Tag Archives: Coronavirus

Random Rants

Househusband Tales #10 – I really LIKED the lockdown

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Well it’s been a bit over a year since I did a Househusband blog post and with good reason, I got forcibly retired from my position.

Yes with both the children now school age and a second income being desirable, I once again full-time entered the workforce.  No more watching 500 funeral insurance ad’s a day for me!

But with the lockdown that accompanied the pandemic, like many others I started working from home.  This meant I was once again thrust into the position of Househusband, albeit one that still had to get on the computer from time to time to fulfil his work obligations.  Now that the lockdown restrictions are easing and I have had to physically return to work 5 days a week, I’m going to voice an opinion that hasn’t been heard much over the last several months.

I liked the lockdown.  I enjoyed it!

Yep!  I was happy to be back at home – I really was!  Despite being the social butterfly in my late teens and 20’s & 30’s, in my 40’s as a Dad, husband and hobby farmer I’m quite fond of the hermit lifestyle where I only see my personal family unit and rarely venture out. I still had to physically go into work one or two days a week during the pandemic but the rest I never left the farm.  No rushing around in the mornings trying to get myself ready.  No packing my lunch.  No drive to my job.  I could simply get my work done at home at my own pace, grow my isolation beard and occasionally change out of my pyjamas if I had a Zoom meeting (and even then I considered pants optional).

Big Hermit Trev – just plain sexy eh!

 

More family time

And the beauty was that my wife was working from home most days too!  No long commute for her in the mornings.  No getting home really late because of the long post-work drive.  Our children’s school was quite clear that for continuity they wanted our kids to either attend school every day or none at all.  Since there were days both my wife and I still had to go into work this meant the kids attended school.  And since they were at school full time, it meant that my wife and I got some ‘us’ time on our lunch breaks the days we were both home.  We could sit together and have a meal and a cuppa without kids screaming that they were hungry or thirsty or tired or bored or annoyed or that their sibling hit them.  It was the most one-on-one time we’ve had in our marriage since we became parents!  It was beautiful and it was something neither of us took for granted. And when our kids came home on the bus, because I had gotten so many househusband jobs done during the day it meant I had more time to spend with them every afternoon.  It really was a win-win situation, especially since we weren’t short on toilet paper. 

 

Isolation is natural in the bush

As for being physically stuck at home…. well…. it’s not so bad when you live on 125 acres in the middle of nowhere.  During the bushfires we spent so much of the summer evacuated and wondering if we would ever see our beloved property again, it was a joy to have an enforced couple of months in the autumn upon it.  Caught up on all those farm jobs that had been going wanting for so long.  And with no children at home for 7 hours a day it meant I didn’t have to stop mid-task to wipe a nose or bandage a boo-boo.  I completely sympathize with those during this pandemic that live in big cities – living in areas where you dared not venture out of tiny apartments must have been claustophobic to say the least.  But when you’ve got huge areas of bushland on your own property you can walk around without risk of meeting another soul – being stuck at home is really a non-issue.

Wasn’t hard for our kids to social distance from the rest of the world

So yeah, I liked the lockdown.  Staying at home on the farm was wonderful and I enjoyed every minute of it!  More time on my property, more time with my family – where so many are hating on the Chinese right now I’m inclined to send them a thank you card!  My heart goes out to all those during this pandemic who have suffered stress, gotten sick, lost loved ones, lost jobs, felt depression stuck at home etc.  Just because I didn’t experience it personally doesnt meet I don’t understand or indeed sympathise.  But for me it was lovely to return to the hermit lifestyle a very welcome respite – I hope some of you were also able to find a ray of positive sunshine in your lives during this crisis as well.

 

Related Articles:

Coronavirus – The Toilet Paper Conspiracy

Houshusband Tales #9 – There will be meat!

Houshusband Tales #7 – The Fear

Houshusband Tales #2 – Bathrooms are Bull$hit!

 

Random Rants

Coronavirus Crisis: City Slickers leaving Country Stores bare

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As the COVID-19 crisis continues and cases within Australia and particularly NSW continue to rise, its been considered a good time to be a rural resident.

Out here where my family lives we are a solid 2 ½ hour drive from the nearest capital city where the majority of cases are taking place.  So far there is only a handful cases of Coronavirus within a hundred kilometres of us all together.

As such people in situations similar to us haven’t been panic buying.  We didn’t all go mad stocking up on toilet paper, we haven’t cleaned off shelves and we haven’t gotten into fistfights over a bag of rice.  For the most part us rural folk have taken it pretty calm, and in small communities like the one I inhabit, you don’t take ever single item of a product off a shelf as the people you are depriving are your neighbours, your community members and your friends.

Yep, the panic buying had been contained to the big cities.  But now its not.  It’s hitting small country towns and its not small country town people that are doing.

It’s Raiders from the Big City!

An sight no longer contained to capital cities

It’s been amazing!  Tiny towns with populations of well under a thousand are seeing more new faces than they have in years.  And these are not tourists – these are food-filchers!  People driving out from capital cities to hit up every butchers, every bakers and every small supermarket they can, to grab whatever they can, and then return home.  One can only assume the candlestick makers will be next.

In fact it’s not just people in cars – it’s entire busloads! Buses pulling up at little supermarkets in one-horse towns and twenty people disembarking.  These people head straight into the local stores and come out carrying as many bags of groceries as they can lift.  These raiders leave barren shelves behind and nothing for the local people, who depend on these stores, to buy.

 

Is it greed that is prompting these people to come out and grab all the tucker and toilet paper they can tote?  Is it desperation?

Because no matter the motivation – it is NOT ON!

 

Big City people don’t get it.  Country people are not surrounded by stores where if one store is out of a product they can simply try a half dozen others down the road.  If you raid a store, then that leaves NOTHING for the locals!  These stores, due to their remote, don’t get restocked every day.  And if that store is empty, the next store is usually a loooong way away.  The town I live outside of has one small butchers, one small bakers and one very small supermarket/bottle-o.  Besides bags of chips at the servo that’s it for places to get groceries.  If those shops are empty I have to drive an extra 10 minutes to the next town which also only has a few small shops.  If they too are empty, which increasingly they have been, my next option is to drive 60km to Mudgee where the major supermarkets are in the hopes that their shelves are also not bare.  Should I have to do that because Big City people have depleted their own stores in panic buying and now are doing the same to us?

You know what is even better than a clean fridge? A FULL ONE!

This isn’t just in our area, this is happening all over NSW and Victoria!  Small town locals going home without any food for their families because these busloads of city slickers have come out and nicked all the grub!  And it has to stop!  Not only because of the effect on the locals, but the potential spread of COVID-19.  People are coming from places like Sydney and Melbourne where the virus is growing ever more rampant, and driving through town after town where the entire populaces are so far uninfected. I wonder if these raiders realize, or care, that if country people get sick the food shortages will only get worse since we are the ones that grow all the food!

 

So, I say this to you raiders.  DO.  NOT.  COME.  HERE!  You are not welcome!  You take all our food and risk infecting us all!  And why?  Because you all couldn’t stop yourselves going nuts and panic-buying out your thousands of stores until there was nothing left.  Stay in your damn capital cities and wait for the stores to restock.  Because when you come here and take all our food, we have nowhere else to go.  We didn’t panic buy, we were sensible.  And now we are paying for it because our cupboards are not overflowing since we didn’t want to deprive our neighbours of their tucker – because, you know, that’s what good people do.

So please.  If you are from a capital city do the right thing, especially these school holidays.  Wait for your stores in the big smoke to restock.  Don’t come and take all our food and risk spreading COVID-19 into rural communities that have managed to remain unaffected thus far.  We managed to make it through the bushfires, we as a society need to pull together to make it through this too.

We, your rural cousins, thank you for your cooperation.

 

Related Article:

Coronavirus: The Toilet Paper Conspiracy

Random Rants

Coronavirus: The Toilet Paper Conspiracy

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Right now much of the world is in the grip of panic. Like SARS before it, a new virus – COVID-19 or the Coronavirus – is spreading across the globe, with nearly 100000 cases worldwide so far and deaths in the triple figures. Thought to originate in Wuhan China, air travel has taken it to every continent on the globe and more and more countries are dealing with outbreaks of the potentially deadly disease.

But did it really originate in Wuhan? And is it really a natural virus?

 

Here in Australia, much like the rest of the world, supermarkets are experiencing massive runs on toilet paper. People are buying hundreds of rolls at a time to stockpile and shelves empty as fast as they can be restocked. So with stock in toilet paper companies rising  right now it’s a good time to own shares in a loo-paper company.

In fact one might say it’s a very good time to own shares. Almost a suspiciously good time.

 

That’s right – COVID-19 is not a natural virus! It is a synthetic virus. And who created this virus? THE TOILET PAPER INDUSTRY!

So much death just to sell some bogroll

 

Think about it – what’s the results of COVID-19 so far?

*Nearly a hundred thousand people worldwide are sick? What do you do when you are sick? Go to the toilet more often for a start.

*What do the authorities recommend if you think you may be infected? Quarantine yourself at home for 14 days. Being that bored you are going to eat more, therefore defecate more, therefore need more toilet paper. And being stuck at home for a fortnight, you are going to stock up on dunny paper big time before you sequester yourself away.

*What is half the populace of the planet doing right now in response to the Coronavirus. Simple – the general public are shitting themselves!

Depleted toilet paper shelves in Tumut NSW (Photo Credit; S. Addison)

Everybody has always known what a bloodthirsty realm the toilet paper industry is. Cartels fighting for power in the streets – many’s the bathroom-tissue brawler left with a sharpened dunny roll protruding from their bloody eye socket. Scientists working in the toilet paper equivalent of meth labs, each trying to come up with something more absorbent or to add yet another unrequired ply. It’s something we have all come to see as a necessary evil in order for us to not have to wipe our arses with the back of our hands. But now things have gone too far. The creation of synthetic viruses in order to sell more bogroll is an evil one could equate to the how the tobacco industry adds addictive chemicals to their cigarettes in order to get people hooked, despite the fact that due to their products their consumers eventually die. And lets face it, the Toilet Paper consortium’s have had the governments of the world in their pockets for years. Plus this virus came from China, one of the biggest toilet paper manufactures in the world. Coincidence? I think not!

No toilet paper on the shelves in Sydney – but don’t worry, there is plenty more for you to buy on the way! (Photo Credit: T. Munn)

Well I shall have none of it – do you hear me you putrid purveyors of poop-paper! I shall not be stocking up on toilet paper as this crisis continues. I shall use leaves, I shall use bark, I shall use the scarfs of co-workers while they are not paying full attention. And I shall decry you from the rooftops – you murderous bastards will not get me!

 

Cry havoc, and let slip the arse-wipes of war!

 

 

Note: The above it written for satirical purposes only. BigAngryTrev.com extends its sympathies to all those across the globe who are suffering from the Coronavirus, as well as to the families of those who have lost loved ones to it.