Staying home: Week 4 Tears of relief at breaking bubble Throughout the pandemic, the Herald has kept in touch with four groups in isolation.
The large blended family
Bronwyn Emerson and her three young boys are spending the quarantine with her partner and his two kids in Christchurch. The children are aged from 6 to 15.
A lot will change for Emerson when we go down to level 3.
According to guidelines from the Government, people living away from their usual home will be allowed to travel back to their original residence once the alert level drops.
Emerson and her three boys are on the first flight they could get out of Christchurch on Tuesday.
She was disappointed on Monday to hear the lockdown was being extended.
“I had already booked tickets hoping that we could go home,” she said.
But she was able to get on the phone to Air New Zealand and rebook on a flight to Wellington, where her mother will pick her up and take the family back to Whanganui where they live.
“I actually cried when the Air New Zealand lady said ‘yes, I can get you on a flight to Wellington’.”
Emerson has found the lockdown particularly difficult, as she decided to take her family down to Christchurch for it and test living in a blended family with her partner.
But she has found the homesickness and a lack of familiar surroundings challenging, and is ready to regain normality.
She’s also looking forward to extended her bubble, and the boys are keen to see their father again.
The young professionals
Ashton Lindsay is spending the lockdown in a villa in Thorndon, Wellington, with her four flatmates. All are young professionals who are working from home throughout alert level 4.
One of Lindsay’s lockdown goals was to sew her flatmates matching outfits.
The day before lockdown began she rushed to buy enough fabric and over the last four weeks has chipped away on personalised items of clothing for each member of her flat.
She had planned on practising patterns and working on other sewing projects, but “I haven’t actually made anything apart from these matching outfits”.
Lindsay has been enjoying the slower social life that came with lockdown, which gave her more time to work on personal projects such as this. She’s not unhappy with the slight extension.
“I’m not surprised. Just having a look at the rest of the world and what’s been doing on . . . if we smashed it in four weeks, even five weeks I think is amazing.
“I feel fine with the extension because, well, I guess I’ve got a pretty good situation.”
Lindsay had prepared herself mentally for an eightweek lockdown.
“One of my coping things is trusting the authorities . . . to get that peace of mind you have to kind of trust that they’ve thought all the possibilities through and they went to all the right people and things.”
Not much will change in level 3 for her Thorndon crew. They will all continue working from home but are excited to get proper coffee, and order food from Little Penang.
The essential worker
Tim Crawford is the second in charge at a Horowhenua dairy farm.
The dairy farmer says the first thing he wants once takeaways and food delivery is available in level 3 will be something from Macca’s. But he’s not keen to wait in a line.
Aside from the ability to get takeaways he doesn’t feel life will change much for him when lockdown lifts.
That has been the case through most of level 4, however. As a farmer, he found his day-to-day routine was almost exactly the same throughout the last four weeks.
Extending lockdown into next week hasn’t affected him.
“The people making the decisions are the ones we’re supposed to trust,” he said.
“Why would we want to undo the work that we’ve done . . . Would you rather have people die and have it flare up again?”
At the risk of “being the guy banging on about the roads”, Crawford said he’d already seen an influx of traffic on the roads between Foxton and Levin but he hoped it was simply people preparing their businesses to reopen.
For those who have lost their jobs as a result of the Covid-19 crisis, he had a message.
“Has anybody thought of dairy farming?
“There are 900 jobs on the Fonterra website at the moment . . . it’s just that people don’t really want to do those long days.”
The lone isolator
Wendy Belworthy is isolating with five cats and her work’s budgie.
When the Herald called this week, she was at the supermarket for the first time since the lockdown began.
She has been fortunate through the last month to have friends and family regularly dropping off food and cooked meals, so hasn’t had to go pick up supplies until now.
Belworthy isn’t concerned at the extension, and doesn’t believe dropping to level 3 will affect her.
She works at an early childcare centre but won’t need to return to work yet as the number of children returning to the centre is not expected to be too high.
However, she’s looking forward to having coffee with her neighbours and perhaps going for walks with them once restrictions are eased.
But a few more days before she can do that is no big deal for Belworthy.
“I’ve actually really enjoyed the time to relax.”