Dang, we were going so well in Western Australia. No community transmission of the COVID 19 virus at all, no cases of infection except in incoming travellers, who immediately went into quarantine. No masks, no worries.

But then on Sunday a young guy who has been working casually as a hotel quarantine guard reported sick and was found to have the highly infectious UK variant. Clang! Down came the shutters and we went into a five day lockdown since 6pm last light. No leaving the house except for a limited range of reasons, compulsory wearing of masks. Back to the big quiet. Almost no vehicle sounds, no motorbikes (hooray!!) and no sirens. It’s peaceful.

The guy had been very conscientious and cooperative and had been using the phone app that tells your movements, so they were very quickly able to trace his movements in the previous week. Boy, he had been busy, but mainly in areas of Perth that I never go near, so I don’t feel any danger at all.

And the good news is that as of now, 3.30pm Monday, there have been no more cases of infection found. He shares a house with three others and they’ve been taken to a quarantine place, but so far there’s been no spread of the virus. If this keeps up, the lockdown will be lifted on Friday at 6pm.

I’ve got three appointments this week – the first is my regular Silver Chain cleaner on Thursdays so I’ve phoned them and cancelled that one. I think I can miss a week of cleaning. I have an appointment at the medical centre on Wednesday and I’ll phone tomorrow to see if it’s going to be open. Then on Friday I have a Silver Chain lady coming to talk to me a bout something (I don’t know what), so I’ve said let’s just play it cool. If she still wants to come, good, but otherwise we can postpone. They agreed, saying it’s really her choice. Fair enough.

So after 10 months of virus free life in this state, our record has been busted. Oh well, we’re still streets ahead of the rest of Australia and probably the world. Beautiful climate (38C today), blue skies, warm ocean (23C), it’s paradise.

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I’m still watching the Big Bang Theory TV series. I haven’t exhausted it yet. And I’ve realised that I never saw series 11 and 12, each consisting of 24 episodes, so that’s 48 episodes that I’m seeing for the first time. Bonus.

It’s funny, when it was first aired on free-to-air TV it was on Channel 9. Then while it was still being shown, Channel7 picked it up too and was running it in parallel. That ended a couple of years ago and now Channel 10 are running it again, from the beginning. Wow, this is a popular show. Considering I watched it faithfully on 9 for ten years or so, not caring if I’d seen the episodes before, and now I’m watching it in its entirety all over again, that seems to indicate that it has a certain appeal.

I must admit Sheldon grates a bit. He dominates the show and I wonder sometimes if they could have done without his character. I think they could, but he does serve a purpose.

It’s very moralistic, written to illustrate human behaviour with a huge dollop of lessons in ethics and human failings, but the humour is genuinely good so I can put up with it.

By the way, I’ve long noticed that when I watch TV humour on my own, I laugh inside my head, in my mind, but not out loud unless it’s really good. Only if I’m watching with someone else do I tend to laugh out loud.

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Speaking of watching with someone else, my European friend is in lockdown in a city over there (where it’s winter!) and she said it’s very gloomy. Almost everything’s closed, all the theatres and restaurants and cafes, all the benches have been removed from the parks to prevent people congregating too close together, and it was 10degC and raining during the day, getting down to -1degC and snowing overnight. Boy, I’d find that hard to bear, but they have no choice. “I can’t go on. I will go on.” Just grit your teeth and go on.

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I’ve got to get on with making my Advanced Health Directive, which is the “living will” document to tell people what you want done if you become seriously, mortally ill. As a single person no next of kin (well, not so you’d notice, they don’t seem to want anything to do with me these days), I want it to be clear who does what. When I was in the Mount Hospital last week, they did ask if I had an AHD at one stage, but I had to say no.

As I say, my siblings are not to be relied on and I’d rather my two best mates look after my affairs if I can’t.

But the forms are so complex! One of my best mates is like me, on his own and being a smoker who’s already had a heart event, highly likely to drop dead at any time. Both of us must get these forms done and countersigned. But he’s daunted, as I am. I guess it’s just a matter of buckling down. Wish me luck.

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Speaking of dressing female, as I am, I’m buying a lot of clothes from the Chinese web site Wish.com. I love the clothes they’re offering:

The thing is, they’re all offered as 5XL to 8XL and they fit me! I know it sounds weird, but for the first time in my life, I can dress the way I’ve always wanted to. I have good taste in clothes and I’m proud to be seen in these. I look good, believe it or not.

And they’re so cheap – $8 to $16 – that if something doesn’t fit when it arrives, I just put it into the charity shop bag.

It might be cheap Chinese stuff, but it’s good quality and it suits me better than anything I can find here. Yeah!

I’m getting serious about this, telling friends and almost always dressing female now. In fact I’m going to a brekky with a group of high school friends next week (lockdown permitting) and I’ll definitely be going as a girl. They know in advance and are fine with it. In addition, we have our annual high school reunion scheduled for 17 April and for the first time, I intend to show myself there, to the whole crowd of 30 – 40 that we get. Some know already but there will be a lot of gasps, I reckon. Too bad, this is me. Not too many years left and I’m determined to live them as I want.

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Uh oh, again. There’s a bushfire somewhere near and the sky is totally grey with smoke. I have to put the bins out now so I’ll have a look.