Ampersand Duck too

Restless I don't know about you, but I spent most of January stuck indoors with my flat sealed up against the toxic smoke that enveloped Canberra. I remember at one point standing at my window watching the smoke roll in from the coast as if someone was gently laying down a grey wool blanket from east to west. The first time the smoke rolled in, I was celebrating NYE with friends, and I'd taken some spare clothes so that I could drink and stay the night. I ended up staying for days as an oxygen refugee. Eventually I mustered the energy to leave, and drove home via Bunnings and Repco to get the supplies I needed to hack an air purifier out of a fan, the cardboard box the fan came in, a roll of lime green masking tape and a car aircon filter. I was pretty proud of the result, so much so that I haven't dismantled it yet; it's sitting in my bedroom performing duties as a 'filterdrobe', lifting my clothes from their usual floordrobe status. It's like a pet. I

I might spend the next few months growing a beard. I decided that if I was going to start blogging again, I couldn't add to my old blog. It's a time capsule of my past life, the life before I decided to change everything. It's been six years since my last post, reader, if in fact, anyone is reading, and that person, that other Ampersand Duck, is a long lost construction. Of course, I'm still essentially me... or am I? Argh. I'm not getting into all that stuff. It's 2020, but there's no jetpacks. What the hell? Instead, I'm living in a flat in Canberra, with a housemate that I don't really know, waiting out the progression and hopefully eventual dissolution of the COVID-19 virus. I had a practice run of being flat-bound only a few months ago, during the Great Bushfire Season of 19/20. This is weirdly much better. I can go out on my bike for a ride around the startlingly busy lakeside bike paths, or for a much more secluded evening walk throug