuss the technicalities of doing it by Zoom and my heart sinks. It’s too complicated! We talk about how much we’re drinking and smoking. Seems half of us are drinking too much and the other half are eating too much.
Sunday, July 26
Gill and Bet come for coffee and we practise our PPE. Bet is wearing a stylish black patterned and pleated mask made by her daughter Jo. I’m wearing a red spotted hanky over my mouth and nose and yellow-framed sunglasses. Then we take off our PPE to drink our coffee and eat Bet’s Armenian walnut slice. Bet, who’s in her 80s, does all her shopping online from Woolies, Amazon and Dan Murphys. She thought the wine deliveries would just come up the hill from our Dan Murphy but they came from Sydney and took several days. I ask Gill how her book group is going with Zoom. She says they stopped. It was too hard and not very enjoyable.
Monday, July 27
I keep telling my friends not to watch the news, not to read it, not to listen to it. But I’m as guilty as anyone, sneaking a look at the numbers each afternoon, relieved when they’re in the low 300s. Today it’s 532 and I’m gloomy all afternoon.
The very dead of winter. It’s hard to think of spring, and yet the grapevine is already coming into leaf. I’ve swapped my COVID obsession for an obsession with hours of daylight. This week we’ll accrue 10 extra minutes – five in the morning and five in the afternoon.
Victoria is working remotely. Since reception is bad at her place, she’s making calls from her friend Norma’s place, where the reception is better and she can tap into the wifi. Norma is in the city looking after her father, so Victoria sits on the verandah with her laptop. She’s wrapped in a Swedish fur jacket and insists she’s comfortable despite the bitter cold. A steady stream of neighbours stop to say hello. Phil calls in with his two grandsons. He’s carrying a golf club as usual. When he’s not working he practises his golf swing. He insists the club is for belting the boys if they misbehave. They laugh.
Tuesday, July 28
An appointment in Korumburra for brain surgery. Well, three small bumps on my forehead. One is called a cutaneous horn, and is as interesting as it sounds. I arrive to an empty car park, an empty clinic and a doctor who is waiting for me! A student doctor and a nurse are in attendance for the surgery. There’s no pain but I can feel the tugging and hear the slicing and cutting. I feel a bit sick so I distract myself with J Alfred Prufrock.
“Let us go then, you and I,
When evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table …”
Oh! I don’t think I ever noticed that line before. I try Keats. “Now more than ever seems it rich to die/ To cease upon the midnight with no pain …”
The wooziness increases. I’m on the edge of the great abyss. “Fay,” I call to the nurse, “turn on the radio!” Turns out there’s no radio in the surgery but the student doctor gets ABC radio on her phone just as the hourly COVID count comes on. A collective groan. “I’ll find some music,” she says. An ad for a used car yard and then a forgettable song. Far away I hear voices. “Catherine! Catherine!” They don’t slap my face but they’re bringing me round. “You fainted,” the doctor says. “Hold still. Nearly finished.” Later I think if that’s what dying is like, it’s good! I didn’t even notice I was gone.
Wednesday, July 29
I ring Peter, expecting the worst since he suffers from depression. To my surprise he’s quite cheerful. He says his sister was sending him daily COVID graphs and documentaries until he told her to stop. “’I can’t do this any more! I don’t want to look at the numbers.’ I really had to put my head in the sand.” We planted his garden together in February and March and he says watching his new trees growing is giving him great joy. “I’m in my comfortable little bubble. We’re not going to get out of this any time soon.”
Toby is swinging on the gate. He’s finally started kinder and wants to tell me about his teacher. And how he didn’t have lunch. His mother gently corrects him. “You did have lunch. You had two sandwiches, a muesli bar, a banana and two apples. It just wasn’t enough! You were still hungry.”
Under 300 new cases. Have we turned the corner?
Thursday, July 30
No! 723 new cases and 13 deaths today. Dan tells us that from Monday morning we must all wear masks when we leave home. Yes, even us. Here we go.
A warm, still day. Such a profusion of winter flowers – camellias, wattles, cyclamens – and the buzzing of bees in the sunshine. Darren and I cut firewood in the paddock. The wood’s for his neighbours in Cowes, a young couple with a baby. The man has lost his job and the only heating in their rented house is a small wood burner that chews through a $20 bag of wood in a night.
While we’re cutting the wood, Leo arrives and tells me he was planning a working bee in Tank Hill but Parks Victoria said that wouldn’t be possible with the current restrictions. So Leo and Denise are guerrilla weeding broom seedlings.
John arrives with a 3 metre hazel nut tree and a cherry tree for Megan and Sam. Last week he gave me 30 sturdy raspberry canes. Distributing fruit and trees is his way of dealing with the COVID gloom. The hazel nut is Megan and Sam’s first tree. John explains that they’ll have to plant a pollinator to the south west so the prevailing winds will carry the pollen to the female.
It’s only as I’m writing this now that I realise that everything that happened today – the firewood gathering, the guerrilla weeding, the fruit tree planting – was connected to the virus. Everything about our lives has changed. But civilisation is still alive and well in our part of the world – so far.
Saturday, July 25
Megan and Sam have decided to be part of the COVID-recovery boom. Seems like the only job for women in construction is holding a STOP-GO sign so they decide to start by doing a traffic management course, especially as it only takes a day and costs $300. These days the courses are being run via Zoom. Sam is very amused by one trainer’s requirement that students wear hard hats and hi-vis gear during the lessons.
A call from David to ask me if I’ll run a workshop for some writers for a community newspaper he’s involved with. We discuss the technicalities of doing it by Zoom and my heart sinks. It’s too complicated! We talk about how much we’re drinking and smoking. Seems half of us are drinking too much and the other half are eating too much.
Sunday, July 26
Gill and Bet come for coffee and we practise our PPE. Bet is wearing a stylish black patterned and pleated mask made by her daughter Jo. I’m wearing a red spotted hanky over my mouth and nose and yellow-framed sunglasses. Then we take off our PPE to drink our coffee and eat Bet’s Armenian walnut slice. Bet, who’s in her 80s, does all her shopping online from Woolies, Amazon and Dan Murphys. She thought the wine deliveries would just come up the hill from our Dan Murphy but they came from Sydney and took several days. I ask Gill how her book group is going with Zoom. She says they stopped. It was too hard and not very enjoyable.
Monday, July 27
I keep telling my friends not to watch the news, not to read it, not to listen to it. But I’m as guilty as anyone, sneaking a look at the numbers each afternoon, relieved when they’re in the low 300s. Today it’s 532 and I’m gloomy all afternoon.
The very dead of winter. It’s hard to think of spring, and yet the grapevine is already coming into leaf. I’ve swapped my COVID obsession for an obsession with hours of daylight. This week we’ll accrue 10 extra minutes – five in the morning and five in the afternoon.
Victoria is working remotely. Since reception is bad at her place, she’s making calls from her friend Norma’s place, where the reception is better and she can tap into the wifi. Norma is in the city looking after her father, so Victoria sits on the verandah with her laptop. She’s wrapped in a Swedish fur jacket and insists she’s comfortable despite the bitter cold. A steady stream of neighbours stop to say hello. Phil calls in with his two grandsons. He’s carrying a golf club as usual. When he’s not working he practises his golf swing. He insists the club is for belting the boys if they misbehave. They laugh.
Tuesday, July 28
An appointment in Korumburra for brain surgery. Well, three small bumps on my forehead. One is called a cutaneous horn, and is as interesting as it sounds. I arrive to an empty car park, an empty clinic and a doctor who is waiting for me! A student doctor and a nurse are in attendance for the surgery. There’s no pain but I can feel the tugging and hear the slicing and cutting. I feel a bit sick so I distract myself with J Alfred Prufrock.
“Let us go then, you and I,
When evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table …”
Oh! I don’t think I ever noticed that line before. I try Keats. “Now more than ever seems it rich to die/ To cease upon the midnight with no pain …”
The wooziness increases. I’m on the edge of the great abyss. “Fay,” I call to the nurse, “turn on the radio!” Turns out there’s no radio in the surgery but the student doctor gets ABC radio on her phone just as the hourly COVID count comes on. A collective groan. “I’ll find some music,” she says. An ad for a used car yard and then a forgettable song. Far away I hear voices. “Catherine! Catherine!” They don’t slap my face but they’re bringing me round. “You fainted,” the doctor says. “Hold still. Nearly finished.” Later I think if that’s what dying is like, it’s good! I didn’t even notice I was gone.
Wednesday, July 29
I ring Peter, expecting the worst since he suffers from depression. To my surprise he’s quite cheerful. He says his sister was sending him daily COVID graphs and documentaries until he told her to stop. “’I can’t do this any more! I don’t want to look at the numbers.’ I really had to put my head in the sand.” We planted his garden together in February and March and he says watching his new trees growing is giving him great joy. “I’m in my comfortable little bubble. We’re not going to get out of this any time soon.”
Toby is swinging on the gate. He’s finally started kinder and wants to tell me about his teacher. And how he didn’t have lunch. His mother gently corrects him. “You did have lunch. You had two sandwiches, a muesli bar, a banana and two apples. It just wasn’t enough! You were still hungry.”
Under 300 new cases. Have we turned the corner?
Thursday, July 30
No! 723 new cases and 13 deaths today. Dan tells us that from Monday morning we must all wear masks when we leave home. Yes, even us. Here we go.