Musos have thirst to perform
MUSICIANS are just as excited for pubs to reopen as thirsty punters, given it will bring them their first pay cheques in six weeks.
Local muso Mark Usher performs solo and with The Captain at a number of Territory venues and said reopening pubs couldn’t come soon enough.
“It’s been nearly eight weeks and to get back to work will be really handy,” he said. “Most of us are getting to the end of our savings … the last sort of month has been a little bit rough.
“Everyone’s talking a big game about coming back to the pubs and I hope they really do come back and support the entire hospitality industry because it is going to take some time to recover.”
From a social perspective, Mr Usher said entertainers would relish the chance to perform to crowds again.
“It’s been good to have a bit of time off,” he said. “When you’re on stage performing in front of hundreds of people, seven or eight times a week, then to go to nothing, it takes a bit of adjusting. I’ve been at home, starting to sing a bit more at home, starting to drive my family crazy.” P11: OPINION
“IT feels like I’ve become a 1950s housewife.”
It’s a statement I’ve heard repeatedly from friends, colleagues and the media during lockdown.
This forced mass retreat into our homes has, for some, not been a heaven of jigsaw puzzling, Stanley Tucci negroni lessons and TV binges of Normal People and Tiger King.
For some, it has been an exhausting time of cooking, cleaning, laundry and schooling from home, all while trying to hold on to a job.
And so, coronavirus has been blamed for setting back the advances of the feminist movement.
“Women’s domestic burden just got heavier with the coronavirus,” The Guardian said. The Atlantic declared: “The Coronavirus Is a Disaster for Feminism”.
Darcy Lockman, author of All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership, told Harper’s Bazaar coronavirus had amplified the gender divide.
But at the risk of offending the sisterhood, may I suggest that this virus-induced rewind of feminism is possibly a good thing.
Perhaps it is an opportunity for us to reset how we function as families and parent equally.
I’m no longer the full-time worker, part-time mum, rushing through the front door for 30 minutes with my kids before they go to sleep, or worse, missing bedtime altogether.
Sitting on our front steps sharing a chat and a bowl of ice cream with my daughter on a weekday afternoon, I realised I missed out on this simple pleasure as a child.
If you’ve stepped outside into suburbia recently, you’d be forgiven for thinking we had returned to the 1960s.
Of course, I support equal rights for women and men and I want my daughter to grow up with the unfettered freedom of career choice.
But does knowing the kids have clean hair, the slow cooker’s on and the sheets are drying on the line bring me deep joy? Absolutely.
Suffragettes would be turning in their graves, but I refuse to feel guilty for my new-found maternal feminism.
And it’s not just women reembracing domestic bliss. In this ‘war on corona’, men are discovering their domestic affinity and savouring a return to active fatherhood.
They are also (according to the anecdotal evidence of friends) appreciating the invisible mental and physical load of raising children.
But with restrictions easing, will it last?
“This gives us pause to reflect and really investigate further and potentially put in place additional policy and more conversations to advance equality and gender equity,” says Yolande Strengers, Monash University Associate Professor of digital technology and society in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab and Associate Dean of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the IT Faculty.
With a predicted $60 billion in lost income and an unemployment rate of 10 per cent by June, the idyllic notion of a stay-at-home parent by choice may be over.
But in our return to the hectic demands of unlocked life, let’s not forget what has made us truly content.
Hopefully, when all this is over, parenting unity will be our new normal.