Covid Lockdown by Tony Eyre

​Tony Eyre, with his wife, Yvonne Fogarty, live in the harbour suburb of Vauxhall, Dunedin. They have four adult children and five grandchildren. Tony has been a chartered accountant in public practice for over 50 years and is also a writer specialising in creative non-fiction. He is currently working on a bibliomemoir, an account of his life as a book collector.

From our upstairs bedroom window, I have delighted in a hundred-year-old kōwhai in full bloom. It’s a busy tree on some mornings. A pair of melodic tūī do their usual breakfast ritual of feeding on its kōwhai flowers. A lone kererū perches statuesque in undistracted contemplation, and an unexpected swarm of tiny silvereye suddenly emerge from the golden blossom and dart off on their tree-to-tree circuit routine. Beyond this miracle of nature is the layered vista of the calm Otago Harbour, the inner-city high-rises and hillside suburbs and, depending on the weather, a blue or gray sky.

In pre-Covid times, this annual spring extravaganza of sun-infused fiery gold always seemed to last just a few short days before its blossom faded into a pale-yellow insignificance. But Covid lockdown has shown me different. With time to be still, rather than the usual day-to-day busyness of workday routine outside the home, I’ve continued this past two weeks to be spellbound by the performance of this magnificent old kōwhai, silhouetted on the skyline.

For three days of the week during the alert level lockdowns, my downstairs library reluctantly converts into a home office where I work with remote access as a chartered accountant, unable to operate from my 6th-floor business premises in the city. My floor is littered with client files; my communications with my partners, staff and clients is by phone and email; scanner and printer technology, reliant on home Wi-Fi, is not as reliable and efficient, and on one hair-pulling day my remote access software crashes out every four minutes. A midday walk along the harbourside with my wife Yvonne provides some sanity and a much-needed break from my sedentary home office routine.

Thankfully, on non-workdays, my office files are tidily stacked into a corner and my library transforms back into a warm calming place where I like to spend time reading and writing and to be encircled with books, like they are old friends, revisiting them often with affection. Naturally, it’s my favourite room in the house, further enhanced with vintage writing desk and leather and bentwood library chairs — and the subtle smell of books. A place to be still, whether in Covid lockdown or not.

---