David Penberthy: Creativity and risk-taking and the seizing of new opportunities comes out of the most miserable and bleak circumstances
Unless you get your thrills by going to crowded supermarkets, every field of human enjoyment is now under a cloud. But most of it will survive – and many great new things will emerge by the time it’s all over, writes David Penberthy.
Coronavirus Hibernation
Don't miss out on the headlines from Coronavirus Hibernation. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Aside from its frightening health impact, the horrible thing about the coronavirus pandemic is that it strikes at the core of our status as social beings.
COVID-19 might be a worldwide event, and it is hard to process the news from overseas, but it is at the local level where it hits you the most as all the usual social props that make life worth living get systematically pulled out from under you.
At its most unpleasant, it is the temporary saying goodbye to family and friends.
Paul and Ben last Thursday, mum and dad Tuesday night, sitting in the backyard with a tape measure (seriously!) to keep the grandkids at bay. All those rituals with friends and families – weekly meals, casual pop-ins, big family birthday barbecues – all suddenly having a line put through them.
The key word to remember here is “temporary”. This is not forever. It’s for now.
And we are not going off to the Great War or being rounded up by some fascist force.
We are simply staying home for quite some time, and hoping that when all this unpleasantness blows over we can do a quick headcount of our nearest and dearest, make sure everyone is accounted for and get back to the business of having our free-and-easy catchups again.
Beyond that inner private circle of family and friends, and at the broader community level, all the stuff that makes us enjoy life also feels under threat.
Unless you get your thrills by going to crowded supermarkets, every other field of human enjoyment is now under a cloud.
My inbox and mobile currently serve as a miserable roll call of all the stuff I love the most about living in Adelaide – the Governor Hindmarsh suspending operations, places like Wah Hing and the Star of Siam and BBQ City being clobbered in Chinatown, emails from pubs like the Marion, where my sister used to pull beers and my old Rotary Club met, putting on the bravest of faces as they try valiantly to adjust to an ever-changing set of operating rules.
Driving into the Goody Park drive through (for we have to keep our liquids up in these troubled times) and seeing its sensational sports bar, usually heaving with blokes who have secretly put a line through the arvo to get on the punt, with a miserable sign out the front saying no more than 10 patrons at a time.
Wondering what the AFL will look like next year, and wondering whether there will even be an SANFL next year, whether standing in the outer at Unley soaking up the idiotic banter and kicking the footy with my son during the breaks is a thing of the past.
Seeing that The Cube, where my wife and I celebrated her 40th last year, has closed down.
Wondering if the last place we had dinner, a fantastic new restaurant called Herringbone, on February 14, will come out of this the other side.
February 14 feels like a long time ago. On February 14, you could leave your kids with the grandparents, head into Halifax St and sit happily at the bar within 1.5m of a complete stranger as you waited for your table to be cleared. What do we do?
Clearly not everything we love about our town will survive.
And obviously, with the unemployment rate tipped to double (at least) as almost 300,000 Australians try to log into Centrelink on the same day, not everyone will be in a position to help others financially.
My tip, for those who can, is to assemble a list of all the things they love in their community, north, south, east and west, and see if they can support them somehow while they’re still operating.
Since we were kids, our favourite family restaurant has always been the Glenelg BBQ Inn, which is now open seven days from noon until 8pm for takeaway and is also selling fresh meat packs in a bid to keep the charcoal burning.
Other restaurants across town are doing similar things to stay alive.
If you love your AFL club and (importantly) are in a financial position to do so, don’t seek a refund on your membership dues. If you’re an SANFL tragic, join your club, even though we don’t presently have a season.
And in the same way, we should remind ourselves that the coronavirus is not the Great War or World War II, we should try to find other more recent examples of cities that have emerged the stronger out of tragedy.
The place I keep thinking about is New Orleans, utterly destroyed in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent storm surge as Washington initially watched on.
That $125 billion disaster prompted serious talk about whether one of the greatest but most precarious cities in the world, perched as it is below sea level and protected by levees that seem a triumph of hope over engineering, should be rebuilt at all.
New Orleans has since been reborn, with its modern-day vibrancy recorded in a great docudrama called Treme that is well worth binge-watching as we spend the next while cooped up at home.
Creativity and risk-taking and the seizing of new opportunities comes out of the most miserable and bleak circumstances.
Post-corona Adelaide may even have advantages that jam-packed Sydney and Melbourne do not as our new city emerges. The thing to remember is that great new things will emerge, and many of the things listed above will survive, too.
And we will all be back around the dinner table soon enough, without a frigging tape measure, or separate bowls for the Charlesworth nuts.
OPEN FOR BUSINESS
We’re committed to helping SA continue to trade. Search our free guide, plus share your listing bit.ly/StillOpenSA