Hotel Quarantine: Days 1 & 2
I thought twice about writing this — because it’s got a bit of gore in it, and some sweary swear words… but then decided too — because it’s funny, and because all’s well that ends well — so….
We made it out of Europe — on the last flight if Fox News is to be believed. Pam (the 12 year old pet poodle-cross) scarpered a few days earlier. She’s currently in quarantine in Mickleham in Melbourne. (We’ve heard from them, and so far, so good.) Meanwhile, the husband (Scotty) and I are doing time in detention at the Stamford Hotel on Collins Street in Melbourne — and I gotta say — Day 1 was… weird.
Quarantine here is run by the Department of Justice — the police and prisons. I’m not sure which is which, but there are a lot of cops here. And when you ring room service, the person who answers says, ‘Department of Justice’ — although maybe that was one of those unfortunate lapses like when you called a teacher ‘Mum’ at school.
We arrived about 8pm on a Saturday night and were given a room with generous proportions, but, as we discovered in the morning, no direct daylight and so the Husband tried to get us moved to a higher level as a gift to me.
He was genuinely concerned about my mental health. Even though I’d packed my anti-depressants and happy goggles, we’d been on a pretty strict up and out into the light routine and he didn’t want any backsliding.
“My wife needs light,” he said to the designated health worker. (“My wife is a beautiful pot plant needs to bathe in the excoriating glory of the Australian sun.”) He explained that I suffer from diurnal depression and they asked to talk to me directly.
How long have I suffered? What medication do I have? Do I have a note from my doctor?
I sat down to answer, but misjudged the world’s smallest chaise longue, and landed smack on my arse — cracking my head on a glass topped coffee table in a shower of invective.
There was also blood.
We finished the conversation — with me clutching a towel to my head while an egg-shaped lump formed under it, and the man on the phone trying to assess whether I was an hysteric or a domestic violence case.
We hung up.
Scott rang the nurse and told her there was blood. She suggested I wash it out, which I did. Then showed Scott — who panicked and rang the nurse back to say I needed stitches. When I failed to be impressed by his leadership skills he took a photo of the back of my head.
Wanna see it?
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It’s grizzly
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Here it comes:
Don’t think I didn’t hear you say ‘Ew!’ all the way over here.
The nurse arrived in full PPE, and didn’t think stitches were a good idea, because you have to go to the health hotel for them — and that’s where they send people with Covid.
So she used glue instead.
Glue.
She glued the wound — with ‘baby glue’ — which sounds like a disgusting thing to do to babies. I am now officially a glue head.
She asked Scotty to hold the flesh together while she glued it — and he gagged.
And then they moved us — to a higher floor with a balcony and doors that open — onto a sixteen story drop into the world’s smallest laneway.
Yep — sod’s law — they moved us to a much smaller room, with no outlook at all and even less light.
I shit you not.
To make their incredibly accommodating kindness just that little bit more galling — we’d spent a couple of hours on arrival unpacking all our stuff. Washing down all the surfaces and light switches with disinfectant — and then — as you do after 40 hours in transit — we moved ALL the furniture. Turned the bedroom area into an office — living room area into a bedroom and cleared a big space for the virtual reality games to begin.
Now we had forty-five minutes to pack — and in a mad heave-ho we swapped the bed, tables, couches, chaise longue and and blood-stained coffee table back where they came from, and with all the co-ordination of a prison transport they moved us from this:
To this:
At this point I started to laugh — because it’s fucking funny. We thought about complaining again — but then — how small would the next room be? And looky! That window opens! That’s pure gold around these parts.
We rearranged all the furniture again — turned the bedroom into an office, the living room into a bedroom... Only this new room has about 3sqm less space so the carefully planned skipping rope we brought with us for exercise got tangled in the furniture.
By the time we’d done all of that, we were ready for dinner. Here’s Scotty’s five star restaurant meal from the Paris end of Collins Street.
I know — apple crumble!
He paired his ‘penne al funghi’ with an Aussie Shiraz (the house red bought from the hotel for $24 because that’s the only place you’re allowed to buy booz e— and ONLY one bottle of wine only per room.)
We carnivores got the same pasta — only with a bigger bun, butter and (yummy) sausages…
…pre-cut because there’s no way the plastic knives and forks they supplied were going through those tough sausage skins. There are 15 slices if you count the twisted nob on the bottom left.
I don’t want to be ungracious because this hotel quarantine system if really working for Australia— but it’s not cheap. We’re paying $4,000 for this. And that doesn’t include wages for the health workers, security, and hotel staff whose costs are picked up by the state! And there are hundreds of them. Each floor has its own bored police officer patrolling the corridors. Outside our door there’s one right now fiddling on her smart phone.
And none of that is even the strangest thing about living here. When the food comes the hotel staff (I presume… demoted coppers, maybe) puts the paper bag (for the vegetarian) and plastic bag (for the carnivore) outside our door, presses the bell and then runs away. It’s true. We’ve been told to give them a minute to get a way. At one point — the doorbell rang. We waited a minute and opened the door to a startled cleaner.
“Sorry, cleaning touch surfaces.”
So that was our first day. I don’t know if I can keep up this pace for another 13 days. I need a good lie down, now.
