Lockdown gave me time to think

HMAS Otway, Holbrook, NSW Australia. Photo / Christopher Cape

At the risk of being labelled a trendy lefty with the academic clout of a leaf of wet sea lettuce, let me share a few thoughts on my lockdown over the last few months.

In many ways life was not much different to life before lockdown except for the enforced safety measures. I did buy a 40-pack of loo paper but sanitiser was way too expensive. I also bought a three pack of pigskin riggers gloves from Bunnings and two packs of wet wipes from The Warehouse along with a four pack of pink Lux soap from New World.

Thirty-five years ago when I was a lab tech at DSIR I bought a carton of 40 Sunlight soap blocks. I've used one this time. I still have 32 left, ready for the next pandemic wave. I set up a footbath at the front door and sprayed my groceries with bleach solution or meths. I ate pretty well and enjoyed the sound of nature being revitalised. Life felt mundane and I didn't get frantically involved in housework or woodwork in the workshop as I'd planned. Instead, I felt the same way I have felt in past emergencies: knuckled down, fixated on the media and news, and drinking endless cups of tea or coffee, filling time eating and feeling doubly isolated even though my talkative cats loved having my company.

I've seen the World Trade Centre, Oklahoma bombings and 9/11, the London Tube terrorism, the Christchurch quakes, Hurricane Katrina, Boxing Day tsunamis, Haiti quakes and Aussie bush fires. Yes, and I was lonely. So much for Jacinda's phone a friend idea. Ha! I got one call from the local mental health, the place with a convoluted unpronounceable Maori name — and I'm not Maori — because I was a "senior citizen".

One call from the Anglican church because I was on their parish list. One call, on my birthday from a lady friend and one from someone up north because I'd left a message on their answerphone. Desperate, I rang people on a few occasions but it felt like I was intruding on their space. And New Zealand wonders why it has a problem with suicide and domestic violence.

So here I was with two cats, media personalities and news for company, staring at my TV like a possum in the headlights. I came to the conclusion, albeit in borderline nutcase fashion, that humans are self-centred and stupid, in the realms of power broking at least.

When I was young I used to think a round of ammunition was a bunch of bullets. Now I know a round is one bullet. In movies where do all the ricochets go in firefights? How is it that nobody gets hit by one? In newscasts shaggy haired or balding militia fire automatic rifles, wildly aimless, at something off camera. I priced ammunition at Gun City recently. A bullet costs about 20 cents to a dollar. Military rifles fire 10 per second. That's dollars per second! An RPG rocket costs $500.

The Middle East and Africa are desert. Their currency seems to be cattle and bullets. Where are the food crops? If those crops exist at all across Africa and Pakistan they're being devoured by 50 million locusts. Now locusts could be a brilliant food for humanity, roasted in honey perhaps — waxing biblical.

Perhaps we could reinstate cannibalism, echoing the sci-fi classic "Soylent Green" . Globally, clean air, sand and water are in increasingly short supply. Forests are being destroyed for money. The tide is full with plastic waste and political hot air. Meanwhile, the people starve.

You'd think human beings would be creative enough to invent ways to make water and green the desert, and quit wasting energy, brass, copper, silica, and life, but watching the dropping of Covid restrictions I doubt that that will happen.

It might take a few more pandemics before such common sense arrives — perhaps in the year 2525.