Plague Update #24 - Do You Want Fries With That?

I write this blog entry a little giddy from the freedom I exercised over the weekend.  I went to my favourite cafe and sat down to order a coffee.  As I rested my backside on the stool the owner greeted me in her own special way.

"You've got an hour, then we're kicking you out."

Things really have changed.  It doesn't normally take an hour for her to be sick of the sight of me.

Yes cafes are open but can only serve ten customers at a time.  What this means is that in order to service the crazed mobs hammering at her door demanding food and coffee this cafe owner is placing a time limit on her customers.  Basically it amounts to "get in, get fed, get out".  Since I was only having a coffee and a slice of cake I was out of there well before she unleashed the hounds but still the simple activity of sitting down to eat and drink in a cafe was a delight. 

Restrictions have been relaxed so we can once again suck in the fresh air (and considering the industrial downturn the air actually is fresh) and socialise at least to a certain extent.  Of course our political leaders and their medical lackeys are warning us not to get complacent.  Down in Victoria the population's natural craving for fast food hit a bit of a roadblock when every second McDonalds in the state turned out to be a breeding pit for disease.  That is, its a breeding pit for the specific disease we are currently attempting to combat. Any other diseases we could probably have taken in our stride.

My Tasmanian correspondent isn't even bothering to hide the delight she is feeling at being able to send her children back to school.  She also has dogs and some surprisingly not yet dead fish, I believe she's planning on sending them along as well.  She'll have the best educated goldfish in the state if the water holds out.

Overseas there's gloom, argument and a possible investigation but my favourite story comes from South Korea where a football team had to publicly apologise after the mannequins it was using to make the stadium look less empty turned out to be sex dolls.  It was apparently a misunderstanding, or a miscommunication, or a screw up by the supplier or something else definitely not their fault.  Everybody is deeply embarrassed, well everybody except one as yet unidentified individual who is almost certainly laughing hysterically into his kimchi.

Back in the home of, well if not the free then at least the "slightly less incarcerated than previously" came more proof that the authorities think they're on top of this outbreak.  The daily briefings by the government's chief medical officer have now been cut back to three a week.  That's the government telling the citizenry that from now on we're going to have to get sick and die without their involvement.

Of course not everything is back to normal.  Queensland still has a hard border and is refusing to return the NSW premier's phone calls.  Officially this is because NSW has had more cases of COVID-19 than anywhere else (we also have more people) but as I mentioned earlier in this blog I suspect that Queensland has been waiting for an opportunity to do this for years.  Secession might possibly be the next step which will cause the Federal government to make a tough decision.  Do they call out the army or just have a party?

With freedom of movement restored I called up my parents, ostensibly to arrange a visit but actually just out of morbid curiosity to see if they had survived.  They're both well, in fact they're so well that they're not crazy about their elder son travelling over a hundred kilometres through the still infected landscape to visit.  I assured them that I would leave it a few weeks before I turned up at their doorstep.

"Take as long as you feel is necessary," they responded, "in the meantime, Merry Christmas."