Watching the news, post-leftover venison pie, with mash and peas. Sounds like a boring meal but it was so hearty and tasty. Thanks Dad for the venison! News tonight: lockdown getting pushed out again until Friday, the 27th. A couple of new cases in Wellington, but surely we are getting near the point where people are now in lockdown and the spread is seriously curtailed.

Today we were all pretty tired, on account of a bad night last night. Yesterday Moo was quite sick with a stomach bug. She threw up and had a fever…and then in the morning it was as if nothing had happened. Steve was wondering if he somehow passed it on to her from work last week. It’s so hard to know what the right thing is to do with this sort of situation. Covid? But we haven’t gone anywhere, even in the last week before lockdown. The symptoms weren’t right. But you still feel guilty for thinking, maybe I’ll just wait and see?

In any case we’re all home, not going anywhere.

What did we do today? Leila and I made yoghurt…we played Oblivion. We also played Broom Service, the board game. We did some online schoolwork. And I got in some Utopia work too. I’m all caught up now, so that feels good. I still haven’t had the brainspace to work on any of my own fiction though.

(later)

I also played a couple hands of Friedman Friese’s “Friday,” which was pretty good, but I found I couldn’t much get into it as I have in the past. Lockdown is just so strange. Some days just drag, but already I’ve noticed that a day can slip by here and there; case in point: yesterday! I was thinking I’d be able to write one of these every day (last lockdown was hopeless for journalling), but I’m finding it’s harder to get to it than I thought it would be.

I didn’t mention it earlier, but I finished reading China Mieville’s Railsea a few days ago, and absolutely loved it. I loved his whimsical writing style (chatty, talkative, and yet not irritating), the worldbuilding (so good), and characters. People “go to sea” on trains rather than ships on an ocean. Strange creatures come up from below. They want to eat you. There’s a mystery about the world “before,” of course, which is also really well done.

I also got out for a walk at lunchtime, which was good. Steve’s been told by his work they can use a “childcare” timecode whenever they need to. Everyone was wearing masks, apart from one man who gave me a really wide berth. There were heaps of seagulls down on the beach, including a handful of the young grey ones that make that plaintive sound and chase the adults around. Poor little things.