Observations on a lockdown by Tessa Duder

 ​tTessa Duder has written YA novels, picture books, non-fiction for children and adults – forty-plus books over as many years. She loves writing on a computer and gives thanks daily for emails and Google, but knows both the many benefits but also downsides of working from home. The lockdown period convinced her that Zoom meetings, while useful during those months, are not the brave new world, and she manages well enough without the strident voices of social media.
 
Lockdown is a pretty ugly word, don’t you think? Originally it meant confining prisoners to prevent further violence, then was applied to schools under siege; in the last few months it’s been whole populations to halt the spread of a dangerous virus. But I suppose quarantine or confinement aren’t much better and media prefer shorter words for click-bait headings. Lockdown it is.   
 
For many writers, whose working life, to make daily progress on a novel, requires them to lock themselves down, for days, weeks, months on end, I suspect I’m not alone in welcoming the quiet, uninterrupted hours ahead each day. School visits cancelled, writers’ festivals (much as one enjoys them and sympathises with their financial plight) cancelled, talks to Rotary/Probus/U3A clubs, concerts and theatre bookings, all cancelled. True, bookshops and libraries were closed, no walks on the beach, but we shared or re-read books and walked around the block instead, admiring the many dogs out and about. I watched more television than usual, great series like  Bodyguard and Endeavour.
 
Notwithstanding, did others of my colleagues also find they moved into a lower gear, accomplish fewer words a day than they planned? Did they also feel less guilty at taking time to sit in an easy chair in the autumn sunshine, and simply read: I took a whole month to savour every glorious word of Hilary Mantel's third Cromwell book, The Mirror and the Light, followed by Maggie O’Farrell’s equally impressive Hamnet and Becky Manawatu’s Ockham winner Auē.  
 
And the time taken to read and compare the online news websites (Radio NZ, stuff, the Herald, the Guardian, BBC, MSE) has been instructive. The weak links were gradually, inexorably exposed by a hyperactive press: a struggling Minister of Health, a tone-deaf opposition leader putting party politics above his country, a new leader who’s also shamelessly  politicising our current situation (everything a ‘shambles’ or ‘fiasco’ or ‘national disgrace’ but mate, look at what’s happening in Victoria or Brazil or the UK or most other countries!) Other politicians, mostly of the right, trying to discredit every government effort, committing appalling errors of judgement:  leaks, resignations, apologies, social media going bananas …
 
And the media itself in these contentious times, equally going bananas?  I became fascinated by their editors’ obsessive emphasis from Level 4 to 1 on the ability or otherwise of Kiwis to enjoy a beer or a frothy cappuccino. From the headlines and endless columns of comment, one could reasonably deduce that the worst deprivation suffered by this country concerned the protracted closing of bars, restaurants and cafes. 
 
Of lesser interest, apparently, was the plight of families coping with two parents at home, jobless or trying to work online, put food on the table, pay the bills, keep kids entertained/from killing each other. And what about the heroic efforts of welfare agencies, checkout operators, delivery drivers, medical staff and ordinary kiwis helping their old folks, their neighbours, their communities. 
 
The media saw no obligation to keep the populace regularly informed about when the libraries would open, the banks, the post offices.  That German family business, Bauer Media, showed no mercy in abruptly closing down some of our most loved and necessary magazines, for me notably the Listener and North & South, but also the women’s magazines enjoyed by thousands. No Diana Wichtel, Paul Thomas, Jane Clifton, Joanne Black et al, the country’s finest writers. I can live without fish and chips, even a daily flat white, but I’m finding it hard to be (probably) permanently deprived of my Friday morning lie-in treat with the Listener, cover to cover.
 
As the whole world re-examines every aspect of the society, culture and values that we’ve carried into the 21st century and so took for granted (global tourism, working hours, online work, schooling, to name a few), one recent Guardian story took my eye: ladies, ditch that bra!  Apparently we western women in lockdown (that includes me) have been enjoying the freedom of going bra-less! No longer do we feel obliged to hoist our boobs into a bra every morning. Except for energetic sporting activity, the tyranny of the underwired, engineered brassiere, constricting us since the 1930s, is over. The nubile, pointy ice-cream cone look from the 1950s is over. Hallelujah!