IF I CAN GET THROUGH SELF-ISOLATION, ANYONE CAN
Just over a year ago I ran a marathon in Antarctica. How the world has changed since then. I’m now a dumpy mess that can’t run more than five kilometres and I can’t leave my house, let alone the country. The latter can be attributed to coronavirus but the former can only be blamed on an excess consumption of Coronas and chips.
Antarctica was my first taste of isolation, which we now know so well. I stayed in a tent at Union Glacier, one of the most remote parts of one of the most remote parts of the world. When people picture Antarctica, they picture birds and penguins and chunks of ice falling into the water. That’s not Union Glacier. When I asked about wildlife at Union Glacier, I got the dry response: “Maybe one bird a summer – some poor thing that lost its way and is about to die”.
I was grossly under-prepared for the Antarctic Ice Marathon and started to feel I might be that one bird. After the race, the weather changed and we became stuck in this isolation for days – a bunch of marathon-weary folk missing their families and growing tired of chess, Scrabble and each other. Tensions rose as supplies diminished, and although there were no punch-ons over bog rolls, it was more of a forecast to current times than I could’ve ever predicted.
The plane we took from Antarctica back to Chile (spoiler alert, I survived) was a Soviet-era cargo plane that had some seats thrown in the back of it. We had a Russian crew with one ‘flight attendant’ who yelled (there was no speaker system) just before take-off, “Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the flight. Now just sit back, relax and let’s hope we f--king make it alive!” In our delirium, we all cheered and applauded. Life now carries with it a similar sentiment, but with a far less jovial and adventurous undertone.
I’ve prepared for this pandemic the same way I prepared for my marathon in Antarctica: poorly. I didn’t hoard, instead I calmly bought a bottle of whiskey, a 1kg tub of hummus and four packets of Mission chips. The next morning, I woke up with a cracking headache and an empty fridge. I felt too embarrassed to return to the same shop in case the checkout lady said, “Didn’t you buy four packs of these yesterday?!” knowing my yellow-crumbed black T-shirt had already answered the question for me.
I guess what I’m trying to say is we’ll be fine, trust me. After all, I’m the one that’s been in isolation before, except it was minus-20 degrees and I was in a tent with no phone or internet, and it was then that I would’ve killed for an Amazon Prime Video account with 10 new stand-up comedy specials on it, so enjoy them, you lucky bastards.
Two Original Australian Comedy Specials release each week on Amazon Prime Video from Fri., Apr. 10. Tommy Little’s special, Self-Diagnosed Genius, is released Fri., Apr. 17.