On Writing a Covid-diary
The anniversary of my Covid-journal launch: April 2, 2020
It was in mid-April 2020 that I read a tweet with someone suggesting people start a Covid-journal, linking to Paul Daley’s piece in The Guardian, ‘We are witnessing a critical time in history. You should keep a diary.’
I had already started writing one, but I think reading these suggestions cemented my commitment. Globally, the official ‘day one’ was March 13, with the declaration of a pandemic, according to this piece in The Guardian. As for Victoria, this timeline of Victoria’s dates has our first official lockdown beginning at 0:00 on March 31, 2020.
In 2020, my diary stretched on and on, across 260 pages and 120,000 words. Little did I know that I would still be writing a Covid-diary years later.
This is how my Covid-journal/iso-diary began, on this day in 2020, with a few extra, unedited extracts:
April 2-reflecting back and onwards:
It’s been difficult for me to accept when ‘this’ started. Was it the first ripples in January, when Mark began to worry? Was it when they sent the private schools home to study, or when they finally shut the public schools down? When they first used the words ‘social distancing’ or when the toilet paper hoarding started?
Thoughts on keeping a diary have hovered, but in some sort of denial, I failed to make a start.
Some weeks ago, when we could feel the tide slowly rising, and we could just sense the world receding, I asked Mark in the midst of some testy altercation: ‘Are you alright? What’s wrong? Why are you so stressed out?’ and as he lay on the bed he said ‘I’m worried. This virus thing is going to be huge.’ This stopped me in my tracks a bit. It is so rare to hear Mark admit to worrying.
For some weeks he had slowly been buying extra supplies, just quietly stocking up on tinned goods, coffee, pizza bases, tomato paste, cereal, soap, curry paste. He knew what exponential increases meant, he could understand the curve–he’s an engineer, who uses spreadsheets, and he had little faith in our leaders to lead us. It was sobering to consider how we were at the mercy of ill-informed and dangerous men, in Australia, the UK and USA.
But he still got his gear ready for his surf trip, the road trip to Ulladulla that he had planned with mates. It was only the day before that he really began to question whether he should go: Tasmania had just enacted a border closure, making his parents out of reach unless he went through a two week isolation. That seemed serious. But somehow, he seemed able to justify heading off, and left at 6am one Saturday morning late in March. Within less than 24 hours, even while he was in the surf, he was considering heading back. He lasted about three days, and drove home again, ready to pack us up and head down the coast, where at least mum’s shack could accommodate four of us, and the dog, with less risk of conflict and tears. The lockdown had not yet started.
Now, we have transplanted ourselves to this new ‘home’, bunkered down at the shack, where the light comes in the full length doors, and the dog has a garden to run in. The kids have set up in a room each, and now, now I have put the tent up.
Mark is working from the dining table; Noah has a TV in his room and plays Playstation with mates, laughing and chatting with his headphones in; Maia is baking, watching movies and having video chats with friends, where they talk and laugh til after midnight.
I have found it hard to read. Each page seems like a mountain, and the book is put aside after a few distracted minutes. I want to honour this novel, The Yield, by Tara June Winch, so will start it when I feel able to focus.
I have found my days get lost in scrolling and flicking between social media accounts. I have decided to push some of my writing onto Medium, where it sits, with no notice, and me hoping I haven’t wasted it.
In good news, a Guardian editor contacted me to write up my virtual choir experience! So that gave me a piece to write, research, get quotes and copyright clearance etc. It took my mind off the day-to-day, and allowed me to dwell in words and music. It took a while to get from quick write-up to being published, but it did have a buoying effect, that feeling of a little lift coming. With its publication, 'Singing in dark times we can turn our voices to the light', I’ve had connections from people across the world: choirs in Brighton and other parts of the UK. Plus some lovely feedback and a happy choir family.
We have been taking the lockdown and distancing pretty seriously. Only Mark had shopped for weeks, until yesterday when I went to the tomato farm, sprayed my hands, picked fruit and veg, paid and brought it all home and washed it all in the sink. I have never done that before. Our mates up in the Upwey hills have been rinsing their fruit/veg in an iodine solution, so that did make me reflect: if they (scientists) are taking the virus that seriously, maybe washing stuff and wiping down packaging is not going too far? The virus lives on surfaces we have learned, especially on metals (door handles, trolleys, hand rails etc) but also on cardboard and clothing, so ‘better to be safe than sorry.’
Now, we walk Haze to the back beach, letting her onto her long lead so she can run into the waves. She seems to love the water. This morning she even body-surfed a little wave! The swell was ‘solid’, as Mark described it.
Ships in the morning haze still plough through the spray, heading to port with their cargo.
We ate well last night: roasted kipfler potatoes, scotch fillet, salad with goat’s cheese and avocado. Maia’s baking is filed in the pantry–chocolate brownies, cinnamon scrolls–and we are all working on planning our own dinner menu. Maia wants to do a chicken pesto pasta. I’ve made a cool yellow chicken curry, and am keen to experiment with leftover lamb: a lamb shepherd’s pie? Or do a chicken risotto, or a dish of noodles. Noah might mess with sausages? Mark has already made lasagne, bulk tomato sauce and stocked the fridge and freezer with ingredients. We have treats: chocolates, anzacs, cashews, cheese, gin; fresh mango, nectarines, lemons, local limes, capsicum, beans, tomatoes and the biggest bunch of basil I’ve ever seen.
The basil is in a makeshift vase, made of a measuring jug, keeping a protea flower company.
There is beauty in many small things: the way the light comes into the tent; the birds, so close to me, feeding in the wet soil; the magpies singing all morning from high places: light poles, dry branches of the gum tree, a TV antenna; wattle birds clacking, currawongs carolling, tiny wrens of yellow and grey, a mass of them flitting in the tea tree. An un-ironed tablecloth with embroidered flowers sits on the card table in the tent, half in sun, half in shade, with the sound of trees scraping on the wet tent material, back and forth, back and forth. The jangle of the dog’s collar as she runs around the garden, here large enough to run in, rather than a brick-bound back yard with no grass, tree or flower to relieve her, or me, from the sense of imprisonment.
Other things I have done since the shutdown: a Zoom author meet-up for ‘On the Street’ anthology; the fantastic live music session of Isolaid on Insta live, with fabulous musos doing 20 minute sets; a Zoom abs exercise class with local Elwood exercise guy, Josh, who has now gone online; a Facetime chat with a friend; and a Zoom fiction session with Charlotte Wood! And, of course, the weekly Melbourne Indie Voices Tuesday night session, which really has felt like a lifeline, for many of us choir crew.
One of the challenges now is getting wifi coverage in the tent, and keeping my devices powered. (Coffee and half a doughnut was just delivered. The service here is quite good.)
JUMP to December and one of the last entries for 2020:
December 13
When I started this ‘isodiary’ or journal in April, I had held off in some sort of suspended state, with disbelief as to what was happening in the global pandemic land. Our restrictions had started mid-March, around the time Alex died of Covid in London. At that stage, my friend Kath had been in house lockdown for weeks in Rome, and I had been aghast at the severity of their restrictions–they couldn’t go further than a km or so from home, and only for shopping or medical, had to carry a permit and they weren’t even allowed to go out and run for exercise. Months later, we were in a brutal and long lockdown.
December 31
We’ve ended our run of clear days. Thanks, NSW fugitives, bringing your northern beaches Covid strands to Melbourne for Christmas. Not content to flee NSW, these people gathered for Christmas, spent a full day at a local beach, went shopping at a huge shopping centre, went into multiple stores, went to cafes, and then, thank you very much, went to friggin’ Church! We have six cases now, flowing from the initial three announced yesterday. Some of the 50 or so close contacts of these people, who arrived Dec 21, have since spread across Victoria, to Leongatha and closer by, to Barwon Heads. Apparently the close contacts are isolating, but the fear is rising in our populace, after all the sacrifices made, that we will be heading into restrictions again.
So, from 5pm tonight, it’s back to masks indoors, and the number of people who can gather in your home is 15. People are freaking out on social media, about anxiety levels rising, how some are fleeing to Queensland and how one 9 year-old told her parents she couldn’t cope again if it got back to lockdown. We went through such a long and grim year. Luckily for us, there was some relief for us in being down here for part of it. But to think of how easily and quickly it can spread, and to think that it is a couple of towns away, when we just went there and gathered with a group of people, a few days after Christmas when the infection would have had a chance to spread around...yikes.
Now that the news has been announced, I’m feeling the urge to check websites, track down sources, get caught up in the conjecture and outrage and anger and disgust at politicians and the RW media and the whole maelstrom of our lockdown’s misinformation, malign motives and malevolence due to the Libs and elements of the media. It feels exhausting. And now, we wait. We wait to see if we can go back to Tassie, where Mark’s dad is about to have a spot on his lung investigated and his mum is on the verge of needing to go into care.
It’s a New Year. All I want to do is stay home tonight, really. When Maia asked what we were doing, and we said, ‘probably hang here and listen to records,’ she said ‘well, that’s just sad.’ But in fact many people, even before the outbreak of the last couple of days, were talking of staying in with a book, or a bottle of wine and a movie. It’s been such a year. We feel tired.
Both kids have headed into town for New Year’s Eve, but as the day unfolded, the restrictions were announced, so as for plans of parties and pubs, they get slapped with another reality check. When we told Maia she’d have to wear a mask at her friend’s place, she shrugged and said ‘oh, well, we’ve done it before,’ and when Mark rang to let Noah know that while he had driven to Melbourne the rules had been announced, his response too was ‘oh, well, that’s just how it is.’
Word for 2020? Shitstorm? Clusterfuck? Reset?
This morning I did a yoga practice on the lawn at Lon Retreat. I walked there past the low mooing cows. We had heard them bellowing the other day: MOOOOOOOO. The land looked across to the water, the light and the lighthouse. I drank it all in.
The wind was fresh, birds flitted around, a robo-lawnmower swept across the lawn, the sun rose to the left of the lighthouse, magpies propped on the rooftop and the roar of the waves buoyed me through.
When I felt flustered, I just held onto the waves. So loud. I allowed them to roll me when my body needed support, to move me when my body ached, to lift me when I drew in breath. At one point, while we were in warrior position, a moving building–a laden container ship–powered past the lighthouse, out through The Rip. What a vision, I thought, to watch the ships as I move my body through yoga movements.
Afterwards, I drank warm, soothing tea and spent an hour in mineral pools, of hot and cool temperatures–magnesium coming up through the limestone caves. I felt calm.
Ahead: another year. The fairy lights flare. Reset.
All photos taken by author © Anna Sublet
Oh this took me back!