In his third lockdown piece Ross Sinclair—Wellington, NZ—lays the groundwork for never being invited to another family BBQ while sharing some thoughts about his country’s Prime Minister.

When the kids are busy I catch up on emails and news. I find my way to a ‘human interest’ clip from CNN on YouTube. I cry and so does the interviewer. The news is not supposed to be like this. I stop it before it ends, like I stop bad dreams before they become nightmares, and I sit there remembering why I don’t watch TV. 

I get my news from Radio New Zealand. Smart people asking other smart people insightful questions. Very little ‘human interest’. 

I also listen to the Prime Minister’s daily briefings, marvelling at how lucky we are to have a compassionate leader in such a crisis. If the centre-right National Party had been in power my friend, a monumental mason, would have been busy next year—twelve months after death—when families erect headstones.

My wife wonders if Jacinda is heralding a new era of compassionate female leaders. I hope so. 

I don’t feel compassionate, I feel bored, so I post on the WhatsApp group I share with my 10 first-cousins.

“Two questions for you dickheads” I post.

“I was wondering if the antivaxers among us will be lining up for the Covid-19 vaccinations when they arrive? And to the rest of you, how do you feel now about the years of chronic underfunding of the health system under National?”

I try and offend both ends of the political spectrum. 

I succeed. 

These exchanges always descend, rapidly, into me being abused ; myself insisting that they should really listen to what I say as I am the only cousin with a PhD.

This sends them apoplectic. 

Mission accomplished. I go and make the kids a snack. 

Ross Sinclair

Today HOWL presents its esteem awards for the most interesting media headlines and bylines from these ‘Covid times’.

‘Justice of a Poetic Kind’ Award:

Shopper who used team to stockpile $10k of toilet paper, sanitiser refused refund

RNZ, 16^thApril 2020

Puns: ‘Oh dear’ Award

Selfish surfer’s behavior far from swell

Stuff, 16^thApril 2020

The ‘Not Keep Calm and Carry On’ Award

‘Shambles, chaos, ridiculous’: what the UK papers say about Covid-19 testing

Guardian, 2^ndApril

‘Interesting Question’ Award

Coronavirus: Where will be the last place to catch Covid-19?

BBC.COM > News

‘You Should Never Bake Your Covid Heroes’ Award

New Zealand TV presenter ‘deeply sorry’ for her disturbing Jacinda Ardern cake

Guardian, 16^thApril

The ‘Say What!’ Award

Coronavirus: German zoo may feed animals to each other

Stuff 16th April

‘The Purr-fect Headline’ Award

You can’t leave that lion there: big cats nap on road in South Africa amid lockdown

Guardian, 17th April

The ‘Headline that I Dream Of’ Award

‘It’s Over!’

Diary Entry No. 2: Walking a beach in Lockdown – Reflections from Ross Sinclair, Wellington, New Zealand.

Sometimes our exercise is a walk down the beach. Other days it is online dancing where I am apparently a complete embarrassment even though no one is watching.

When we were walking down the beach yesterday, we saw two police officers come down through the dunes in their day-glow vests. We had not seen police on our beach before. The authorities had ramped up police checks over the Easter weekend, ensuring people were not driving for walks. Rather than questioning beachgoers, the two officers proceeded to draw giant hopscotch squares in the sand and then play hopscotch. We walked past them without being questioned. 

Since we danced today, tonight I take the dog for a walk down the beach. All the streetlights are blazing like a normal night but the streets are empty. I try to pretend it’s after a zombie apocalypse, but disappointingly it just seems more like Christmas day night: everyone away on holiday except a few lonely souls. If it was Christmas day night at least there might be one drunken fool stumbling home like a zombie that I could have daydreamed about. 

The walk is along the beach is towards the airport where there is usually a procession of planes taking off at regular intervals. Tonight there are only two private jets taking off. Perhaps carrying PPE that billionaires have generously donated using the millions they don’t pay in tax. Or perhaps it’s just billionaires going where billionaires like to go. Like to Davos. Or to tax-free havens. Or perhaps they carry National Party politicians flying private to avoid infections from economy. All in the name of the economy. 

I reach the end of the beach near the end of the runway, and turn around to walk home. It seems darker walking away from the bright lights of the airport. The dark carcasses on the beach that I’m not imaging to be zombies are kelp washed up by a recent storm. Above the sound of the breaking waves is the sound of trucks. 

Beyond the airport is the sewage treatment station. The pipe that carries it’s sewage-sludge to the landfill has broken so there is a constant procession of tankers passing along Lyall Bay Paradeat regular intervals. One every 10 minutes. 24-hours a day. 

They are an essential service.  

One contractor has named their fleet the “Turd Taxis” and uses the colour scheme of NY yellow cabs. Another is a converted milk tanker, which just seems so wrong. At least they got it the right way around, and hopefully the tanker won’t return to the milk run once exports pick up again.

The trucks drive to fast. They must be paid by the load. When they pass there is a faint whiff of faecal material. It last just long enough for you to register it – “What’s that smell? Jesus that smells like…” – and then it’s gone.

Before Covid-19 when the parade was packed with people out enjoying the seaside, I imagine the drivers were also enjoying themselves by drawing attention to their trucks by driving too fast, and then appalling bystanders with that smell. 

I know if I was driving a Turd Taxi I would have enjoyed that. 

I feel sorry for them now as there is no one to disgust. The streets are silent as are the living dead. 

Ross Sinclair

The dawn chorus takes on a special meaning for Yaeayi, a Japanese native ‘locked down’ in France.

Like ‘other / previous’ mornings since Day 1 of this ‘world-famous / worldly-shared’ lockdown, around 7am several sprightly soprano notes commence tapping my brainwaves, and then my soul is introduced gently and connected to the natural world that lies outside my window.

I fix my ‘regards / looks’ onto the infinite horizon, infused with skyblue, embracing the universe with a spirit of ‘Peace and Love’ that I have never felt before.

I defy the power of gravity on my eyelids and let my ears fill with the notes of harmony played by the precious creatures that remain free, outside, in the ‘Covid’ world.

The notes, sometimes, are like an orchestra composed with different players participating in a movement or symphony. Other times more like a soft ballad played on some plucked guitar strings.

Each night, before navigating  my feet to my cocoon, I studiously wander towards my front window, in order to slide them carefully to make just the right space. This should not be more than 5-7cm—not too wide or it will allow in the chilled dawn air—but sufficient for the morning melody to make its way inside.

This night-time ritual is a new habit, borne of this ‘lockdown’ world, but one that has become part of it, ingrained. Now nature, not my cell phone, is my morning call; entering through the window and waking me each morning. Nature now has dominion of the land and sky beyond the glass.

So tonight like other days, I am wandering past the window, and preparing to dive deep into my blanket cocoon, wondering what notes will greet me at sunrise…

A new habit, a new ‘normal’, and one which I have come to hold precious.

PyunponpiiipoooSaasaasaa….. Piyopiyo…kasakasa–♪♪♭♭♯ 

Today’s Lockdown diary piece comes from Ross Sinclair, Wellington, New Zealand, for whom the term ‘essential service’ has spawned a whole range of new responsibilities.

My day starts early.  Usually woken by a ping from my wife’s phone or her tapping answers to one. It is usually around 5 am, sometimes as early as 3 am. Odd numbers. I find odd numbers much worse to wake up to than even numbers, as if they are going to somehow throw my whole day out of kilter. 

With these loud little noises, my wife is clearly breaking our pre-Covid-19 pacted of no work phones inbed.  

But lots has changed. 

And this is the least of it. 

I get up and make her breakfast and a coffee. I know she knows how to drive the espresso machine but when I am in residence, she insists she can’t stretch the milk. 

I am an essential service to an essential service. 

It is nice though, some early morning time together. I don’t see her much during this lockdown. She usually gets home late. 

She calls herself a public servant. She’s working on the policy response to Covid-19 as a shift worker because they have so much policy to shift. She tells me they used to take weeks to write a cabinet paper, stressing over where to place a verb in a sentence. Now it seems they have only a few days to stress over where to place masses of potentially infected people.

My wife leaves for work with all the other early-rising essential-workers, but rather than their day-glow vests and sports utility vehicles or buses or trucks, she’s wearing a power suit and driving a small EV. 

Very Wellington. 

My wife is so grateful that I’m looking after the kids and cooking and cleaning and tears up when she tells me this. She’s saving the fucking world while I’m vacuuming and she’s thanking me!

I tell her I’m proud of her and I feel empowered by supporting her to do what needs to be done. I don’t worry about it sounding condescending or cheesey because it’s genuine and one of Zoe’s many talents is taking a compliment.

The kids get up later but don’t expect coffee. They do expect sugar-coated cereal, somehow conflating lockdown with holidays and an increased chance of breakfast indulgence. 

If it has been a 3 am start to the day, I tend not to sugar coat my responses to their requests.

I think the neighbours would report lots of shouting from our house, if they could hear anything over the din of their incessant power tools. The fervour with which they are doing it themselves suggests they don’t realise that we’re in this lockdown for the long haul.

Of the five residents in our house, Luna the dog shouts the most. She’s just not used to sounds coming over the fence during the day. I recognise them as sanders and grinders and water blasters. She doesn’t recognise them at all, so she barks at them. And she barks a lot.

We are home schooling during lockdown. We had talked about me doing this if Zoe got a posting in the Pacific. Now I am getting to practice, and slowly getting better. I started off being more a janitor and manning the canteen, but slowly I am working my way towards teacher’s assistant. My ambition is, of course, principal. 

When the kids are busy, I catch up on emails and news. I find my way to a ‘human interest’ clip from CNN on YouTube. I cry and so does the interviewer. The news is not supposed to be like this. I stop it before it ends, like stopping a bad dream before it becomes a nightmare. I sit there remembering why I don’t watch TV. 

The day goes on: morning classes, lunch, afternoon classes, exercise.

The day ends how it began, just Zoe and me and her phone in bed. We listen to a podcast of radio news.  They say the Easter road toll was zero. No one could remember when that had last happened, or if it had ever happened before. If it had, I bet it was during the Spanish Flu. 

Ross Sinclair

Today’s Lockdown piece: Words of reflection from Phnom Penh and the magic keyboard of Steven W. Palmer.

“I felt a tremendous distance between myself and everything real.”

― Hunter S. Thompson.

Self-imposed lockdown, Day…what is it again, Priti? Oh yes. Day Thirteenty fortytweleven.

To borrow another quote (and why not, it saves me writing), Philip K. Dick said: “It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.” 

I think between Hunter and Phil, they have nailed this weird alternate reality we have not only plunged into, but plunged into willingly in most cases. Take a single Scottish exile with Cyclothymia (that’s Bipolar III to you lucky laypeople) and lock him away – voluntarily of course – in a large house with an equally large but fenced yard and watch the adherence to carefully constructed cycles of up and down slowly crumble.

For the most part, my view of the outside world is half-seen bodies passing my gate. For the other part, my link to reality is a slowly crumbling interaction with the rest of the world via social media.

Ah, the sword with two edges. On one hand, it provides a link to people you know and love. It can even offer respite in the guise of ever-darkening memes (at what point does it become acceptable to laugh at death?). But on the other hand, you are also subjected to a never-ending downward spiral of conspiracy theories whose madness, for a moment, make you feel totally sane. 

From that fairly predictable cycle of up and down, the world has shifted this cyclothymic writer into a chaotic unpattern (sorry, George) of morning “guess the mood” gameshows. If I can avoid social media long enough to not see the increasingly orange face of the Trumpoon or yet another 5G rant, then I might manage to make it to the coffee machine and allow that first caffeine – and obligatory accompanying nicotine – hit nurse me into either mild mania or mild depression.

Either version is preferable to a full-blown episode. I can try and find a point of focus – increasingly more difficult as paying work has disappeared – and coax my damaged psyche to deal with the day ahead. 

Then there are treat days. “What are treat days?” I hear you cry enthusiastically. Those are one of the two days I deign to leave the house as a hunter-gatherer. Well, more of the gatherer since mammoths went extinct, to be fair.

Fully masked and goggled, I mount my trusty steed and ride through the village, ignoring the occasional suspicious glance from fearful natives. Enter supermarket, use hand sanitiser, wipe trolley handle with wet wipes, use hand sanitiser again, then off for a trolley dash – at respectable social distance of course – that Dale Winton would have been proud of (for our American viewers, think David Ruprecht, for Aussies, think Ian Turpie). List ticked off, fellow shoppers swerved past, non-mask wearing people scowled at, I make for the checkout, replete with flexiglass screen to protect the staff…or is it to protect the customers? 

Despite the actual, real, truly tangible insanity of the supermarket, those little excursions represent a brief toe-dipping back into reality and sanity. As you ride in the – lighter than usual – traffic of Phnom Penh, you can, just for a brief 5 or 10 minutes, pretend that we are not all trapped in a maelstrom of fear and uncertainty.

You can pretend that you are going out for some beers tonight, maybe a game of pool, go for some nice food, flirt with the waitress, joke with the motodop drivers, gaze at the intricacies of social intercourse on the riverside, all those stupid little things that we took for granted…

I want those stupid things back.

“To complain is always non-acceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.”  Eckhart Tolle

Dr. Howl: A Lockdown diary entry from Faye Tsang, who recently returned to her native Canton, China, after an extended Cambodia stay, and found herself in quarantine.

Finally, I could set foot on the balcony of the hotel room and freely inhale fresh air, and then be on my way home real soon. Hearing the suitcase wheels rumbling downwards the sloping path leading to the lobby, I said to myself, “That’s it… a 14-day mandatory quarantine is over.”

It turned out not so bad for me though, a period of isolation at some five-star resort. Hotel-isolation was a special measure at the time to prevent Covid-19 spread due to many infected Chinese returning from abroad. Every one stranded in this situation would not complain too much for the luxurious and costly treatment arranged by authority, even if it had been confining and extremely boring. 

This is my hometown, Canton or Guangzhou city, which is more expensive for living than many other places in China. However, many other companions who flew here from Southeast Asia to transit still had to put up with this quarantine for the time being.

Being fair here, you pay for what you get, (‘yes, I have to pay) besides the pleasant accommodation in a tranquil and beautiful rural environment tuned with birds singing. The team of hosts have been working very hard to meet our basic requires – decent meals, mosquito repellent, toilet roll, detergent, and more, all except room cleaning and customized catering.

And there was another team of medical staff from the district hospital, who have been working very dutifully to carry out the day-to-day sterilizing and checking, including virus testing twice a day, which was free of charge for us, the observed objects. 

Friends of mine all seemed very relieved for me having successfully left Cambodia, where the spread of the epidemic was unclear.

Yeah so far, I was feeling very lucky, even when completing multiple road trips across Cambodia and a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Baiyun International Airport I seem to have avoided infection.

14 days was going very peaceful and as regular as military drills. Yet for a solitary soul like me, it was not much difficult to cope with, by use of reading, copy-writing ( from my freelance job) additionally with some help of an indoor exercise video that was introduced to me by a friend, and a shuttlecock – complimentary from the hotel.

The only humane contact was eye contact and Q and A happened during my daily physical check-up. Incidentally the two-week isolation was largely in gloomy weather, that reflects the moodier spirit of the Ching Ming customary calendar period. 

Thinking of the whole endeavour Chinese people have engaged in, especially the huge sacrifice of Wuhan folks, I gradually found the emergency rules of the authorities quite acceptable and practical, given imported infected cases have been increasing.

So you see, I am still able to adapt to typical Chinese socialism, even though I have stayed overseas for a long period.

Hopefully this global health crisis will soon be defused and overcome, through co-operation across countries no matter how different the social systems, races, or political agendas are.      

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, where members of the HOWL family share their ‘Covid’ thoughts and experiences.

A ‘lockdown’ poem by Scott Bywater (Phnom Penh)

the crowds are thinning
on the boulevard of cautionary tales
but maybe a new name is in order:
the street of the last chance saloons?
the avenue of the end times?
deathpat’s graveyard?
(have I been reading Tom Robbins too much?)

if only beer wasn’t half as expensive
as soda water
I think to myself
as I scratch the unshavenness
I am wearing to blend in

Monday has not traditionally
been a good day to start again
but so many of the old rules
are gone
and why wait for Tuesday?

as the street dwindles away
into shutters and sentries

~~~

one cannot help being impressed
by the creators of email spam
who continue to work tirelessly
through this crisis

the internet is our mirror
both individually and
our society
all the things we are
are in there
blaring back at us
staring back at us
in piercing shards
and loud lectures

our mythic heroes weep silently
in their corners and their caves
they are spent; they did what they could
for now we are on our own

the bandleader up on the bandstand
keeps calling up new titles but
the dream orchestra keeps playing
the same tune

the shadow protagonist
his time called at last
can only hack his way through the scenery
in stubborn repetition of past roles
on the same backlot
high shimmering painted skies
and smoke machines laid to waste
as he stumbles forward
incoherently shouting lines
from his past triumphant speeches
once there was not a dry eye in the house
now there is not a house
not even a rickety chair

~~~

after the day-after-day morning bangclatter
the view from my window
is still and flatly hot
like childhood summer afternoons
when everything was distant
and the birds were the loudest thing
to be heard

when we walk the streets
the comparison with zombies
is hard to avoid,
with our mouth hiders
firmly in place,
eyes working overtime in exaggerated expressions
to overcome the facewrinkles that
complete our brief exchanges

all plans mothballed
all bets off
all opinions bleated
all encouragements obeying
the law of diminishing cares

~~~

the streetscape edited
erratically, but continually
the familiar faces of these years past
disappeared:
home means different things to different people
particularly when pushed

strange times, we nod sagely,
as we quietly rearrange our priorities
even as we wonder what they are

somewhere it seems
our alter egos
are off hiking in the hills
picnicking halfway up cliffs
waving bottles of wine
at a different sun
wondering where the glasses are
wondering where the corkscrews are
wondering where we are

all plans mothballed

all bets off

shutters and sentries

the dream orchestra keeps playing
the same tune

Scott Bywater – poet, writer, word raconteur

Julie Svay: Written from Rueil-Malmaison, the imperial city of Napoléon and Joséphine Bonaparte, near Paris, France, on lockdown J+32. And inspired by the emotions awakened by Saarah Choudhury’s Lockdown post: ‘Duet between a widow and her husband, Post 2020’

What words can I share after such lines … ?

Lately, someone blamed me for three simple words of mine, “I am fine“, because how can someone feel fine in such dramatic times? So many are in grief, fear or depression.

For reasons, good or bad, here we are; confined and little by little deprived of our freedoms – from going out (for more than one hour daily, authorized reasons only), from the warmth of gathering (so important to our elders), and to parks and places of green – our connections with nature.

Then, why not take the chance of these suspended times to reconnect with our profound beings? And through this inner journey face our shadows, and despite it all why not allow ourselves to reconnect with the beauty of each simple moment? And more than ever, the beauty of living?

It is springtime here, glycine and lilac trees blooming along the walls in the city gardens. Few cars pass on the usually congested and noisy roadway, allowing the breeze to bring scents of flowers and the sound of buzzing bees.

In the quietness of the evening I walk along the (forbidden) banks of the Seine. Sitting on a pier I send a prayer to its green flowing waters … a prayer of no religion but for our humanity, in the unexplained hope to fill the water with consolation and love; to carry along in its journey from the sea to the clouds, from the rains to the sources, and to the drinking water we welcome in our bodies.

Maybe it does not take more to feel fine. Maybe we can all learn, day after day. There must be lighthouses that stand before the dark and stormy sea, to remain us silently that there is hope until the Flower Moon light and the signs of dawn …

On my way back there are cherry trees in bloom, like the trees that you see in Japan, with an old Mercedes car parked beneath. It’s after a storm of thunder and rain and the vehicle is covered with pink petals, a ‘wedding car’.

Julie

April 17, 2020.

Hi, my name is Emily Moss and I’m 9 years old. I live in the countryside in Maheno, Oamaru, New Zealand with my mum and dad and my 6 sheep and Max the cat. I wrote this about my school and how lonely it might feel with no kids in it’s classrooms because of Covid-19.

Let’s see what Maheno School has to say about having no kids because of Covid 19…

EM:    “ Ruru Room how do you feel about having no kids in you ?”

RR:     “ I feel lonely, but happy because kids are not jumping on my floor!”    

EM:        “Wow sad and happy. It must be so quiet at Maheno school in the play-ground. Tui Room what do you have to say?”

TR:        “ Hmm…I can sleep in till 10:00am.”

EM:          “Thank you Tui Room let’s go to Pukeko Room, what do you have to…”

PR:          “Well I am not lonely because I have two butterflies. I miss the kids working, but they are safe in their homes now.”

EM:        “ Well thank you Maheno School. Stay safe and this is Emily Moss for home school news”.

Dr. Howl: In a case of the past echoing today a note from Barbara, Em’s mum: “Maheno School was named after the Hospital Ship ‘Maheno’, which took care of WW1 soldiers suffering from the Spanish Flu in 1919. The wreck of the Maheno is on the beach at Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia. The school has the original ship’s bell.”