Covid in the springtime

We've reached the end of September, and spring is in full swing. The Covid lockdown has lasted 6 months, and about 10 days ago here in South Africa it went from Level 2 to Level 1, but I wasn't even aware of that for about a week. The syringa trees are in full bloom, and its only when they are in bloom that you realise how many of them there are in our neighbourhood. 

Syringa tree across the road, seen from our bedroom

The syringa trees, with their pale blue flowers, are forerunners of the jacarandas, with their deeper blue, which appear about a fortnight later. The one in the picture above is over the road from us, near the railway line. There used to be several syringa trees over there, but most of them were chopped down by a mad axeman a few years ago -- see Mystery tree feller | Notes from underground

The thorn tree in the corner of our garden is also blooming, and it's only when they bloom with their yellow flowers that you notice how many of them there are in the neighbourhood. 

Our garden in spring, with blooming thorn tree

The syringa on the left is in a neighbour's garden across the road. 

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary, so we went for tea at Cafe 41, where, before the lockdown, we used to hold our literary coffee klatches, and discuss theology and literature. -- see here Genius, shades, ancestors and more | Notes from underground. But since this time last year two of our regular members, Tony McGregor and David Levey, have died, and as we sat there I felt their ghosts haunting the place with fleeting snatches of old conversations. Even if the lockdown ended with Level 0, I doubt that we could recapture those days in their absence. 

We went on to Rutland Books, a marvelous second-hand book shop where I had previously found a book I had been looking for for 20 years, Orientalism by Edward Said, which is said to be the key to the mystery of postcolonialism. This time I took a list of books I wanted, that I haven't been able to find in other book shops or libraries, but sadly none of them were there.

We came home to our favourite syringa tree, no longer being stripped bare by the mad axeman. Bit just beyond were the posts that used to hold the catenary wire for the electric trains, stripped bare by cable thieves -- see Stripped bare: Looting till there is nothing left of Gauteng's rail network. About twice a week during the Covid lockdown the dogs would bark, and there would be gun battles between police and security companies and cable thieves. Occasionally one would be arrested, but there were always plenty of others to take their place. In our area most of this looting took place during the lockdown, when passenger trains stopped running, but the main line between Pretoria and Johannesburg (and Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town) was stripped of wires several months before the lockdown began. I don't recall seeing any news items about this before yesterday's Daily Maverick article. But this must also be added to the cost of the lockdown, and what has happened to the jobs of those who were employed by the railways? Where are they all? It is the kind of damage that one expects to be inflicted in war time, only it is far more extensive.  

 

Lockdown and the battle of the booze

When the lockdown for Covid19 started back in March, it was at Level 5, and the sale of alcoholic liquor was forbidden. That made sense at the time, because the idea was that only essentials, like food, could be sold, and alcoholic liquor was not deemed essential.

Then it dropped to Level 4, and then to Level 3, and liquor could be sold again. But it was stopped again at Level 3, but the rationale was somewhat different, since by that time a lot of other non-essentials could be sold. The problem was that when liquor was sold again, there was more domestic violence, more drunken driving, and more fights generally, and this was filling up the hospitals which needed the beds for the expected inrush of people infected with Covid19.

We have had some booze in the house for years, and once we had finished the Chateau de Cardboard we had bought to drink with our dinner once or twice a week, I went to make an inventory of what we have. Here it is:

 

A sip of Jerepigo. Brandy for a Christmas cake (if we can afford the other ingredients), a couple of bottles of table wine and some Marula mampoer.  

And looking at that, I have a suggestion for the government for a compromise solution which should make a lot more people more happy. 

Keep the ban on hard liquor sales, but allow the sale of wine and beer, and limit them to one bottle of wine or one six-pack of beer per purchase. . 

That should give the wine industry and its employees a chance to recover while not filling the hospitals too rapidly with non-Covid patients. 

And when we're allowed to go back to church, we'll need that sip of Jerepigo for communion. 

 

The Questions people ask...

When I have a few minutes to spare I sometimes go to the Quora Question and Answer web site and see if there are any questions I can answer. One can learn quite a bit about popular culture and conventional wisdom from the kinds of questions people ask.

In this time of corona virus and stayhome injunctions there are quite a lot of questions on those topics, but one that rather surprised me was how many questions there were along the lines of Why did the South African government ban the sale of liquor?

The answer seems pretty obvious to me -- the government doesn't regard liquor as essential, like food and medicine, and so they banned the sale of liquor for the same reason that they banned the sale of books, toys, clothing and sporting goods. Why question the ban on the sale of liquor? Some people made comparisons with the era of Prohibition in the USA, and commented that it wouldn't stop people drinking. so the prohibition was ill-advised.

Do the people who ask such things think that the ban on liquor sales was bad? How does it differ from banning the sale of books? The aim is not to stop people reading, but to stop the congregating in book shops and bottle stores. It makes little difference whether you congregate in a book shop or a bottle store -- the physical proximity to other people is more likely to spread the corona virus, and that is what the government is trying to prevent, not drinking or reading. There is no ban on the sales of e-books over the internet, because that does not require physical contact.

But perhaps the liquor conspiracy theorists do have a point. The government wants us to stay at home to avoid spreading the corona virus. The last thing they want is people heeding the Hennessy brandy injunction to "never stop, never settle". Maybe that's it.

Just stop, settle down at home, and curb your wanderlust by pouring that Hennessy brandy down the drain.

Another question on Quora was Why are they rioting in South Africa?

I wondered who "they" were. It was news to me, so I watched one of the South African TV news stations instead of Al Jazeera, in the hope of learning who "they" were. News item about the police arresting people for buying and selling fake informal trading and travel permits as exceptions to the lockdown. Another on the Waterberg Welfare Society making its hospice available as a quarantine centre. Looks like those exciting events have driven boring stuff like riots right off the news pages.

Not to mention all the questions about all the things that got left out of the Bible.

Lockdown Day 1: Water, Rats and Fire

27-Mar-2020, Friday

by Steve Hayes, Kilner Park in the Great City of Tshwane

Up at 1:01. The beginning of the strict "stay at home" disaster regulations. I can still hear traffic on the highway, though. I did more work on the Cowan family history and sent a descendant chart from Henry Cowan off to Peter Waddell who had written to ask about it a few days ago, At about 3:30 Pimen started barking. I looked out of the window but saw nothing. Later on our Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp group someone reported seeing a hooded figure at their gate. They phoned Kilner Park Security, who in turn phoned the cops, who came and arrested the bloke. Presumably he'll be charged with breaking cufew. Later Val said that when Pimen's barking woke her she looked out and saw someone walking up Slater Street, but couldn't tell whether he was a hoodie or not.

Then went back to bed after feeding Pimen at 5:45, and slept again to 9:30. Now there is deep silence from the highway. Since Jethro is home from work I made us both Oats-so-Difficult for breakfast. I asked if we could use his drone to have a look at the traffic on the highway, but he'll have to charge the battery first. There seem to be fewer trains than usual. Eskom says there will be no load-shedding during the "lockdown" -- I'm still not very happy using that American prison term, but I suppose it's not much different from saying that we are all under house arrest.

Towards mid-morning the traffic on the highway picks up and there are lots of vehicles passing. It's the N1, so the main road to the north, three lanes each way, The trains seem to have stopped running altogether. The line across the road is the main line to the east, ending at Maputo. Normally there are 2-3 suburban trains an hour, going to Mamelodi, and several goods trains, going further. Today, nothing. How do essential workers get to work?

Val is watching cricket, matches from 11 years ago, which she recorded, when South Africa was touring Australia. Even if there were live cricket today we couldn't afford to watch it, because it's only on the most expensive channel. That's the trouble with retirement. Before you retire you have the money but no time, but once you are retired you have the time but no money.

Then the water pressure drops, and suddenly the Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp group is filled with messages again. It's off in this street, it's off in that street. I recall that a couple of days ago someone reported a water leak up at the Casbah Roadhouse. perhaps the municipality has sent someone to fix it, the trouble is now no one can go up there to see if that is indeed the case. That gets someone else into a tizz -- surely that is an essential service? Why don't they fix it? But that's not what I said; I didn't say they couldn't go to fix it, I said we couldn't go to see if that's what they are doing. Simon brings in a whole lot of water containers so that we can fill them just in case there is a more serious problem with water. The containers are a relic of a few years ago when Jethro hired a trailer and drove down to Senekal in the Free State with 2000 litres of water when they were having a drought there.

I spent the afternoon reading The Horsemen, by Joseph Kessell, a novel set in northern Afghanistan before all the recent wars there. Come 4:30 and the rush hour, and the highway is quiet again, virtually no traffic passing. Another text message from a friend -- a warning from the dustmen -- wipe your dustbin handles with soap and disinfectant. We handle 2000 bins a day. Yet another vector for the virus.

We had supper, Gold Dish vegetable breyani from a tin. Thank God it's available again. For a long time one never saw it in the shops. Then at 7:00 we watched the "Pointless" TV quiz show, as is our custom, even though most of them are re-runs. When it ended at 8:00 Simon went out to see what Pimen was barking at, and it turned out to be a rat sitting on top of the fence. How it got there I can't imagine. Perhaps Pimen chased it there, and it has gecko feet. As we were going to see it, however, we noticed what seemed to be a fire to the north-east, over the railway line, where there is a scrapyard and the Koedoespoort railway workshops. I checked the WhatsApp neighbourhood watch group, and since no one else had mentioned it I did. Val phoned the fire brigade, and they said they already had a vehicle at the scene of the fire.

The rat on the fence was a brown one, and I took a photo of it. When Simon mentioned it I thought it might be an imbiba, but I couldn't see its back to make sure. It just perched there and looked through its beady little eyes and wiggled its rounded ears. I wonder -- isn't it brown rats that carry bubonic plague? Is its appearance a sign that if COVID-19 doesn't get us, bubonic plague will?

We went back inside and watched an episode of "Silent Witness" on DVD, and at about 9:00 pm went outside again to look at the fire. It was much bigger now, with smoke streaming away to the west, and occasional sirens heard. Will we ever know what it was? We can't go out tomorrow and buy the newspaper. Will they even be printing newspapers if no one is able to buy them, and the sellers can't appear on the streets? Perhaps the corona virus will be the end of print journalism.

We watched the second half of the "Silent Witness" episode, and at the end of it, about 10:15, the fire was still burning, the smoke was still streaming, and the smell was worse than it had been earlier. And so to bed, as Samuel Pepys would have said, and the evening and the morning were the first day of the lockdown.

Fire in Koedoespoort, Pretoria 27 March 2020

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A group of us are sharing notes, observations and extracts from personal diaries relating to the COVID-19 epidemic. If you'd like to know more about this, and perhaps join in, or start something similar of your own, see here  Notes from underground: Physical Distance and Social Proximity in a time of plague