DAY 1 of LOCKDOWN: Aside from my dream wedding at Hobbiton having to be postponed, my life is barely affected. As a writer, I’m used to working from home. As an introvert, I’m perfectly happy staying inside. All my anxiety is focused on others; I hope you’re okay.

As I sit in bed, notebook assailed by a jealous cat called Circe, the details of last year’s New Zealand campervan trip seem more difficult to recall than usual. Perhaps it’s because not being allowed to travel has made the walls of this house I rent with my friends seem more solid; more difficult to permeate, even in the mind. Travelling in a campervan is so freeing, even though it’s cramped at the back. The walls are psychologically permeable.

I haven’t thought about it like that before. I remember feeling, when we were parked up for the night on the shore of Lake Pukaki, that the back of the campervan seemed at once both open to the world and cosy. I stared through the windows at the pine trees silhouetted against the turquoise water and the snow-capped alps. It was wonderful, but I didn’t want to step outside because the weather had just turned. This was a September campervan trip, after all.

Despite the fact that we’d chosen to do the trip in September precisely so there wouldn’t be many other campervans around, the shore of Lake Pukaki was packed. So this was where every other campervan in the country had been hiding! You can’t blame them. The view of New Zealand’s tallest mountain, Aoraki/Mt Cook, over Lake Pukaki is one of the most famously beautiful in the country. And the campsite on Lake Pukaki’s shore is free.

This is the view I’d been looking forward to:

This, due to the aforementioned weather turn, is the view I got:

Still nice, but… Anyway, when we woke up the next morning, the weather was even worse, so we drove straight to our next destination, Lake Tekapo. Unfortunately, we were too early in the year to see the famous lupins blooming on the lake’s edge. Fortunately, the weather held just long enough for us to take a little walk and see the stunningly situated Church of the Good Shepherd.

It’s strange to see a church like this in New Zealand.

It feels as though it should be ancient, but it was built in 1935!