Splendid Isolation – 50

I wasn’t expecting to find more mailboxes but this wide-mouthed fish (or perhaps it’s a shark?) had to be done. We walked a low-tide passage along the shore at Rangihaeata, passing under high cliffs, over tumbled pancake rocks and through a forest of ancient tree roots rising up through the sand before completing the loop by road where this creation is.

Life has been busy so no time to post here recently. Nevertheless, I have been painting Lake Brunner, although instead of watercolour, Lake Brunner is a New Zealand Dulux house paint colour, a deep navy blue, on our son’s house!

We booked to fly home early next month only to have Emirates cancel one flight and change the next with no explanation. We suspect our flight was one where Emirates have completely removed all economy seats to carry freight instead. There were no economy bookings available until September, and no other acceptable routes with other airlines so we have used any credit we had from Emirates plus a lot of plastic, for the cheapest business class seats we could find later in August. We watch the situation in Ireland daily and the differences between decision-making about the need for quarantine there and here in New Zealand are striking. Time will tell if open borders and open pubs will create a new wave of infections.

I suppose No. 50 of my ‘Splendid Isolation’ series is some sort of milestone. We have been here 131 days today by my calculation, from the first ripples of Covid-19, through several stages of lockdown and back to a new normal. It has, and continues to be a difficult time for many reasons and life is never going to be the same for any of us.