This Is How It Starts...

I wrote this journal entry at the beginning of April after a brief trip to do some groceries. 

A time ago I wrote many songs and zines about life in Western Sydney. They were pieces of hyperbole, filled with cynicism and invective, and presented a world on the precipice of armageddon. Now, in light of the exponential spread of COVID-19 and the impact this is having on society, those days seem unexpectedly idyllic by contrast.

Like the steadily-climbing whine of a bomb dropping from far above, the past few days have inched by for me with accumulating anxiety. I've been home with the flu, and the realisation that we lacked defrosted meat for tonight's dinner led me out to Coles to do a quick shop.

The car park was fine. The store looked fine.

But inside is a different story. The penny drops when I walk into the chicken aisle and the freezers are nearly completely empty. People come rushing after the staffmember as he unloads precisely eight lots of chicken breast onto the shelf, the only ones available, and there is a quick and silent scramble. As I move through further aisles I note further absences... no rice, no pasta, no noodles, no eggs, no long-life milk, no toilet paper, no tissues, no chips, no pies.

I stop to listen to the cursing opposite me.

"There's no fucking pasta."

Another voice, louder, "Mate, watch your mouth. There's kids around."

The first man, tall and of scowling angular head, raises his own voice, "I don't fucking care. There's no bloody pasta."

Louder still, the smaller bloke, "Watch your mouth, there's kids around!"

"You want a piece of me?"

The two are suddenly standing staunchly against one another. Everyone in the aisle freezes where they are, necks twisted, faces bemused. The loudspeaker issues a request for security to Aisle 6.

As I move through the rest of the increasingly spartan store I notice that everyone is warily watching each other. A woman at the self-serve checkout pushes her jaw unnervingly close to the cashier who's come to see why she is making a commotion, "What are you gonna do? C'mon then!" And outside, a man leans into the window of a car and jabs his finger at the driver while yelling something unintelligible.

During my journey across the store, I see an older guy in a Guns 'n' Roses T-shirt lecture at least three different staff members (in different parts of the store), telling them that everyone is inevitably going to catch the Coronavirus and we should all stop worrying. He tracks his way back and forth across the store, seemingly not there to actually buy anything, like a New York sidewalk preacher-bum with an 'End is Nigh' sign strapped to his chest.

I clutch my bags close and make a straight line to my car.