Life is full of ups and downs.

We were living Covid Free.

For at least six months we have been Covid free in the community in New Zealand. Anyone coming into the country has had to spend two weeks in isolation centres and sometimes it has reared its ugly head there. We have kept it out of the community and when we have looked overseas we have felt superior and fortunate.  We had been working through the population getting more people vaccinated, but even then it has been at a reasonably relaxed pace. We have let other nations have the vaccine, we were coping quite well without it. But then suddenly it was discovered in our community with one case, and it was the fast spreading delta variety. The government has put us immediately in Lockdown initially for three days. As far as they can tell it has come in from Australia, the New South Wales version. They are tracing it and finding more people exposed to it. From one person reported, suddenly we have now got 31 cases with lots of exploration, tracing and testing to do. Today they have added to our lockdown days until next Tuesday - a total of seven days. Of course there have been some protests, some unnecessary panic buying, and lots of questions of the government. But most people are happy and confident that "going early and going hard" will help us sort it out. Delta is a bit more difficult and people are getting tested in their thousands, more people are getting vaccinated and there is a sense of unknown about life again. We have been fortunate, for us life has generally been normal except much fewer tourists and not the freedom to pop overseas or have overseas friends and family here.  Even at the latest briefing now they recognise the links of all the cases so far, so they are making confident sounds, but we are in lockdown until next Tuesday at midnight. 

We are now fully vaccinated

The other day we had our second vaccination. We had been told that it impacts you more than the first injection, but we thought it was not as bad as the sore arm of the first vaccine. We feel a certain relief about that. We are happy to isolate and I am enjoying time to get some little jobs done. As far as my cancer is concerned I do feel wheezy more often. Sometimes I think somebody has said something behind me and I turn around and realise that it is just a wheeze in my chest. I had one moment yesterday when for some reason I struggled to get my breath and got a sore chest out of it. I struggled to get to sleep last night and wondered if this was a sign of things to come. An ex-politician died today and I watched a video of him discussing his cancer. He wasn't afraid to die, it was just "the manner of the dying" that scared him a bit.  I think that is where I am at. I am reluctantly accepting the early death, but I don't know about the misery I may have to go through getting there. With a sore chest and wheezy lungs last night I thought about that. This morning my brother rang me at about 10 a.m. and I had to admit to still being in bed, relaxed and reading. I have, however, had a good day today. I finished my first Lockdown project. I made a "garage" for my wheel barrow. Church elder, the late Ian Chadwick gave me the barrow in the late 1980's. It did a heap of work on Habitat for Humanity sites and was falling to bits. One of the volunteers disappeared it and brought it back a week or so later renovated with a flash plastic tray. I have since put a puncture free tyre on it. It is too good to be left outside but takes up room in garage, workshop and shed, so today we finished a special parking garage just for it. I am so fortunate for the people who have helped me on life's journey. Ian was a great guy. I remember after I took his funeral weeping on the roadside with his close friend.

"The Book" is finished!

I have been writing a book which I have titled, "Called by Love". It is subtitled "A happy heretic confesses." It has been on my computer and I have added to it bit by bit. I will tell my daughter that it is finished, but then add some more to it. I sent it off to her and thought it was finished but was reading another book and something prompted me to add another couple of paragraphs. I sent it to her two evenings ago and declared that it is finished! 

I am also writing the story of my life for family so I am trying to get my mind off the first "book" and onto this second paper. I have found it an interesting, sometimes disturbing exercise to look back on things I have done, and choices I have made and why I chose to make those choices.

May my book actually be finished; may I get through some good projects during lockdown; and may I enjoy the signs of spring happening all around me.