Christopher Pyne: Seek silver linings amid COVID-19 chaos
It’s easy to find plenty of doom and gloom about the current pandemic. But everyone deserves to enjoy some of the little things while we’re all stuck at home, writes Christopher Pyne.
Opinion
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Amid the doom and gloom we all search for some skerrick of joy.
Being Australians, more than half of whom have some Irish lineage by now, we are used to finding pearls among the swine.
Gallows humour has been our thing for centuries. Need evidence?
Dr O’Mahoney says to his patient: “I have bad news and even worse news”, to which his patient replies, “what’s the bad news, doctor?” The doctor tells him, “you only have 24 hours to live”. The patient says, “goodness, what could be worse news than that?” The doctor tells him, “I’ve been trying to call you since yesterday”. Boom, boom.
The number of memes, videos, colourful texts and gifs being posted and sent around have become an avalanche. Some are less savoury than others. My favourite so far is the British family singing One Day More from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Les Miserables, to their own words of course.
I was also rather taken with the border collie standing on top of the kitchen cupboard saying to its owner, “I’m not coming down, I’ve been walked by every f...ing member of this family today already!” More on that later.
All of this is designed to keep our spirits up and as someone who has spent much of my adult life on the road, having first worked for a senator as a university student that took me to Canberra and then as an MP for 26 years, being confined to home has been an interesting experience.
Not every creature is finding it hard to cope with isolation.
There are three mammals in my household that are very pleased to have us all home every day – Mathilda “Tilly” the labrador, Miss Jean Louise “Scout” Finch the west highland terrier and Daphne, the new westie.
Tilly is the grand old dame of the household aged 11½, Scout is three and takes to heart the westie role of protecting the family (“What? Are you trying to tell me that not everyone who comes to the house is trying to kill us all?”) and Daphne is four months old and very sweetly following the other two’s example in all things.
They have become used to me taking them for walks sporadically, depending on the travel schedule. This could explain why the entries for my weight loss and gain on My Fitness Pal resemble a heart monitor chart.
But in the past month, these pooches are getting walked almost every day. They’ve never had it so good. New routes and smells, different experiences, new dogs to bark at, the odd rabbit to attempt to chase, new parks to see. It’s a cornucopia of excitement for the three of them.
They each have their pink halter neck brace to wear and their pink leads. They are girls. It only gets so PC in the Pyne household you see. Sometimes I call them “The Pinkettes”, after the girls group in Grease.
If I imagine them singing “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee”, I’ll know I’ve been in isolation too long.
We looked forward to daylight saving ending yesterday. It had been very dark at 6am and we pushed the start time out to 6.45am but we’re glad now the clock and the planet align again. Us and the dairy cows.
No doubt when all this is over, the dogs will be disappointed as life returns to the new normal, whatever that is going to be. Potentially, I will keep walking them every day, just because I like it.
I doubt anyone will do as much travel as they used to, not now that we have discovered Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, Skype and all the other myriad forms of communication that don’t require us to be present in the flesh.
I even did my first Zoom Friday night drinks last week with old friends spread across the nation with whom I used to go to university. It wasn’t too bad. The pinot tasted the same and we all shared a good laugh.
One thing is for sure, we will be getting used to this arrangement for some time yet. Originally, I had thought in weeks, but now I am thinking in months.
So, keep your chin up! Be like Tilly, Scout and Daphne and look for the rays of sunlight amid the clouds.
Why, my 12-year-old even cleaned her room and rearranged her clothes cupboards and drawers last week.