Self Isolation Day 13. Crash & Burn.

Didn't look at any news after 7.30 pm last night. Slept and slept in only to realise that in France it's daylight saving and we went forward an hour but still.... Then slowly but surely over the course of the next few hours after reading the morning news, I crashed. We all crashed. I went fearfully to the supermarket because the girls had had enough of shopping and I was in need of alkaline sustenance - vegetables. I wore a mask. I bought tonic water to top up the Gin already in stock at home and the French shop assistant said something to me that I didn't understand but he was smiling so I just nodded.

When I returned we went to our separate rooms. I didn't paint, I didn't write, I didn't go for a walk, I didn't do my core strengthening exercise. I was having a tantrum with myself that no one else could see. I couldn't see the point of anything except for eating chocolate and even that was decadent. I am white, elite and privileged, what right did I have to justify my existence?

Overnight in Italy another nine hundred plus people had died. Their wages aren't being subsidised, they're starting to run out of money, they're appealing to the EU for monetary help. I can smile at funny coronavirus jokes and I have to, to stay sane. I can write posts and make the mundane slightly hilarious but life as we know it has ground to a halt. Empty toilet rolls are lining up and looking at me accusingly in the toilet now. It's day 13.

Daylight saving has arrived here and everyone forgot to clap tonight so the daughter put on Hey Jude loudly and danced and sang in order to get people out on their balconies. By that time I had drank too much gin and tonic (which I found at the supermarket, 2 small bottles) flavoured with rose water and I was feeling it. The daughter had put on videos of herself as a baby and toddler. In the background were the voices of my late mother, my late husband, both playing with her with their undivided attention as I filmed. Tears streamed down my face for the loss, the years of IVF, the smiling faces that were no more. I was maudlin and yet I had no right to be. I had been fortunate to have a wonderful mother, to find a perfect mate, to have a miracle child (I was 36 and my husband 60 when I fell pregnant, the odds the IVF clinic told me were a million to one). But still I cried for the life we had, for my daughter, for the Italians whose families have been taken from them without even a funeral, for the fact that know one can predict our exodus out of this quarantine. Every country has different rates, different ways of living, and the virus has it's own agenda.

The daughter came and sat on my bed and said: "Mum, we have to start seeing the positive, please don't talk about the negatives. We're overwhelmed with the bombardment of information." I know most of us if we get it will have it lightly and we're being extremely careful but there is no end in sight at the moment.

The daughter lights some candles, she blasts Hey Jude and we sing loudly to drown out the silence in the streets. I'm sorry this has been a bit of sad post but we've made it through another day and we are the lucky ones.

Self Isolation Day 11 &12. Losing the plot.

Oh yes, it's happening. Had it altogether up to now, lost it somewhere between the day we lost and the day we realised we lost it. The daughter has now officially become the Queen of Cleaning. She sweeps, she makes a potion of bleach and eucalptus oil that I'm sure if a corona virus had a sniff of it would go elsewhere. She washes said floors with it. We are safe. She washes all surfaces. I feel my job is done. As a mother, I took after my own mother and never asked my child to clean (I only had one) and as I and my sister had done and my daughter after me, we became vigorous cleaners. The doors are thrown open #yankeecandles are lit, there's even one in the toilet. I'm seriously impressed. But as I occupy the very small space that is the toilet, I begin to look at the line up of toilet rolls - should I paint them? Could that become my piece de resistance? I take them to my art room/readingroom/ bedroom and contemplate their fate. Self isolation day 12 creative tips.

I go for a walk unwillingly but the girls have told me to turn left at the cordoned off river walk and I give it a go. I discover Les Vivres de l'Art which is an amazing exhibition space in a disused factory. I am the only one in there. It lifts my spirits. On the way the only people I see cross the road when they see me (I do the same). I realise that although I am a bit of a recluse, I like to be alone in a group of people: I like a crowded beach, a touristed site. I am not happy being this alone in an almost silent world. I do a Blog course and an Instagram course on line. The daughter is trying to grow vegetables from cuttings she has taken, they are on the fridge suspended in water. Day 12, say no more.

I spend another hour trying to be a free form painter. I end up crushing my painting into a ball. I like precision and as much as I try to free myself of it, I think I have to embrace it.

The girls went shopping and bought Easter eggs. I love that in Europe they only appear sparingly just before Easter, unlike Australia where they arrive on the shelves just after New Year. They have also started both playing SIMS. I am now officially alone. Like this chair with an empty tin of beer next to it. It is a metaphor of my life atm. And I am a very privileged player in the scenario that is playing. Think of India - people will starve before the C virus even gets near them. Gratitude is my mantra at this point.

Self Isolation - Day 9/10. The Frida Kahlo eyebrow dye.

So there's a few people on Instagram cooking and drinking their way through #selfisolation and they seem to be doing it with a certain amount of panache. Hence when the daughter suggested yeeros accompanied by her pickled onion (but then couldn't face it after the trauma of last night's rice paper roll filling that took longer than she expected and split, a scenario she hasn't quite recovered from) but couldn't face making it, I volunteered. I ended up in a similar situation as I suggested I make pita bread from scratch. It was good I have to admit but slightly fiddly. But I digress, in order to keep myself company during the having no proper measuring devices, kneading, rising (carrying it from warm spot to warm spot on a cold day) and making of said pita bread, I created the Ruby Red cocktail. Gin, Creme de Cassis. red wine and frozen berries (the berries are because we have no ice trays) Any quantity will do. It's all good.

That day we also received an order of #Yankeecandles. It made our day. We gathered around as the parcel was opened, we sniffed, we smelt, we felt all was right with the world even though it wasn't. I went for my walk and found two more self distancing chairs. What a day!

If that wasn't excitement enough, the daughter went shopping and found eyebrow dye. After dyeing hers and her partners, she offered to do mine. As mine were rapidly disappearing in a forest of distressingly white hairs that were appearing, I agreed to the procedure. Over and done with in five minutes and now we all have very dark eyebrows which fill in the spaces on me but which are quite eye catching on the two blonde ones. When the daughter knocked on my door, her eyebrows entered first.

I don't want you to think I'm not thinking about the nurses and doctors, the homeless, those who are now jobless, sole traders in the arts, those who have lost family and will in the coming months lose more. In Australia people are getting so little help to those overseas, the purse strings of the government are tight. I am in an enviable position of being able to document and photograph what is going on in our tiny sector of the world and by the end of the day, we all need to laugh. Thinking of you all.