Originally published by The Clifton Courier, May 6, 2020

These days, you have to get a little creative to have a good time.

We have a house whiteboard at the moment, which we’re using as a way to keep track of what unnecessarily-decadent meals we’re making, to sprout our homemade “inspirational” quotes and come up with things to look forward to in the week ahead.

I don’t know about you, but after the initial flurry of COVID confusion and late-Sunday-night press conferences, the weeks have had something of a stagnant feel to them. After the adrenaline and action, there’s a sense of calm that somehow feels more draining than the non-stop slog.

A good way to combat a restless rut is to plan things for the future. To give yourself something to look forward to. Lights and tunnels, and all that jazz.

Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to do that when you’re supposed to be staying within your own neighbourhood – and many places within that neighbourhood are shut.

I mean, we’ve all got plans for When All This Is Over – for me, there’s an increasingly long-term goal of a trip to the UK and Ireland, a visit to Uluru and an insufferably bougie group trip to WA’s wine regions. I mean, I personally think it would be fantastic to embark on a great Australian road trip from Brisbane to Margret River, but I think most of the group is waiting until domestic flights are open for non-essential travellers again, which is still a bit of a way off by the looks of it.

While these vague plans are carrots dangling overhead in the unknowable distance, we’ve needed to have things in our more immediate future.

So, for the tail end of the week, we had the words “Backyard Wine Tour” to help drag our sorry selves towards the weekend.

Now, what’s a backyard wine tour you ask?

Well, each housemate had to select two bottles of wine that neither of us have tried before and introduce it to the other housemates as if they were an expert at a fictional winery. We had to come up with names for our “wineries” and offer some swanky nibblies to go with the plonk. We also had to dress up in the kind of kit you would wear on a winery tour – think linens, florals and floppy hats.

Essentially, we were playing wineries. Sort of how you used to play in the Home Corner at preschool, except with alcohol.

It was an exercise in planning, cooking and improvisation/talking out of your arse.

(In case you’re interested, my winery was called Ice CUBErnet, because its long-held philosophy was to promote the benefits of chilled red wine and how chewing the cubes as you go helps to hydrate the drinker and prevent hangovers. My winery also had an iconic wombat and a strict, foot squashing only policy for mushing the grapes).

As you can imagine, there was all kinds of frivolity on the day. Six bottles between three people with nowhere to go, nothing to do and not much to look forward to got a little out of hand.

There was a broken glass, a few stains on my white shirt and a large candle that melted wax all over the decking on the veranda. And, at some point, my housemates had arranged for greasy, greasy fried chicken to be present in the house as an attempt to soak up some of the day’s events.

After the dawn broke the following day, my housemate had to make an early dash to the servo for milk for the morning cuppas. My shirt was soaking in the bathroom sink. The wax was very much attached to the wooden decking. And the grease from the fried chicken was giving me visions of those fatbergs that clog London drains, which build up in the sewers in ginormous rancid clumps (of course, in this scenario, my intestines were the underground drains and there are no brave, noble souls to go in and clear all the gunge out with shovels and buckets).

I had something else to add to the whiteboard that morning: “rebuild our lives”.

At least it’s something to do.