Hillary Barry reading obits on TV

Diary of the last 24 hours and year.

4.45am

In an improbably huge hotel room, in Hamilton, an iPhone wakes everyone up.

Two trampers rise, hoist their packs and make their way down to the car to finish the drive to Auckland. 

Gather around, everyone, for the strange but true story of two Aucklanders who voluntarily chose lockdown.

We were sitting with friends in a fully stocked ski hut on the side of a moonlit Ruapehu on Saturday night when Twitter alerted us to the 9pm press conference.

Clearly it was not going to be Jacinda letting us know she'd finally got the Panda that John Key had promised us all those years ago and then just forgotten, like some deadbeat dad.

No, it would surely be lockdown time again and yep, that was it alright, starting in 9 hours’ time.

And hello what's this? Some bastard has his hand up to be Tethered Goat for the Team of Five Million. Behold as he visits people who have Covid even though he should be at home under level 3! Look on dumbfounded as he takes himself out and about when he's supposed to be in isolation! Feel your jaw drop as he takes his covid test then goes off to the gym!

Geez buddy, what were you thinking,  a charitable person might think. 

Less charitably: are you shitting me?

Yes, I’m imagining walking in someone else’s shoes, yes, I did dumb things when I was young, yes, what matters most is that people don’t feel in any way discouraged from  coming forward if they might be infected.

All the same, there are moments in this pandemic when your first thought is Fuck’s Sake.

All the folk wisdom is true: there's a sucker born every minute and there's nowt so queer as folk, and generally its a bad idea to put too much faith in them.

People can be disappointing and dismal and sharp-elbowed and selfish; they will not scan; they will not wash their hands, they will hurtle the Audi down to Whangamata before curfew; they will slip out to be with with their buds when they should be in isolation; they will not wear the mask, they will do all those dumb things. It’s best to plan accordingly.

5.01am

Trampers D and K are in the car now, and moving north apace, to tell it as Dr Ashley would.

You don't need to go that fast, Karren says and she's right. But you really don't want to find yourself in the sort of hours-long wait at the border they had yesterday

More than 23,000 cars, utes and trucks crossed over into Auckland at Mercer between 6am yesterday and 2am today. None could pass without being checked by a police officer, and this task was being performed yesterday by just four officers at a time, I understand. Please do correct me if I heard that wrong, but that's the way I heard it reported: four police officers to stop each and every car to verify they were entitled to proceed into Level 3.

One might ask: Dave, you could have stayed out there in level 2, what were you thinking, did you have nowhere to stay or something? The answer would be: well, no, we did, but work would not have proceeded smoothly on the side of a mountain with a weak 3G signal and no laptop. So home we went.

But even before the reports began, we had a wary eye on the traffic ahead. It can be shit enough at the end of an ordinary weekend, let alone with Covid restrictions, so we tweeted ahead to find out the state of things.

Not looking promising, not at all. 

We stopped in Hamilton, got Dan Dan noodles and dumplings and ate like kings and then trundled next door to a vast hotel room to rest up and watch poor Lindy Chamberlain have her life completely ruined. Because they can do that to you, the Australians, truly they can. 

5.10am 

Now we're on the Waikato Expressway and there are just a few cars and few trucks and I’m like Patty Loveless, hangin’ on to nothin’ but the wheel.  Who can say what lies ahead? 

We listen to Nate Rarere chatting with Phil Goff. Phil wants us to not lose our shit at people, that will only make things worse. Also Phil feels it was a bit regrettable, all those people having to wait four and six hours to get through a checkpoint, with kids and animals in their cars and no water and whatnot.

Who can say what lies ahead? 

5.50am

Well good morning, checkpoint of nightmares, how are you doing?

What you see here is the length of our wait, the light at the head of the queue is the police doing their work. 

In a couple of minutes we made the front of the line and as I fumbled with my mask - because we weren't in line long enough for me to both get it onto my face and also take a photo - the friendly officer asked are you headed for home?

We told him yes.

He asked do you have some photo ID and something with your address on it?

I handed him my licence.

He said thanks and asked and do you have something with your address on it?

I pointed back at the licence in his hand, and he said oh yeah right, and he read that I was a seaside villager in Level 3 Land.

All good then. Free to proceed across the line and surrender some of our personal freedom. Karren was left wholly uninterrogated, a visitor from Hawkes Bay for all they knew. But fortunately I’m not the kind of guy to disregard Covid protocol. Except when I’m too busy taking pictures. 

Here’s a question, though: did they not think it might have been a good idea to get a few more officers on the job? I heard they belatedly brought in some army and navy people but wouldn't it be a good idea to have a few ready to go for this sort of thing?

6.50am

Back into the seaside village we drive, back into Level 3, back to our house-sitting daughter who is going to share the bubble this week, back in time to hear a few more hours of radio about Lockdown Number 4.

Sure hope the water testing is giving us a good accurate reading, because so far it seems to be suggesting the virus hasn't managed to get very far.

Sure hope government support is enough for anyone who is feeling the financial hurt of another lockdown.

Sure hope we can keep the team united. There needs to be confidence. In a few ways these past couple of weeks, that’s felt a bit tested; a bit of a feeling that things might be rubbing a little bit raw, a bit of truculence.

For example: do we want things to get a bit stricter? Should transgressions have penalties?

We can say yes they bloody well should but we also know we have a big dilemma: what if that discourages people from coming forward?

It's valid debate fodder, something for people like Seymour and Bishop to gnaw on, but the crucial point can get lost: in the pandemic, there's no ideal and correct option, just a range of compromised possibilities.

Last year, as things were about to take off, we chose the least bad option: hard lockdown and elimination. Boy has it ever worked well for us these last twelve months. We shouldn’t lose sight of that.

Reader Deane writes:

I'm not annoyed by the reasons Auckland is in level 3 which is at least in part due to not being in Auckland myself. But it seems like the unthinking actions of the people involved are sort of explainable because we haven't had Jessica Mutch Mckay et al in full PPE walking around a hospital ward packed with people on ventilators or Hillary Barry reading obits on TV. Our experience of this as a country has been so damned good perhaps we've forgotten the Reaper

Anyway. Happy first New Zealand anniversary, Covid 19. Greetings, thrice greetings, you unloved piece of shit.

There’s a vaccine coming for you and we cannot get it into our arms fast enough.