From oh god no to okay we're doing this again.

Diary of the last 23 hours

5.15 pm yesterday

Hooo boy 5.15pm yesterday already feels like a week ago. Someone just said on social media: think I’ll put up a tree and call it a year. I hear you man. Anyway…

5.15 pm yesterday

Meet the new media, not the same as the old media. To drinks, the old fashioned way, in a K Road bar, all wedged together and excuse me and sorry can I just squeeze past and hey these are bloody good dumplings. Good sorts here: comms types, marketing types, and Patrick Smellie’s Business Desk has put on the beers and there's plenty of good old chat about how to make a living with a keyboard and nothing but a cold wind outside your door.

For four decades I did this with a glass in front of me that would keep emptying too fast. No more. And no longer am I holding a receptacle in front of me for all the particle and droplet stuff that hangs in the air inside a huddle of drinkers. Here is my medical opinion: this is how I have gone for 18 months with just one solitary cold. 

At various times one or other of us says gee it was a tough thing to have, but lockdown was also pretty good eh. 

I miss it, I say. Yada, and yada, and, you know, roll on 9.03 pm to see the absolute look on Dave’s face.

9.03 pm

We’re watching misery in Syria inflicted by ISIS on Netflix and by god what a thriller what a horror, imagine being the parents of those poor young women, when a stream of text messages arrives from the daughter in Mt Eden.

Naturally we stop to find out what's going on. Oh goddam.  Holy shit.

10.05pm

Still lying on the couch.  Have watched on through to the harrowing conclusion of Caliphate. Use journal of record Twitter to catch up on my fellow New Zealanders reacting to Plague 2.0 Holy shit look at those supermarket trolleys. Goddam.  

More texting with the daughter. 

This is like a nightmare, she says, but also a movie 

Quick mental inventory of fridge and cupboards. We need meat. We need veges. There’s not nearly enough. Wonder how long I can put off going to the supermarket.

6.45am 

Siri turns on the radio, but I’m not there. I’m outside the supermarket.

Look how far the  socially distanced line snakes back around the corner and to the main road. Oh, it's all like riding a bike, how it comes back to you.

Read the phone while we wait for the doors open. Suffering Jesus, these people in the Facebook community groups are fully insane. How can they possibly think the tiniest part of this stuff is true?

Over to Morning Report. Professor Michael Baker says as an epidemiologist I don’t like to say “certain”. 

Listening and figuring out how to get the water up to half full in my glass. Let’s hope it’s a short chain, let's hope that no carriers went to any rugby or raves or weddings or orgies or Rotorua.

Clearly the day has come for masks. Clearly this will be easier to deal with if it turns out to be a reasonably short chain of transmission, the numbers so far infected are low and oh, it all comes back , how it’s all that echoing across the  canyon, and whatever numbers you’re seeing today tell you how things were two weeks ago. 

How many, you wonder.

8.30 am

Going back into the village to pick up daughter's contact lens order for her, to take over to her flat. This will be much appreciated. Until she has more lenses, she has to wear her glasses and the mask steams them up. 

Fish out the very nice masks Karren bought for last time. Hang it on my face for the first time.

Um, she says, is that right?  Take it to the mirror to get a better idea. 

Is it maybe upside down, I think it is, she says. 

As I'm turning it around she says helpfully, because when it’s the right way up it’s got a little piece for your…. and even before she gets to ...nose the idea of something for my nose being little is just too comical. And she’s laughing.

And then she’s laughing more. And now as she sets out to add see, its got this little metal bit that you shape around your another wave of laughter takes her, and now I’m explaining it all  on the phone to Mary-Margaret, as her mother disappears  into the bathroom and even behind the door gales of laughter are consuming her and honestly do you wonder why the Karens have been getting  such a hard time lately.

9.30am

To Auckland city, via Lake Road with everyone else who’s not still in the queue at Devonport New World. On Boston Road, greet daughter and daughter’s boyfriend who has padded down  from Mt Eden Road without shoes, tell him: fucking barefoot ya fully sick hippy, hug them both, our bubble mates from last time.

On Symonds St and Princes St and Wellesley St people emerge walking backwards through office doors wheeling office chairs and lugging monitors. 

10.30ish

Press conference. There's a bit more information, including oh man, a trip to Rotorua. On the positive side, there's fresh information to top my glass up to half. Possibly the virus came in on the surface of some product through a cool-store and may have been acquired there. I call that good news: it would mean that we have more clarity about where else to protect ourselves and maybe it means the current border isolation protocol is holding the line. Let’s see.

The PM notes that she had briefed the leader of opposition, and also notes the surprising coincidence that the media appeared to be in possession of a lot of information before it was announced. Troubling coincidence, coming on the sharp heels of that matter a few weeks ago where Duncan Garner appeared to know to ask her if she'd told the PM about something to do with a minister's behaviour, and she had to confirm that yes she had. 

Clearly someone is tapping the phone of the pop-up leader of the opposition and placing her in a  dreadfully compromising  position.

It would be rattling her. People keep saying how good and nice and capable she is and that is surely true. Doubtless in ordinary circumstances she would never say a thing like:

Look. I'm living in a country where 200,000 people now are on the unemployment benefit. If I was someone facing that sort of unemployment. I wouldn't be looking for Bambi to be looking after me, I'd be looking for someone like me to make things happen.

We can see she's become perturbed by this strange person, never knowing when they might next be peering over her shoulder. Please stop it, strange person.

Also noteworthy in the press conference: all the questions seeking to establish if the PM and Bloomfield had knowledge of the outbreak earlier than they claimed. Meet the old media, not like the new media.

12.05pm

Very much enjoying the return of the Covid-19 official public service announcement delivered in the golden tones of Paul Brennan. And yet, and yet, there's just a little something about it that reminds me of the voice of the Carl’s Junior machine in Idiocracy. 

12.30pm

First run of the new lockdown. Pass another runner who's pulling a mask up over her face when she passes anyone.  Think I might do the same. Just have to sort out that whole nose thing.

4.10 pm

The weird sensation of going from oh god no to okay we're doing this again. We know what we have to do. We know that it works. Here we go. 

The roads are already quieter. I’m looking forward to a clearer sky.