We wandered around our ghost town early this morning and had a strange case of deja vu. It was like Good Friday used to be in our youth, before seven day trading and twenty-four hour entertainment became an intrinsic part of life.
Not a soul was to be seen except for the odd customer at the bakery, sneaking in then quickly out, laden with hot cross buns.
The government's publicity, stern warnings, locks on public parking areas, and perhaps the prospect of a $1,300 fine for being caught out on non-essential business seems to be making a difference at last. The State government is said to have raised more than half a million dollars in fines to miscreants ignoring its directives in the past week alone. Given the scale of the income being generated one wonders if by the time it is over, the cost of the shutdown will be entirely reimbursed by the sections of the public intent on flaunting the rules.
We drove the car for the first time in weeks, on an "essential" run to get our flu jabs. Our doctor, a champion of organisation, had opened her practice today, the quietest of Public Holidays for that sole purpose, and had for us all to enter her surgery in pairs, (the maximum number allowed in a gathering) at carefully orchestrated times to avoid any waiting nor any meeting of each other on the way in or out.
As we entered the Doctor's surgery two by two, we had to wonder about ancient principals of self-isolation, how everything old is new again. Was this not analogous to entering some sort of modern Arc, built to shelter us from the rampant viruses that are the new great flood?
We'll send you a postcard from Mount Ararat.
1 comment
I am going to the drive-in in Tuesday. No not the old fashioned type of drive-in where we got up to things that would make my mother blush in the car on Saturday nights, a drive-in clinic at the local hospital for flu shots.
Post a Comment