Deborah Shepard Books
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Conference Paper
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Writer's Stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
    • From Being Mentored to Book Publication
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact

In the time of coronavirus

A collection of stories submitted by the public on their experience of living through the time of the Coronavirus pandemic.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed our lives. Globally the scale of human suffering as a consequence of Covid-19 has been very great. Everywhere people are now reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global crisis means for us, as individuals, living in the 21st century. This forum offers a space for writers to reflect on their experience in Aotearoa and to consider questions such as: What might we need to remember and preserve? What has been my experience, my observations, how might my priorities have shifted, in a good way, as a result of the lockdowns? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort through any of the following life writing formats — journalling, nature writing, memoir, commentary, poetry, notes on work in progress during lockdown… — please make initial contact through my contact page. Next prepare a page of A4 writing, starting in the present moment and moving where you need to into the recent past and forwards from that point, with a title, brief bio, photo (optional) and your contribution will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

“Securing the memory of COVID-19 is the minimum we owe to each other in the aftermath of this catastrophe.”

Richard Horton, “Covid-19 and the Ethics of memory", The Lancet , 6 June 2020
Picture

I think I don't mind lockdown by Megan Hutching

31/8/2021

0 Comments

 
​Megan Hutching is a freelance historian, specialising in oral history. Her research interests are women’s history and political activism. Megan works on commissioned projects as an oral historian, and works two days a week at the Museum of Transport & Technology (MOTAT) in Auckland, where she lives.
 
I think that I don’t mind lockdown. I suppose it’s because I work for myself most of the time and, for that, I work from home. Having just listened to the Prime Minister tell us that Auckland will be in lockdown for another two weeks, however, and looking out the window to the rain that has stopped me from having a walk today, I’m beginning to think that I DO mind lockdown after all.
 
It has its advantages for a procrastinator though. Part of my work is recording oral history interviews. In order to make the contents of the sometimes-long interviews available, I write what we call in the trade, an ‘abstract’ – a time-coded summary of the recording that encourages researchers to listen to the original recording. For while a transcript will tell you what has been said in the interview, how different that sounds when you listen to the sounds of a person speaking, along with the laughs, the pauses, sometimes the anger and tears.
 
Anyway – abstracting takes time and concentration and is very easy to put off when I can be out and about, recording more interviews. Being at home means I have time to write those abstracts. And so I am. Somewhat resentfully and only after finding myriad unnecessary jobs to do to put it off, but I am doing them. And it is, of course, marvellous to be able to put a line through and tick off the names on my list. (I like to do both.)
 
Deadheading the violas in the pots on my balcony is one of the tasks I do when putting off abstracting. The little flowers of deep purple and lilac and yellow give me such pleasure, especially the ones with ‘faces’ on them. At the moment, I also have hoop petticoat daffodils (Narcissus bulbocodium) out there, dancing on the wind. I was talking to friends on zoom last night about the joy that miniature flowers give me. My mother, whose name was Iris, had many different miniature irises and I’ve grown miniature daffodils. My sisters and I ‘stole’ some of Mum’s miniature iris rhizomes after her house was sold and I grew mine in my garden when I was living in Bayswater. When I unexpectedly had to move, I dug them up – again – and one of my sisters is looking after them till I have a garden of my own once more. When my friends and I were talking about the miniature flowers last night, we decided that it was the doll’s house effect that makes them so appealing. The tininess of them and that they are a perfect replica of their larger sisters.
 
It’s been a lovely time to go for lockdown walks. There are two cherry trees on the verge outside my flat which, until today’s wind, were smothered in soft pink flowers. Now the grass underneath them is scattered with petals. There is a hedge of jasmine further down the road, rioting along beside a stone wall, and freesias and jonquils scenting the air. The bare trees are beginning to get a down of pale green and the evergreens, like the huge pohutukawa along the road, are sending out new shoots and getting themselves ready to produce flowers. 
 
And so, for me, despite two more weeks in internal exile, it feels a hopeful time of the year.
 
 
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    WRITING GUIDELINES

    Archives

    February 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020

    Authors

    All
    Abby Letteri
    Anissa Ljanta
    Anita Arlov
    Annabel Schuler
    Anna Fomison
    Brian Sorrell
    Catherine Moorhead
    Cath Koa Dunsford
    Cynthia Smith
    David Arrowsmith
    David Hill
    Delis Pitt
    Diane Brown
    Edna Heled
    Elizabeth McRae
    Estelle Mendelsohn
    Eva De Jong
    Faith Cleverley
    Fiona Kidman
    Fredrika Van Elburg
    Gregory O'Brien
    Helene Connor
    Jane Bissell
    Janet De Witt
    Janine
    Jeanette De Heer
    Jicca Smith
    John Adams
    Julie Ryan
    Keith Woodley
    Leigh Burrell
    Liz March
    Liz Wilson
    Lora Mountjoy
    Margo Knightbridge
    Marilyn Eales
    Mary Elsmore-Neilson
    Megan Hutching
    Michelanne Forster
    Paddy Richardson
    Pamela Gordon
    Pat Backley
    Philip Temple
    Piers Davies
    Rex McGregor
    Robyn Welsh
    Roger Horrocks
    Ruth Bonita
    Ruth Busch
    Sandy Plummer
    Silvia
    Siobhan Harvey
    Sue Berman
    Sue Fitchett
    Sylvia Nagl
    Tessa Duder
    Tony Eyre
    Trevor M Landers
    Yvonne Van Dongen

    RSS Feed

Deborah thanks Rangimarie Kelly and Pikau Digtal for website design and artist Karen Jarvis for her image ‘Writers at the Devonport Library,’ (2023)
Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
Your Writing Space
​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
​
Events
​About
Testimonials
What People Say

Media
​Contact
Copyright © 2023 Deborah Shepard
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Writing Life >
      • Reviews & Interviews
    • Giving Yourself to Life
    • Her Life's Work
    • Translucence
    • Between The Lives
    • Reframing Women
    • Tributes
    • Personal Writings >
      • Conference Paper
      • Lockdown Journal
      • Travel Journal
      • Elegy for a friend
      • Christchurch - Post Quakes
      • On a residency
      • Deborah’s Love Letter to the Women’s Bookshop
      • Deborah's Q & A With Unity Books
  • Writing Memoir
    • Defining Memoir
    • The Participatory Model
    • Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
    • The Value of a Writing Class
    • From writing course to book publication
    • Your Writing Space
    • Writing on a Theme >
      • Window
      • Surviving a Crisis
    • Reviews of Memoir
  • Writers' stories
    • Writer's Stories
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
    • From Being Mentored to Book Publication
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact