Let's ride on outta here pardner ...

It'll be two weeks on Wednesday that we've been in our 'bubbles', staying home and being good.

Well done everybody - and our PM Jacinda Ardern says so too. We're doing great, even though we've reached the unnerving diagnoses number of over 1,000. Still, compared with other parts of the world, we're doing really well.

Most people have settled into their quarantine, finding things to do, keeping themselves well and sane, and sharing some entertaining things on Facebook (music, performances, madcap ways of alleviating boredom, pets doing weird stuff). I have been looking at drumming tuition videos, trying to learn some new techniques and beats because I really miss my music and my musician mates.

On our walk yesterday Pam and I came across this fellow in the front garden of a neighbour's place. A few days earlier he'd been perched up on the balcony, getting ready to launch into the stratosphere on a broomstick. Here he is preparing to ride off into the sunset on his trusty steed.

Wow, how I wish that was possible right now. To just get into the car and ride. Go off and meet friends for a beer and those delicious curly fries, or drive to a broad, long beach where the waves are breaking and noisy and frothing like bubbles in champagne. Not that our little beach isn't lovely but sometimes  I need more energy, power, wind-blown spray in my face kind of thing, waves crashing and rolling, birds riding the updrafts.

That's freedom. 

Our freedoms have been taken away for a little while and we can hang with that because we need to. More freedoms will be taken - and for longer - if we can't get a handle on this bloody virus. 

So in my imagination and memory, I can ride off on my rocking horse, heading out to the greener pastures of the vast prairie, the blue sky an endless canopy. This is not a unique feeling for me because I did have a rocking horse when I was little, along with a six-shooter Mom bought for me one day at the 'five and dime' and a cowboy hat. My sister called me Trashcan Jim for reasons I cannot understand but, undaunted, my rocking horse and I had adventures, my imagination serving me well, taking me to those places I'd seen on TV and in picture books, the Wild West.

Imagination is free and without limits. Use it. Do some writing, create something, paint a picture.

​Hop onto your rocking horse and ride on outta COVID Country for a while.            

---