Lets hear from another one of my tour guides during lockdown – – – –
So what does my life look like as a tour guide during the Covid 19 lock down? For each guide I guess it will be different, but for me I wanted to ensure that it was not going to be a waste of time!
In the overall scheme of things, life is too short to squander it, so my first reaction was that I would put more effort into a small business venture that I had running in parallel to being a driver/tour guide. You see, I’m ‘retired’ now but after reaching that mythical retirement age, I quickly realised that there was still a lot of life left in the ‘old boy’ yet, and so embarked on new ventures that kept me interacting with people.
However, the wily tentacles of Covid 19 were far more reaching than I had imagined! Not only was my foray into tour guiding affected, but also my business venture was not immune. Because it involved people, and people were potential Covid 19 carriers, that also very quickly ground to a halt due to a government decree relating to the assembly of people; firstly no more than a hundred were allowed to gather, and then a complete lock down into a ‘bubble’, which in my case is a ‘bubble’ of two.
Once the garden was in order, and those long put off chores around the house were completed, a different activity was needed. I had installed an app on my phone enabling me to both see and speak to family and friends who were outside of my ‘bubble’. The grandies particularly thought this was great, as several had birthdays during this time and wanted to show off their gifts, and include my wife and me into their virtual ‘bubble’.
With parents endeavouring to do home schooling, the inevitable question was asked; “Hey Papa, what was life like in the olden days?” This I assumed was all about home projects, but it got me thinking…What was life like in the past?
Sometimes we can be afraid at looking back to the past, after all, isn’t it the future to which we are headed? While that is true, my experience particularly of late, has shown me that my past has shaped me into who I am today. Looking back to the past has given me a better understanding of who I am. So, my project has been to go through old diaries, school reports, newspaper clippings and such like to establish what life was like for me in the ‘olden days’.
This process however is ongoing, as we cannot complete a life time of experiences in just a few weeks. It will probably take longer than the current lock down period, but who knows, the lock down may yet last longer than we currently envisage. However, at the end of it all, an autobiography (or memoires, if you are posh), will be available to the family so that when they ask the question; “Hey Papa, what was life like in the olden days?” will at least be answered for them from my perspective.
Being someone who enjoys interaction with others, an added bonus of this exercise is coming across the names of those that I had long since forgotten. What has happened to these ones? What have they done with their lives? Are they still alive? So my life continues to strive forward, with information that I gain from looking backward to the ‘olden days’. And yes I find that exciting because I can venture out of my ‘bubble’ in a virtual manner, and so I am still touring into areas yet to be discovered and revealed.
Level 2 is now only 2 sleeps away – and Zealandier Tours has some amazing trips & tours pending when we all feel safe to travel again.
“Woody”
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