Lockdown by Life Member, Louis A Coutts

Lockdown

by Life Member Louis A Coutts

I love my Oxford dictionary. I know that today it is passé. All you have to do, so they tell me, is key the word into Google and up comes the word and its various meanings. I haven’t tried that yet because, as I said, I love my Oxford dictionary. There is something about it that suggests learning and the romance of scholarship. Let me hasten to add that I am not a scholar, but I think of scholarship as in the old days when Don’s wore their academic robes and worked hard to enrich their minds and those of their students. I remember a dear friend who was senior lecturer in classics at Adelaide University. I would visit Ron in his room of ill-shapen book shelves full of thousands of books. I would sit in an old leather lounge chair with the springs penetrating the aged leather. He would put on the kettle and make tea in a China teapot. He always had shortbread English biscuits. He was a real romantic. On one occasion when his sabbatical came up, he went down to the P & O office to book his passage to England only to discover that it didn’t take passengers anymore and referred him to Qantas. There was something romantic about scholarship. There are times when I would have loved to be a scholar but now my scholarship is restricted to my Oxford dictionary. I have come across a new word “lockdown”. Now I would have to admit that my Oxford dictionary is a bit out of date. It is a bit like Ron’s aged leather

chair. But for most of the time it is fine. But lo and behold, lockdown was not in my edition of the dictionary despite nearly a half a column devoted to the word “lock” being both a noun, like the lock of the door or a lock of hair and a verb like locking the door. The reason that I am so interested in the word is that I am said to be in “lockdown”. Perhaps a current version of the Oxford dictionary would have the word. I am not sure whether it means that I am locked down which is an interesting grammatical combination of what appears to be the past tense of the verb “to lock” and an adverb. I am not sure how the word “down” fits into the grammar. Perhaps, the modern Oxford dictionary would include a verb “to lockdown” and that would make things simpler. At least for me. Anyway, there is it, I am in lockdown or, put another twist on the word, I am locked down. The problem is that there is this nasty invisible thing called a virus or more specifically, the COVID-19. It’s got the world by the throat. We had it under control until some guy driving some international air crew to what we call “quarantine” and who should have known better wasn’t wearing a mask. He was employed by some organisation that also should have know better. Before you could say Jack Robertson (that is the saying we used to use when people used dictionaries) this covid had spread through Sydney and more people, who should have known better and worked for someone who should have known better drove to Victoria without a mask and left us with the gift of COVID-19. Hence, I am in lock down. Strangely enough, that is fine by me. I live alone and am not completely broke so I can manage OK financially. I have learnt that there are a lot of people who are locked down who are broke and live from day to day. In a lockdown, many of these people lost their jobs or have to close their small business and then they don’t have any income. Some do silly things and get out in the street to demonstrate without a mask, and we know what happens when some people who should know better don’t wear a mask. But then the covid thing didn’t come with a user manual and being in lockdown must be a new and terrifying experience for those who are on the bread line. Until recently, like me, they had probably never heard the word or knew what it meant. And that is where big brother comes into the picture. For most of the time, governments are accused of always doing the wrong thing. They levy taxes and according to some, spend the money on ridiculous enterprises such as health and education. I think it is OK by many, if government spends taxpayers money on weapons that kill people and employ people called soldiers to master those weapons. Anyway, come lockdown and many people are out of work and on their uppers, they turn to the government that has locked them down and ask for help. The government claims that it is broke. For heaven’s sake, we have a multi billion contract with the French to build submarines. Do you know, I think that people who have lost their jobs as a result of the lockdown couldn’t give twopence (there is another throw back to the old days. Microsoft word doesn’t recognise it) about submarines. Then the real significance of a lock down occurred to me. I am OK. I have a roof over my head. I don’t have to pay rent. I can manage the occasional bottle of wine and cook a decent meal every night and turn on the heating on cold winter nights. I can sit and listen to the classical music radio station and read and sleep between clean sheets (I am a stickler for clean sheets). But people who can least afford it are the ones who have to suffer from the lockdown. It sickens me to see the irresponsible behaviour of people out in the street risking the spread of Covid 19 which is a sure way to continue the lockdown. But I wonder if the government called the French and the American arms manufactures and said “Look, we are short of quite a few billions at the moment to make sure that people in lockdown keep a roof over their head and have a square meal. I think we will have to have a rain check on some of our orders until we get this covid thing under control”. And by the way, perhaps governments will say to people like me who aren’t completely broke, that our tax bill will be higher next year so that we can cover the cost of the pain of people less fortunate than ourselves. In the meantime, I am in lockdown but I am not on my uppers.