Nearly 3 weeks into Level 4 response in New Zealand: no one has gone crazy. People are still polite, keeping their distance while walking on sidewalks or in parks, and not overshopping in grocery stores.
My AirBnB host delivered a bicycle to us a couple of days ago, and how wonderful it is to glide through the quiet streets. Very little traffic, glorious early fall weather, friendly people, big parks. While pumping up a tiny incline I passed a woman who encouraged me by chanting “Pedal! Pedal!”
Note to self — get back to exercising. No way should a footpath bridge arcing slightly over a 30-meter wide stream require any kind of adjustment in my pedaling.
Otherwise keeping busy with hand-crafted projects (embroidered NZ-themed bookmarks for readers in my family), reading (1/4 of the way through Little Dorrit, plus finished Evelyn Waugh’s Decline and Fall and Black Mischief). Satire for these crazy times, and surprisingly apt. Black Mischief gives us a remarkably incompetent ruler, and in Decline and Fall we find a truly dreadful English public school. One of its teachers, while in prison, learns something:
… one of the first discoveries of Paul’s captivity was that interest in “news” does not spring from genuine curiosity, but from the desire for completeness. During his long years of freedom he had scarcely allowed a day to pass without reading fairly fully from at least two newspapers, always pressing on with a series of events which never came to an end. Once the series was broken, he had little desire to resume it ….
I’m not exactly “in captivity”, but I certainly understand Paul’s relief at being out of the loop. It’s bliss.
Lizzie Ross 
Lockdown in N.Z. ! It doesn’t sound too bad after all. At least you can ride a bike. Here , after 5 weeks on lockdown, we are stuck at home and I am allowed to walk for a max of 200 meters around my block. Stay safe and wish you a Happy Easter. 🙋
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And a happy Easter to you as well, Steffi. With luck, NZ will be spared the worst of this. My daughter and I are lucky to be here.
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The most important thing is that it seems to work here, the lockdown 🙂 people understand the need for the measures and keep to them.
The NZ-themed bookmarks sound interesting! Care to share a picture, Lizzie? 😀
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I’ll post a photo when I’ve finished all of them, Ola. Flora and fauna and Maori weaving patterns. 😊
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Hour long walks in sunshine are good for mind and body here, Lizzie, but it’s a bit too hilly for us to feel the urge to cycle. (In fact, since moving five years ago the bikes haven’t left storage in a shed.) A half-hour stomp uphill on quiet roads is compensated by a gentle slope down back home!
And it distracts from the incandescent anger we feel against the immoral neoliberal government who’ve ensured that the UK is in line to have the most deaths per 100K of the population from COVID-19.
When all this is over I hope their day of reckoning will come, even though it won’t bring back those who’ve needlessly died before their time: 10,000 deaths here compared with, what, NZ’s one? Have I understood that right? Even allowing for NZ’s smaller population?
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I believe it’s up to 4 deaths now, Chris; still amazingly low, thanks to NZ’s PM.
There are a couple of parks nearby, but true countryside is too far, even on wheels, so I’m enjoying your photos.
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This is awesome and so glad you are somewhere safe as well as sane. Stay well.
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Thanks, Janet. The sanity here gives me hope.
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I have been wondering about you….happy to be out of New York or sad to be away from home? Though I bet one can feel both and more.
Also, my daily bike rides are saving my sanity when the low moments strike!🚴
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So true, Laurie, about the mixed feelings. Only the amoral heartless ones will get through this unscathed.
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