Turbulence at the top of the All Black Tribe

Cinda the Hard and Stern, mighty Over Lady of the All Black Tribe, had enjoyed a glorious reign, handling crises with her inimitably smiley style, and without having to handle competent opposition to her rule. Happily for Cinda, the Blue Rinse Tribe had chosen leaders who were male, incompetent and lacking in guile. Well might Cinda smile.

Darkness had descended on the Blue Rinse Tribe however. After rolling one chieftain because of his unfortunate tone of voice, the Blue Rinse Tribe was astounded to discover that the replacement chieftain was so unprepared for the trials and tribulations of the post that he resigned after 53 days in office.

The prospect of an imminent election loomed over the leaderless tribe, and as tribes had done since time immemorial, they despairingly accepted a leader they would not have chosen in less desperate straits. Emerging from the Dark Side, as if conjured up in a seance, the Sith Lady Judith the Crusher seized ultimate power in the council of the Blue Rinse Tribe.

The Old Boys of the Blue Rinse Tribe trembled in the presence of the Woman of Steel, but they were not alone in having reasons for their fear. Cinda too, had reasons to have a care.

Judith was female. No longer could Cinda count on an enemy who was afraid to attack a woman. Judith, being no wall flower, would not wilt in the scorching heat of the parliamentary kitchen. Judith had taken the precaution of marrying a non-European man, thereby making it difficult to play the 'race card' on her. Judith was shrewd and knew she only had to wait for Cinda to make a mistake. Judith was cunning. She suspected that constant, low-level needling might eventually cause Cinda to snap and do something stupid, in the way a girl exploded in rage after receiving one barb too many from a second girl who cloaked her attack by splitting it up into a series of small and seemingly innocuous criticisms.

Have a care, Cinda" Cone Man muttered to himself. "The election may be yours to lose, but the Blue Rinse Tribe has a cat in the fight, and while you may be feisty, she's ferral ..."

Cone Man returns to writing his chronicle ...

Cone Man had survived the Lock Down. He could almost be said to have survived it too well. People spoke darkly of a new beast stalking the world known as the "Pandemic 15", referring to excess weight gained from over-consumption of comfort food while enduring enforced sedentary hibernation. Like many others, Cone Man had resolved to use the time well, and like many others the time had begun to use Cone Man and turn him into a listless slob. Unfortunately, at the age of 57, he was enduring the 'Middle-age 45' or putting it in less prosaic terms, he was 20 kilograms overweight.

He could make jokes about his girth, and even laugh about it when others made jokes about the said girth, but the truth was that the jokes weren't funny any more. Jest did not make the weight drag less heavily or lighten the tiredness that haunted him. Jest emanated from a lively mind, not one sluggish from being trapped in a sluggish body.

Cone Man had avoided the issue, but the weighty issue would not avoid him. Cone Man could not run away from being overweight. Cone Man might, he hoped, ride off the weight that stalked him.

Cone Man's man cave was located 1.5 kilometres away from the foot of the Hill of the Gods. The crest of the hill was 184 metres high, and the road over it was 3 kilometres long. Riding uphill from the Wainuiomata side of the hill required an ascent of 90 metres. Riding uphill from the other side required an ascent of 180 metres. Riding from his man cave to the other side of the hill and back thus required ascending 270 metres during a 9 kilometre round trip.

The ascent was impossible for an unfit warrior who was 20 kilograms overweight. The real mountain to surmount was psychological, he realised. If he did not ride, he could never do it. On the other hand if he never did it, he may as well not ride.

Cone Man accepted that he would have to win the battle by attrition. He began riding to the foot of the hill each day and then riding part of the way up the hill. Each day he would ride one lamp post further than the previous day, thereby increasing his fitness each day while maintaining the pressure on his legs.

There were 50 lamposts on the hill. Cone Man accepted that this would be a long and brutal campaign against the terrible Middle Age Spread monster ...

Corona Saga: Lock Down - 25th Day

Twas the 25th Day of the Lock Down. Twas the Day of the Sun. Twas it the last Day of the Sun to occur in the Lock Down? Cone Man prayed to his god that it would be so. Many hoped that Cinda would announce the end of the Lock Down by the 28th Day. Others believed the Lock Down should go on for another two weeks, which would mean that it would last till the 42n Day. Cone Man groaned at the prospect.

Cone Man could survive either development, but the decision between the two was out of his hands. Impotence in the face of forces of nature was nothing new of course. Modern communications, transport and technology created the necessity and possibility of global lockdowns, but that two was a force beyond Cone Man's control.

Cone Man's control extended to his keyboard and blog. "The pen is mightier than the sword" the old saying went. "Writing is at least  the opiate of those who are mightily bored".

Cone Man had considerable historical precedent for this view:  St. Paul wrote much of the New Testament while incarcerated in various Roman prisons; Martin Luther translated the Bible into German while hiding in the Wartburg; Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations from a prison cell; John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress while imprisoned for his religious views; Adolph Hitler wrote Mein Kampf while in prison for the failed Munich putsch; Antonio Gramsci rotting to death in a fascist Italian gaol, avenged himself by exhorting his fellow Marxists to establish cultural hegemony by infiltrating and taking over the cultural institutions of their societies; and Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote The Gulag Archipelago while in internal exile in the U.S.S.R.

House arrest  in his comfortable man cave did not automatically qualify him as a great writer of course, but it did provide him with the opportunity to redeem otherwise useless time. Quietly he wondered about the many different ways 3.9 billion poor souls were redeeming their otherwise useless time ...

Corona Saga: Lock Down - 24th Day

Twas the 24th Day of the Lock Down. Twas tedious to recount the times, but Cone Man remained cone-stant. Twas tedious because house arrest had ceased to be an exciting novelty. Twas tedious because week days and weekends became blurred together. Seven days a week you could sleep in as if it was Sunday morning, so what was luxurious about sleeping in? Monday morning was merely another morning, and 5pm on Friday was not the end of another weeks work. In a world without regular work, even rest had lost its allure.

Worldwide, one  hundred and fifty thousand people had died. This great and grim fact tempered the temptation to transgress the boundaries of the restrictions of the Level 4 Lock Down.

Temptation may not have to be resisted for long. Cinda had hinted that the government would change the alert level to Level 3 with effect from the 23rd of April, and Cone Man was counting the days. 

Napoleon Bonaparte had once derided the Union Jack Tribe as 'a nation of shopkeepers'. The 'shopkeepers' defeated his navy in 1805 and his army in 1815, before sending him St. Helena in the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. The All Black Tribe, dwelling in the vast expanse of the South Pacific, could not be described as 'a nation of bakers' they had bought 1.4 million kilos of flour to make bread to fill many an otherwise tedious hour.

The All Black Tribe was nevertheless becoming listless. Fewer exercised than had done so in the first weeks of the lock down. Many became depressed. Partners became grumpy. Business people struggled as livelihoods shrivelled away while they were trapped at home. People had been compliant and "played nice" but they were beginning to turn sour.

Outside the strange Antipodean world of the All Black Tribe the 'Grapes of Wrath' were multiplying and being trodden out in the great vats of humanity in. 22 million workers in the Land of the Stars and Tribe had lost their jobs in the last four weeks. Protests against the lockdowns were beginning to be held in various places within the borders of  that mighty tribe.

John Brown had lived to make men free, and troops marching to terrible battles had cried "Glory, glory, Hallelujah" on their way to death. Cone-sidering the huddled masses yearning to breathe freely in the Land of the Stars and Stripes Tribe, Cone Man grimly wondered when the blood red wine would begin to spill from the great vat ...

Corona Saga: Lock Down - 20th Day

Twas the 20th Day of the Lock Down. The Coronavirus Monster had bitten over two million people and killed over 120,000. Tired of twisting words into humour, and seeing naught to be humorous about, Cone Man took the day off ...

Corona Saga: Lock Down - 18th Day

Twas the 18th Day of the Lock Down. Twas the Day that the Shepherd King rose from the dead and defeated Death. He had risen, he had risen indeed. Buoyed by this positive thought, Cone Man's mind turned to other resurrections.

Cone Man realised that it may be premature to think that way while the world was walking along the great Via Dolorosa towards to the crucifixion of the way of life that had prevailed prior to 1st of January 2020. Admittedly, the Coronavirus Monster had emerged in November of 2019, but the wondrous peace of blissful ignorance had prevailed so widely that many departed for foreign holidays from whence they returned with great difficulty. Some were still having great difficulty returning.

Resurrection, however, was part of life. The caterpillar was reborn as a butterfly, and the butterfly was reborn as a caterpillar. The mating of young men with young woman may have produced the weariness of tending newborn babies, yet enabled the human race to live on after the young became old and passed on. The biographies of famous people were replete with accounts of failure of professions and projects unrelated to the professions and projects they later became famous for. And how many successful businesses originated from unemployed people having to explore new ventures in very difficult circumstances?

Daydreaming about Spring growth after the bleak Winter was all very well, but how bleak, dark and long was the Winter going to be? And how would the world endure it? Cone Man was shocked to learn that 25,000 people had applied for 2,000 supermarket jobs. Airline pilots were stacking supermarket shelves, a situation inconceivable to all a mere two months earlier.

Troubles came not in threes, but in thirty's and were too numerous to be listed. Dairy farmers saw the worldwide market for milk products collapse and were faced with a price that barely paid their expenses. Rest homes bought personal protective equipment because the government refused to supply it. Farmers in the Land of the Stars and Stripes Tribe disposed of millions of tons of food when they found that they could not deliver it to market.

"If this is the 'Autumn', I shudder to think what the 'Winter' will be like Cone Man groaned ...

Corona Saga: Lock Dowm - 17th Day

Twas the 17th Day of the Lock Down. Twas the Day when the Shepherd King lay in the tomb, after having been killed in no uncertain terms the previous day. Twas strangely appropriate to the wider entombment of the All Black Tribe in their caves, a nation lying dormant, along with the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, instead of one man dying once and all for the sins of the world, it seemed as if the world was dying for the sins of the Dragon Tribe of the Middle Kingdom. But what to do? The Dragon Tribe could not be sued, and even if they could, no law suit would put the  Coronavirus Monster  back in the bottle from whence  it sprang.

Who would or could move the stone trapping billions of human beings in this grave moratorium on the business of life? Medical experts prophesied the coming of a New Vaccine that would arise to deliver humanity form the Coronavirus Monster; Econe-mavens prophesied Disruption, Depression and Doom brought about by the terrible Recession Monster, sadly not without evidence; and tribal leaders prophesied that one day they would lead their tribes out of their caves, through  the Level 3 Alert,  and on to a time, which, if not exactly flowing with milk and honey, would at least allow the people to buy milk with printed money.

Cone Man had his doubts, but what was to be gained by a lack of faith? The way things were going, even false hopes were better than no hope. And the business of life could continue in the many tombs in which the population hid.

Cone Man's literary work continue, as did the work of many who had access to the Internet at their caves. Cone Man wondered how many children were being conceived each minute, but knew he would have wait for a few months before the statistics appeared.

The business of life, in some quarters, even took on a new lease of life. Prophets of the Cult of the Shepherd King found that three times more  people attended their online services than ever attended when they could physically gather for worship. The supermarkets continued to do a roaring trade.

Grave as their predicament was, the men and women of the All Black Tribe, were definitely not dormant, even if some of them felt rather down ...