Author bio: Rex McGregor is an Auckland playwright. His short comedies have been produced on four continents from New York and London to Sydney and Chennai. His most popular play, Threatened Panda Fights Back, has been produced over a dozen times. Website: http://www.rexmcgregor.com/
 
Tabby's Plague Diary
A perceptive cat notices changes in her home environment.

TABBY
Something’s up. The big one’s packed the cupboards with food. Much more than I can eat by myself. Hey, maybe she’s getting another cat. With any luck, it’ll be a tom. A live-in mate. That’ll save me from sneaking out at night.

Weeks later and still no joy on the feline companionship front. But the big one’s home a lot more. She’s packing cupboards again. This time, with piles of paper rolls. I remember having fun, unravelling one of those things when I was a kitten. The novelty soon wore off, though. Hey, maybe she knows something I don’t. Am I finally expecting?

No sign of the pitter-patter of tiny paws yet. But the house is bustling. Both the big one and the little one are here all day long. My saucer’s always full. And they keep my bowl topped up with tasty treats. Hey, I hope they aren’t fattening me for slaughter! Surely not. Then again, they are carnivores. When I play with a mouse, I enjoy lulling it into a false sense of security before swallowing it. Better be on my guard. 

Things are getting tense around here. The little one’s throwing tantrums and the big one can’t control her. Unless this is all just an act. To cover their evil designs on me. The big one’s started hiding her face behind a mask. But I still recognize her. She spends an excessive amount of time brewing a dark brown liquid. While she’s out of the kitchen, I’ll take a quick sip from her mug… Yuck! Bitter. There’s no way I’d drink enough of the poison for it to be fatal. I bet she’s refining the recipe to make it more palatable. Then she’ll spike my milk. After I’ve given birth, of course. So she can make a feast of my whole family!

I’ll never be a mother. I don’t have an estrous cycle. Something’s wrong with my reproductive organs. There can’t be a cure. The big one takes me to the vet regularly. I’m sure they’ve tried everything to help me conceive. Perhaps I’ve been unfair. Accusing them of seeking to harm me—when all this time they’ve been praying I’d become pregnant. That explains the extra nourishment, the toy paper rolls, even the little one’s tears. 

They both look miserable. Obviously heartbroken at my infertility. I’ll comfort them. Brush my fur against their legs. Tickle their cheeks with my whiskers. After all they’ve done for me, this is the least I can do.

Follow this link to a Zoom performance by Kira Hoag in Los Angeles: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RUpxHaEsyo&t

​
Pat Backley is an author, based in Auckland. She is a mother to one beautiful daughter. Passionate about people and travelling the world, she has spent seventy years living a colourful and interesting life and her books reflect these passions.
 
When we were plunged into our first lockdown in March 2020, I wasn’t particularly concerned. I thought it was just another virus, like the SARS outbreak. It would make headlines worldwide, then pass by, leaving us almost untouched. This was merely a blip, a rather shocking halt to our normal everyday lives here in Aotearoa New Zealand. Surely it would be over in a couple of weeks, when I had a big overseas trip planned and then we could get back to normal?

How wrong I was.
 
Every year since I emigrated to NZ I’ve travelled back to London, to visit my beloved daughter, my only child. This time I was also going to see friends in France, Morocco, Spain and Russia.
 
Instead, I celebrated my 69th birthday alone, in isolation, in my bubble of one.
 
I spent the first few weeks of lockdown lazing on the sofa, watching Netflix and eating far too much chocolate. I tried to avoid the news. It was depressing seeing how badly the rest of the world was faring. But it was also addictive. I found myself watching every news bulletin, even though they often made me cry.
 
Thank God for the internet, for Zoom, WhatsApp and Facetime. I could talk to friends, post messages on Facebook and Instagram and see how other people were coping.
 
It was a novelty at first. Not having to make any effort to go out, wearing comfy clothes all day long, but then the novelty started to wear off. I began to miss things: a cup of proper barista coffee, lunch with friends, hugs. For me, human touch has been the thing I have missed most during this pandemic.
 
Despair began to set in. I was worried about my daughter in London, things were dire there. I worried about my friends, some of them were quite elderly and susceptible to this awful virus. I worried about my close friends in Fiji. How would they cope if the pandemic ravaged their country?
 
Living alone gives you too much time to think. I now knew that my planned trip to see my daughter wasn’t going to happen. The world was in a terrible mess, the situation worsening daily. It was like living in a science fiction movie.
 
I was 69 years old and realised I needed to do something. And so I decided to write a book. I had never written a book before. Like many people I had dreamt of doing so, but life always got in the way. I sat up day and night for two weeks, frantically putting all my thoughts on paper. My first novel was published six months later.
 
Although Auckland is in level 4 again and the future is uncertain, I feel more fortunate than most of the rest of the world.  My beloved daughter chose to come home permanently and is now only thirty minutes away. We live in an incredibly beautiful country, with great beaches and kind people. Every day I feel grateful to be able to call Aotearoa New Zealand my home.

​





​
​Sandy Plummer has been a writer all her working life, but mostly a legal writer. She is quite new to memoir and the idea of writing about herself but is beginning to see some value in it, for herself, for her family and perhaps for a wider community, now and later.
 
Wednesday 18 August 2021 — Day 1 of Level 4 lockdown
When I was diagnosed with two cancers, in November and December 2020, I said that 2021 would be my lockdown year. I was thinking then that although other New Zealanders might be beginning to travel overseas again, my plans to travel, and celebrate a significant birthday, would definitely be postponed, as I had a full year of treatment lying ahead. I expected that 2021 would bring greater personal challenges for me than 2020.

As 2020 drew to a close it seemed that, as a country, we had pretty much dodged the virus. We felt lucky that mostly we had stayed safe and well and retained our freedoms, though confined within our own borders. Hopefully we were done with lockdowns and the first half of 2021 would see us all vaccinated. Throughout 2020 I’d been very concerned for family and friends in the UK and elsewhere overseas. They had all, thankfully, escaped Covid-19, but it had been a very tough year with the virus rampaging, case numbers and deaths out of control, hospitals overwhelmed.

We started the year in a good position, still Covid-19 free, but by 14 February 2021 Auckland was put into a snap level three lockdown. That same month the first group of 100 nurses were vaccinated but it transpired that vaccinating us all was going to take many months. I was vaccinated in June. My blood cancer and the chemotherapy I have been on decrease my immunity, so avoiding all infections is critical, not just Covid; any ill friend or a crowd of strangers are unwelcome.

From 1 March New Zealand was Covid-19 free but by early August the government had begun to say it would be ‘when’ not ‘if’ we have a Delta variant case in the community; eventually and inevitably our border controls would be breached. On Tuesday 17 August I visited the physiotherapist as part of my surgery rehab. She was talking about readying her business for another lockdown. Then I rushed off to meet my daughter, she had the day off after working Saturday in the hospital. I had bought tickets for a movie which I thought would be enforced, but enjoyable, rest time, for her and me, and it was. We sat in the lazyboy seats and ate our ice creams; there is something especially decadent about going to the movies on a weekday and in working hours. On leaving the theatre, discussing The Justice of Bunny King but also checking our phones, we learned a case had been found in the community and a lockdown was likely imminent, the Prime Minister would make an announcement at 6.30pm. We discussed going to the supermarket but had a cup of tea and a chat instead. I stopped for milk, fruit and vegetables on the way home as my fridge was pretty bare. There were around a dozen people filling our small local greengrocer when I arrived at about 5.30pm; we weren’t well-distanced. I wondered if shopping was a mistake, but one case and in Devonport, 25km away, I shouldn’t worry. I wanted bananas, there were none, I wanted broccoli, there was none. I took just one bottle of milk as there weren’t many left. The staff were restocking shelves where they could and reassuring everyone that they would be open tomorrow with more stock.

The Prime Minister’s announcement came. We learned we were to be in full (level 4) lockdown, just like March 2020, from midnight. The impact was nothing like the shock and disbelief of her first lockdown announcement in March 2020 but still it was sudden and would take some adjusting to.

On Wednesday morning I learned that a nurse at Auckland Hospital was one of the handful of cases discovered so far and that the hospital was ‘locking down’. I thought my hospital appointment would be postponed. I also thought I wouldn’t mind a break in nine months to date of constant tests, treatments and multiple medical and related appointments. I didn’t rush to shower and dress. At the same time I was concerned about my daughter who works across several wards at Auckland hospital.
By 10.00am I’d received a call to say my appointment was on, I was to see the haematologist and collect from the hospital pharmacy my week’s supply of growth factor injections preparatory to my stem cell collection. The collection would proceed next week as planned. What a relief, that whilst everyone but essential workers stayed home, my treatment would continue. But did I really want to attend a hospital in lockdown?

Postscript 6/9/21
Over 24-26 August and in level 4, the three-day stem cell collection took place and was successful. My cells will be frozen and returned to me, later this year, following powerful chemotherapy, and when, subject to bed and nurse availability, I rise to the top of the waiting list.

My daughter and partner completed fourteen days of isolation, entirely confined to their flat, having visited, briefly, while masked, a ‘location of interest’ shortly after the movie on 17 August.

My brother-in-law, in the UK, was laid low in bed with Covid the week of my stem cell collection but is now recovering, slowly. He and my sister had been double-vaccinated and were incredibly careful, but the incidence of Covid-19 in the UK remains high.

I was back at the hospital again today for my weekly chemotherapy injection. I didn’t want to go. Patients and medical staff were nervous already, understandably; and now an in-patient presenting with unusual symptoms that were not initially flagged had since tested Covid positive at Middlemore Hospital yesterday.

Hospitals are essential but not entirely safe places to be at this time. Although I have severely compromised immunity, I continue to interact weekly, if not daily, with the healthcare community, with staff and patients, despite Delta still being amongst us. I am pressured to carry on by the unspoken opinion of the professionals caring for me that the alternative, to pause or delay treatment, to stand still, is riskier.

​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.

​Janine is a scholar and writer in Aotearoa New Zealand, who has always been fascinated by the stories of others and builds this passion into her research and writing. During lockdowns, she lives in her family bubble with a pack of furry babies and gets creative. She’s an avid crafter who loves trying anything new (at least once!).
 
There is an ominous shadow inside our gilded Covid cage. I call him Ed. He’s growing bold again.
I’m prone to dramatic overtures, as my friends will confess, but I’m not being dramatic in this moment. Neither about the cage, nor about Ed. Our little bubble of three joined lockdown with dogged determination last Tuesday.We’ve learnt from the past not to panic buy, that the shops stay open for at least one of us to escape for a moment each week, and we all (pups included) relish a daily neighbourhood walk, sometimes two.

Our bubble wholeheartedly supports the public health initiative to stay home. We can find happiness hiding away from (or protecting others from?) the tyranny of the Delta strain. But making the close contact list is a whole new Covid experience. Locked. Down. Inside our gilded cage. With Ed. It’s a comfortable cage, a privileged one, filled with resources to see us through. But a locked cage nonetheless. For the most part we have coped remarkably well. I’ve certainly never been happier to drive for my Covid test and see the world once more even when its masked or observed from my mobile bubble.

But you see, there’s Ed.

Over years and tears we have wrestled with Ed in our home. He arrived in our daughter’s back pocket quietly one dark night. To my shame and regret, I didn’t even notice him living with us until much later. She was feeding her shadow quietly in the corners, keeping him hidden away from us by her own despair and inner confusion. I only noticed Ed when I stumbled into her room unannounced one night and saw the ravages of Ed’s appetite. You see, to feed Ed, for him to grow, she must get smaller, her body physically shrinks, her light diminishes.
 
Then we fought. And we fought hard. I begged Ed to leave her alone, I begged her to kick him out. And we watched her shrink, fading smaller and smaller, while Ed the shadow grew. The light in our home was slowly being overtaken by his arrogant confidence that he was stronger than her, bigger than all of us. But Ed doesn’t know my girl the way I do. On the ropes, in the final round, she started fighting back. We consider ourselves deeply blessed that we could access and find a medical team, including an eating disorder specialist who helped her finally confront Ed, see him for what he is. It’s not a matter of if, they said, but when he wins then his shadow will eclipse the last corner of your light.

Then she fought. And she fought hard. Years later, she exists in a healthier state. I give thanks every day that she is thriving in a carefully managed state of recovering. For type As like ourselves the idea of recovering as a perpetual state, rather than recovered as a completed task has been a lot to process. It’s a journey, of mental, physical and emotional agility. Ed has been contained in a corner, kept in his place for the most part, although occasionally he gets a little cocky and tries to push the limits again.
​
And then Covid came along and Ed’s arrogance grew alarmingly. I could see at the announcement of our first ever lockdown how she panicked. I was even more panicked when I saw her reach out, back towards him. No, I screamed on the inside, he’s not your comfort, don’t give him room to grow! It was a daily challenge, and we were constantly checking on Ed to make sure she was still able to keep him at bay, not letting his shadow overwhelm her again.

This past week of lockdown has been different. Locked in self-isolation, no one leaving the house, the vital outdoors, the fresh sunlight that we need to restrain Ed was harder to manage. All her coping strategies were severely limited, her anxieties heightened. Ed was growing bolder. A late night ping from a text and a negative result equals a positive outcome. A light switches on, Ed slinks back into place. Yet never fully evicted. So we sit inside our gilded cage as lockdown marches on, keeping a close eye on our ominous shadow. She’s won this round. But I worry, with a mother’s broken heart, about all the other shadows being fought or succumbed to all around our motu right now.  

​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.
 
 

​






























​Lora is grateful for her life. She dances for pleasure and writes for connection to herself and others.

Wednesday: the honeymoon phase. I feel my neck unclench and mind relax as I rediscover peace in having little to do but recalibrate. I do, however, have to buy supplies and my adult children have been on the phone, concerned about Coromandel’s hotspot status, making me promise not to go into the local Four Square. I had a dental appointment today in Whitianga and had let stocks ran low, depending on doing a big shop in the supermarket there. But it’s a do nothing day and all this is shoved aside.

Thursday I wake early and by six thirty am sitting up in bed with a coffee and my laptop, making an order for delivery from Countdown. It won’t arrive till Wednesday of next week, 3.30pm. There are only two things I need before then. One is butter for the sourdough loaf I made yesterday, the other is enough coffee.

Later, I contact my neighbour over the road. With her heart problem she doesn’t use much butter, but may have some in the freezer. I beg a small slice. Then, when in phone conversation with a friend in the next street I reveal my fears about the coffee situation, I am told not to worry. She recently ordered 2 kilos of coffee beans from Havana in Wellington. If I run out before Delivery Day, she can tide me through. Once again I send thanks to the universe for the fate which brought me to this friendly small town in my old age.

There is still some anxiety about fruit and veg, both a big part of my diet. The oranges are almost finished for the season and I often eat at least two a day, but I pick the rest and mentally ration them. There are greens in the garden, scant but enough, root vegetables in the cupboard and most of a bag of frozen edamame beans, bought one day on a whim. That night I make a stir fry with noodles and homemade sweet chili sauce. It is too late to take a photo when I decide that this will be a project, to create something from the random dry goods and the few cans in the cupboard and record it.
The next morning I find an unopened packet of black rice and cook it for breakfast Bali style with coconut cream from the freezer, a dash of maple syrup and feijoas from one of the small jars almost forgotten on a high shelf.   At night I recall a vegan recipe, made once for a gluten-free vegan, though I add some of my precious butter to the polenta this time and serve it for dinner with feijoa chutney. Tonight I intend to make black bean soup to share with my buddy in celebration of my negative test. By then I might just be ready to commit to writing the next part of my memoir, which has been simmering below the surface since the world shrunk and opened.

Jicca is a New Zealander who loves being home. She also enjoys ballet, photography, seeing family, watching birds, furniture restoration and has not yet fully topped up her annual quota of kiwi sweet treats after twenty  years of missing them while being away.

March 22nd 2021
One year on from arriving back here in New Zealand after many years away and I am in a journaling class. Fretting about not having recorded more of my first-year impressions after such a huge life change. But today is the official start of the second year and there is a balance of some sort in being here now. One year of experiencing what NZ is in reality, not just my impressions from short visits. And one year of emotional distance away from a traumatic personal exit from a UK battered by the cold winds of Brexit and Covid-19 and a harsh winter.

That first flight home London to Vancouver to Auckland, the sounds of border doors clanking shut all around me reminding me of the opening scene in the Get Smart tv series I watched as a kid. The agent steps through one metal door after another and they bang hard behind him, sealing off any opportunity to return.  I stood stock still at Heathrow airport terminal with my oversize bag holding twenty years of memories trimmed to the essentials. The Air Canada representative was saying I couldn’t transit Canada. (Air New Zealand had suddenly upped sticks and vacated their London base three days before) So I argued. I even pleaded.  She let me through. 

She had to.  I had needed to be home for some time, cried on leaving on each of my return trips home. I won’t return to the UK to live.  But this dissonance between the reality of my friends’ lives there and the safety of our lives here feels like a very jagged edge. Like the sharp spine of mountains we flew over on our way back from Fiordland last week. While we two are immersed in glorious adventuring, New Zealanders I love are trapped, anxious and very far away. Their trips home cancelled. Those of us that do make it home have increasing numbers of hurdles to traverse. When we finally touch down, like the migrating godwits who also flapped and flapped to get here, we are beyond exhausted, coming home to a land that does love but also fears us as potential carriers of the virus, at least for awhile.

Meanwhile we two do our own version of the Grand Tour —  Wanaka, Queenstown, Hawea, Te Anau and Manapouri, our eyes collecting a sunshine bouquet of lake vistas of blue, purple, silver and gold.  I can’t even process all the beauty of the last week. I am transformed like the European poets who first saw the Matterhorn and termed it the essence of sublime.
​
Piopiotahi (Milford Sound) was the moment of my sublime. From the immense carved rock bowls, deep green waters and stepped glacier valleys, I turned towards a shining sea and saw where the Alpine Fault exits the land. Suddenly I was really here, touching the electrifying backbone of this land I love so much. Nothing about my love of Aotearoa is surface anymore. I would physically hug her everyday if I could. Nothing about living here is ordinary. It’s an extraordinary place. So I plant my feet firmly in Aotearoa, arms wide open, balanced on the edge, seeing both sides, feeling the trembling earth of a constantly shifting world.  Maybe I just wasn’t ready to write before now.  Now my journaling can begin.

​Catherine is part of a loving family and community. She is part of a caring profession. Over the past several years she has experienced significant grief and loss in these integral parts of her life. These challenges have left her exhausted and in pieces. Catherine writes to unpack and reframe this experience. She writes to be. She writes to return herself to a whole being, to being her whole self. Writing accompanies and supports her journey.
 
I wake in the garden, feet planted. Water trickles gently down my arm, drips from my elbow. Morning weighs heavy with sunrise - soft pink to the west, yellow with intent to the east. Bees vibrate Om in middle “C” in my ears as I wander; out from sleep, beyond perception, through imagination and past creativity to memory.

This garden and its house arrived in our lives during a time of need, a desperate need, for rest and replenishment.  It was delivered as expected, in a packed auction room, alighting on raised hands, ours, the successful bidders.

An opportunity to breathe again but not for long. Pandemic locks down, trapping us between two lives, unable to leave the pain of one or enter with hope into the other. 
Four, three, two, we level down, safe passage is confirmed.
​
Time and space expand allowing us to rest and replenish. Earth turns a full rotation through the four seasons as we stretch out our tendrils toward each other in this place of hope and possibility.
Om in middle “C” echoes in my mind. Here in the garden, I am awakened to life and move to greet it, bathed in the warm yellow intent of each sunrise.