Diary Entries

Covid-19 is destroying my life because my family hates it! Yesterday my Nanny bought a Covid-19 mask!!😑 I told her that it only stops her from touching her face! well... I am having a good life. The bad thing that happened was when I spilt orange juice on my computer! But I got a new one.

QUARANTINE Has been a big disaster we barley even could go out but it got even better and better. because we could go out again but we still had to stay 1.5 meters away and some shops will only allow one person at a time. Also even when your driving the police will pull you over and every one thinks 2020 has been a bad year so far. It is bad even people are getting tested. But when i came back to school i was happy because i didnt see my friends four a long time i thought i wouldn't come back but here i am now however every day i wonder when I`m going to school and by the time i came out of the car I looked up and down and i smiled because we were in lockdown four 3 to 4 moths.

2020 has been an annoying month this year because of Corona! Right now i had some good things happening. I played Roblox. Somethings were not to good. I am really frustrated and worried about me not going to the shops. There will be something i will never forget which is my family and friends coming over. However it will take long to end Covid -19. This is really bad because all of this is causing us crazy, so wash your hands for 20 seconds. And stop Corona!

2020 has been a very bad year because of COVID-19 had domination. It was killing lots of people. People were terrified, sad and worried. There were good things though. Coronavirus became better than ever before because it was killing less people. The virus was still a problem. Almost everyone couldn't see their friends and cousins. I am feeling super bored because I have to stay home because of Corona. I am never going to forget that COVID-19 was more worse in 2020 than 2019. I am excited for seeing my friend's YouTube channel and yes, he has one. I am going to see my friend's channel when I go to his house because when I search his channel it doesn't pop up. This my life in 2020 so far.

During lockdown home has been annoying and has also been funny to my cousins Maddie and Catiy came over to play Roblox and my sister had the phone all the time. I was annoyed because my sister was being a phone hog.

I thought this time would count to make things better in our world. All I see is that it has not. All I see is that the human culture that has brought us to this place has eaten away our capacity to question, to accept risk, to accept enoughness. All I see is a human culture that feels it has the right to eat the world in order to generate its own short term comfort. All I see is a human culture that has no respect for other species. All I see is the only species that thinks it is not part of nature: humans. All I see is a human culture that has no capacity to understand death, and in doing so has little capacity to understand that the depth of life matters over its length. All I see is a human culture that lives on the delusion of hope while pushing aside the power of grief. All I see is a human culture hell-bent on returning to 'the way it was' - a worse 'normal' than before. I thought this pause would count. I thought this pause would give pause. I thought this pause would be the making of us. I thought but I was wrong. Please prove me wrong.

I wrote this on Sunday 26 April 2020. In Isolation for five weeks. I listen to the lawnmower outside and I am reminded of a time when there were no cares about a deadly virus, an economy collapse, or environmental damage. I think of my Dad pushing that lawnmower, doing what had to be done every Sunday, first at home and then doing it again at his parent's house in another town 22 miles away. The whole of our Sunday's seemed to be filled with the sound of the lawnmower. The sound of normal. While Dad is outside, my Mum and Grandmother inside cooking Sunday lunch which was either a roast of lamb or a home made meat pie in a kitchen with no running hot water. The smells of cooking and the laughter of 6 children playing. Then having to help rake up the lawn clippings into a pile to dry out for our Grandfather to later burn. Not done now. Remembering these days reminds me that isolation now in this COVID time means my grandchildren will lose this opportunity to experience those memories in their future because their past is being stolen from them. This makes me sad. Zooming and Face time or even Skype is not the same as being there, smelling the cut grass, the cooking in the kitchen and everything else like a hug and a kiss and even the tears of my Grandmother as we left to not return until the next Sunday. Ending isolation comes with fears of getting the virus but also hope that there will be more Sundays with family around. Slowly moving forward if we all practice our social distancing today, tomorrow will be better.

Slowly slipping away… The bright yellow adhesive markers on the footpath outside the patisserie in Bowral indicate where to stand. Like a game of hopscotch, customers advance a hop, skip and a jump until they are inside, devouring the irresistible aromas of meat pies and sweet pastries. The lunchtime queues remain, but the yellow markers are starting to fade and peel away. Across the road, an A-frame billboard outside Australia Post warned that “aggressive behaviour would not be tolerated”. Only eight people were permitted in the shop at a time. The number “Eight” was soon crossed out and replaced with a “Five”. A post office employee stood like a sentry, just inside the automatic- opening glass doors, with her fingers poised high in the air counting heads, “One, two, three”, before ushering the next customer inside. This grey-uniformed female employee is now behind a Perspex screen selling stamps and gifts, while the A-frame sign is stowed somewhere out of sight. The swings in a nearby park, previously tucked precariously high above a parallel metal bar, have been allowed to dangle freely again. The faces of children light up when they spot the black rubber seats, swinging to and fro in the breeze. A pre-school aged boy in denim-blue dungarees runs across the verdant green grass towards the playground and calls brightly over his shoulder to his mother. I can imagine him saying, “Look mummy, the swing is not dirty anymore! Someone wiped all the bad Covid away.”

2020. The hardest year after one hundred years. For you it must of been hard. Some of the negative things were the home school was hard, my siblings hogged Mum and I got tired because usually my teacher yells a lot and keeps me awake. There were some good things mixed in the bad things like I didn't have to go to school and I got lot's of family time. I will never forget how I felt disappointed at times with the Internet how it kept dropping out and feeling like it won't come back but in the end it came back. My biggest hope is that next year is as fresh as a new apple. 🍎🍏

I have been enjoying the lockdown caused by the pandemic. It has been an opportunity to stop rushing around and be at home, with my partner and our garden. Our early attempts at an exercise regime have fallen away, but I do two zoom yoga classes a week and we take a good walk almost every day. We have a project to walk every street in our village, and discovering lots of beautiful homes and interesting views that we were not aware of. It gives us a focus which keeps us going. My family has set up a weekly zoom so we have been seeing more of them than usual, which is a delight. We have been attending zoom concerts from our favourite chamber musicians and loving them. The amount of excellent musical performance online has been a revelation and a delight. We have kept in touch with our local community, getting a takeaway coffee most days from our favourite cafe, and inviting friends from the city to take the drive to visit us for lunch in the Blue Mountains. They have been keen to come out of the city. A few friends from my choir and I meet weekly to sing together and stay in touch with the music while our choir is closed down. I’m not sure I really want it to end. I do want to stop rushing around as much as we did. I’m not sure how things will be different, but I am sure they will be.