For Mum. Life goes on, but is never the same.

When I was a child, Mum used to play Tammy Wynette whilst doing the housework. I hate Tammy Wynette. I blame this early conditioning for my minimal domestic skills. What’s particularly ironic about Mum’s taste for Tammy Wynette’s old fashioned whining about life and relationships, is Mum was really a radical in hiding. She also had a thing for Tom Jones and his hip wriggle in his tight, tight pants. I often wondered how different Mum’s life would have been had she been born a decade or 2 later, or even if she had been at university through the massive shake ups of the world post 1968.  I don’t think it was by chance that she raised 2 children whose lives have not exactly been conventional.

In the 1960s, Mum earned a scholarship to study nuclear physics. But the world being as it was back then, she wasn’t able to stay in Tasmania alone to study and moved back to Adelaide where she started teaching. I often laugh at how many career changes I’ve had in 30 years, but Mum out did me. In the space of 3 years, she’d gone from nuclear physics, to teaching to nursing, then somewhere in the midst of sneaking out of the nurse’s quarters to party, she met Dad and thus found herself mothering. Later in life she went on to study art and feminist theory.

I suspect nuclear physics would have been easier than raising me. Firstly I nearly kill us both being born. Then I scream non-stop for 3 years and the only way I would sleep was if they drove me around the block. I figure it was carbon monoxide poisoning. In desperation, they put me in care, but as soon as Mum had had a chance to sleep, she felt so guilty she brought me home again 2 days later. I have no idea why she had another child given what a nightmare her first one was.

I might I lulled her into a false sense of security for a few years in the middle, before the real monster in me reared its head again as a teenager. When my friends are struggling with nightmare teenagers, I reassure them that I was a shocker, and somehow come out of it a reasonable human being and incredibly close to my mother.

Mum and I could talk about anything. That’s a particularly good thing as I discovered at some point that she’d known every time I’d lied to her as a teenager. Mum described me as not just a daughter but a best friend. I could say we were lucky to have the relationship we did, but luck would not be giving Mum credit for the work involved in the formation of both me and our relationship.

In a world where women are under constant pressure about their appearance and behaviour, Mum brought me up to be confident and comfortable with myself, capable of doing whatever I decided to do and to throw social expectations and stereotypes to the wind. I don’t know how she managed to do that, but I’m eternally grateful. As I grew up to have a somewhat wild life and interests, Mum was always loving and supportive. Even proud of funny old me. Except when I shaved my head. Then she told me I looked like a concentration camp victim.

Just as I seemed to be becoming functional adult, I nearly died in a canyoning accident. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to get that phone call to say your daughter was in intensive care. I guess that was the start of Mum’s continued mothering of her adult daughter. I’m a prime example of how mothering never ends. Mum looked after me after my accident, after my shoulder surgeries, when my mental health was struggling. Whilst I was a miserable sod after one of the shoulder surgeries, Mum assured Douglas I had been a terrible sick person as a child, and nothing had changed. She had to cut up my food, put my hair up and tie up my shoe laces, and we laughed about how it was just like old times. 

Mum struggled with physical health issues all her life. I don’t know how she coped really. I fall to pieces the moment I’m unable to do all the things I want to. She always said her body had never been that reliable, but what would be intolerable to her was losing her cognitive capacity. Over the past few years, she’d stress that her memory wasn’t what it was, that she’d lose track of words, or where she’d put things, and I’d tease her that I must have been becoming demented all my life if this was a sign to worry about. 

She’d still beat me at Scrabble and get all the cryptic crossword clues. Douglas would joke that it was time to play Scrabble when Mum was tired, so at least we’d be in with a chance. Despite her own struggles, Mum was always there to do things for the people she loved, spending a lot of time supporting Nan over the past years as well as helping out people in the community. Whilst she was unable to work, she would still be out volunteering.

Mum hadn’t really cared about whether she became a grandmother or not. Which considering how Malcolm and I were looking, was probably a good thing. But in an unlikely turn of events, Malcolm provided the goods and Mum discovered that being Nanna was great, and Malcolm and Kristy raised Lola to be as into family as Mum was. Whilst she cried when they moved to the States, they remained in close contact over the years and Lola was a source of pride and pleasure for Mum.

We went through boxes of childhood remnants together over the past few months, and discovered terrible poetry I had written for her as a child. Mum’s poetry was much better than mine.

I wonder what I was thinking with some of those metaphors, but I get the chocolate ice cream. Everyone loves chocolate ice cream, and everyone loved Mum.

I always knew I’d come to care for Mum when she needed it. It didn’t make it any easier when it happened. For all the radical paths her life may have taken in other circumstances, Mum never regretted meeting Dad and having Malcolm and me. Well, I expect the thought crossed her mind a few times over the years, but overall … Whilst covid 19 restricted what she could do with her last months, having her family around her was important to her, and family flocked around her. And she still beat us at Scrabble.

Despite all the difficulties in her life, Mum requested we play What a Wonderful World at her funeral, because she did think life had been wonderful. I can’t imagine anybody won’t be in tears by the end of it.

 

 

 

 

Rambling memories part 3: Moon Safari

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyGF4pvTwW4_GYk3jSZy4IGXT7hW1PkdB

Douglas has music on constantly. He also has slight hearing loss, so I had to make him put his phone underneath the pillow each night because the music playing from it was too loud for me to sleep. I have long since lost count of how many nights I feel asleep to Moon Safari. Air are really a band for all occasions. They do dinner parties, relaxing, dance, sex … although these days, they are so strongly associated with happy times with Douglas, they also make me cry.

In his early 20s, Douglas had long red hair. I have a massive thing for men with long red hair. Did you know that only 1.5% of the population have red hair? Then half that for the number of men, then think about how many men have long hair … ok, it’s a specialist field. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t know Douglas then. He and Natasha moved into Natimuk at pretty much the same time Jason and I did. Douglas’s hair was still long, but he wasn’t dying it anymore. Does dyed red hair count? I never got the chance to find out anyway. That was 20 years ago.

Natimuk being Natimuk, we went climbing, we socialised and Douglas and Natasha demonstrated some fine outfits. I should add a nudity warning here. There may be a bit of Douglas flesh in these photos. Of course, Douglas being Douglas, you’ve probably seen it all before. If it wasn’t some skimpy costume, skinny dipping or life modelling, you may have caught a glimpse of the time he and Natasha road the tandem naked to the fire dam for a swim.

Douglas followed me up the delightful Power without Glory once. That’s the squeeze chimney, off width roof thing with a skull and crossbones on it at Black Ian’s. Despite that experience, he still fell in love with me 10 or so years later. Maybe that’s how long it takes to forget what you are getting yourself in for.

Thus at some point in time, we found ourselves on a climbing trip to Flinders Island.  It was very impromptu. Douglas rang me from the island to talk me into flying down in 2 days’ time. And who am I to say no to random adventures? It turned out to be a rare week of idyllic weather in Bass Straight, and well, what do you expect to happen between 2 people skinny dipping on stunning isolated beaches in between dying of terror on rarely repeated routes of mediocre gear and friable rock? Or maybe Douglas was overcome by the undeniable attraction of a future filled with thrutching.

So we went as friends and returned as lovers.  But it wasn’t until a month or 2 later, when I came home to find Douglas washing my dishes attired only in my 1950s style frilly apron that I decided I really was in love with him. Fortunately for you all, I don’t have a photo of that outfit. But I did find this one to fill in the gap. I mean, you can see how irresistible he could be …. Ok , again, I have specialist tastes.

Somewhere in those heady early days, I left a pair of shoes at the top of a route at Barbican Wall. I warned Douglas that it was worst rock you’d ever encounter on a 2 star Grampian route, plus the track in was overgrown with spikey hakeas. Douglas later said in the haze of early love, he’d have eaten cat food if I said it as a good idea. So even though I admitted it was a bad idea, he came to rescue my shoes with me, but declared it was the most scared he’s ever been on second.

The relationship was full of fun and adventures. Buffalo, Moonarie, Frog, Hook Island, Nowra, Blueys, Tasmania. In the years before we got together, Douglas had lost his way a little. Been tempted away from the straight and narrow by the vices of making art and making money. These things were separate, as any artist will know. Douglas’s art was well received despite the lack of financial gain, winning several prizes over the years.

As a result of art and work though, he had done little climbing in the preceding 5 years. I fixed that. Back in those long red headed days, Douglas was a climbing machine.  At least his break from climbing meant I wasn’t being left behind. The adventures continued – Townsville, Kakadu, Red River Gorge, Indian Creek.

But really, it must have been the trenches that did it for Douglas – how else did we end up on The Ogive 

or doing the til then unrepeated Citizen Kane, an overhanging gnarly crack in Townsville? It doesn’t take much to turn a natural climber back into a climbing machine though and this is an incredibly excited Douglas having just sent Citizen Kane, his first 27 about 10 years.

Douglas’s glory in the Ogive was more in his outfit however

One of the things I loved about being with Douglas was the way conversations would just start from something random and escalate into a world of silly. We started one of those just before a day’s climbing with Ben, and by the time Ben was there to pick us up, Douglas was all kitted up, a bag of props and costume changes ready and Ben was thrown unwittingly into some low grade film making.

Douglas started our relationship owning 1 pair of hotpants. I have lost track of how many he owned by the end of it. Hell, there are probably even more now.

Douglas was responsible for my decent into decadence. Fancy wine. Fancy cheese. Fancy beer. Fancy places to stay. Fancy places to eat out. Gradually he wore down my decades of dirtbagging. For my part, I dragged him to off widths and made him bash through the wilderness for weeks on end. 

He made me stay in beachside bed and breakfasts.I  suspect I got the better end of that exchange. He did make me look at birds a lot though.  I spent evenings wistfully staring at the tent roof whilst Douglas was lost in the bird app. Turn around to see where he was on the trail to find he had turned his pack upside down to find the binoculars because there was some small brown bird to identify.

I would spend all my money on climbing gear and survive on scummy old electronic devices. Douglas was the reverse. His rack still looked like the early 90s, whilst he had the latest apple gadgets. I gave Douglas decent climbing gear and he gave me electronic toys and we made each other drink champagne. Actually, Douglas’s rack seemed to miraculously disappear and mine went out even when climbing without me. He was also responsible for my addiction to dishwashers, air conditioners and cleaners. He got me hooked on snorkelling, modern board games and an assortment of trashy computer games.

I don’t have any regrets about any of these addictions really. But despite all his best efforts, he failed to convert me to birdwatching. I doubt he has given up hope though.

Of course, we all know Douglas became incredibly ill in there as well.  Life was pretty bloody hard for both of us in there. There were many times when we’d both just end up on the floor crying. I’m not going to dwell on it, because I’m not the dwelling on shit kinda person. Instead I’m going to dwell over how silly he is. How much laughing we did together. Remember instead sitting on the couch crying with laughter over Bill Wither’s singing “Hot, hot”. The cheesy breathiness of it had us in fits of laughter. I guess you probably had to be there .. but I still laugh everytime I hear it, in the way that many memories of Douglas make me laugh.

I really wanted Douglas’s illness to be psychiatric. It didn’t make it any less hard going, but at least there was hope for a cure. In some ways, I still can’t believe it is a terminal illness, because, well, I don’t want to. I can’t imagine losing an old friend and lover this young. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a rapidly degenerating illness. I imagine all of us struggle to imagine coming to terms with hearing a diagnosis like that. I want a world where Douglas and I get to finish projecting the Ogive together in outrageous outfits. 

At least Douglas can still wear outrageous outfits, and I will happily push him in his wheelchair in whatever set of hotpants takes his fancy. In fact, I found him the finest hotpants that Horsham could provide. 

                                                                                                                                            

More rambling memories inspired by music - Bat out of Hell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QGMCSCFoKA

I fucking hate this song. I didn't listen to that link, and feel free not to yourself. However, this song is an integral part of my housesharing with Ken. I think it may have been the only tape (yes, tape, that's how long ago this was) he owned. He used to play it particularly loud when he was pissed off with me. Which was usually because the house was a mess. When the kitchen was a mess, he would bring home a massive steak and stink the kitchen out with in it revenge. I was a staunch vegetarian at the time. That I can't stand this song is sort of appropriate, because Ken and I vacillate between adoring each other and driving each other insane.  I would come home at times to find Ken in the lounge ensconced in porn videos (yes, actual videos that he hired from the sex shop in Katoomba. That is showing our age). He didn't have a VHS player in his room. I'm pretty sure he come home once to catch Jason and I having sex in the lounge, so I suppose we are even.

I loved sharehousing in my 20s. We lived our own version of He Died with a Felafal in his Hand, but I also formed lifelong friendships from it. It's so often mad and chaotic and messy and loud and intrusive but it's also fun and caring and like your own weird family. Moving out of home in suburban Adelaide and into inner city Sydney share housing was quite the step. There was the house where the upstairs bath tub crashed through the floor with someone in it. The flatmate who broke a rib and was sent home ED with panadiene forte, then cracked open a bottle of red, so by the time I came home, he was a grinning idiot unable to move on the couch. I confiscated the wine and threw a blanket over him. He later moved out because he had to go to London to start the Marxist revolution. I'm still waiting for that revolution. The one whom we found dead in her room. That story is rather sad. Another who developed a speed habit, then moved her boyfriend in and painted her room purple whilst I was away on a climbing trip, then just disappeared. John and I spent hours painting the room back to rose pink to get our bond back. That incident did lead me to moving in with Bili and Corisse, so all worked out well.

Ken and I met out of the Mt when I was 17. Apparently he had a massive crush on me, but I was oblivious to that at the time. We were both into climbing cracks, so we set out on a mission to do Boy Racer. We simulclimbed up to the ledge on Syrinx, got rained on, got swooped by birds and stared trepidously at the route. I magnanimously said Ken could go first. He said, oh, no, you can. No really, I mean it, you can have this one. No, no, you can. I made an attempt and bailed off, a gibbering wreck and sent Ken up to save the day. He disappeared out of sight into deadly silence until finally I hear a pitiful sounding "safe". Normally Ken bellows. I battle up after him and as I pop into his sight, he asks if I had cried under that roof, because he had been.

Ken and I have been through rocky rides together in both of our lives. He knew me through my reckless younger years, and my messy 20s coming to terms with trauma. His deep depression in his 40s. I think I may have been the only person he saw outside of his work for a few years there, because I would just turn up from Victoria on his doorstep and insist we go climbing. Until he didn't have the head for climbing anymore and we would just do dinner.

We were both around for many random adventures. He has enough Wendy stories to dine out on for years, as I do Ken stories. He was renowned for getting his kit off. I discovered he has a bald triangle on his perineum courtesy of a day when he decided he would just climb naked. You can't help but notice these things when he is bridging above you. And then every climber on Serenity Crack the day we did it knows all about Ken's adventures in the sex clubs of San Francisco. He doesn't have a quiet voice when he's excited. There was the day when he was guiding a group in Sydney for the Mardi Gras through a canyon, and he cut the arse cheeks out of his wetsuit for the occasion. He made more in tips than his wage that day. We had a party that he couldn't make not long after that, and so we made an alter to Ken out of his wetsuit. Ken has always been a lot of fun and loving in his awkward backhanded fashioned when he's not being a grumpy fucked up bastard (his words!). He's a total contrast of outrageous and blokey, and a soft gooey centre that he's done a lot of work to get in touch with in recent years. I do adore him, and it is fun to talk back to the outrageous and blokey. We have been continually playfighting for nearly 30 years.

Last winter, I finally got Ken back climbing with Bili and Shaun from our old circle from the 90s after his years of exile. It was also the first time I'd seen Shaun in about 15 years. Our day at the cliff was straight back to the old days. The same old bad jokes. The sun was shining, we were laughing, climbing was happening and the world was great.

I may have destroyed the Bat Out of Hell tape in a fit of pique. Ken's mostly forgiven me.

Rambling memories inspired by music: The Clouds

Much as I am tempted to keep writing about covid 19, I am diversifying before it drives all of us insane. You're not out of the warzone however, I might yet start ranting about the police state! In the meanwhile, I am moving onto another highly popular internet theme that I've always found rather annoying, which is chain posting of "10 albums that changed your life" or "10 photos" or "10 books", no words, no explanation. The thing that annoys me about them, is that these things are interesting for the stories behind them. What makes them meaningful? What memories do they stir? How did they change your life?  I don't want to just see an album cover. I want to hear about it's context. So strap in, I'm about to verbosely write all about some music that always takes me back to certain places, people, times in my life, starting with the Clouds.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA247F35B040D7533









The Clouds exemplify a genre of music that I call "Kylie music". Kylie and I have known each other for 32 years now. Fuck that seems like a long time. I had a very mobile childhood, with my father being in the RAAF, and as a result, I don't have those lifelong friends from primary school that most people have. Kylie is my oldest friend. We met briefly when we were both in Venturers, before I became on off the rails teenager, then when I got back on the rails again, we reconnected through Adelaide Uni Mountain Club. We were both very young to be at Uni, and came from the ill reputed north eastern suburbs of Adelaide where university was a whole different world.  Uni really was a lifechanging experience.

Those years at Adelaide Uni really  made me who I am today (you can thank them or curse them).  I started a suburban bogan with little perspective on the world and left a radical, post modern feminist climbing bum. I still remember the lecturer who explained the difference between Freud and Lacan by acting out how Freud worshipped the giant penis up on a pedestal, whilst Lacan actually though he was a giant penis and she danced around the lectern with her arms shaped above her head as a phallus to demonstrate this.

In those days, student activism was still a big thing. We had street protests, rallies and strikes. We had a strong student union and a vibrant community of all sorts of clubs and societies, from the Society for Creative Anachronisms beating each other up in medieval costumes in the courtyard, to feminist, anarchist and antiracist groups plotting in cellars on how to change the world, and of course, the Mountain Club.  We were a funny group of social oddities now I look back at us, but we became each others network in a way our course mates never did. This was the vehicle by which I became an obsessed climber, there were endless adventures and parties and I nearly dropped out of uni entirely just to climb. Instead I started picking my subjects based around how much climbing time they would afford me. Much as I acknowledge we were dodgy as fuck at times, we all survived and we loved it. It's amazing feeling young and immortal! I still don't advocate learning to climb the way I did though.

In those days of social irresponsibility, the Uni Bar served us all, including still 17 year old Kylie and me, and Friday nights were inevitably spent seeing live bands there. Hence where we discovered the Clouds.  It was a great venue, and even my dodgy long term memory takes me back to the crowded, smokey dance floor, dim lighting tinged with red, the black and purple cloak that I virtually lived in then (I still have it, I can't bear to throw it away), and Kylie's A line mini skirts. I still have a crotchet top of hers that she gave me when she moved overseas for a few years. It also is impossible to throw out. Uni social clubs had lock in parties, where you paid your $20 entry and could drink all the beer you wanted or tricycle relays with compulsory beer sculling before you could hand over the baton. So problematic in hindsight, but such good times!

I'm sad that the radicalism of our universities has disappeared. Voluntary student unionism, HECS, a general return to conservatism in the world and the pressure of rising costs of housing all fed a change to university being a mechanism to earn money, rather than a place of learning, exploration and growth. Students became focused on getting a job that would repay their mammoth HECS debts and their mammoth mortgage. There was no space for radicalism anymore. I am loving seeing young people out on the streets protesting again now. It's like young people tried to play the capitalist game we are told to play for more than a decade there, but now they are looking at the world and realising that it's a game they can never win. Here I am, feeling like a doting aging activist, nodding approvingly at the climate strikes, at slut walk, and the gun violence protests in the States, all of which young people of have been integral to. I love the young adult fiction showing rebellion against the conservative regimes that take control after the apocalypse. Maybe popular culture will become the hotbed of modern radicalism in the ways that higher education once was.

Kylie and I are such different women in some ways. But here we are all these years later. Probably I have Kylie to thank for it. She is always incredibly good at keeping in touch. We haven't lived near each other since the mid 90s, but through all that she checks in on me, she makes time to visit, she welcomes me to stay, she invites me on trips. History is important to Kylie, and despite all the changes in our lives, we have history. Kylie became a librarian, and the seeds of it were there all along. She has diary entries and photos all ordered and accessible to remind us of events in our lives, not to mention a far better memory than I have. About this time last year, she sent me a photo of  me in the Pines in 1999 wishing me a happy 20 year anniversary of living in Nati. Of course, I had been unable to remember even if it was 98, 99 or 2000 that I moved to Nati. Kylie knew down to the month. This, she told me was our last trip camping at the Mt before I moved into Natimuk. I look so young! The gear and the tent so old! The pines so empty of people, but also so full of trees.

Music has always been a big thing for Kylie. She was over visiting for Invasion Day long weekend this year, and made me listen to the Triple J hottest 100, which she follows obsessively each year. I don't think I knew a single song on it, until they played an excerpt of the 1999 Hottest 100 which they were going to revisit on Double J. Those songs, I remember well. Maybe it's because the 90s were really my formative years, and the connection of music to memories are stronger for it. They were fun and amazing but also tumultuous and traumatic years, and I wouldn't live them again if you paid me!

Kylie is the epitomy of nice. I mean that in a genuinely lovely way. I feel terribly cantankerous and impatient in comparison. It's hard to imagine Kylie ever hurting a fly.  She's devoted to her friends and family, and to her community work such as the Climbing Club of SA and Amnesty International. On the outside, she can appear to be a sweet and respectable product of an all girl Catholic school, but I know the wild Kylie as well. In someways, she's a bit like the music I associate with her. Sweet female vocals over grunge guitar. Whilst Kylie is The Clouds, I am more like Bikini Kill. Outright swearing and rebellion against the world. But I love her to bits and we'll still be sharing our lives in another 32 years.

The cost of social distance, or please #shutthefuckup with #staythefuckathome

I'm a bit sick of the #staythefuckathome brigade. It makes it sound as if it's all easy. We just lay on the couch and save the world. But what really is the price of staying the fuck at home? We talk about the economic and health costs of this pandemic, but the shouting of stay the fuck at home is rude and hurtful to those for whom staying home is in fact, really awful.

The day we locked down my work, I cried. I had residents crying in front of me and families crying over the phone. It sounds so straightforward. The elderly are at risk, we must lock down the facility to save them. But the costs of that lockdown are huge. Seeing their family is one of few remaining pleasures in life for them. Residents and families may never see each other again. Many are unable to use Skype or even a phone, and elderly partners in the community frequently don't have a computer or smart phone. Most are unable to understand why they can't see anyone. I hold the Ipad up for them to see their family, and they cry again.  I feel guiltily like I am running a prison. In staying the fuck at home, we cut a large amount of their quality of life remaining.

When they shut the borders with SA, I also cried. I was going to see my mother this week. She is high risk and I wanted to get over to see her before it was too risky to visit. I was too late. I will still go over to nurse her should she become sick. I will strap my battle wombat on the front of the van and storm the border if I have to, but by staying the fuck at home, I may not get the chance to spend time with her well ever again.

Our communities are already full of isolated people. People only marginally connected. People only just holding it together in the normal world. People whose families or partners are a source of stress or risk with whom they are now locked in.

I am one of many people living alone these days. It's great when I could pop into friend's places for a cuppa, held pot luck dinners, arranged sociable climbing days, headed off on road trips or went on random Tinder dates. It's not so great right now. I have mornings when I wake up and contemplate 6+ months of living alone through stress and grief and without those things that keep me together, and it's not good. There's no one there to give me a hug and I can't just turn up at a friend's for a comforting tea and chat. And what if staying the fuck at home mean no fucking for 6 months???? I'm not entirely in jest when I say I don't know that I'd make it through 6 months without sex, climbing and riding. That's like all the great pleasures in life ...

So stop saying just #staythefuckathome and acknowledge the cost of it. There are people coping with the fear and anxiety of covid 19 alone or coping being cooped up with people who are causes of fear and anxiety. Grief and depression will be rife. Rates of suicide and family violence are going to skyrocket. Instead of shouting at them, try saying, "I understand staying at home can be hard. Is there anything I can do to help you stay safe, sane, connected and healthy through this?"

The cost of mixed messages: can I go climbing if i buy takeaway first?

Australia is rife with mixed messages at the moment, but the one currently doing my head in is the encouragement to order takeaway to support local businesses.  I get that people want to support local businesses. They are often an integral part of small communities, are run by people we care about, employ people we care about. But there are two major flaws I see in this strategy. One is, we are still creating a vector of transmission. Sure, it might be less than if we all crowded in the cafe, but there is a line from the homes and other connections of staff and owners to each other and to customers, and vice versa. We're just minimising the customer-customer vector.  Don't go climbing. Don't go riding. Don't go camping. Don't go to the beach. But do go buy takeaway. Does anyone else find this message a little inconsistent?  How the hell are we gong to trace contacts if one of these takeaway providers becomes ill? I am so not eating food prepared by other people at the moment.

The other is that this is just not a viable strategy for keeping small food businesses alive. Anyone who has worked in the industry know that it's always marginal. The chances of covering costs on the limited services available is pretty slim, let alone making a living out of it. We are also asking people in the community who have lost jobs or reduced their income to spend money supporting these businesses. For example, those in my community who worked in the outdoors industry have basically lost all income for an indefinite period.  How are they going to be able to prop up local businesses?

This appears to me as yet another way in which our government is trying to fob off dealing with a major crisis onto individuals. Slowly, our government is realising that this strategy is rather limited and turning to government intervention - enforceable closures, boundaries and isolation, increased financial support, but it has stopped short of the incredibly obvious solution to the mass loss of livelihood caused by this. Universal basic income. Massive queues at Centrelink could be avoided. The delays in processing claims and the immense stress on Centrelink staff avoided. People in need supported. The farcical measures to try and keep some non-essential services functioning that still contain risk stopped. Clarity could prevail and we could actually have an effective shutdown without people starving or loosing their home or business. People will say but not everyone needs it, to which I say, who cares? So a few people will get some money they don't need. The government does that to big businesses all the time. High income earners will still be paying tax on it, whilst low income earners won't. The money and stress saved in administration will make up for it. Imagine if all that policing welfare that we do just no longer happened. This is a time when we are seeing how flexible the world really is, and different ways things can work. The benefits of a large, benevolent state are becoming obvious. Maybe once shutdowns have finished, we could move onto to government job creation instead of welfare policing. Maybe it's time to find out if the world doesn't end when we simplify welfare.

I am not buying takeaway. Not because I don't want to support local business (don't you love how there is always a moral imperative in these things? Good citizens support their local businesses. I think good government supports their people), but because I think it is an unnecessary risk. A much greater risk of transmission than a solitary ride on gentle trails, or a climb on an obscure crag, both of which those with moral imperative like to tell me I shouldn't do. Driving to pick up your takeaway is a much greater risk of an accident than my gentle trails or obscure climb as well.

I believe one of the reasons people are not adhering to physical distancing is the inconsistency of the message. If the message was clear, then people might hear the urgency of the message, and also make better decisions about what they do. And if people don't start making better decisions about what they do, we will all be subjected to the required boundaries of the lowest common denominator and be shut in our houses. I don't want to be unable to do anything because the government has a policy full of loopholes or people are just doing stupid shit. We are trying to avoid something that has droplet transmission. So don't have close contact with other people and don't touch shared surfaces whenever possible or wash your hands before and after. Minimising your time around other people is the easiest way to do that. But the stay at home message is pointless unless you also don't go to the hairdresser, don't crowd crags or beaches and don't get takeaway. I'd love to not go to the supermarket, I was never a fan of them at the best of times, but it seems unavoidable every so often. Try and make staying at home fun enough that you want to do it and make sensible choices when you do leave the house. Right now, exercise is an acceptable reason to leave the house. If we follow the principles of physical distancing,  all we can still do that. If we don't, we'll shut in our houses completely for months.

Climbing in the time of coronavirus: not quite as poetic as Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Countrywide, we have the two extremes of panic and denial going on around covid-19, neither of which are really justified. Lots of people are panicking because covid-19 is new and unknown. There’s no doubt that many other things will continue to be far more dangerous – climate change, poverty, family violence, driving, hell, lifestyle diseases lead to a huge number of preventable early deaths in Australia. People continue to refuse vaccination and can be rather lax at using condoms. All these things could kill us, but the risks are dealt with through normalisation and denial. Covid-19 is a long way off being normalised. It will be eventually. Most of us will get it at some point, a vaccine will be developed and life will go on. Until then, there’s a lot we don’t know about covid-19. We don’t have clear figures about how prevalent it really is, how contagious it is, or even rates of mortality. The different living conditions, populations, health facilities and management strategies of different countries all effect the outcomes we have seen. Between its frequently mild presentation and limited availability of testing, there could be a much larger reservoir of it out in the community than we know of.  Rates of mortality may be elevated by its presentation in countries where many people live in poor conditions with poor access to health services. Having said that, Italy is a modern western society, and its health service is overwhelmed. This again leads to increased mortality. As we are living longer, we have a large aging population particularly vulnerable to acute illness. I also dread to think of the impact if it gets into remote indigenous communities, who have high rates of pre-existing health conditions, crowded living conditions and very poor access to services.

Despite all of the uncertainties, one thing that has been clear that it is spreading exponentially. Australia is on track to have 1-2000 cases in another week. I don’t think we are going to prevent the spread of the virus. The sort of serious intervention, investment and support that was needed weeks ago in order to prevent it is the sort of action that is anathema to liberal governments, as is the health and social welfare action we should have had over the years that would have been made us more resilient to this. Instead we get told things to do as individuals. Self isolate (is quarantine a dirty word?). Take your annual leave to do so. What, casual workers haven't saved their meagre casual loading for a national crisis? Part time nurses, step up to fill the staffing shortage! (Yeah, right, like I'm going to work more to save Scotty's arse ...).  No wonder people are unwilling or unable to do this. No amount of good will is going to solve this problem. Welcome to the trainwreck that neoliberalist policies get us.

  

Climbers like to think of themselves as a healthy bunch, so it seems there’s a fair bit of complacency about covid-19 in our community. For most of us, it is quite reasonable to expect we will not suffer badly with the virus. But that doesn’t mean we should remain unconcerned about it. Some climbers are not as robust as they may seem. Some have chronic respiratory or heart conditions. Some are on immune suppressing drugs for conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or Chrone’s disease or after organ transplant. Some are recovering from cancer treatment or are just becoming older and more vulnerable despite their continued capacity to climb. You can’t really tell how strong someone’s immune system is just by looking at them. We don’t know if someone is going home from the crag to care for an elderly or sick friend or relative who may be vulnerable to serious complications if they become ill.

Climbing is actually a pretty good medium to spread bugs in. Covid-19 is transmitted via contact and droplets. This means that infected particles are heavy enough to fall to the ground within a metre or two. They aren’t airborne. So if you are two metres away from someone, you should be pretty safe. That’s easily breached in a crowded gym or even a busy crag. The virus can survive on surfaces, meaning every time you touch something, you may get some your hands. We don’t know how long covid-19 survives on surfaces, but studies of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome virus suggest it survived 60 minutes on surfaces. A lot of people can touch a door knob or climbing hold in 60 minutes. Of course, the skin is a great barrier, but you become infected when those organisms on your hands get into your mouth, nose or eyes.  How often to you put your gear, or your climbing partner’s gear in your mouth? We handle all our grotty, probably never been washed equipment, then scoff down a sandwich without a thought of washing our hands. How many other sweaty hands have caressed each hold you are using? I’d avoid the gym at the moment, but that’s no great sacrifice for me, as I haven’t been in one since about 1997. Now is a good time to start taking hand sanitiser to the gym and to the crag though. Put a generous dollop in your hand, rub vigorously together until dry, making sure you include thumbs, between fingers, finger nails and backs of hands.

Should we still go out climbing? I certainly will be, but remote and obscure crags have extra appeal at the moment. In consideration of the more vulnerable members of our community, don’t go out climbing if you are at all sick, or known to have been exposed to covid-19. If you are feeling well enough to do stuff, save your sanity with some solo or non-contact outdoor activities, like hiking, trail running, mountain biking, surfing. Well or unwell, quarantined or not, practice hand hygiene all the bloody time. Before touching stuff, after touching stuff, before eating, before and after blowing your nose … it starts to feel ridiculous, but ridiculous is best practice. When you are sick to death of washing your hands so much, sympathise with us poor nurses whose skin is basically falling apart from years of handwashing like this. If you are at gyms or busy crags, you are at more risk of exposure, so don’t spread your exposure to vulnerable people. It’s fine to take risks with yourself, not so fine to force those risks on other people. Ring Nan rather than visit. Leave a care package on her doorstep, but make sure you wash your hands before preparing and handling it.

You’ve got the climbing trip of a lifetime planned and you’re wondering whether to cancel? I guess we should be grateful that these are the hard decisions of our lives, because they could be so much worse. Check your travel insurance to see if they will cover cancellation in case a pandemic, or if your airline will change the dates of travel. Assess the risk of the country you’re are going to, or any transit countries. Check the travel information from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Who knows what restrictions may end up in place for international travel? It looks suspiciously like it’s too late for travel restrictions to be of any use for Australia now, but our government does like the “strong border defence” lines. They are practiced at that. You might get out of the country, but face quarantine to come home, or be unable to enter your destination country. Planes are great places to spread illness, so you will inevitably be increasing your risk. If you have any chronic conditions that increase your risk of complications, think about it even harder.  If you do go, get immunised for everything you can before you go, stock pile your first aid kit with medications to relieve symptoms and antibiotics for secondary infection.  If you get sick, find yourself a comfy hotel, hole up in your room, order in food, minimise contagion, make sure the hotel knows to take precautions and lounge around until you recover. That is, if anywhere will let you stay there by that stage. Consider the possibility that you could get seriously ill in another country. Will your travel insurance cover you, and will that country be able to care for you? Is your trip worth the risks?

There’s no great reason to panic.  If this was ebola though, I’d be hiding out bush for the duration. Be sensibly cautious nevertheless. Practice scrupulous hand hygiene, choose less crowded places to go, avoid close contact with vulnerable people, and just stay home if you are sick or aware of an exposure to covid-19 until cleared. I’d love to take the social distancing advice as a chance to disappear somewhere with my bike for a few weeks, but sadly, I don’t think they mean nurses when they say please stay away.  For those of you who want to self isolate via climbing, may I recommend the Australia wide tour to repeat all of Greg Pritchard’s new routes?  I am certain that you will not find anyone with coronavirus on Greg’s new routes, and by the time you’ve managed to find them all,  if you ever get back out alive, we should have a vaccine. Bugger stocking up on toilet paper, though, make sure you have enough coffee, wine and chocolate. I’ve also got a supply of pop corn in case I get the pleasure of watching the capitalist system collapse around me.