Tag Archives: COVID-19

Indoor Passtimes

22 Tuesday Jun 2021

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It’s winter in Melbourne, we had the shortest day of the year yesterday and the weather is getting chillier. I have always like cooking, and the cold weather seems to be bringing out my European peasant roots (my Dad’s family is German and I’m going to pretend that’s what it is).

I ordered a box of ‘make at home pretzel kit’ from Pretzel Australia a while ago when Victoria went back into lockdown after a rogue COVID-19 positive person was wandering about causing spikes. We’re still under restrictions but they’re a lot more relaxed than they were this time last year that’s for sure! But back to the pretzel kit, it took a couple of weeks to reach me which meant I was still waiting for it after we were let out of lockdown.

Last week I made them, I kneaded by hand because I don’t have a fancy dough hook type mixer. It was a good ab workout that’s for sure. They turned out even better than I had hoped, the first one straight from the oven was so delicious, but the subsequent ones were also tasty.

To serve, I have been eating with mustard, or pickle, and sauerkraut and polish sausage and cheese. It’s a very German version of a ploughman’s. Some photos of the process are below (note I do have a mirrored splashback on my stove).

9 Freshly baked soft pretzels sit on baking trays on top of the stove
9 unbaked soft pretzels sit in baking trays on top of the stove
Freshly baked soft pretzel sits on a white plate with a dollop of seeded mustard
A hand holding a small portion of freshly baked soft pretzel, in the background the rest of the pretzel is seen in soft focus

Prior to my adventure into pretzels I made a beef stroganoff, which was really yummy but super rich. So much creamy stew. Next on the list is something with red wine; coq au vin or ragout.

There’s something about cold weather and slow cooked food, soups, and home made bread. I’m sure it’s not just the peasant in my heritage but something about cocooning and storing calories.

I haven’t been doing much writing the last few weeks. I have a manuscript on which I have done one pass of edits. I hope to have it ready to publish with it’s sister manuscript in early next year, though I probably need to get a wriggle on with booking the editor.

I like being at home, but I don’t like being trapped at home. I used to enjoy going out a lot and I’ve dipped my toe in the water a couple of times when Melbourne restrictions allow and it’s been fun, but also confronting. Being in crowds isn’t something I’m used to anymore. I hope once everything settles down and the vaccinations are all rolled out we will be able to go out and feel comfortable in crowds again.

I hope you’ve been able to keep going with your projects and life, whether you’re working from home, home schooling, going to work even with the lockdown or trying to keep yourself entertained at home because you can’t work. Nourishing the body is worthwhile, especially in times of stress, and I like cooking.

Déjà vu all over again

13 Saturday Feb 2021

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It feels like it’s been a while since I wrote anything here. I haven’t written much on my other projects either, unfortunately. I’m sure a lot of you out there will identify with my frustration with the continuing pandemic situation. Melbourne went into our first lock down in March 2020, and we’ve just entered another five day Stage 4 restriction period. Naïvely, I believed that once we’d kicked the second wave that we would be able to go about our lives almost as normal. Cautiously, but mostly normally.

  • Eight uncooked bread buns with pieces of dried fruit and chocolate.
  • Eight small brown buns with burned fruit pieces on the top.

This morning I baked sourdough fruit and chocolate buns, pictured. I was going to take them to an event today but that was cancelled when the government announced the changes yesterday. I had the ingredients ready to go and I decided I wanted buns. In true pandemic style, I burned them, or at least I burned the fruit. If I pick off the burned chunks they taste okay though, so not a total waste.

We’re all worried the lockdown will be extended and we’ll end up stuck inside for the next three months like we were in winter last year. I don’t know if I’d survive another long period of restrictions like that. Eventually even binging Netflix doesn’t sound appealing.

The vaccine will start rolling out in the next month or so, and no doubt that will change the landscape for the pandemic but until then I guess we can only suck it up and try our best. It will be hard, but the end is near, I hope. Here’s to coming out the other side.

NaNoWriMo 2020

03 Tuesday Nov 2020

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This year will be the ninth time I am attempting NaNoWriMo or National Novel Writing Month. My first time was in 2012 and I have won, reached my goal of 50,000 words, every year since then.

I work best with external encouragement and deadlines, and while NaNoWriMo is an (almost) entirely self motivated endeavour it still feels like there are stakes.

I’m rewriting my 2014 novel, I have reread the synopsis but I am going to avoid reading the text as much as I can. I’m sure I’ll change a lot of details, but the story and character arcs will remain the same.

photo of sand and shallow waves on a sunny day in late evening with blue skies.
Mordialloc Beach, November 2020

It’s a weird time to be writing. I had a conversation earlier about how much the pandemic will appear in culture, writing, film and TV in the future. For myself I don’t want to read or write about COVID-19. Living through it was plenty.

Yesterday I went to the beach. It was a public holiday (for a horse race I disapprove of but that’s another issue) and there were a lot of people around. I wore a mask, many others didn’t bother, or were wearing them incorrectly, in spite of laws requiring them.

Our numbers are way down, which is great, but I hate to think that our numbers will be back up after people stop taking this dumb virus seriously.

I will continue to be cautious, but I will be really upset if we get sent back into lockdown. At least doing NaNoWriMo I have a good excuse to stay home.

Cabin fever

15 Wednesday Jul 2020

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I sit, my belly boils
with nervousness
dissatisfied
with the smallness of life
with loneliness
with my poetry

Outside, everything is dark
hide inside, afraid
or not afraid enough
I watch people walking around
anxious on their behalf

I am a worrier, overthink
everything, don’t know how
to turn it off. How will
I stay sane here alone?
How will I stay healthy
when everyone is a
walking infection?
It wouldn’t happen to me
Until it does.

Das ist verboten

25 Monday May 2020

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It’s been nearly four months since I was hit by a car. Some of you may be surprised to know that I’m still hobbling around on crutches, although I am rid of the moon boot as of last week. I need one further surgery to get all the metal taken out, it was supposed to be last week but then I had a bit of a sore throat and the hospital told me I couldn’t go in until after I’d had a test for COVID-19.

The test was unpleasant but tolerable, much in the same way as a pap smear test is unpleasant but tolerable. I don’t have it, thankfully, just some other unrelated sore throat issue. The whole saga reminded me of how weird the world has become. Things which would have been totally normal this time last year just don’t happen anymore, and things that would never have happened last year are common place – like having nothing scheduled every night this week. Lots of people are out of jobs, though thankfully in Australia we haven’t had huge numbers of deaths.

The whole world reminds me of a sketch I saw once, I’m pretty sure it was Bill Bailey but of course I can’t find the clip anymore. He described an East-German sitcom he’d made up entitled ‘Das ist verboten’ (translated it can mean variously: it’s illegal, it’s forbidden or it’s not allowed).

person holding covid sign

Everything I used to do feels like it’s illegal, forbidden, not allowed. Going to see a band, modelling for an art class, catching up with more than five people. I went to the supermarket on Saturday to get supplies for my isobaking and isocooking and there were so many people there. It was stressful. I didn’t feel as though I could get far enough away from people and I was wearing a big jacket because it was cold outside, but it was not cold inside so I was overheating which made everything worse.

Time is moving both extremely slowly and dizzyingly fast. I was released from hospital exactly a month before lock down started, but I wasn’t very mobile then. Now I’m more mobile, I have more energy, I’m even back up to my regular hours at the day job, but there is no where to go. Since being in partial isolation I’ve forgotten how to socialise. People exhaust me. Life exhausts me. I guess that’s kind of par for the course – everyone is exhausted or stir crazy or both.

I announced a while ago that I would publish my third novel on 1 June 2020, that’s only a week away. I blame the weird action of time for this. I’ll be hosting a virtual book launch on Facebook next Monday evening (Melbourne time) and I’d love you all to come. I haven’t entirely worked out what I’m going to do but it should be fun none the less.

If you don’t fancy the book launch or you live in a time zone where it will be awkward, you can always purchase your copy of My Mother’s Secret on Amazon and all good online book retailers. There might be a recording of the launch too.

One day we might look back at this time and think of all the things we learned, all the bread we baked, and all the government deficits we accumulated and smile, but it will be a long time from now. Until then, just try to be excellent to each other I guess.

I’m gonna be over here…

20 Friday Mar 2020

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…doing my own thing, 1.5m away from any other people.

So we’re all totally over-loaded with COVID-19 pandemic content, so I’m going to try not to talk about that too much, but it’s changed everything for everyone for the foreseeable future.

One of the things that has changed for me is what I want to do with my next manuscript. I had planned to wait for responses from traditional publishers but I suspect taking new authors from the slush pile is not going to be high on their radars for the next [indeterminate period of time]. In light of the whole situation I’m planning to release my third novel independently on 1 June 2020.

The novel is called My Mother’s Secret, it’s a full length contemporary romance novel. I haven’t written a blurb or done a cover but I’ll publish those here and on my FaceBook author page when they’re done.

I’ve made the decision on a whim, I’m still on some of the opioid medication so maybe that has contributed to this slightly impulsive announcement.

hospital ducks

I hope you all have enough to eat, somewhere to hide away from the world, and enough to read. Hit me up if you want e-copies of my previous novels for free, I’ll do a promo code for isolation.

PS: I’m using the rubber duckies wearing scrubs again because it’s still relevant…