News of volcanoes and tsunami this week brought risk management into focus, making it hard to concentrate on the tennis.
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Risk is ever present I suppose, but the only certainty at the moment seems to be Djokovic won't be playing the Open this year.
In the meantime we're all wondering when might be a good time to get Covid.
'Never' would be the preferred answer from medical experts.
'Ride the wave' the more likely response from government, so long as you keep going to work.
Given the viral load we've let rip, it's natural to think about contingencies.
It's becoming not so much a case of who's had Covid, as who hasn't.
And the social isolation we've maintained over the last 18 months in order to avoid it seems so much longer than the isolation we're now required to undergo if we encounter it.
As we learn to live with the changing messages we're urged to monitor for symptoms, one of which seems to be hypochondria.
That we have Covid when we don't, possibly because we slept under the fan last night with wet hair.
Or that we have Covid, because we mingled with social variables, and eventually a variant.
If that sounds confusing, just remember, if it looks and sounds like a Hillsong festival, it could well be a Jimmy Barnes concert.
Prioritising people you don't want to infect certainly becomes an issue when you've got a limited number of testing kits.
Strange days indeed when we get a mice plague one year, and a RATs shortage the next.
Peering out from behind my venetians, I know I should be supporting my economy.
And yet, last time I went to the supermarket there was evidence my supermarket wasn't supporting me.
Or their supply chains weren't supporting them.
In the end you can only focus on things you can control.
Like sitting under a fan watching the tennis trying not to melt.
Funny, the Bureau of Meteorology announced this week that 2021 was the coolest, wettest year in over a decade.
Didn't feel that way mowing the lawn.
Indeed, my grass is growing nearly as fast as my concern about contracting the dreaded lurgy.
Suppose I've just got to pick my moment, or it will pick me.
The new normal is clearly fraught with risk what with drought, fires, floods, pandemic, volcanoes, tsunami and getting kids back to school.
Life wasn't meant to be easy, they say, in the Old Testament I think, and to confirm that, I went for a surf last weekend after the tsunami warning.
It's not that I thought I was immune to what they were warning about, I just didn't hear it to heed it.
Being not very good, I subsequently battled surging seas and ever present shark paranoia to just about drown myself in the name of a riding a wave.
So, pretty much a normal surf.
It felt a lot like living with Covid. Trying to mitigate the risks while having a crack at something hopefully not caused by a Krakatoa.
