Day 26

If you want to know what your favourite film is, doesn’t it have to been the one you’ve watched the most? (excluding children’s films). For me a favourite film is a happy warm place, a comfortable seat (and set) with characters I know, places I love and a story that never grows old.

Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s 2011 film is mine and I watched it tonight. I should be embarrassed to say how many times I’ve watched it, but it never ceases to capture my imagination, and if it’s forty times or more I wouldn’t be at all surprised. Gil Pender is a Hollywood screenwriter on holiday in Paris with his fiance and future in-laws, when he is transported back to the 1920s each night and mixes with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Picasso and others.

The warm and fuzzies have finished in politics with the announcement today. During the last four weeks, it seems that if anyone had the temerity to contradict the wisdom of the imposition of the state of emergency, then that was tantamount to the person wanting the ‘rona to attack your neighbour.  Media and all political parties played ball.  I’m glad that’s ended. We went into this thing with the prospect that 80,000 people were going to die if we didn’t. Of course that was never going to happen – we don’t have the population density or age demographics of Italy or Spain. We may not have known that then in fairness, but we do now.

Modern society shields most people from the realities of life and death and it’s been very easy for leaders to frighten us with death rates. Seeing as I’ve become semi-addicted to statistics, according to Statistics New Zealand 3097 people will have died in New Zealand during the Lockdown.  About 100 each day.  Every one of those deaths will likely leave loved ones behind and there will be great sadness and grief attached to it, but we’re all just timing differences, as a boss of mine once said. Our turn will come!

So, I think we need to take the emotion out of the normal run of events and not scaremonger each other about the ‘rona. Yes, the curve needed to get flattened to avoid a health crisis and avoid building the tent hospital. That’s a great thing. Time to get back to work now with appropriate controls. I may have failed to redefine our understanding of death in the context of the crisis, but a verb got redefined today.

Elimination is not, as you might expect from the ordinary meaning – the complete removal or destruction of something – but rather, the, um, not complete removal!  Common sense has prevailed as it had to – we can’t possibly expect to eliminate the ‘rona – any more that the common cold or any other virus for which there is no vaccination. That could never work.

We need leadership with empathy and understanding, but leaders also need to harness the directness of a Hemingway. Telling it as it as. I’m not sure that trying to redefine the meaning of a word that was so much part of this campaign was a good idea.

But I doubt we have eliminated our desire for food we can’t have. So 27 April 11.59pm is the date for a Big Mac at the Greenlane drive through! The queue alone will be worth being there for  – history in the making surely! When the time comes it’s Japanese for me – Salmon Sashimi and Yakitori dishes. With a favourite film. Can’t wait!

Stephen