Siouxsie Wiles is running late. Not late, late. Just 20 minutes late, and it’s okay. Because as we all know, the microbiologist and science communicator is a very busy person.
It’s thanks to Siouxsie, 46, that many of us waded our way through the beginnings of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, and understood what was happening to us through her well-written columns, and the cartoons and diagrams she worked on with Toby Morris. If you were at all confused, Siouxsie was there to take the science, interpret it and let us know what was happening. She helped us feel safe and calm.
So if she’s late, that’s absolutely fine with me.
It’s a rainy, early-winter morning in Auckland and Siouxsie arrives, not on her bike, which is her usual mode of transport, but on the bus. Her pink umbrella matches her pink hair and she is reassuringly wearing her trusty Doc Marten boots.
Before we start to chat, she sets an alarm on her phone to remind her to get going to her next meeting, because she’s going to be late all day now.
“I just finished recording my lecture for my students, which I have to miss this afternoon,” she says, as she orders a hot
