We've got two TVs!

We have two spots planned  for TVs in our house, one for watching and one for looking at, but we hadn't really convinced ourselves that we needed a greater ratio than one television for every two pairs of eyes until we became victims of one of the other side effects of "the Covid Shutdown":- rampant consumerism.

The first item on our list of things to make and do is: "BUILD UPSTAIRS TV UNIT" (pictured in March), which was well underway but came to a screeching halt back then when we commenced our "leave", and has not progressed since.  The second item is "Downstairs TV Unit" which is in an even lesser state of construction, but since we didn't actually have a downstairs TV nor any particular plan to purchase one, was in a lesser state of urgency still.

Then our Government interfered, and without consultation gave us some "Covid Relief" money, which got us to thinking that if we bought some timber, and stacked it neatly in the garage we could get onto it as soon as our long service leave ended.   We also got to thinking that it might be nice to have some idea of what we were building before we started to cut up those expensive sticks, so set off to a big box store in search of a television set we could measure in order to make a template.

As fate would have it in those strange times, whilst wandering tape in hand, drowning in a confused sea of televisions of ever inncreasing size, the thought occurred that it would be much easier to simply buy a gigantic television than to make a gigantic template to fill an even more gigantic hole into which it would one day fit.  Stunned though we may have been by the hastiness of our decision and the enormity of the thing we chose, the real surprise came when the man in the shop assured us that it can receive sporting broadcasts.  

After its installation a world of things like cricket matches, football and motor racing would be open to us, a feat which to this day the other of us insists is not attainable for our aged "Upstairs TV".

The List.

 When it became apparent that last year was not going to be a repeat of those that preceded it, we decided that since we'd been doing what we've been doing for a little over ten years, we were pretty much due for long service leave.

For the following three months we simply changed the dates on our lists of things to make and do to some time later in the year, turned off the lights to the shed, and commenced lying idly about, or at least doing things differently to our norm.

As far as I can see, the only problem with lying idly about, is that one has time to read, and trawl the internet, and to take long walks along the beach and one's mind does not remain as inactive as one's body would perhaps like.  This perhaps explains how the 3D printer came to be built, and perhaps excuses the growing pile of parts for the CNC machine that will one day whirr in a corner somewhere, and how the camera club website was reconstructed, and why the list, nine months later is stuck like a clock with a flat battery at the first deadline: "June". 

I would like to sneak back in and write "2021" after the months in the list, but dare not lest come next year's retrospective I risk being hoist by my own petard.

With 2020 Hindsight

 

Last March, an eerie silence descended on us and we buckled up and waited for the Tsunami that became known as "the Pandemic" to sweep us away.   For reasons inexplicable, in those days immediately before kwhat became known as "the lockdown", many people gathered by the ocean's side, staring silently for a sign of the Riders of the Apocalypse approaching over the horizon

Fortunately for us, New Zealand is in that direction, the prevailing south-easterlies were virus-free. Not so returning travellers and cruise ships however, but swift government action aided undoubtedly by the relative ease of isolating the entire country have kept us almost free of the ravages being experienced by much of the world.   None the less, there are some cracks appearing in the fabric of our little part of the universe, and I have felt compelled to update March's photo to better reflect the present.

It's been an interesting time for us, rather than a terrible one, a time when we can be grateful for the sort of opportunity that presents itself when change is forced upon us.  

We've been busy of course and it's quite possibly a portent of things to come that the first post of the new year did not occur until three days after it, but the decision to write more regularly has been made if for no other reason than to keep track of all those wasted days, making marks to keep track of time on the invisible walls of our prison island.  For now though, the reality of spending another year in more or less the same manner as the last is beginning to sink in. 

Let the good times roll!