“You dodged a bullet by staying in Lismore”, my friend Graeme commented the other day. Of course, he was referring to the growing COVID-19 problem in Sydney, and the associated lockdown.

Things are obviously going much better here. There have been (to date) no cases or close contacts, and the restrictions (facemasks indoors, compulsory sign-in) are minimal. Nonetheless, people are taking things seriously, and people are wearing facemasks, even outdoors, where they’re not actually required by law.

A few things have been cancelled/postponed. For example, there was going to be an Aboriginal market held today at The Quad, as part of NAIDOC Week. And last night, there was going to be a one-woman comedy show at The Civic which I had hoped to attend.

There was, however, a comedy show which wasn’t canceled, which I went to on Wednesday night at the Northern Rivers Hotel. According to the MC, most of the fourteen or so people doing stand-up were preparing to participate in the Raw Comedy competition.

They all had about five minutes to speak, and they were all reasonably funny,

The one thing I did notice, though, were recurrent themes amongst the male comedians. A number of them referred to themselves as having small penises. A number of them also referred to their discomfort with non-binary definitions of gender and sexuality. By the time the third had come along with a routine along these lines, I’d lost interest and had gone to the bar.

I was sitting in the front row, by the way, and thus became the subject/target of interaction from the host comedian. In Sydney, I would never sit in the front row (keen to avoid the interaction), but on this occasion I did.

“Where are you from?”, she said. “Two places”, I replied, “South Lismore and Surry Hills”. For the rest of the show, I became known as “Mr Surry Hills”. I didn’t mind so much, it was fun. I couldn’t stay for the whole night. though, as it became pretty cold in the pub’s beer garden.

Aside from that, it’s been a reasonably ordinary week of getting up, working, and hanging out with my family.

The only major “drama” of the week was having to make a few alternative arrangements for my forthcoming holiday to Tasmania. Thankfully, I can still (currently) travel there, so long as I don’t leave Sydney Airport in transit. I have enough evidence that I haven’t been in Sydney anytime recently, which is good. However, the direct flight from Sydney to Hobart has now been cancelled, and has been replaced with a stop-over in Melbourne. But fingers crossed all should be okay.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying being away from the lockdown in Sydney, and wishing all the best to friends back there.