The view from my window: Bill Bailey

Bill Bailey. Photo / Supplied

This week, Canvas launches a new column with luminaries from the entertainment world talking about what they see from their window, literally or figuratively. First up, comedian Bill Bailey looks out the window of his central Auckland hotel and talks about life beyond lockdown.

You look out and get the sweep of the city, all the boats bobbing in the harbour. you get a sense of the proximity to the ocean, the greenery, there's the low-lying nature of the topography, quite modern builds everywhere. It's very typical of a lot of cities in the Southern Hemisphere, quite modern-looking, feels new, like a place that's regenerating all the time. It's a place of opportunity in many ways.

Coming out into a busy, bustling street in Auckland where people are sitting in a cafe, enjoying just a completely normal, everyday scene, was quite shocking and almost alien. I didn't quite know what to do. I got to the hotel and someone offered a hand and I sort of flinched away. I'm avoiding people, trying to get 2m back from everyone and thinking about wearing a mask. We just got so used to that [in the UK]. We would have masks everywhere: masks in the car, in pockets, all around the house. It's been quite an extraordinary experience being out and about."

I ordered a coffee. Just that. I sat in a cafe, ordered a coffee and I looked at it. I took a picture of it. This is the most decadent thing I've done in a year. It's the most normal thing to do and that's what most people I speak to crave. It's not this, "Oh! Can't wait to go clubbing again!" or go out to Ibiza and go on fancy holidays. No, it's not that. It's just the everyday normal stuff we've been denied.

I was quite lucky in my isolation, in the MIQ. I was billeted in a place out by the airport and it had a little balcony, which, having spoken to a lot of other people, I probably did better than some other people who couldn't even open a window. So I was able to sit out on the balcony and there were trees. There was an apple tree outside in a little garden and there were some palm trees. There was outside space. I took so many pictures of this view, at different times of the day - first thing in the morning and then there'd be one in the rain, then there's one at sunset - and I'd put a little montage together and it managed to frame the day.

I had my camera with me, my long lens, so I was able to photograph various birds and lots of birds came to the balcony. I fed them a muffin every day. These birds figured out there was a good feed to be had, so they all lined up on the handrail waiting for their breakfast. Then one day, it was about a week in and I'd had a lot to do, occupied with various things, Zoom calls and meetings and I was writing music as well and had a deadline. There was a lot of activity, so the time went quite quickly. Then it got to the end of the week and then I thought, "Oh God, it's only halfway through. Another week of this." By about day nine, 10, I was starting to get a bit browbeaten by the whole experience and institutionalised. I sat on the balcony one afternoon and a monarch butterfly just flew over the trees, sort of flitted over the trees and it landed on a branch just in front of the balcony. I sort of took that as a sign.

It was a wonderful little moment. More and more these days - perhaps it's an aspect, a feature, a consequence of lockdown and this sort of existential dread that we felt, that we ascribe more symbolic importance to little things. I think maybe that was it. I just thought this was a sign and it was to get me through the next couple of days. And then it came again the next day, returned the next day and I thought, "Yes, you realised the good that you did yesterday and came back again today." And that kept me going.

I do think we are creatures who like to ascribe these things and perhaps we have become less so in modern times. We've become quite sort of cynical about these things, about signs and portents, whereas our previous selves, our incarnations, our ancestors, they would most definitely give importance to these things.

I think a lot of people have changed, have been changed by [lockdown]. I've seen that there's been a lot of literature, a lot of people have written books about birdsong, about the sustaining power of nature. There's a degree of comfort people get from it.

As told to Greg Bruce

Bill Bailey hosts Patriot Brains, Wednesday 7 April, 8.30pm, TVNZ 2.