Steve Braunias: Share and share alike

A delivery of care on the doorstep. Or is that Covid ...? Photo / 123rf

Everybody knows someone who knows someone else, and so it goes, all the way to lockdown. It's like the great joke by Billy Crystal at the 2004 Oscar awards when The Lord of the Rings won everything: "It's now official - there is nobody left in New Zealand to thank." All nations share in the glory or the tragedy of the few but New Zealand operates at a level where we all know someone who knows someone who knows the glorious or tragic few. That's the thing about Delta, it doesn't have to go far to spread.

Everybody knows someone who knows someone or actually is that someone among the 15,000 (as of Tuesday) close or casual contacts. Jacinda whipped out at a map at her 1pm conference! There we all were, the regions, the provinces, the towns, the quiet suburban streets with their tidy front lawns and birdbaths and letterboxes – the contact tracing representative only rings twice. It was such an intimate portrait. Yoo-hoo to the West Coast! Has it stopped raining this year? Shout-out to Manawatū-Horowhenua! Are the crops okay? Jacinda's map presentation on Monday made it official – there is nobody left in New Zealand who isn't a contact of a contact.

Jacinda's map presentation on Monday made it official. Everybody knows someone. Photo / Pool

Everybody goes to the mall, and a great many are now registered as Locations of Interest. I've always regarded malls as Locations of Deep and Enduring Happiness. I think fondly back to Christmas 2019 when I wrote a long, cheerful story about malls, based on my visits to malls at Royal Oak, Onehunga, Newmarket, Botany, Kelston, Manurewa, Glenfield, Takapuna, St Lukes, Sylvia Park, New Lynn, Manukau, Albany, Milford, Pakuranga, Henderson – it was the happiest fortnight of my consuming life. But when we went to the mall in August, we shopped for Delta.

Everybody goes somewhere. There was a cuteness to the range of human experience that first week of lockdown when it was revealed that someone who tested positive was at SkyCity casino till 1am on Saturday night and the next morning went to church. But mostly the Locations of Interest are an index of busy little errands. Someone at the BP Service Station, 94 Bridge St, Bulls. Someone at Pak'n Save, 78 Rongotai Rd, Kilbirnie. Auckland put a little bit of glamour into proceedings when the health ministry identified the Mitre 10 2021 Awards ceremony at Spark Arena and the Bayleys Real Estate national conference at the same venue. People on TV were involved!

Everybody knows people on TV. I was moved when one of my neighbours, a TV gameshow host and former politician, got in touch to see whether I wanted her to drop off some baking. Yes please, I said. I was out foraging for firewood and came back to find an icecream container at my doorstep. Inside was a third or maybe half of a lemon meringue. God, it was good! I expressed my undying gratitude and the next day she said she was going into self-isolation as someone who had attended one of the Delta incubation jamborees at Spark Arena. I expressed my deepest sympathies and ran around getting rid of the goddamned icecream container, wiping down the surfaces it had rested on, washing my hands, and finishing off Paula's lemon meringue.

Everybody is in this together. All of us have gone through the litany of Locations of Interest and seen how close we came to dodging a bullet at such hotspots at Snap Fitness on 22 Stoddard Rd in Mt Roskill, on Bus 007 from Glen Eden to Green Bay, in Stats 101 Room 115 OGGB Lecture Building 260 Fisher and Paykel lecture theatre City Campus University of Auckland. My daughter asked a few weeks ago, "Do you think we'll have another lockdown this year?" She had come to the right person. A lifetime of experience has led to wisdom and a profound understanding of the way things work. "Nah," I said. But here we all are, pretending to be hermits. A team of five million shut-ins, not in the mood to socialise, all dressed down and nowhere to go – New Zealand, c/- home.