Hold My Beer

August 13, 2020

Day 162

 

 

 

 

I’m in a bad movie. Intermission is over. On with the show.

 

 

As Long as the Red Earth Rolls

 

Jun 8,  2020

Day 79

Today I rested.

Early morning clouds hid the moon again and so the chance to duplicate May’s full moon photograph is gone. “Another time, Highlander”, growls the Kurgon somewhere in the back of my mind.

No quail this morning. Temperature is down into ‘see your breath territory’. Back to sleep for a while. Wake to beauty. Breakfast in bed. Sun streams through the bedroom window.

Valerie and I walked in the midday sun through our compound, seeing areas that need work and noting where a brush stroke here or there would add to the canvas. She inspected the neat double stacked row of foundation posts in the tiny hollow just off the drive and I showed her how I’ll be able to pull them one by one down through a gap in the trees to the worksite. A Tui sang crazily above us and we walked to the top of the drive and up the road for a while. The sun was bright and the sky a turquoise backdrop to the green ridges that frame our land. Back at the entrance to our drive I showed her where I want to build a cantilevered gate that will slide out of the forest on silent bearings when we want to keep the world at bay. We walked hand in hand down the drive cataloging the damage to the ponga done by the drought. We lost at least ten of the tall fern trees along each side, not to mention what has happened throughout the forest. I will harvest the trunks and use them somewhere along the line, honouring their life as best I can.

After lunch I cleaned dead ponga branches from the grove and removed spider webs from the interior walls of the entrance porch. The ease with which they can be seen is probably the only drawback of having black walls. I used a small paint brush and found it worked pretty well, but as I brushed I imagined of a battery powered rotary tool with a bottle brush on the business end…  And added it to the list.

Around mid afternoon Valerie checked the numbers and told me, “Zero new cases and you’ll be glad to know that the one person who’s been holding out has recovered…”  I let that news sink in as I reached for my computer to see for myself. Sure enough, today’s numbers tell the tale…

Zero New cases. One Recovered case. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases and probable cases plus deaths is 100%. Zero active cases.

WHISKEY. OSCAR. WHISKEY.

Bloody marvellous and while not a laurel to rest on, it is a milestone a long time coming and one to be proud of and thankful for. I think I’ll have a beer and raise a toast to us.

 

 

So… Where do we go from here? The country is going to Alert Level 1 for the second time in history. What that means for us is that all businesses will be open with only minor restrictions. Gatherings can be held without regard to size. Social distancing will still be encouraged and the wearing of masks may be mandated on public transport and in certain other situations. Anyone coming into the country will be quarantined for a minimum of fourteen days while authorities examine options  and begin to sort out how to re-open the country to travellers from disease free nations. There will be many more details to iron out, some anticipated and others wholly unanticipated. It’s the nature of the beast.

 

 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wisely made it very clear in her announcement today that there will be more cases, but that what we have learned thus far will help us to find, diagnose, track and eliminate any new cases that show up.

 

 

We are in a good place and things are only going to get better.

 

 

All of which has me thinking that my subtitle, Diary of a Pandemic, is no longer appropriate, nor accurate. Especially since it looks as though, for the semi-foreseeable future, any dying I do won’t be because of Covid-19. That being said, I’m still glad I decided to write about it all. At the outset of lockdown the odds were good that it was going to be a serious Charlie Foxtrot and there was no way of telling how it would all work out. http://acronymsandslang.com/definition/7720898/CHARLIE+FOXTROT-meaning.html

 

I’ve learned a great deal in the past three months, not the least of which is that…

 

 

Nevertheless, I have no illusions that it’s over. The fears that started me writing what was, in many ways, my death bed testimonial still exist. They are founded on long years of experience and the events of the first half of 2020 have only strengthened them.

 

 

The Pandemic is still on in the rest of the world. Covid-19 is probably out there for good now, unless smarter folks than I can find a way to put it back in the bottle it was let out of. New Zealand will have to bend like a reed as the storm continues to rage elsewhere.

No man is an island, as Mr. Donne so eloquently said, and that statement applies to islands as well. So we will watch and wait, hope and dream, love and laugh. And I will remember to be grateful for the miracles that I am privileged to see every moment I’m alive, and to thank those of you who have stood by me as I added a few more planks to my raft. It is all I can do. I hope it is enough.

 

 

I hope each and every one of you find your way to the happiness you deserve. Breathe deep and know that no matter what happens to you or yours, this is not the end…

 

 

If the time comes when anyone wants to know more and I’m not around to ask, let it be said that…

 

 

And that he wished for all to…

 

 

 

 

Waiting on the Moon

June 6,  2020

Day 77

 

Sun.

Rain.

Sleep.

Love.

Zero New cases. Zero recovered cases. The ratio of the movement of the second hand to the hour hand of a watch is 720:1. With unequivocal certainty I can tell you that since the onset of the Covid-19 contagion, the speed of time has remained constant, and that the last person who has the disease has been sick for an awfully long time. I wish they’d hurry up and get well.

 

 

It turns out that garden snails are not really that slow, so perhaps I should apologise to the fellow above. In one hour they can travel 150 feet, which may not seem that fast, but in the time it takes for the moon to go through all four phases, your average snail can cover twenty miles. Cut that in half to allow for time spent sleeping and eating and it’s still a healthy ten miles. Not bad for a creature with only one foot.

 

 

The rain of the past two weeks has hidden the moon from view as it changed from new to full, which it is right this second as I type. One of the reasons this entry is so short is that I’ve been going outside every few minutes stare up past the scudding clouds to check the moon’s progress. Last month I took its picture as it set and I hope to do the same in a few hours.

I’ve been around for 804 full moons in my life. I can remember quite a few of them, but still hope to see another 400. Majestic, mysterious and utterly captivating. There’s a reason why the three toed tree toad sings his sweet ode to the moon…

 

 

Miracles happen.

 

Go outside and see.

 

Waiting on the moon.

Soon

June 5,  2020

Day 76

This morning I set up a ladder outside the kitchen bay window and climbed up to inspect the roof tarp where it is secured to the main house roof overhang. I brought with me a homemade rake made from a long, thin strip of plywood with four wood screws set in the end like the tines of a fork and bent at ninety degrees. Using this impromptu tool, I patiently raked out a couple of pounds of leaves and debris. The little implement worked perfectly and when I had cleared as far as I could reach, I swept the troublesome pile off the tarp and down to add its component parts to the ever growing humous layer of the forest floor. To the extent that I could, I eyeballed the tarp surface for cracks and then climbed down to wait for the next rain so that I could check to see what puddles appeared.

For the entire two-month span of lockdown the dumping of refuse at the council-run tip was governed by constraints that made trash runs a real pain. I took some bags down  there in the beginning to see how it worked, but when I discovered the hoops I had to jump through I elected to store my full trash bags along the eastern wall of the shop container. Then I watched the numbers fall and waited for the end of lockdown. Now that we’re at level 2, my personal collection of rubbish bags has assumed an elevated priority. I decided to consolidate bags by packing them tightly before loading them into the car for the trip down the mountain. I built a frame to hold open the bags so that I could transfer the contents from other bags into them and set about turning twelve bags of garbage to eight.

While doing that I did a load of laundry only to find that the mysterious leak beneath the washer is back. Threw a towel down to soak up the small puddle that crept from beneath the whiteware. Roseanne Roseannadana came to mind as I thought about the one-step forward and two-steps back dance I’d been doing around the homestead during the last few days. If it’s not one thing, it’s another… Sometimes it’s like that. You just have to put your head down and drive on.

After lunch Valerie and I drove over to a friend’s lot about three-quarters of a kilometre down the valley. We’d been invited to inspect a pile of timber scraps her builders had amassed during the construction of her new home. We pulled in the curved and muddy drive to find our friend Rosie getting out of the car after the long drive from Auckland. She’d come up with a friend to spend the weekend kitting out her new digs with books and planters and the usual home furnishings.  We sorted out social distancing while commenting that it was strange how we still clung to routine despite there being only one active case in all of New Zealand.

Rosie bought her lot about two years ago with the idea of it being an off-grid hideaway far from the madding crowd where she would be able to put down roots, grow a garden and commune with nature on  weekends or holidays. She has a caravan and has spent a long time on site planning her home. The design she came up with makes the most of a small building area perched at the edge of a precipice that affords a wide-open view down the valley toward Whitianga and the sea beyond.

Working with an innovative construction firm, she’d opted for five twenty-foot shipping containers to be placed on huge wooden piles driven into the clay and arranged in a wide ‘U’ shape with the open end facing the view. The builders had cut out walls and installed huge sliding glass, double paned doors and combined two of the units into a large and open kitchen/living room with bedrooms forming the legs on either side. The fifth container was tacked on in back to form a mudroom/entrance and an enclosed storage room. The site was chewed up and muddy but will recover and blossom and her house is going to be divine.

Rosie had pulled the trigger on construction a month before Covid-19 showed up and seen most of the work finished just as lockdown started. She then had to endure the uncertainty and frustration of two-and-a-half months of everything being shut down. No work could be done and even traveling to the site was impossible. Mice took up residence in her caravan and the shell of her new house was exposed to the full brunt of the onset of winter. Since lockdown ended almost a month ago the majority of the work has been completed and the open lines and sweeping vistas are a testament to her imagination and patience.

Rosie showed us around and then offered us the off-cuts of the piles that were used for the corner posts of each container. There were fourteen in all, twelve inches in diameter and ranging from four to eight feet long. I asked her if she was sure, because if I had to buy them at the timber yard it would cost a great deal. She was adamant she wanted them gone and that I could have them. I accepted gladly, but only after showing her how she could use two of them split long ways to make a nice temporary set of steps up and into her house. Her eyes lit up when I showed her how to do it and she said she’d ask her builders to knock it together. I can’t wait to see how it works out.

In the meantime I’ve got twelve huge posts to move to our lot. Looks like two at a time in the back of our station wagon. Lots of levers and work and straps and tarps and fun, and then I’ve got to find a place to stow them neatly until I can use them in the construction of the upcoming new bathroom/storage room and kitchen expansion. I don’t want to mess up the forecourt but at the same time I want to store them as close to where I’ll be using them as possible. I decided on the way home to make Rosie a bell for her driveway as a house warming gift. Luckily, I’ve got an extra SCUBA bottle around somewhere so that will be easy. Another adventure underway.

Checking in with the numbers I found that there has been no change in twenty-four hours…

Zero New cases. Zero recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases and probable cases (plus 22 deaths) is 99.93%.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/05/cant-quite-believe-it-new-zealand-tiptoes-towards-elimination-of-coronavirus

 

 

Soon.

 

 

Do Not Rejoice

May 30,  2020

Day 70

First the good news…

The Zeroes say it all on this day. For the first time ever we are one zero away from there being nine out of nine total zeroes on the board. 1 Active case. Zero recovered cases. Ratio of recovered (or otherwise) cases to confirmed and probable cases is 99.93%

 

 

Now for the bad news…

 

 

So, you tell me. Are we as a species doomed to repeat the same tired, tragic and timeworn tales generation after generation? Is it impossible to stop the cycle of the rise of totalitarian governments and the wars necessary to ensure they do not take over the world with their poisonous ideologies?

If you would like to know what the peoples of the world thought and felt while Hitler and the cancer of Nazism was growing in Europe, look around you as China takes over Hong Kong and destroys a tiny remnant of freedom clinging to the shore of Asia’s mainland. Eighty some years ago it was Czechoslovakia, the Sudetenland, the Anschluss, Norway, Belgium, France, Italy….

Now it’s Tibet, Nepal, the South China Sea and Taiwan. The concentration camps have already been built and the Uighurs, an ethnic minority, are imprisoned there by the millions for the simple crime of being ‘other’. They have no champions and no hope. Those not yet in the camps live under mass surveillance and the threat of imminent arrest. Once inside, the inmates are subject to re-education, torture and possible organ harvesting. Outside, systematic oppression includes the destruction of graveyards and the disappearance of entire communities from the land, maps and eventually, memory. It is happening now and we tolerate it.

 

Toasters are cheap here because life is cheaper there.

 

It is not only lives in the balance, but judgement of history as well. Just as Hitler had a plan for South and North America, the Chinese Communist Party has a plan for you. When all is said and done they’ll rewrite the curriculum of all schools, dismantle statues, destroy landmarks and erase history all while rebuilding the world as they imagine it should be. To the victor go the spoils.

Watch Hong Kong in the coming weeks. There is a reason the CCP placed their boot on the neck of the island two weeks before the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. When the former Hong Kong is a couple of news cycles in the past, watch Taiwan. Watch Australia, the South China Sea and Africa. Read your history books and learn, because if all you do is watch, there will come a time when you will see your children march off to a war that you let happen because you could not be bothered to stop it.

Bring manufacturing home to your own land or to countries that do not support totalitarian dictators. Stop, by whatever means, the conducting of business with China. Stop listening to their wolf diplomats scolding the west for interfering in their sovereign right to whatever they like. Stop thinking you can do nothing. Do a little bit each day. Open your eyes. Study your enemy. Speak out. Speak up. One battle is over. The next is well underway.

 

Goodnight and Good Luck

May 24,  2020

Day 64

A couple of things right off the bat. The quail haven’t left, the meteorologists were right about the rain and Hong Kong is in trouble.

In other news today a salon worker in Missouri infected 91 customers over seven days last week, Sweden stands by their plan and Putin’s approval ratings have dropped from 100% to 97%. In Moscow a third doctor who worked for an ambulance service has fallen to his death after expressing dismay about two doctors who earlier died in similar incidents. A government spokesperson is reported to have cited ‘unwarranted agitation for parachutes for health workers on the frontline of the fight against Covid-19’ as the cause of his ‘inadvertent and totally unrelated high speed convergence with the earth’. In Norway, BOC Aviation, a wholly owned subsidiary of the state owned Bank Of China, has purchased a majority share of Norwegian Air after the cash strapped startup completed a debt for equity swap in order to survive the downturn in revenue caused by the Covid-19 contagion. Media representatives for BOC Aviation were unavailable for comment at the time of the transaction as they were busy threatening Australia with ‘new much needed regulations’ on the import of beef and ‘technical inspection issues’ affecting the shipping of coal and iron ore. Elsewhere, North Korea still has zero reported cases and credits this to Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un’s ‘Superior Leadership and Beneficial Practices’. The Hermit Kingdom has offered to help the world combat Covid-19 by teaching these principles to all countries except Turkmenistan, citing a long standing dispute with that former Soviet republic about which nation had zero Covid-19 cases first. Resolution of this dispute is proving to be difficult as President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, has banned the word coronavirus. And in New Zealand toady, Ministry of Health figures were posted on their website and this is what they say…

Zero New cases. 1 Recovered case. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.8%. Five Zeroes on the board. 27 Active cases remaining.

 

 

 

And in our final story tonight…

 

Goodnight and good luck.

 

 

 

Progress

May 23,  2020

Day 63

The weather forecast calls for six days of rain starting tomorrow so today I collected two shovels, four new large pavers and a few smaller, older ones, some bricks, two bags of setting sand, two levels, a brick layer’s trowel, a pry bar and a rake, and proceeded to make a walkway that would allow us to approach the steps to the forest porch without slipping in the slick yellow clay that is the foundation of the forest floor. It took about four hours with a break for lunch around three in the afternoon. Levelling the path base took the most physical work because our garden used to be the lower part of the drive the original developers put in twenty years ago. They used a type of rock infused fill that resists traditional shovelling and the pry bar came in handy for levering up recalcitrant rocks about the size and shape of clenched fists. Once I had what seemed like a level area I confirmed this with the levels, then spread a bag of bedding sand and raked it smooth.

 

 

The large pavers followed, two abreast, checked and tamped until they were solid and as perfect as they were going to be, given the temporary nature of the walkway. (It’s going to be removed sometime before spring, but that’s another story.)

 

 

The smaller pavers were easier to lay, still using the same method, and then the bricks went down until I ran out of them. Another bag of bedding sand was spread on top and swept into all the joints. I’m hoping the rain will compact the sand deep into each joint and lock everything together. This may involve a little work in the rain tomorrow to add more sand but that’s not an issue as I have to go that way to get to the shop.

 

 

I finished just as the sun set and then used the last light to reroute the water supply hose to the washing machine so that it runs under the shipping container instead of on the garden grass. The new arrangement looked so clean I decided to hide the hose as best I could all the way to the faucet some eighty feet away at the back of the house. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Now the hose is tucked away and hidden for the most part and having done so I cannot help but think there is no better way to bring back the drought. For now though, and until it is needed elsewhere, the hose stays where it is.

 

Tools put away, workshop closed up for the night, I went inside to have dinner and check today’s numbers…

Zero New cases. Zero Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases remains unchanged from yesterday because there are 7 Zeroes on the board. No change in anything, which is a good thing. The more the merrier.

 

All day as I worked there was a huge wood pigeon sitting and feeding in a tree just on the other side of the windbreak to the left of the forest porch. In the morning Valerie and I sat for a few minutes in the sun and listened to a Tui high in the branches singing his wild discordant song. Just before lunch Mr. Lonely, a single quail we’ve seen here for four years, came and waited patiently while I spread some seed for him. After lunch three more showed up a received the same treatment. Their count today was a fraction of their usual numbers and I wonder whether the coming days of rain will keep them away. The chaffinches and sparrows kept a vigil in the grove and thundered into the air by the dozens every time I banged a rock with the shovel or scraped the rake on the growing path of pavers. One by two they return unnoticed to perch in the ponga and scan the steps for any new seed, then take flight again and again as I progressed*.

As I type these last sentences for today’s entry, the rain begins to fall outside, tapping lightly on the roof, slowly building. Soon it will be drumming steadily, running off the roof, into the gutters and downspouts, filling our water tank and our dreams.

 

Goodnight.

 

 

 

 

 

*Speaking of progress, here’s a handy link for you all to help you gauge yours. Enjoy.

https://neal.fun/progress/

 

Strange, Strange, Strange

May 22,  2020

Day 62

To the extent that it is possible within the limits of their resources, every country in the world has tried to find a way to deal with all of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some have decided to say that it does not exist, some have decided to let it run its course and others have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to stem, if only for a little while, the wave of contagion. We are in the midst of the first months of what may prove to be a years long battle to defeat a thing that is not even technically alive, but which is multiplying in its billions of trillions and spreading slowly, inexorably to every living human in the world.

I fear that the end result of all our tilting at this implacable windmill of Mother Nature will be the sad fact that we are powerless in the face of its relentless march and that one will either catch it and live, or catch it and die. Those that live will either have no long term problems or they will struggle with the effects of the virus for the rest of their lives. But they will be alive. They will reproduce and those most resistant to the virus will pass on this resistance to their children. Time and tide will relegate the Covid-19 bug to the history books and the world will wait nervously or obliviously for whatever’s coming down the pike next from the wet markets of China. The virus is going to run its course and humans are banging their heads as it does.

We see this happening now as governments try to protect citizens who don’t want to be protected. We see it in the attempts by some nations to pay lip service to their stated goal of protecting the older members of society while devoting equal, if not more attention to protecting their economies. Fear and apathy are revealed in the morbid nickname of Boomer Remover coined by some who cannot begin to imagine that they might one day be the same age as those they are so dismissive of now. The disease is driving a worldwide wedge into the fault lines of party politics and the result is that those in power will begin to sacrifice the vulnerable in order to protect themselves. Billionaires build bunkers equipped with swimming pools, stock them with the best viands money can buy. They staff them with masseuses, cooks, nurses and personal assistants for every need, then hunker down to ride out the storm, aloof in isolated luxury. Celebrities utterly convinced of their importance fill their Instagram feeds with inane yammering about lockdown being like prison or how we’re all in this together. They describe the hardships they’re enduring and post pictures of their activities as if anyone cared and they pat each other on the back and dream of the day they can hobnob on the walkways again and be famous once more. We see it as governments realise they cannot remain shut down forever. With covidiots partnered with those who simply need to go back to work. With protesters marching on capitols carrying signs that say what amounts to, “If you don’t like my driving, stay off the sidewalk!”.

Through it all the virus continues to be spread by human activity, good or bad, well intentioned or clueless, like water finding its way into every space it can. It’s not overly virulent, as plagues go, and people are getting tired of it ruling their lives. So they carry it to their friends and neighbours and coworkers and fellow citizens and say, “Here, I’ve got it so you might as well have it too. Enjoy! You’re not too old are you? Diabetic? Overweight? Sorry about that, but you’ll be stronger for it.” In the end it will be like a good TV series that everyone eventually sees. Some watch it as it happens, week by week while others binge watch entire seasons a few years down the line. Sooner or later, though, everyone has seen it and then it’s gone, but not gone. It just blends with the scenery. A part of life in the bad old 2020’s. We’re in for a long, strange haul.

And that’s why I’m glad I live in New Zealand. It’s one of the last sane places on the planet and is a country that, whether through geographical isolation or enlightened leadership or just plain dumb luck, has managed thus far to slam the door on the world and then take great strides toward eradicating Covid-19 within its borders. This miracle mixture of luck and applied discipline has bought me some time before its my turn to dance with the devil. Time for the vaccine makers to do their thing, or, failing that, for the drug makers to whistle up some expensive brew so that I can ride this planet a few more times around the sun. I could not be in a better place and from where I sit and write, the view alone is worth the trouble.

 

 

Here are the numbers for the island nation that is my home…

1 New case, 3 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.7%. 2 Zeroes on the board. 28 active cases left.

 

 

 

 

Coronation Chicken

May 21,  2020

Day 61

Toady I spent most of my time being aware of the incredible beauty that starts right outside our windows and extends ever outwards wherever one looks. The green of the valley walls is bathed in burnished silver and gold, framed by the clear blue of the sky beyond. We hear birdsong and the wind moving gently through the trees, rustling the ponga fronds and making the branches of the rose bushes nod. It’s as if they agree that they are part of a masterpiece painted by a singular artist, available for viewing only in this moment and never to be seen again in the long sweep of time to come. The sun moves in its shallow arc across the northern sky and shines in the new double doors of the sitting room so that we have to close the curtains during lunch to cut down on the brightness. The quail visit, peering in the bedroom window to make sure we know they’re here and then retreating as I walk up the steps, welcoming them quietly, telling them they are loved. They seem to know we’ve cleaned the steps and signal their approval by working with the new program. Food will be placed in the clear area beneath the power box and next to the steps or in the grove now. They have it down. I give them two big cups of seed and back silently down the steps.

Later I throw open the doors to the workshop container and stand on the forest porch looking down at the ground below. I’ve got a huge job ahead of me clearing brush and saplings and building a facade to blend the forest into the vertical walls of the porch and the shipping container itself. The steps down to that area still need to be built and painted. Paths are going to have to be cut and levelled and all evidence of construction removed. When finished, the view from the porch will be of forest extending undisturbed from the deck all the way down the the stream that marks the valley floor. Lots of work. Plenty of time. It will be worth getting it right.

Inside I re-stowed tools left out after my last project and start in on a new one. There is a young possum that has taken up residence somewhere nearby and has begun eating the rose buds and tender shoots of the new branches late at night. It knocked over a watering bowl down on the bark in front of the verandah and might be what is digging up the leaf litter along edge of the path below the grove. The project of the afternoon was to make a new set of bolts for the crossbow pistol and have them ready by nightfall. The first step was to cut off the knurled tip of a metal knitting needle with a high speed grinder. This required safety glasses. One of the three pair that I keep stashed in various spots would have worked, but I could not find any of them. This led to a slow, thorough look through, around, over and under every shelf, desk, horizontal surface, box, bucket, bin and barrel in the shop. I found a pair of reading glasses I’d bought three weeks ago and lost, but it took another hour before I finally found the two spare pair of safety glasses in a new spot I’d chosen and then forgotten. One day, one day, one day, all will be organised. If I don’t forget.

Glasses on, I ground off the ends of the knitting needles, set one aside and sharpened the point on the other. Fashioned some flights from a plastic bin lid and glued them on with epoxy. While they were drying I test fired the crossbow for the third day running. It is still zeroed in, a fact that is going to lead to the end of one creature’s life and the saving of many others. Red of tooth and claw, I am a part of nature and I choose the roses.

Lights off, arrows collected, crossbow loaded and placed near my shoes by the door of the house, I step from the gloaming into a warm sitting room. Dinner was a chicken and rice dish that was so delicious I asked Valerie what it was called. She smiled sweetly, as if she knew that it’s name was synchronistically appropriate. “It’s called Coronation Chicken, created to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth…” I thanked her and smiled. We live on the Coromandel Peninsula hiding out from the Coronavirus and we’re having Coronation Chicken for dinner. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You can’t make this stuff up.

 

 

Another thing I can’t make up are today’s numbers. I’ll leave that to Turkmenistan and North Korea. They’ve got much better imaginations than me. Here’s what the real world figures are for New Zealand on this day…

Zero New cases. 5 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to probable and confirmed cases is 96.6%. Five Zeroes on the board. 30 people still infected.

 

 

 

 

A couple of hundred years from now people will jack into a museum feed and see pictures like this to try to imagine what life was like in the years before China fixed everything.

Thanks for visiting. This exhibit is closing now.

Stay safe and Goodnight.

202020

May 20,  2020

Day 60

Up early on a beautiful, clear and cold morning to return to the doctor. He said to put the lime in the coconut and call him in the morning. Other stops included the main op-shop for the first time in two months. Found some treasures there, including a light fixture for above the washer and dryer for $5. Amazing value to be found if you know what you’re looking for. Found a GoPro knockoff for $5 in a smaller op-shop around the corner, waterproof case and all. Going to hook it up to a motion sensor and see what sort of critter is digging up the leaves along the edge of the walkway to the workshop shipping container.  While Valerie shopped for groceries I used some of the disinfectant spray I’ve been using around town and some paper towels to wash the inside of the windshield of the car. The sun is so low in the northern sky now that no matter what time of the day we’re driving there is constant glare at certain spots on the 309 Road. It was better going home, but I missed some spots so there’s still work to do. Ammonia based window cleaner will be next.

I designed the base for our faux tile floor for the shower last night and began to cut the pieces of timber I’ll need to complete that job. The afternoon passed in a blaze of glory and evening found us firing up the burner to heat water for our showers before a dinner of steamed chicken, mushrooms and potatoes. Watched the movie A Brief Encounter on YouTube and reflected on how fortunate we were to have found each other and to have been in a position to do what the protagonists in that story could not.

 

 

Tucked Valerie into bed and then checked the day’s numbers. They are encouraging, tantalising, even mesmerising and they are shown below.

 

 

Zero New cases. 5 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is 96.2%. Four Zeroes on the board. 35 Active cases.

 

There is a chance.

There is hope.

There is going to be a respite while a vaccine is developed.

 

The story of our finding this place to build our home is one of  miracle after quiet miracle, each of which reaffirmed our belief that the Universe supports those who make a leap of faith.

 

 

We could not agree more.

 

 

Stay safe and let your thoughts manifest the change you want to see.

 

Goodnight.