This is how it feels when your child is on the other side of the world during a pandemic

For families separated by coronavirus, one of the only silver linings is that technology can at least bring them closer together, writes Jenny Eclair

In New Zealand, but only a video call away... (PA Wire)

I found a black and white photograph at my mother’s flat some months ago. Taken in Malaysia in the early Sixties, it features a children’s blackboard, on which the words “Happy Xmas Nanna and Poppa” are neatly chalked. The blackboard was presumably a gift for my four-year-old sister – I’d have been 18 months old, born in Kuala Lumpur when my father was stationed there by the British army.

The photograph had been sent to my grandparents, living in Blackpool, anxious for news from so far away. Communication wasn’t what it is today – I doubt my parents even had a phone. My mother would have written frequent airmail letters in her terrible handwriting, but laboriously sending photographs would have been another way of “keeping in touch”.

Photos were the only real evidence of my existence, the granddaughter they had to wait a couple of years to see in the flesh. Instead, they made do with black and white snaps of a maggoty-white, mostly bald baby. I wonder whether my nanna showed these to her friends or kept them hidden in her purse? I really wasn’t the cutest.

Some years later, back in the UK, my father left us for a stint with the Trucial Oman Scouts in Arabia. I was about four years old and we didn’t see him for months, though exactly how many months, I don’t really know. My mother has dementia now and is an unreliable witness to these events. But what I do remember very clearly is greeting a complete stranger at the train station when he finally came home.

My sister recognised him immediately, so I pretended to, copying her every move, literally shrieking, “My Daddy, my Daddy” – years before The Railway Children was filmed. And no, even now I can’t watch this scene without blubbing.

Fast forward 50-plus years, and thanks to the internet we can see and speak to people all over the world. My daughter is currently in New Zealand, but when she FaceTimes me, she sounds like she could be in the next room.

It’s an incredible pleasure to be able to see her face and hear her speak in real time, even though her real time is 11 hours ahead. For families separated by this pandemic, one of the only silver linings must be that technology can at least bring them closer together.

Weirdly, contacting my daughter right now is the easiest it’s been for years – she might be on the other side of the world, but I know exactly where she is for 23-and-a-quarter hours of every single day. She is in a quarantine hotel in Christchurch – confined to one large, clean comfortable room, with two double beds: “one for sleep”, the other commandeered as a “work station”.

Already double-jabbed due to asthma, she has travelled on a work visa to do some script writing in Auckland; but first she must spend 14 days in a government-run isolation facility. No one visiting or returning to New Zealand is given any choice of location or accommodation, but in her case, it’s a four-star hotel within the grounds of the airport, complete with a view of the bus depot.

All transfers – including a flight change in Singapore – are handled according to strict Covid protocol, and no one is free to wander off on their own accord. Once in New Zealand, the isolation hotels are guarded by the army.

So far, she has absolutely no complaints. Three decent meals a day are delivered to her door, and as long as her regular Covid tests are negative, she is entitled to a blue wristband and 45 minutes of accompanied exercise a day. Extra groceries can be ordered in from a local supermarket, although spirits cannot cross the threshold.

On arriving at the hotel, she was asked a lot of questions about dietary requirements, allergies and whether she was alcohol dependent! I think this is a box I’d have been very tempted to tick, as I’m rather partial to a Southern hemisphere dry white wine and would quite fancy something alcoholic as I watched the sun set over the bus depot.

By all accounts, day nine is when the quarantine blues kick in, so no doubt there might be a spate of less cheery WhatsApp messages. But – considering that she is dealing with this alone, and not, like some, sharing her space with small children and babies –I think she will cope. After all, she has a yoga mat and Netflix; and this time next week she will be in her own apartment, free to come and go in a city which has zero community Covid transmissions.

Meanwhile, her old mask-compliant mum is stuck in London, despairing when travelling on busy buses full of unmasked passengers. These days, I’m relying more on the fact I’m double jabbed than any social courtesy from those who have stopped bothering.

And as the Delta variant spreads, we keep our fingers crossed that the vaccine programme will outrun it and in a few weeks time, we can all be as free as the New Zealanders.