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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.
We are now safely through the first phase of response to coronavirus in New Zealand and people are reflecting on what this major and previously unimaginable global catastrophe has meant for us, as individuals, in the 21st century. Globally the losses and the scale of human suffering have been very great. This forum offers a space to reflect upon the experience and to consider questions such as: What are we learning from the pandemic? What might we need to remember and preserve? Through the alert levels our prime minister said repeatedly, ‘Stay safe, be kind.’ What was your experience, what did you observe, what mattered and how might we re-imagine a better direction going forward? If you would like to contribute to the re-collective effort please send me your reflections, observations, journal entries, stories to my contact page... just a page of A4 writing, with a title and a brief bio and they will be added to the repository of important writings flowering in this space.

The search for knowledge is.. an exercise in reminiscence, that is, an effort to recall and recollect that which we once knew.

Ahsivai Margalit quoted in Richard Horton, “The Ethics of Memory,” The Lancet, 6 June 2020

My First Lockdown by Philip Temple

13/7/2020

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​Philip lives in Dunedin with his wife, author Diane Brown. He has written many books, both fiction and non-fiction, and some have won awards and fellowships. He has been a member of NZSA (PEN) for 50 years and fulfilled many roles, especially in the promotion of the Public Lending Right. Philip completed the second volume of his biography of Maurice Shadbolt, ‘Life As A Novel’, during lockdown. Although used to working at home, he found, like many writers, that news of what was happening to the world out there was a continuous pressure and distraction. In practical ways, it was not a problem. He had been in lockdowns before (see Diane Brown’s contribution) and wrote this short piece about the first one.
 
I was woken by the bangs, the screaming and the bellowing. Woken into a room so dark that I could not tell if the bedlam was within or without. I yelled and burst into tears, bawling, hysterical by the time my mother rushed into the room with a torch, plucked me from my cot and held me close, jiggling me up and down as she told me everything was all right, everything was all right, but then she dropped the torch and I could sense the doubt in her. Until the noise ceased suddenly and there was only a distant groaning. It’s just the cows, she said, just the cows. She put me back in the cot with soothing sounds, promising me warm milk. Soon all was dark and silent again.
 
In the morning she held me against her shoulder while she pulled back the blackout curtains. The sun streamed in on another warm autumn day. Everything outside seemed the way it had been the day before and the day before that. But I could not see the cows standing in the fields beyond. She told me they had been taken away now and there would be no more noises like the night before. I was not to worry.
 
Much later, when I could understand, she told me that the guns, the anti-aircraft guns, had been firing at the German bombers and pieces of falling shells, the shrapnel, had cut and wounded the cows. Some of them had died, and because of that they did not keep cows in those fields any more.
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Writing Memoir
Defining Memoir
The Participatory Model
Tips on Writing and Posting a Story
​From Writing Course to Book Publication
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​Writing on a Theme
Reviews of Memoir
Writers Stories
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Copyright © 2017 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 >
      • 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
    • Covid-19 Stories
    • Writing Guidelines
  • Events
  • About
    • Testimonials
    • Media
  • What People Say
  • Contact