Tomorrow Jacinda decides our fate, with New Zealand’s full lockdown ending (at the moment) next Wednesday at midnight. There is mounting pressure on the government to do more to help small businesses – and mounting unrest in the masses who are getting a bit tired of the very strict restrictions. Interesting statistic – 97% of businesses in New Zealand employ 20 or fewer staff and the government wage subsidy has so far covered 1.5 million staff wages. That is over 1/3 of the entire population of New Zealand.
It has also been a month since we were last in this building. This is Ryding2Health. I drove past the other day on the way back from the supermarket, just to check everything was still ok. It fills my heart with great sadness to see it standing dark and empty, with no clue how much longer this will go on.
Meanwhile, in lock down land, there is not much difference. Apart from the fact that it is now raining almost every day. I guess we should expect that, however it does make lock down a tiny bit harder when you can’t even go out in the garden! so when it finally stopped raining this morning, I took the opportunity to head out for a ride around the block. Lol. It is nice to get out but the lack of variation is a little tough!
I see that our Prime Minister has been in press all around the world and everyone wants to adopt her for their own. But… on Monday her and her cabinet had a mighty tough decision – whether to exit the country from lock down on Wednesday or not. The general feeling on the ground here is quite mixed. While business owners are growing increasingly stressed by being closed, there are many who believe we should stay locked down a while longer because there are still too many people not actually abiding by the rules. Mark thinks she will go to Level 3, but we will be back in level 4 again before long.
My ideal would be she announces level 3 from Thursday and that level 3 lasts 2 weeks.
We are still not able to open up the business again at level 3 anyway, so I am trying to not get too stressed about it… yet.
Meanwhile Mark (hubby) is still in the garden, either that or doing jigsaws! He has completed his last one and has the houses of parliament back out again. We only have the two of them and the garden is almost completed so I hope industry starts back up and he is able to go back to work next week, or he could well run out of things to do!
Me… not likely. With the constant of work stress (self inflicted mostly but there is a lot to still do behind the scenes to enable a fast re-start, whenever that might be), trying to keep this leg going and the pain under control, plus all many series’ available to binge watch on Netflix now we have temporarily been given unlimited data, I am not likely to get bored any time soon!!!!
