Quarantine diaries: day 15

 I'm out! Look it was a palaver (not the officials' fault - they were amazing). The parents drove into the city to pick me up, we figured a sunny Sunday afternoon would be a stress-free time. Obviously, the faithful car of 13 years decided to just cut engine around the corner from the hotel. Bit of an inglorious end to the stay, hanging around waiting for the auto services by a park. But Sydney weather is treating me ridiculously well (too well - mum said she didn't want to do laundry today because it was "too hot" which is an alien concept to someone who has been struggling for outdoor drying sun in the UK for the last seven years. But alls well that ends well and the next chapter is truly in motion, for better or worse. 

Quarantine diaries: day 13

 So I spent all day yesterday in bed. Bought myself yumcha and basically lay around all day feeling pretty sorry for myself. Not quite sure what happened but my whole body - chest down - went on strike. I was rolling around on the floor trying to stretch my hip out, and then lying in bed on one side then the other, trying to make my obliques LET GO. My calves wouldn't even let me crouch down to pick some papers up. I mean, nothing was going to kill me, and nothing like covid-symptom muscle ache. This was no deep immune response. It was just my body saying no to PE. If the fitness was begun primarily in order to facilitate better mental health (all that endorphin, blood pressure, hormone stuff), then I guess the body decided it needed to remind me that other people live here too and should get a say. This morning I've woken up with a bit of a niggle in my right hip but otherwise feeling much more human and capable of basic human movement, so I guess a day in bed is all the doctor ordered? Either that or all the dumplings.

The nurses and police are supposed to come by at some point today to give me the all clear to leave. They keep mentioning a "certificate" and I am super (but not realistically) excited that it will be an actual piece of paper with like, some gold embossed stamp on it. I will frame that thing if so. I understand the validity will last only until I leave the foyer tomorrow morning, but considering there isn't actually any community transmission of the virus here at the moment, I think I should be safe? It's going to be strange getting onto public transport again, and heading inside crowded shopping malls. But intellectually I know this is orders of magnitude safer than any kind of similar situation back at home in the UK.

Home. I'm into that foggy liminal space of not knowing what I am calling "home". It'll be different with different people. And if you buy into that idea that home is where your people are, I'm still torn because my heart is far off across the seas. I've left it there very purposefully, but with no specific plan to get it back. I wonder if the thread will snap at some point without me actively cutting it. That will hurt, I think. But I watched the Freeman documentary last night and I recall my first sojourn out into the English countryside and really getting a ghostlike insight into the idea of belonging to a country. My mind dreams in ochre and yellow and eucalypt colours. Part of my being belongs to this place, and in that sense I am glad to be back to this island home. 

Quarantine diaries: day 12

 I am glad I didn't start this off with a countdown. I mean, I kept a list of the days and numbers to tick off (like in prison, as my dad pointed out, although it should have been scratched into a wall rather than written out on hotel paper), but it was a list TO 14, not downwards. A count up, rather than down, to steal a phrase that was intended to lessen exam anxiety for kids. But now it's so very close to the end, and I am making necessary plans for how I am leaving and what I need to do afterwards, that countdown feeling is inching its way into my brain. Simultaneously excited and also apprehensive, I know that I should be busying myself with logistical details, but there is still so much actual time and I am finding it harder and harder to convince myself not to order massive banquets to the hotel room (yolo, right?) and lay around glorying in this enforced 5-star hotel stay. 

It is possible I have slightly overdone the fitness workouts. My joints are mildly unhappy with me, and it doesn't help, I suppose, that they don't have the regular but incremental lubrication of incidental walking around to get to things. Its absolute stillness (how much movement does needlework take?) and then extreme arms-waving, body-rolling, high-kicking, squat-repping, high-intensity action for an hour and a half. I may be getting too old for this...

The excitement of planning things and treating myself to chimney cake last night has given way to the realisation this morning that there are still two, maybe three, more days of this soft-humming existence. I miss the sound of birdcall (and Aussie bird call in particular - none of that super sweet and vaguely polite British stuff), and the door slamming and engine revving of the suburbs. It's not silent here, and I can't decide if that would be better or worse. There is a neverending mechanical hum of machinery emanating from the city, the whoosh of occasional planes or trucks, and the sounds of the hotel - extractor fans, aircon, vacuums. But it all sounds distant and unrelated to me. There's nothing I can do to affect any of those noises. I can't even get away from them. Uh-oh, is this my lady in the wallpaper moment?