James from New Zealand living now in Glastonbury, speaking from his own experience about his time in the UK, having just arrived back in March 2020. He is discussing with Reza the pandemic and furlough scheme and how it compared with New Zealand.

right well it's uh where are we

10 36 pm on Sunday the 12th of July and I'm sitting here with James in a hotel in a village near Glastonbury and he's very kindly agreed to share some thoughts about the corona crisis and we're we're preferring to call it corona conversations now rather than covet conversation so this is the title we're going to give this category of conversation to going to be called corona conversations so i'm going to hand over to James and let him take it away

so i know it's it'll be interesting to see how the country recovers and how they ease restrictions moving forward so you were off work for the whole period until last week so we shut down the 23rd of march in line with pretty much every other business full lockdown um and then i returned to work first of July right so all that that period with your wife and kids wife and kids so I've got a two and a half year old and a one-year-old so it was it was quite entertaining for me yeah well it was a blessing it's the longest I've ever spent with my kids um working away it's uh you're on photo correct yeah

so you don't you have any kind of there's no emotional traumas or anything like that to be honest i isolation no i mean for me i pretty much changed jobs in January um oh you'd only been here a couple of months two weeks so i'd I'd moved within the company oh then you went straight off to New Zealand to New Zealand for holiday and then back back to work so i'd only been back to work a week and then we shut up shop so i basically i've had a bit longer off than most um so it was a yeah a double whammy holiday for lack of better words but it was it was great to be able to see my children yeah evolve um and develop and sort of watch their personalities grow so you know i wasn't i i'm fortunate i had a large garden um you know the weather was brilliant so it was i wasn't going

so what advice would you give to people who obviously have suffered from the isolation and suicide rates have gone up and divorce rates are going through the roof and or proceedings to get proceedings from many many people it's really been a difficult time what would your general advice be how to cope with the situation

it's a difficult one because everyone processes things in their own individual way and unfortunately with humanity there's lots of different ways people cope um unfortunately i think being in hospitality the exacerbated drinking that a lot of people sort of you know like i mentioned it was great weather for the vast majority of it people were drinking earlier and so whether that's had an impact on the domestic abuse and like you say the divorce rates i think it's also put a lot of strain on people where you might only see your husband your wife partner you know kids for a couple of hours in the morning and a couple hours in the evening being with them 24 7. i think it's strengthened a lot of relationships but like you say it's um depends on your personality type and what how you sort of approach life so when when i offered you a drink earlier you said i prefer not to i've got some water i prefer to lead by example do you want to elaborate on that a little bit what you meant by that so i was on shift so now i've knocked off so it's really that immediately after your shift you shouldn't really be seen to correct to be reaching for the bottle as if correct right and um so do you do you get the feeling that people have just abused alcohol in order to you know as a way of coping with the crisis they've drunk too much to be honest it's gone both ways i think if you look at social media in the news a lot of people have used it as an opportunity to really re-evaluate their lives and what they're doing um in terms of sort of online fitness and people have been doing uh exercise classes at home you know this they've found new ways of sort of coping um i personally know a number of people that have gone dry throughout the whole period because they thought well actually it's money i can save you know some of them haven't had the furlough so they've been very limited in what sort of income they've um had so they've cut back on luxuries like you know sky tv boos obviously not eating out things like that so it's been an enforced change to their lifestyle um you know it's so i think i hate to say it it's socially economic as well in terms of your geographical location whereabouts you live you've got all these other factors it's not just you know because bob's potentially an alcoholic now there's many things to sort of take into

consideration

so for some people you think it actually has been a wake-up call what are they doing wrong with their lives put it right and maybe also regarding the environment climate crisis global warming yeah i think it's it's been a very for some people and for the vast majority of people it was a large wake up or re-evaluation of how they lived their lives how they went about what their main priorities were others will just go back to normal like as if nothing's happened yes the pandemic it was an inconvenience but i think if you look at the way the vast majority i mean you can see the the instantaneous drop in pollution levels you know being able to see the Himalayas from you know just for the first time the lack of smog in some of the major industrial cities it's it's been a very it shows it can be done it's whether or not the people who have the most amount of money to lose from it will try and push things back to normal as it were um or whether we use this opportunity to really sort of push you know wind farms um you know other alternative means of generating energy so in new zealand again we harness geothermal um quite well hydro dams you know so we have we can't rely on coal or you know because we don't have enough there's very little oil reserves if not none there's a few off the coast but again because of our green image we try not to drill them um but i think as a as a species and as humans we we need to work smarter and work together as a collective rather than you know all about me which i hate to say is quite prevalent in the world yeah of course new zealand's a kind of success story with regard to code it's one of the most efficient effective responses what's the name of your prime minister again jacinda arden jacinda she seems to be very good she was also excellent in the cr the ox church yeah shootings yeah tell us a bit about that to be honest i i mean i i've been out of the country for 13 years so i only sort of saw snippets on the news and what the family have told me but you know i think the way she managed that her income this reminds us what happened i've kind of forgotten there's a lone gunman who was shocked there was an Australian extremist of lack of better words racist who had come to New Zealand walked into a mosque and gunned down 50 odd people 50. killed 50. i i can't remember the number i'll be honest but yeah it was it was not small but i remember being struck by horrors when she went and she actually put a headscarf on and went to a mosque and took off her shoes and went and did prayers with her very very it's a great step was there a backlash against that by the right wing so look she's gone too far to be honest i'm not 100 sure i think new zealand is a very welcoming society anyway don't get me wrong every society has their people that are racist you know it's the way they're raised and

i don't agree with it but the way she handled it she was very empathetic and genuine you could see it was as the vast majority of kiwis are quite caring quite welcoming um inclusive um again background of Polynesian and the maori culture is very much about whanau and you know it's all about looking after those within your family and your wider family and community so that's what she did was basically put an arm around the nation as it were in her position to say we'll be all right um and the fact that she refused to speak his name and even to this day nobody wants to mention his name i couldn't even tell you i can't remember it purely because it's not mentioned for that reason was he was killed by the police or yeah i believe so you know

yeah not 100 yeah and then so moving to the way she dealt with the crisis um you just said she immediately the government immediately imposed lockdown and uh no international flights is that the other um there's anything else about the government's policy the attitudes that you think is particularly exemplary and that could be emulated by others considering the vast majority of our kiwi economy relies on tourism to shut off your primary source of income and exports as well to asia and wider world um in terms of dairy and the like the fact that literally they just overnight shut up the ports shut the airplane um airports down was a very bold move

and it wasn't well received in many corners but i think the fact that they went into full lockdown and yes it was an inconvenience but speaking to my family and friends now they're like four weeks well spent basically four weeks yeah is that what it was it was a full you don't leave your house for four weeks basically so not even the house yeah for everybody yeah i mean there was i think it was similar in terms of exercise and whatnot you could go out in your gardens and the like um grocery shopping um not exercise out the park on the streets it was stick stick to your own household bubble um and that was a that that's that's even stricter

so you think that was the right thing to do short sharp immediate and then the easing was done appropriately you think yeah i think it was gradually released um and again in stages so they had a level four level three level two level one um and now it's pretty much i say near enough back to normal unfortunately with

they re-opened to repatriate kiwis from abroad which is where the new cases i think there was no new cases for 20 odd days and then unfortunately a people couple that were in quarantine were released for compassionate grounds to go to a funeral not realizing that they were positive with the virus and then so where they are mandatory quarantining at the moment in hotels and the like around the country it's um they've got a bit harder and tougher on some of the people but i think there was in the news couple days ago where somebody had broken out just to go to the shop to get a bottle of sports drink and some booze you know it just but he's then inadvertently put the greater population at risk so it's it comes back to that selfishness

so is there any other sort of advice you could give people who may have had a more difficult time than yourself what would you say in relation to keeping your emotional and psychological while being intact or restoring it if it's being unbalanced um it's just you gotta have take care of yourself um like i said i was in a very fortunate position where i was gainfully employed you know i was looked after by my employer very well um i was with the family so i had that um for people that are less fortunate it's about reaching out you know a problem share is problem halved as they say um you know speak to family and friends i know some people that do suffer with mental illness quite severely and and it's about talking and decompressing and getting things off their chests which helps diffuse the anxiety and the sort of depression that they go through um you know if it is medical then you know reach out to your doctor and don't delay but you know it's getting plenty of sleep it's eating properly it's not you know taking lots of drinking drugs and all the rest of it that most people turn to it's you know but take ownership for yourself as well because people need to look inwards first rather than blaming everything on others that's very easy to do that's very good advice

instead of bottling it up not coming out with the truth of your feelings and pretending everything's all right when actually you're you're having to resort to things like drink in order to disguise the underlying condition fool yourself into thinking that you're actually all right so you really think that it's really important to open up and as you put it to reach out to friends and family and to talk about your feelings without a doubt i think you know it's i i come from a large family and again i come from a very tight-knit community um so that was instrumental in my upbringing not everyone has that so it's you know i can only speak from my perspective and you know i do have people i can always chat to and you know bounce things off and go actually i'm really wound up about this you know what what would you do um you know for others it might be more difficult they might be only children parents might have passed you know everyone's situation is different but it's finding something that works for you as an individual and again it might be taking up drawing it might be writing poetry it might be you know exercising that's there's many outlets that the human soul can sort of tap into to you know heal itself and do you have any um opinion about this thing called mindfulness technique that's taken from Buddhism that's now being employed in the mental health industry profession i should say

do you have any opinions ideas about using techniques of meditation drawn from any religious tradition um to be honest i i don't know enough about it to um sort of speak on it but i think if it works it works you know it won't be you know helpful for all because like i said people deal with things in their own way and some might discount it from the outset but others might find it really therapeutic and useful so you know if if it works for the vast majority then there's absolutely no reason not to use it great well i'm very very grateful for this conversation now my pleasure and it's it's really been helpful and uh I'm going to put this up it's always very it's sort of amateurish it's not gonna be edited it's just gonna be us chatting like this and uh and I'll let you know when it's up on the website so i'll say goodbye to James and reiterate my gratitude to you thank you you