Return of the Rona

(Photo from here)

It’s weird, but here we are. At 5pm yesterday there were rumours of a new community case in New Zealand—the first one we’ve had in something like 160 days. And then, on the 6pm news, the PM announcing that we would be going into a three-day level four lockdown. Auckland and the Coromandel (where the man traveled) are in a seven-day lockdown.

We woke up this morning to news, not all that unexpected, that there are four more cases, but all linked to the original case. I’d say the government is feeling pretty vindicated now. Plus confirmation that the original case is of the Delta variant. So, highly contagious, and in the community. Poor Sydney, being held up as an example of “a city to learn from.” All the things they did wrong, the delays in locking down. Now they’ve had an explosion of cases and are struggling to keep it all together. Think they’re in their ninth week of lockdown as a result.

So, anyway. The house is really quiet this morning; Steve’s commandeered my study downstairs to use for a meeting, and he’ll take it for the rest of the week to work. I feel a bit adrift from my wee posse downstairs, but at the same time I’ve already got a wee nook here in the lounge, where my laptop is plugged in, and my notebooks handy. Leila’s down in her room, having some “super-naughty” screen time. To be honest, if she’s happy during this whole upheaval, I don’t really mind. We’ll do some baking later on today. I’ve got a recipe for home made Oreos.

It’s raining. Quite nice to be locked down when the weather is bad. If it was beautiful and sunny it might be harder to bear. But frankly, being able to go into lockdown, and to have a government that is so invested in protecting its people, is a privilege. Something to be thankful for. We might be getting bad advice like all the weird waffle over in the UK. They’ve always been clear about thresholds and responses, and I love the way when it’s important they cut to the people with the knowledge - Professor Michael Baker’s as much of a household name as Siouxie Wiles as Ashley Bloomfield. Bet not many of them got a good night’s sleep last night.

One thing I did do last night was put in my Sunday grocery order. I just thought the online shopping thing—which we’ve been doing since the last lockdown—would in all likelihood get quite busy. Last time you had to order a week out. Someone even created a web tool to let you look up different supermarkets and whether they had any slots available. Super handy. Hopping on, all of the dates for the week looked like they were “closing soon.” So I had to quickly blag some sort of a list. I should have ordered eggs, and, Leila tells me, Coco Pops Chex. But I can get some eggs with the next milk delivery, that comes Monday night. We’ll live.

I’m writing this on ‘Tot,’ an app that everyone on MicroBlog was raving about. I wasn’t 100% sure about the seven tabs and things, but I like the idea of having this little green tab (the far right one) taking up some real estate for my lockdown notes.