Land ahoy, or the end of Lockdown.

The figures are dazzling

The figures on new infections,  number of deaths, those in hospital and those in Intensive Care  Units with a finale of those under ventilators followed by a dazzling display of high tech visuals giving stretched-out a moving image of green lines across a blackboard backdrop of both single and double vaccinations are given in daily front line news. There is no escape and we are locked-downed into this while wearing masks and staying the distance between humans that still move on legs.  

There was a moment whereby the news would shift away from all those numbers and graphs when the Taliban (Afghan people) took control of Taliban Country ( Afghanistan). Alas it did not take long for the news to revert again to the previous diet of pandemics presented by sweaty newsreaders and beady eyed politicians. Not a sliver of positivity was allowed to enter the news and even the Paralympics did not really cut through the thickness of Covid and stretched out patients with blaring ambulance’s sirens. Still, the Afghanistan and Paralympic diversion was nice while it lasted

In the meantime the parks are full of people walking their dogs and children. The proliferation of tricycles and mopeds a noticeable addition to the usual tangle of dog leads and poop filled garbage containers which the councils had the foresight to enhance the public parks with. Our way of dealing with dog droppings would have to be the best in the world as well as our civic obedience in accepting lockdowns week in-week out, months in – months out. A remarkable example of the normally anti-authoritarian Aussi. Almost overnight dogshit has left our footpaths and public areas and no one bats an eyelid watching the melancholic task of a dog owner carefully wetting his fingers and opening the plastic bag, turning it inside out and then stoop down to deftly pick up the shit and reverse the procedure under the curious and watchful eye of the dog, and carry the filled bag to home or the nearest garbage bin. The dog must really be pleased how he managed to train the owner so well

Anyway, the end of lockdowns will now happen when between 70 and 80 % of people including children above 12 years have been fully vaccinated, which is projected to be around the middle of November. In the meantime my strategy is to continue walking and walking, talking with my friends at the local Bradman Cricket oval. A world famous oval as shown by the busloads of Pakistanis , Indians Afghanis and many other cricket loving tourists that came here by the thousands during the pre Covid era.

I wonder if there will be any sort of  post Lockdown effect or hangover. Will some people need counselling to get used being close to others again, able to converse and use speech and gestures needed to renew social intercourse. Have some of us become addicted to ‘keeping space and away from each other’? We are told that masks will probably stay. Oceans already are awash with plastic and no doubt those blue mouth masks being discarded in our sewage and on the streets will find themselves being entangled in turtles and fish, mammals and wash up on our shores. How long does it take for those masks to disintegrate?

Covid has a lot to answer for but the end is nigh.

A take on Brexit. Should we follow with Libexit?

Rain

Too good not to pass on. By Richard O’Brien (from his Facebook page):

“So the nation that invaded and colonised Aden, Anguilla, Australia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Basutoland, Bechuanaland, Bermuda, British East Africa, British Cameroons, British Guiana, British Honduras, British Somaliland, Brunei, Canada, Cayman Islands, Ceylon, Cook Islands, Cyprus, Falkland Islands, Fiji, Gambia, Gibraltar, Gold Coast, Grenada, Hong Kong, China, India, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Kuwait, Malaya, Maldive Islands, Malta, Mauritius, Montserrat, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Nigeria, North Borneo, Nyasaland, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn Islands, Samoa, Rhodesia, Sarawak, St Helena, St Lucia, St Vincent, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, South West Africa, Sudan, Tanganyika, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Trucial Oman, Turks and Caicos Islands, Uganda and Zanzibar has voted to leave the EU, potentially sparking a global financial crisis, because they thought their sovereignty was under threat.”

The Himalayan salt revolution.

It just had to happen. Aldi is selling Himalayan salt. People are queuing up and a special isle (nr3) has been set-up to cope with the demand. No one wants to be seen serving food at their Christmas turkey laden tables without this special pink salt. Just imagine the ignominy of it? It started in the US; where else? Since then it has taken a foothold in Europe. I have been told the salt has, since last week, spread to Latvia, Lithuania and even Estonia. Pink salt waves are swamping the world.

This salt has magic healing properties. A lame man was seen rising from his bed after just a single sprinkle of this magic salt on his eggs, sunny side up, after years of living horizontally. Special trace elements are imbued in this salt. Cooks now swear by it and no restaurant worth their salt would dare to serve food without this Himalayan salt, mined in Pakistan. Corns, sciatica, vertigo and nervous dispositions are all curable. No parliament subject to limp indecisions can afford not to have those pink salt containers on their front benches. As soon as a hiatus is reached, the opposition will just walk over to an obstinate senator, and sprinkle some magic salt.

Of course, this iron oxide laden pink salt has to be combined with serving food on wooden slabs. No one seems to know exactly if the wooden food platters came first or if the magic pink salt can lay claim to that distinction. We had our first experience with the food on a wooden slate in a Bowral pub well over a year ago. I though it was a mistake and that a carpenter was perhaps helping out with timber off-cuts.  Perhaps the pub’s ceramic plates were in the dishwasher, who knows? It was well before the pink salt period.

It was difficult to eat from this wooden platter. It’s shape had a protruding handle to hold a grip on when the buzzer announced the T-bone was ready to be picked up from the counter. As I like my meat rare, it took careful balancing not to dribble the juice over other diners while walking with it back to our table. Once seated, I built a little dyke around my T-bone steak with the clever use of arranging the chips tuck-pointed with the tomatoes. It stemmed the flow. Helvi did not have any things flooding over, as she had ordered a pizza, the Napoli special.

Since then the Himalayan salt containers and wooden serving platters are now everywhere. No restaurant use normal salt or silly ceramic plates. The diners nod knowingly to each other and we are all  now so terribly ‘in’. We joined the real world and nothing scares us now.

In between all this chaos in salt and wooden platters there is the Himalayan salt rock lamps making inroads in our interiors. Positive ions emitted from those lamps cure those suffering from the more mental afflictions together with those with dark or grey marital unevenness. The person suffering from clear-sighted despair, the hopelessly addicted to moodiness and heavy thoughts are best advised to turn those lights on next to the book case or even the TV.

Not even Isis will make an inroad. We just sprinkle them with special salt, turn on the salt rock lamp and hurl wooden boards at them. That will teach them a lesson.

We have won.