Lockdown blues at the halfway mark? Me too

We’re all in this together. It’s like that ‘‘stadium of four million’’ we were told we comprised in the golden years when we held the Rugby World Cup. A worthy tagline, literally true, and yet not true. For better or worse, apart but joined in spirit, and by the common sensation of losing your mind just a little bit.

Judging by what I’m hearing from inside other people’s bubbles, lockdown has given us all the feeling reality has slipped very slightly like a family photo inside a cheap Warehouse frame.

No flippin’ idea of what day it is? Tick. Waking up in the hush of night with obsessive thoughts of how to make dryballs pantry staples into delicious meals? Tick.

Lurid dreams of being trapped, being naked, being chased, being in the line at a McDonald’s drive-through but somehow unable to ever get near the window to order? Join the queue my friend – it’s a very long one and when you get to the door you’ll find the supermarket is just about to close. Try again tomorrow.

The human mind under duress is a creative wonder, especially in its downtime. People who in normal times sleep well and dream sometimes, are reporting nightly dreams which range from the truly horrifying (hordes of rats crawling up from under the bed) to the poignant (going in for a long hug with a kuia and then feeling terribly guilty about it) to the rather sweet (you are knitting when the police arrive to arrest you for breaking the rules, but refuse to come inside, which leaves you feeling sad because at least they would have been a bit of company.)

There are lots of dreams of takeaway food, and barista coffee, and having a beer with mates;

I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t a burgeoning inventory of Ashley Bloomfield fan-fic being created in the recesses of the internet right now.

simple pleasures temporarily out of reach. When you start having repeated unconscious longings for Maccas – that’s when you know your axis has shifted.

Forced seclusion is new to most, but not all of us; there are Kiwis with coping skills that have given them an edge right now. Microbiologist Dr Lucy Stewart told me in 10 years of fieldwork at sea she’s learned a thing or three about how to manage isolation. The good news is that you get better at it as you go along – the bad news? The worst has not quite yet arrived.

Reflecting on calls from certain politicians to end the Covid-19 lockdown early, Stewart joked on Twitter ‘‘I see everybody’s hitting the traditional mid-isolation ‘Bad Ideas’ phase about a week early.’’

‘‘Halfway is often when you have a little party and people get a bit silly,’’ she told me later.

‘‘It’s the week after that, when everybody gets cranky and less forgiving of each other, because you’ve gone halfway, but there’s still ages to go.’’

Stewart has spent between two and five weeks at sea at a time, searching for methane ‘‘cold seeps’’ on the sea floor. The accommodation is often ‘‘double-bunking’’ style and could be with someone you’ve never met before, she says.

‘‘You hope that the weather will be perfect and everything will go to plan and you’ll get your samples exactly as planned and come home. But that does not always happen.’’

She’s learned to pack a tonne of reading