It was the least of times. Nothing happened, continually, slowly, dreamily — the Great Lockdown of 2020 was the land of the low white cloud, settling over New Zealand like fog. So much of it was lovely and quiet and strange.
On walks around my watery neck of thewoods, Te Atatū peninsula, I kept seeing the 131 bus and the 132 bus going to and from our peninsula island, with absolutely no one on them except the driver — they were like a ghost bus. They didn't stop to pick anyone up. There was no one to pick up. But all day and into the evening, the 131 and the 132 sailed on, a Marie Celeste of the empty road.
I guess it was on the chance that someone would need to go somewhere for a very good and useful reason. There were two kinds of people in lockdown: essential, and inessential. Most of us were inessential, a kind of mass nuisance. We had no good and useful reason to leave the house other than to get a bit of exercise and to stand in a queue outside the supermarket, where essential people worked at risk of death.
Sophal Bun (right) taking her boys Andrew and Willliam, both 8, for a walk in New Lynn during lockdown. Photo / Alex Burton
God it was horrible going to the supermarket. There was nothing lovely about it. The dreadful silence, the raided shelves, the little shuffle everyone made to avoid each other — we needed a villain to relieve the tension, and fortunately along came that idiot who filmed himself strolling along a supermarket aisle and coughing at customers. Amazing no one decked him.
He probably won't be remembered. The daily 1pm show presented by Jacinda Ardern and Dr Ashley Bloomfield will be remembered. I like Simon Bridges and felt for him when he got rolled after lockdown but it was actually kind of like totally impossible to imagine him leading the country through Covid-19 in anything like the manner that Ardern assumed. "Be kind," Ardern chanted. "Be strong." They were very good slogans and touched a deep sense of New Zealandness.
We were duly kind and strong. There were a hell of a lot of good vibes around the neighbourhood as Kiwis set off on their daily walks that took them not all that far. The New Zealand way of life is at once to take things seriously and to take them with a pinch of salt. All due care and caution were displayed but there was a sense of humour at the edge of everything, a she'll-be-right, a laugh at our own expense. We were a nation of hermits but laughter could be heard in a great many caves.
A couple walk their dog during lockdown at Te Henga Bethells Beach. Photo / Michael Craig
Two police officers knocked on the door of my cave during alert Level 4. A neighbour was worried: I'd left the garage door open, and she thought that might be a sign I was, I don't know, dead. "You seem fine," the officers confirmed. I asked them how it was going out there. I said I'd read that lockdown had led to a spike in domestic violence. No, they said, they hadn't come across much of that. "There's been a lot of bickering, though," they said. "Families, bickering."
Great if that really was the worst of it. We can put the lockdown behind us now and get on with what remains of our livelihoods but the truth is that we lived through something incredibly scary. The daily scoreboard reduced things to the frightening power of numerals. Over 100 new cases by March 23, the first Covid-related death on March 29, over 1000 new cases by April 5 . . . It was coming to get us. It got us. It killed 22. How many parents were asked by their kids, "Are we going to die?"
Every parent said, "No." And in fact lockdown was a prolonged happiness. There was no rush to get anywhere, the weather in Auckland was golden, apparently Tiger King was quite good. New Zealand, on vacation; New Zealand, our island life in 2020 just as it was in 1891 when Kipling came here and wrote in our visitor's book, "Last, loneliest, loveliest." The ocean was our border. The tyranny of distance was a jolly good thing.
Life, then, after lockdown: it's all about money and jobs, and the frightening power of numerals will no doubt continually update figures of unemployment, debt, and various assorted states of financial collapse. Yeah good one. But the worst is over. We gave death the swerve. The virus came to New Zealand but it was closed.
So long to the lockdown. Hooroo. Good riddance, basically. I do and I don't want to remember it. I don't want to see the sickly Covid colour scheme of yellow and black ever again; a pox on the road signs, bumblebees and a certain bank. But I like to think back to the tranquil and meditative state of the alert levels. In a strange way it was New Zealand at its best.
