Originally published by the Clifton Courier on April 1, 2020 

I’m currently* on stay-cation.

* I WAS on stay-cache, but now I am an backing to being an essential cog in the machine that is our economy again.

I’d put in for some time off from work this week because I was supposed to attend two weddings and have a little jaunt around Tasmania.

Not sure if you’ve been following the news lately but to cut a long, virus-related story short, I’m not able to do any of those things right now.

But I was still off for a hunk of time.

So I’ve had to change plans and have what is known as a “stay-cation”. Normally, a staycation is where people take time off work but don’t go on a holiday – they go to their local cafes, head to the beach, maybe go to a few museums and visit a bunch of mates.

Again, not sure if you’ve been following the news lately, but to cut a long, virus-related story short, I’m not able to do any of those things right now.

So I’m holidaying at home, pretty much exclusively – except for going on the occasional grocery run and fulfilling my civic duty by ignoring government self-isolating advice to stay at home to vote in local government elections.

Here’s a list of a few of the fun activities I got up to in one fun-filled day of myself-isolation holiday:

Spent hours trying to put a puzzle of my brother-in-law’s face together: For Christmas last year, I put puzzles on my list of suggested gifts. Puzzles are fun, force you to focus your attention on something other than the news alerts that come through on your phone and they’re great actives that facilitate day drinking. Perfect for when you’re trying to forget what’s going on in the world for a minute. My brother-in-law took this gift suggestion and ran with it, finding a company that turns photos into puzzles. He chose a picture of himself smugly raising a wine glass in a taunting “cheers” pose. My housemate and I have been staring at that face for days, trying to complete the puzzle. It’s getting weird.

Ate two cheese platters: The first one was for lunch, the second one was for dinner. My housemates were supposed to get married on this particular day in social distancing paradise but had to postpone it last-minute. So we did the next best thing: watched several hours of Kath and Kim while drinking prosecco and eating cheese.

Cleaned the taps in the bathroom: I mean, they’ve never been overly grimy, but I cleaned them so hard they could be used as mirrors.

Seriously considered making my own set of bagpipes: So I was just minding my own business, stalking the dark, shadowy halls of Facebook when a suggested link popped up in my feed and captured my attention. That link was to an article titled: How to Make Bagpipes Out of a Garbage Bag and Recorders (the word “recorders: refers to those wind instruments they make primary school children play and produce the shrieky sounds that, no doubt, haunt the dreams of most Australian parents). Now, I’d like to point out that I didn’t seek this advice out. It came about thanks to The Algorithm, which is something I don’t fully understand but know it takes my previous activity into account. Facebook takes note of the things you do on its platform and will use that information to show you things that, based on your prior behaviour, it assumes you will be interested in. I’m not sure what I did on Facebook to suggest that this is something I would be interested in, but I have never had more faith in artificial intelligence.

Googled where to buy two recorders from: I have it on good authority that you can buy second-hand recorders from op shops. However, my experience as a recorder player (I could play Celine Dion’s Oscar-winning song for the feature film Titanic called My Heart Will Go On, which is just so moving when played on a recorder) is that it can get quite caked in saliva on the inside. And congealed spit from a stranger might be acceptable in normal times, but in The Age Of Coronavirus, it just doesn’t have the same appeal, so I’d want to get my mine brand new. It turns out that you can get a basic model for about ten bucks, but there are legit “renaissance” recorders that can set you back more than two grand. That’s more than your basic-model Wallace Bagpipes – I mean, I’m no expert but I’d have thought bagpipes would have cost more. I just Googled how much bagpipes cost, clicked on the first link I saw and found there were a whole heap of different types of pipes. I clicked on the “Wallace” category because Braveheart is an excellent movie, no matter how historically inaccurate it may be.

Became increasingly concerned about my state of mind: Refer to the list above for evidence.