Later her mother calls her to say someone with the virus ate at that cafe last week.Įmails flash between the members of our Metamorphoses reading group. A bowl of soup in an Ascot Vale cafe with my neighbour. The chemist says not to stockpile my cholesterol medication. We buy what we normally would, but slightly more of it: pasta, beans, chickpeas, canned tuna and tomatoes, parmesan, a can of oil. Where’s the line between hoarding and ordinary household provisioning? They’re clawing at each other in the big-name supermarkets, but at Conga Foods in Bell Street a few calm customers move freely in the aisles and the shelves are arrayed as usual. But the weather is warm, a lovely autumn, soft skies, full moon, balmy evenings. Hospitals will overflow people will besiege them, wanting to get tested, treated, healed. Slowly it dawns: things are breaking down. Tomorrow we’ll tackle the freezer.Ī quarter of Italy’s population has been put into quarantine. And to tell the truth, I do not miss it.” Later their daughter tells me she cried in the street and didn’t care who saw her. The professor, well advanced in dementia, speaks to me in the front hall about Wagner: “ Tristan und Isolde. The old lady is in bed upstairs, not receiving. I pay my last visit to them in their own home. My ancient German neighbours have stopped fighting their fate: they are going into aged care tomorrow. Doesn’t she know how long things take to grow? Glamorously smiling, she holds up five little packets of vegetable seeds that she’ll plant if she runs out of bought food. “It’s panic-buying!” On TV a young housewife shows her laundry packed to the ceiling with survival stores. I say to my son-in-law, “Do they know something we don’t?” “They’re nuts!” he cries. In the toilet paper aisle at Coles you can see right through the banks of bare wire to the freezer cabinets beyond. “Do you want me to give you a run-down? Right. My teenage grandson is on the phone, planning Dungeons & Dragons with his friend.
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