Quarantine Day 40. Rebellion - sort of.

I have a view over a city that is on pause. It feels like there is no energy coming from it. People maketh a city. I look out and traffic lights go from green to yellow to red and hardly a car moves through. The streets emptied and silent.

I wonder what it must be like in Venice now that the Venetians have their city back to themselves. Strangely I don't think the city would suit silence and empty canals. It is a city that lives and breathes it's uniqueness, it's glass-like fragility is made of people's creativity. It's a city that has known many plagues and survived. The Carnevale bird masks originated from doctors who wore them stuffed with herbs such as lavendar to make their rounds during The Black Death. It is my spirit city by proxy of my late husband who was Venetian. I feel when he departed on his next journey, that he bequeathed his Venetian blood to me and I have been transfused with it. It'll be the first place I go when the restrictions lift. I'm sure the proverbial stork dropped me in the wrong country. I am an Italian mama through and through. I think that's what my late husband recognised in me. I remember going over with him every June and being in the kitchen with his stepmother, cooking. She was from Puglia in the south and her recipes were flavoursome and spicy. I was in heaven, peeling peas for a risotto and then using the pods to make a soup; hand making gnocchi on the big wooden board that Italian mamas possess; learning the mysteries of peeling and cooking artichokes. His sister arriving from Sicily with a huge box of pastries that were beyond my imagination, one particular sort was the watermelon tarts, jellied watermelon in a pastry lined with chocolate and studded with chocolate chips. Unbelievable.

But I digress. Today I'm in rebellion mood. I don't want to do my exercises, I don't want to jog on the spot, holding my boobs, going nowhere. I don't want to pretend skip or do my online dance class with the crazy teacher who assumes I get the routine within a few seconds. I have tried not to eat the few pastries and mini cakes that are being delivered; I've kept them in a container for such a day as this. I think I'll eat them all!

I ponder whether to go on a dating app just to see who's available out in the world of quarantine but because I haven't changed my Italian number over yet, I can't connect and I can't be bothered to reconnect my Australian number. So I end up doing my exercises and I spice up my jogging routine by going around my conference room and office in a figure of eight, more boobs cradled. I am considering finding something on Netflix to binge watch, (which I've only ever done once as I'm not much of a TV person). I am morphing into someone else. I am officially over this being in one room isolating. I even look forward to the nurse ringing every day to see how I am! How pathetic is that?

Quarantine Day 38/39. Stockholm Syndrome.

I hardly slept the last two nights. Covid dreams break my sleep as I can imagine they're doing to most people. Last night I didn't look at statistics or news and I slept. I've been dreaming of trying to get out of countries, vague blurry dreams with the same theme. a week after we left, France stopped anyone from leaving so we were lucky, although I do miss the nightly clapping that bound us all together.

From three p.m, I start to go a bit stir crazy. I can fill up the space until then but it's too early for wine time. What to do? This is when I start bird watching. They've obviously got the 3 pm blues as well, as at that time, two swallows begin to circle, they seem to be just having fun, maybe they've already had wine time; the pigeons land and have a chat, the males all cocky and hopeful, the females disinterested, they're waiting for wine time; cockatoos strut up and down the rooftop below me with no social distancing ethics at all. Then I notice a guy on the rooftop carpark skipping but without a skipping rope. This inspires me to do the same, had a good workout, both of us.

The food delivered today was restaurant quality! I text the daughter, she tells me to look up Stockholm Syndrome, she said I've got it. I've never heard of it but I research it. It's when the captive starts to be fond of the captor. When I rang earlier to get some more chamomile tea sent up, I complimented them on the food improvements. She's right.

Quarantine Day37. Who'd Have Thought!

I opened the coffee, I breathed in it's fragrance; made up my plunger pot, decanted the cream I ordered into a little glass yoghurt jar I bought from France and sat in my morning room and felt human. They even delivered a little pastry for me to enjoy with it. I follow my morning routine religiously because if I don't I'm worried I will come unstuck and to re-stick myself could be a lengthy process. I am tethered on the edge of last years anxiety and every now and then if I stop, I can feel it breathing it's warm slightly spooky air on me. I take that deep breath and start my dance class.

I have signed up for two online classes at the same time - it's something I do in the middle of the night when I wake up from a Covid dream and can't get back to sleep. I have to make a choice. I decide to do the Instagram one but I'm so tired I phase out and later get a message saying: 'I saw you left early.' WTF!

I try not to lie on the bed during the daytime. I think that takes me back to places I don't want to go. The day my husband died, for some reason I came upstairs to my room and lay on my bed and told the world via text that my life and the daughter's had changed forever. It was a beautiful sunny day in January; my window was open, I was touched by a faint breeze. Women friends gathered at the foot of my bed that day and fed me tiny sandwiches and Brownies (there was probably more and I apologise to the other women for not remembering). It became my safe place. For eight years, bed was a place of grief and safety, a strange mix of bedfellows. I realised when I arrived at the hotel for quarantine and the door shut behind me without a key, that it was time to get off the bed and sit in an armchair. Along with the return of my creativity , this total isolation has done a lot for me. Who'd have thought!

A surrealist vision of me in my armchair!