Strange days, living in a city in lockdown, being safe & kind, and looking to a new Wellington

A quarter of the world’s population is now living under some form of lockdown

Good morning readers. These are extraordinary days we live in. You’ll be waking up this morning to the first day of a national lockdown, a lockdown that may last some weeks or longer. Life then takes a dramatic turn for each one of us, but one that has echoes of the past and a hope for a very different future once this is over.

I had started to wind down this blog as our impending move to Carterton loomed. We were due to move tomorrow; however, the current state has completely disrupted that. Our movers cancelled two days ago, our purchasers did the same, yet the vendor in Carterton was still good to go.

Breaching a property sales agreement at this point is an incredibly expensive exercise. If we hadn’t had found a solution, then at least two of us in that chain would have potentially not only headed fast toward broke but possibly ended up living in a tent.

Lawyers had the same problem with over 6,500 settlements falling due across New Zealand, and that did not include people renting, ending tenancies, and moving.

In the end, all our parties agreed to move settlement until the Alert Level fell back to 2. Crisis averted, though I hear for a lot of other people, reaching that agreement may not have happened, which means people in limbo at the toughest time of our lives. Our purchaser’s landlord gave them a time extension they needed, proving that there are good, kind humans in the city.

So you’re stuck with me, for the foreseeable future, and seeing as I am also stuck with you, then I’ll be writing a series of blogs, perhaps more frequent than the normal, as we, and the city, go through this extraordinary time.

The Wellington City Council finds itself in a nightmare scenario, and I’ll be covering that as we stay locked in together. We’re still all in this together, even if we can’t meet for coffee or a beer. I certainly miss my lair, the Strathmore Local, and I am worried about their staff.

Covid-19 fixed traffic in one fell swoop. It was fixed at what cost, though? The impact of the pandemic on Wellington is not well known yet. It is a government town, and most can work from home, but not all. That’s because not all agencies were ready for this, despite being warned for the last decade it was coming.

The WCC wasn’t ready either, though they have, mostly, scrambled to bring themselves up to speed quickly. Communications have not been great, a couple of Councillors have been tone-deaf in their messaging. Now is not the time to push political agendas, and that needs to be called out.

We, the community, were not ready. We had the opportunity to build strong community links, and now we are mainly reliant on local ad-hoc Facebook pages, and social media feeds that are littered with misinformation. Check your data sources, then check them again, scams, incorrect messages, and fake news are rampant at the moment.

However, all of that can be fixed, and while I will take a critical look at some of those areas, I recognise that a lot of people are risking their lives to keep our city running and in some semblance of order. Thank you.

And it’s tough for the WCC right now, water issues, money issues, transport issues, planning issues, and Councillors generally supporting their communities right on the front line while protecting their own families and under the same lockdown rules that we all are subject to.

I do have friends and colleagues that are now unable to pay rent, pay mortgages, and pay for food. While support is available, that can take time, and we as a community, need to share where we can in that outer radius from family, to friends, neighbours, and communities while keeping ourselves and each other safe. We have vulnerable people as well that we need to take care of.

What will Wellington look like on the other side of this? Something that I want to explore with you in the next month. Bizarrely, with no disrespect to the disaffected by this event, we have a month to think about what we want our city to look like going forward.

Do we want to retain free public transport? Do we need another tunnel? Will there be an outflow, rather than inflow, of people back to the regions where work is more likely to appear earlier? What about tourism? Do we need all those office buildings given that working from home will become the new normal? How will our suburbs grow as workers stay near to home rather than visiting the CBD each day?

We know that quarantine’s of this scale in the past have inspired great innovations and discoveries. People have time to think, a lot of time, and it has produced fresh ideas, art, literature, scientific theory, and the like. We have time to think about what we want this city to look like when lockdown is lifted.

The lockdown itself will be tough because you are confined to a place. That’s hard to get your head around. Today it is a novelty; tomorrow it is a sleep in, the third day is an inconvenience, and after that, it can become a slog, if you let it.

As someone who has analysed media and spent a large proportion of my life buried in the data stream, I have learned one thing. Sometimes you just need to turn it off. Nothing much is going to change over the next few weeks and taking a break from the relentless messaging can provide some much-needed mental relief.

In some ways, we are used to this, and it’s good to take a slightly different mental stance to this state.

Each year, over Christmas and New Year, we stop working and spend time with friends and family. The next month will be somewhat like that for a lot of us. Of course, I do not want to demean the situation and the terrible struggle that some are having.

There is already a movement to start putting up Christmas lights, and I am quite sure this will place no strain on electricity supply given that large industries have closed down. We have seen the movement around teddy bears in windows. It is these acts that signal solidarity in these weird times.

Kids see bears in windows, and at night we see Christmas lights twinkling, all to remind us that we are not in this alone.

While we can’t drive except for essential reasons, we can walk if we are careful to maintain distance, and Wellington is one of the best places on earth to walk.

And walk we will, together, through this, to build a much stronger community and city, of that I am quite sure.