Lockdown: Melbourne Writers' Group and friends respond to isolation in 2020

By Melbourne Writers Group

A collection of 25 short stories and poems by 18 Victorian writers in a range of styles and subjects created during and responding to the statewide lockdown in the middle of 2020. They explore how relationships were maintained or frayed, loss of identity, and the stress of daily life in lockdown. Some enter the realm of fantasy, hyper-reality or

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melbourne Writers Group
• Release date: Dec 18, 2020
• ISBN: 9780645049510

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Acknowledgements

First published 2020 by the Melbourne Writers’ Group.

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Copyright of this collection © Melbourne Writers’ Group 2020.

Copyright © of individual works is retained by the author.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the author.

The authors confirm that the pieces attributed to them in this collection are their own original work, and that they hold copyright over that work. The authors agree to indemnify Melbourne Writers’ Group over any breach of copyright, or moral rights, resulting from the publication of this anthology.

The ideas and opinions expressed in the works belong to the individual author, and do not reflect the ideas and opinions of other writers included in the anthology or the Melbourne Writers’ Group.

Cover design: Bronnie Morgan

Page design and typsetting: Mark Phillips

ISBN: 978 0 6450495 0 3 [paperback]

978 0 6450495 1 0 [Ebook]

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This anthology was written and produced on unceded sovereign lands of First Nations peoples. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.

Contents

Foreword: A Kind Of Legacy

Everything’s Going To Be OK

Antonia Schuster

Brunswick, Melbourne Writers’ Group

The Worms Have Given Up

Claire Bright

Kensington, Melbourne Writers’ Group

Box

Francesca Black

St Kilda

Dear 2020

Maybe It’s The Apocalypse

Fuck Productivity

Megan J. Riedl

Ballarat

Spring In My Bed: Living Alone In Lockdown

Lisette Drew

Albert Park

A Diary (Of Sorts) From Life Under Covid

Kath Engebretson

Airport West

Susan

E.S. Liew

Live Free

Melissa Angius-Salvatore

Berwick

Isolate Together

Rosalee Kiely

Black Rock, Judith’s Moat Poets

Locked Out Of Melbourne

Rumi Komonz

Port Melbourne, Melb. Writers’ Group

The Day The World Stopped Believing

J.R Knight

Edithvale, Melbourne Writers’ Group

Hope Matters

Ste O’Connor

Northcote, Melbourne Writers’ Group

Laundrettes

Antonia Schuster

Brunswick, Melbourne Writers’ Group

Reset

Bronnie Morgan

Edithvale

Curfew

Shoulder In Lockdown

Rebecca Sullivan

Sandybeach Writers

House Arrest

Mark Phillips

Brunswick, Melbourne Writers’ Group

A Night At Dorian’s

Mark Vender

Songs That Make Me Think Of You

Claire Bright

Kensington, Melbourne Writers’ Group

Officeworks

Darrelle Spenceley

Sandringham, Sandybeach Writers

How To Don Your PPE

Ste O’Connor

Northcote, Melbourne Writers’ Group

A Time to Clear The Stones Away

John Bartlett

Breamlea, Geelong Small Poetry Group

Truth Prevails

Mark Phillips

Brunswick, Melbourne Writers’ Group

Contributors

Foreword: A Kind Of Legacy

THE Melbourne Writers’ Group have been meeting and workshopping creative fiction since February 2014, and we have continued to meet regularly on Zoom during the Covid-19 pandemic and Melbourne’s first and second wave lockdowns — the second reported to be the longest and one of the strictest experienced in the world so far.

We’ve been meeting fortnightly on Zoom — sometimes weekly — and for hours at times, critiquing our stories, talking about writing during lockdown and about how we are navigating through and making sense of these strange times. Like any group, we have had some members leave during this time and a new member join. One member found herself stranded in Japan at the start of the pandemic and she continues to meet with us from there.

And, without planning to, we found ourselves writing stories inspired in some way by what we’ve been experiencing.

Then one of us said, ‘Why don’t we put these stories together in a publication for family and interested others?’ And, later, another one of us said, ‘Why don’t we do a call-out to fellow Victorian writers who might also have written a story or poem during lockdown?’

So, what you hold in your hands is an anthology of fictional stories and poems inspired by the Melbourne and Victorian lockdowns written during the long, second, and more strict stage 4 lockdown that began after the government declared that Victoria, already in a state of emergency, was now also in a state of disaster. It has been a hard time for many of us, and we share these creative ideas with you — that many of us found ourselves writing without meaning to — as a kind of legacy. We feel they capture the uniqueness of the time in interesting and often unexpected ways. While each of these creative pieces has their own particular take on it, they all have their roots in the Melbourne and Victorian Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns. Collectively, soberly, they reflect only one tiny jigsaw piece in what is an extraordinary moment in our shared world history.

The Melbourne Writers’ Group

25 October, 2020

Melbourne, Australia

Everything’s Going To Be OK

ANTonia schuster

CARLA ducked her head, one hand steadying her bike by its rusty handlebar, the other pushing up the metal roller door as fast as she could. As fat clouds of dust swirled furiously from the top of the gate, she closed her eyes momentarily, swerved out of their path, then gave one last upward thrust and hauled her bike out onto the footpath.

She blinked and squinted up at the hazy sky, wondering if it was going to rain and if she needed her protective gear. She hadn’t worn it in at least a week now and was reluctant to drag it off the laundry hook and get into it again. Her housemate Miriam was still wearing hers every day — ‘paranoid,’ Carla chided her when they sat drinking wine and eating crackers with supermarket cheese for dinner, debating what was worse — going on with this life or dying a fast death from a dose of toxic rain. Or finally catching the virus.

Carla had once seen a news story about someone who died within two days of getting caught in the rain. Carla remembered that storm; it had blown in on a vicious northerly from the ring-fenced pharmacology zone up near Seymour, where all the failed vaccines were dumped. She’d sheltered in a fabric shop on her way home from work – it was back when shops like that were still open – and watched needles of rain slam sideways out of a churning sky, turning the streets into amber rivers that glistened like petrol and reeked of something bitter.

The storm ended as abruptly as it had begun. Carla picked up her bike from where it had been thrown over, wiped the dirty streaks off her seat with a tissue and continued her ride home, shafts of sunlight breaking through from the west.

These days she wished she’d never told Miriam about that old guy from the news story, caught in the storm on his way home from the shops. But then, that was a couple of years ago at least, maybe even further back – 2020? Before Miriam had lost her job and got scared of going out, and before she was talking to the crisis line every day.

No, it’s not going to rain, she decided, and kicked her bike into action.

At the lights she pulled down her mask to blow her nose and took the opportunity to draw in a deep breath of unfiltered air. It was gritty from last night’s dust storm but better than the fetid dampness trapped behind her mask, which somehow never got fresh anymore even when she boiled the kettle and emptied cascades of searing hot water onto it — luxurious, unallowed cascades of water pouring illegally over her favourite flower-patterned mask with its fraying elastic, and down the drain.

The guy in the white Audi next to her was watching her; his shadowy eyes pleading for the glimpse of a female face. Ah well, nice to give someone a happy moment, Carla thought with a smile as the light turned green and she took off.

I am grateful that I can smile. OK, what else am I grateful for? Time to start my daily list.

This was the thing she did every day on her way to work, once she hit Sydney Rd, the street that used to be the beating, thriving heart of her suburb — now lined with boarded up shops, smashed windows and billboards that were once sunny yellow, defiant orange or a loving hopeful blue. They’d gradually faded and ripped, the edges shredded, their old optimistic messages still legible:

We’ll get through this Brunswick!

Stay safe and look out for each other.

Everything’s going to be OK.

Carla pedalled hard; with most people still too cautious to go back to work, the bike path was hers. She ignored the cars careening mindlessly across lanes alongside her ­ — stereos blaring, hysterical as sirens, losing control over the slippery tram-tracks ­— and started her list.

I am grateful I still have a job.

And I’m healthy. I think I am. My sore throats and headaches never last long enough to be real symptoms.

I got the ash out of my red top after Monday’s bushfire smoke rolled in before I had time to run out and grab the washing. That was good.

And the rent’s been halved, because we don’t mind about the holes in the floorboards and broken heating, and we stick within our water ration. Most weeks.

That’s it for today.

She passed the vast white tent set up for virus testing in front of the hospital and sailed through the roundabout, round the flagpole, its ancient ragged flag hanging lifeless and limp. She could already smell the rotting garbage of the market and detoured to avoid it, picking up speed.

She grimly ignored the slimy cloying feeling of her mask sucking in against her lips as she breathed hard. Once she passed the police station, she’d pull it down.

A few breaths of air. A small patch of blue sky. A flowering tree. A quick glimpse of the water in the Docklands as she crossed La Trobe St and glanced to her right. She did this every day to get that small view. Even if the water was grey it was better than nothing.

Later on, she stood at the lifts waiting to go down to find some lunch. The office was particularly quiet today; she could count on one hand the number of times she had spoken.

The lifts were taking forever. She stood and looked back into the silent office.

A girl walked past on the other side of the glass — a girl Carla had known for years. This girl used to be younger, now