Surviving the pandemic – notes from the plague years September 2020-November 2021

During the pandemic I have become an expert at many new things - early morning raids on enemy supply lines to ensure the household has adequate food supplies, masks, sanitiser, avoiding others, especially the ones I don't like. It's risky – I see that small bands of foot soldiers in the service of assorted warlords are roaming the streets, though luckily in the far South and not here. Sometimes I feel like one of those ancient Vikings heading out from the fjords of Norway to plunder distant shores – today Lindisfarne, tomorrow Sonoma Bakery.

Surviving the pandemic #1 – Early morning raids
During the pandemic I have become an expert at early morning raids on enemy supply lines to ensure the household has adequate food supplies (and alcohol) for our troubled times. It's risky – I see that small bands of foot soldiers in the service of assorted warlords are roaming the streets, though luckily in the far South and not here.

I'm wearing my protective armour

Sometimes I feel like one of those ancient Vikings heading out from the fjords of Norway to plunder distant shores – today Lindisfarne, tomorrow Sonoma Bakery. Unlike them at least I pay for what I take – only on card of course.

Humorous updates on creativity and culture an email away

After many decades working across the Australian cultural sector, I have been regularly posting to my suite of blogs about creativity and culture, ever since I first set them up over 10 years ago. You can follow any of the blogs through email updates, which are sent from time to time. The app that I have used for this is shutting down the feature, so I have found a replacement, ‘follow.it’. If you don’t already follow my blogs and you want to take advantage of this new service, you can simply add your email address to the blog page, and then confirm that you want to receive updates when you receive the follow up email.

There are four blogs in all, covering the gamut of creativity and culture; humour; food and cooking; and creative writing. ‘indefinite article’ is irreverent writing about contemporary Australian society, popular culture, the creative economy and the digital and online world – life in the trenches and on the beaches of the information age. ‘balloon’ is thought balloons for our strange and unsettled times – brief quirky articles about the eccentricities of everyday life, almost always with a sense of short black humour. ‘handwriting’ is homegrown graffiti from the digital world – writing, rhyming and digital animations; ‘tableland’ is food and cooking from land to table – the daily routine of living in the high country, on the edge of the vast Pacific, just up from Sydney, just down from Mount Kosciuszko. The blogs are complemented by two briefer social media channels – indefinite article on Facebook, which is short arts updates and cultural commentary; and Twitter, short, sharp and shiny.

If you want to make sure you don’t miss any of my updates, simply select the blogs you are interested in and set up the update by adding your email. For ‘indefinite article’ on Facebook or for Twitter simply follow or like my feed.

Early onset forgetfulness – what day of the week is it?

There used to be a time when a test for dementia amongst the elderly involved a series of questions. The first one was ‘who was the Prime Minister of Australia?’ After one too many leadership spills this fairly quickly went out the window. The other question was ‘what day of the week is it?’

Soups, galettes, crepes - Wednesday - Sunday

I must admit that increasingly I am losing the ability to answer this question correctly. Today is Monday, yet I keep having a nagging feeling that it is really Saturday. This has been going on for some time but it has been accelerated by the pandemic lock down, which turned into a slow down and then into a lie down.