December 4th
On Sunday, as I did my circuits of the yard, one of my exercise companions said,
‘You go out tomorrow don’t you?’ And when I had said that I hoped so, he continued,
‘See you on the other side!’

The Isolation Facility was a sort of purgatory, a place of cleansing, between the reality of life under whatever tier of rules and restrictions apply in London and the heaven that life in New Zealand seems to be. And there are no Plenary Indulgences, not even for the Pakistani cricketers, a brilliant team, I’m told, who are finding the rules of their Isolation Facility very difficult to deal with. But however difficult isolation may have been, and it was difficult from time to time, it was difficulty for a purpose. A purpose achieved.

I left the Distinction Hotel with a letter which begins:
‘This letter is a formal confirmation of your completed stay in managed isolation.
We are pleased to confirm you have completed the necessary requirements for isolation after arriving in New Zealand, staying in a controlled environment under the supervision of the New Zealand Government.’

And the letter concludes,
‘We thank you for joining thousands of others in keeping our communities safe. Your efforts help us to prevent COVID-19 spreading within New Zealand. We hope that your stay has been comfortable and you have felt well supported.’
‘He wake eke now – we are all in this together.’
The letter is signed, a duplicated signature of course, by Air Commodore Darryn Webb, Head of Managed Isolation and Quarantine.

It was reasonably comfortable and I was totally ‘well supported’. I’m told that a family friend described the hotel as ‘Bulgaria 1954’. As he wasn’t born in 1954 and has probably never been to Bulgaria that is not altogether fair. The bed was fine, there were plugs for the bath – actually my room had a walk in shower not a bath so I don’t know that – and the people, all of them, military, security and hotel staff were, without exception, friendly and helpful.

I cannot begin to comprehend the complexities of organisation which are involved in achieving a Covid free New Zealand. Of course here it is possible to be border protected because we are so far away from anywhere else and the population of the country is only five million. Nevertheless it is surely a remarkable achievement.

December 9th The Other Side
I still think life here is extraordinary and I’ve been out of quarantine for over a week. I was required to wear a face mask on flights to and from Nelson last week. I do check in to restaurants and buses with the ‘Covid App’ on my mobile phone but I have given talks to a group of sixty, ‘In My Eightieth Year ‘, and forty, ‘Its Part of the Ageing Process’, with no one wearing masks so I was able to see people’s faces and gauge my response to their reactions. That was wonderful for me and as I wasn’t heckled or booed and no one walked out I guess it was ok for them. I’ve been to a small drinks party and a lunch for more than a hundred former staff of Christ’s College. No ‘social distancing’ at all. On Saturday evening I’m going to a performance of ‘The Messiah’ at the Christchurch Town Hall. Nearly every seat booked.

It is the normality that is extraordinary. As I hesitated to get into a lift with two other people in the hotel in Nelson, and then got in, I had to explain to them how wonderful it was to be in a lift with other people. I think they were a little surprised but said they had family in Yorkshire so they thought they understood. I still find myself smiling as I am able to ask directions of a stranger and I’ve stopped backing away to two meters distance when people approach me. I keep on having to tell people how fortunate they are – I must get over that soon! I’ve been to church and we sang hymns and there was coffee afterwards.

There’s an element of guilt floating around in me somewhere, guilt that I’m not sharing in the difficulties that others are facing at home in London. Still, I’m out to a Thai restaurant with friends this evening so I’m managing to live with it.

Being Together

We get to the exercise yard by going through the Gumption Bar. Not functioning at the moment. More’s the pity. I think the exercise area has been cordoned off from Cathedral Square. It is to the south of the Cathedral. There’s a tree with a raised patch of grass and benches around it inside our area and another outside beyond the double fence with the shade cloth. And at one end of the double fence there’s a small area with no shade cloth.

Every day there have been visitors to my fellow guests either standing on the benches around the outside tree so that they can see over the fence, or the other side of the two meter no go area where there’s no shade cloth. Those inside keep their masks on. Those outside don’t wear masks, they have neither need nor requirement. And they talk to each other or don’t talk all that much but are just there.

For all the telephone calls and video links, zooming and streaming and every bit of useful technology there is, it is very clear to me that people still just want to see each other and hear each other. They want to be together even at two meter’s distance, in the flesh.

November 20th Routine

The routine began well though ‘chapel’ happened before breakfast which didn’t arrive until ten past nine. Then it was PT. I didn’t use the lift to go to the exercise area but took the stairs, one hundred and twenty seven of them – extra exercise. There was a bigger army presence than usual and standing, correctly spaced in a row, were ten men, my fellow guests, clearly ready to line dance or something. I discovered they were all from Italy and were there for their morning briefing. What it was about I have no idea. Sadly I don’t speak or understand Italian.

After the briefing most of them went off to the smoking area to have a cigarette. The smoking area is next to the exercise area. When I’m first down the next group down are the smokers. I’ve now realised it is chiefly for them the area is open from midnight until 6.50 a.m. Thank goodness I gave up smoking nearly thirty years ago.

Maths has been added to my timetable. I now have the Christchurch Press, the local newspaper, delivered each day and it has Sudokus near the back along with the crosswords and the children’s cartoon. I can’t do the crossword so I do Sudoku. Strange in a way as I was useless at maths and figures at school and loved English and words.

November 24th Trend Setting

It’s easy to set a trend, I’ve discovered. And it only takes one person. I am that person and here in isolation I’ve set a trend. When we exercise most of us simply do circuits, clockwise. A few have sophisticated routines that include exercise mats, skipping ropes and very big rubber bands. The majority of us did not come so well prepared so we do circuits.

I was the first out yesterday morning and I remembered a friend suggesting, early in the first Lockdown when I was doing my circuits of Kennington Park,
‘Why don’t you sometimes do your circuits a the other way round? You’ll see things differently.’

So I set off around the very small exercise area – anti clockwise. I got a slightly strange look from the next person out but then everyone followed suit. And in the afternoon? And this morning? They’re still going anti-clockwise. If I’m first out before I leave perhaps I will reverse the trend.

Tattoos

Quite a number of my fellow guests are tattooed – probably more than I’ve seen because the weather has been cool so I’ve only seen legs, arms and necks. I see the tattoos when we’re doing circuits. Some have tattoos around their upper arms. One young man has six stars, not very professionally worked, down his right calf. There may be seven with the seventh hidden by his ankle sock.

A young woman has some words tattooed around her neck but I’ve not been able to read them because I’m not allowed closer than two meters and the letters are quite small. I don’t like to ask in case the words tell me where to go.

Another man has roses tattooed on his right calf, chiefly in red, and on his left, in lurid green, the face of the devil. He wears a sports shirt that has on the back KEEP THE FAITH which, on my first circuit, I thought a rather good sentiment until the second circuit when I thought, ‘Faith in who, or what? The Government? His doctor? Himself? President Trump? God? The Devil?’ I had remembered that faith doesn’t exist without an object. I decided not to ask him who or what was the object of his faith.

November 25th

I was late down this morning. Everyone’s still walking anti clockwise.

November 14th Heathrow Terminal Two

Everything was different. Not everything. The building was familiar and the check in counters were still in the same place and there were queues. But all the human interactions were different. Of course everyone was wearing a mask and staff were behind shielding screens.

Check in went smoothly, London to Christchurch with Singapore Airlines. After security clearance there were very few shops open and no restaurants, of course. Everything was strangely quiet.

November 15th In Transit

Being five hours in transit in Changi Airport, Singapore, was not a good idea. The Singapore to Auckland flight had a much shorter connection time than mine to Christchurch. The two families in front and behind me on the London to Singapore flight were both going on to Auckland. The family in front, mother, father and two children coped brilliantly. I spent a bit of time doing ‘Hide and Seek’, no, more ‘Peek a Boo’, with the four year old in front. I really felt for the family behind me. A mother with three young children one of whom was not at all happy, and made it known, for much of the flight. Hearing aids out, earphones and either films or Beethoven on and I was able to cope very well.

Not so in the Premium Transit Lounge at Changi Airport. There were only nine of us in the lounge. One of the nine had very loud phone conversations with his phone on speaker so I could hear both sides of the conversations even with my hearing aids out. I could hear but not understand because the loud conversations were not in English. That was frustrating on many levels not least because I usually quite enjoy listening in to what others are talking about. Still it meant I left the Premium Lounge and went for walks. I managed to do 3065 steps in the comparatively limited area in which we were held.

On either side of the five hours in transit were two long flights. London to Singapore was twelve hours and fifty five minutes and then Singapore to Christchurch was nine hours and fifty minutes. I’m not certain we kept exactly to the minutes. The flights were fine. I did manage to sleep for some of the time, even with a face mask, but it was the films and the music that saved the day – and the night. I watched four films that I would never have seen otherwise. One in German ‘Sealed Lips’, one French ‘Portrait of a Woman on Fire’, one Tamil ‘Karrupu Durai’ and one Hindi ‘Kalank’, all with subtitles, and all beautifully filmed, acted and, fascinating. The music was Beethoven and Mozart – mainly Piano Sonatas.

November 16th Arrival

After landing in Christchurch it was the New Zealand army who seemed to be in charge. Everyone was masked and instructions were clear. Ours was the only international flight arriving and there were just fifty people in the aeroplane that can take over 500. Our military instructor told us that we must always wear our masks – standard issue, provided – and that we must never touch the front of the mask once it was on. He promptly touched his to adjust it and said, ‘I’m not a good example!’

My isolation hotel is the Distinction Hotel. If you have read anything of what I have written about Payless, the shop in Kennington Park Road, you can apply it to Distinction. However the people are very friendly and extremely helpful. When I arrived I mentioned I was fairly deaf and found it difficult to pick things up from the floor, food deliveries for example. Within half an hour of going to my room someone had put a chair outside my door for deliveries and on it stuck a note which reads, ‘DO NOT MOVE’ and on food deliveries there’s a note ‘KNOCK LOUD’. That’s consideration!

The mistake is to think of the hotel as a hotel. It is not. It’s an Isolation Facility. My room, number 510, is the only place where I may not wear a mask. There is an exercise yard on the ground floor. It is small and fenced off from the outside world. A circuit is 100 steps so calculations are easy. Even I can multiply the number of circuits I do by 100. The high fence is covered so that we cannot see out nor local citizens see in and there’s an inner fence two meters from the outer so that proper distance is kept. There are set times for exercise and you give your name and number – room number that is – going to and from exercise.

In my room there’s an electric kettle and a fridge. There are also two plates and cutlery. There’s a menu and the choice of food for lunch and dinner is very limited but I understand I can order food from local restaurants. I will explore that option over the next few days.

No one may come into my room. There are soldiers in the corridors from time to time. Just checking, I imagine. I’m beginning to be aware that not only is this unlike staying in a hotel but also it is unlike self isolating at home.. There are many discoveries to be made I’m sure, most of them about how to cope with isolation.

November 17th The Routine

The key to life in isolation is, I suspect, to have a routine. I have chosen my boarding school routine.

Breakfast arrives here at about 8.30 then it’s Chapel for about twenty minutes. I say my prayers. From my window I can see the Cathedral and people working on it so that helps. After that I am dividing the day into fifty minute periods with ten minutes to get to the next class. P T is from 9.30 to 10.20. That’s within the allocated time for the exercise area. I know everyone else calls it P E Physical Exercise, for us it was Physical Training. Our P T master, Hector MacKay was ex army. The army present again.

After that it’s a double period for Art and Music. I’m determined to get drawing and painting again. Some of the family sent flowers to brighten my room. I can start with them or with the fresh fruit family have delivered. And the hotel have given me a radio which, with help on the phone from a member of staff, I’ve set to the concert programme.

Lunch is delivered between 12.30 and 2.30. Then I’m giving myself a period from 2.30 to 3.20 that I will call Relaxation – my afternoon sleep.

Another period of P T in the afternoon if it’s not raining. School finishes at 4.20 but then I have Drama as my extracurricular activity. I’m giving some talks when this time is over so I need to prepare for them. The evening meal arrives between 6.30 and 8.30 then it’s time for Prep – writing this.

There are no bells to guide or contain me, no one to say, ‘Hurry along, boy!’ and, sadly, no roll call. It’s only me.

Usually I look forward to long haul flights. Of course I panic five days before I’m due to leave and think it’s all a big mistake but after I’ve recovered from that I can even enjoy the packing and getting ready. Then there’s the drive to the airport and wondering whether or not I will get there on time. I usually do get there on time as I’m genetically programmed to be early. Once, in Bangkok, I arrived twenty four hours early but that was because my flight left at 00.30 and I knew that meant I had to get there the day before. That thought was so firmly fixed in my mind that I arrived at check in the day before the day before. 

The staff at the check in desk are always polite and I like the check in process and the feeling of relaxation after going through passport control and security and into that limbo where I have no responsibilities at all. I know the plane won’t go without me because my luggage is already on board and it would be less of a security hassle for them to find me than to unload my luggage. Then there’s the boarding call and getting on board and arranging everything for a twelve hour flight. The whole process has a comfortable familiarity about it which is not surprising as I’ve been doing it fairly regularly for more than thirty years.  

I’m due to fly out this Saturday, to Christchurch via Singapore. This time things are not as they usually are at all. I have the required documentation, my E ticket, my New Zealand Passport and, this is new, an Accommodation Voucher for my arrival. The Accommodation Voucher allows me a room in a government designated hotel as a place to stay in quarantine for a fortnight. I will not be allowed to travel without the voucher.

However I’m told by my travel agent and the New Zealand Government website that none of these things guarantees that I will be allowed to travel. I will discover more after 8.35 this evening, forty-eight hours before my flight is due to depart, when I can check in – if the flight is leaving as scheduled. The ‘not knowing for sure’ I find quite difficult to deal with. But so much of this second Lockdown is about ‘not knowing’ even with the glad news of a possible vaccine by the end of the year.

In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs which he presented in a paper in 1943 and which I must have encountered somewhere along the way, Maslow presents ‘security’ as a fundamental psychological need. Without security, he suggested, it was impossible to move to a ‘higher’ level. Certainly I have realised that ‘not knowing for sure’ leads to a lot of anxiety. I have also realised that much of the world’s population lives without security and that most of us, in the comparatively secure west, are incredibly privileged to live in secure societies. 

I do hope that the experience of the insecurity brought about by Covid19, or perhaps by the way governments and the media have reacted to Covid19, may make us all more aware of the much greater daily insecurity with which many of our fellow men and women live. Certainly the very significant number of Covid related deaths in the developed countries has made me more aware of the even greater number od deaths in other parts of the world from starvation and disease.

In 2003 I broadcast my thoughts about the whole idea of ‘Rights’. I think it ties in with this somewhere. You can find it under BROADCASTS

Last Sunday, November 1^st, was All Saints’ Day and I preached at St Agnes Kennington Park for the first time since the beginning of Lockdown. I gave my sermon a lot of thought – I usually do – but for the first time in more than fifty years of preaching sermons a totally new thought occurred to me. 

It isn’t what I say that matters. It’s what people think I’ve said.

And more than that. Perhaps there should be some feedback method for preachers not so that we can correct what people think we’ve said but so that we can understand more the people to whom we’re preaching and understand more of what they are thinking. Certainly on Sunday I found it very difficult to assess what the congregation of St Agnes made of what I was saying because everyone was wearing a face mask.

I know that a wise friend once told me to beware of self congratulation when someone says, ‘Thank you Vicar, that was such a lovely/wonderful/good sermon you preached this morning.’

‘The chances are,’ he said, ‘that all you’ve done is to confirm their already held prejudices.’

And another colleague said to me, ‘Surely you’ve had the situation when someone has repeated back to you something you’ve said in a sermon and in fact you thought you were saying the opposite!’ And I have.

But my most enjoyable sermon memory is from St Luke’s, Christchurch, New Zealand when I began a sermon with, 

‘I don’t like some of you and some of you don’t like me.’

I went on to develop the difference between ‘liking’ and Christian ‘loving’. And how Christian loving is an act of the will not an emotion. I thought it rather a good sermon.

One day in the week after I’d preached that rather good sermon I met, in the street, one of the Churchwardens who  commented, 

’That was an interesting sermon on Sunday, Vicar. I had some others from church for lunch afterwards and we spent quite a bit of time talking about it.’

‘Oh good!’ I said. ‘And did you come to a greater understanding of the nature of Christian love?’

‘Not really,’ she replied, ‘We just tried to work out who you didn’t like and who didn’t like you!’

I haven’t asked anyone for feedback on last Sunday’s sermon. I’m not going to take the risk. And I have an uncomfortable feeling that all too often the difference between what I think I’ve said and what other people think I’ve said,  may not only apply to sermons. And I haven’t bothered to find out.

OH DEAR!

I was so pleased with my Neck Gaiter Face Cover Scarf that protects me and others from Covid 19 and doesn’t pull out my hearing aids or knock off my glasses. Now a doctor friend, having read my THOUGHTS has expressed surprise and has told me they are not good and not at all effective. And he sent a link to a Washington Post article to back up his case. Oh dear!

ANOTHER LOCKDOWN

I will be going for my swim soon, my last at the Castle Centre for a while as swimming pools and gyms will be closed tomorrow under the new lockdown rules. There are a number of new restrictions that come into force from midnight and I suspect the real issue is whether or not people will obey them. In 2003 I broadcast ‘Obeying the Law’. I think it has a relevance to the latest rules. You can find it under my BROADCASTS.