

#  Things Lost and Sometimes Found

Paul Buckley

2012

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopied, recorded or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

ISBN 978-1-310073-14-4

Copyright 2012

#  Life's Like That

##  Things Lost and Sometimes Found

The first time we lost something, we put it down to jetlag.

It is our second or is that third day in the United Kingdom and we are still adjusting to the 12-hour time shift. We take a train into Wales to begin a long days walking. Scrambling out at a tiny station immersed in the green countryside with only one house in sight. The train rattles its way on down the line.

Bruce has his pack off and is searching for something. Then he tells us, "I've left my camera on the train. I put it under the seat and didn't remember it when we got off."

The silence of this lovely countryside underlines the absence of the train which is carrying Bruce's camera further away every second. We are helpless. We can't follow the train in a car as we have no car, we have no way of communicating with the train, our cell phones are of no use because we don't have a number to call.

I instinctively start toward the house to get assistance but Bob, who is already studying what I think is the timetable for this railway line, immediately demands I stop and wait for him to do what must be done. I obey. He finds a number for _Lost and Found_ on the railways and dials it. He listens without saying anything for a while and then delivers a terse message saying what has been lost, on what line and how to contact us. And that is all we can do.

As we begin our walk Bruce is already thinking about a replacement camera; after all this is the start of a six-week holiday, and it would be unthinkable for him to continue without the ability to take photos. Fortunately his Panasonic camera is old and somewhat out of date. He can now get all the features he wants in a much smaller camera. If you want to be an optimist, this is a blessing. Bruce hates discarding anything while it is still working perfectly but now he has change forced upon him.

Next day he begins looking on line for reviews of new cameras. To make his decision to update easier, I decide to make an attempt to talk with someone on Railways about his lost camera. All Bob was able to do the day before was leave an answering machine message on a Lost and Found number where a message tells him that nothing will happen for six days. In six days we will be in Munich.

I ask Bob for the name of the Station where we left the camera on the train and he says, "You won't need that." So I go outside the caravan and call the Railways General Enquiry number myself. The woman I get is very helpful. I tell her our problem namely with the six day delay before we should check for the lost camera. As we are short term visitors to the UK we will never be able to retrieve the camera. She agrees to make a check with Lost and Found in Cardiff herself. Her first question is of course "What is the name of the station where you got off the train?" I race back inside the caravan and turn the problem over to Bob. With some hasty checking of schedules and an abortive attempt to spell the name of the station using a phonetic alphabet Bob gives the woman the information. He also gives her a detailed description of the camera, along with and our cell phone number and she promises to call back. True to her word she soon calls with the news that the camera has not been handed in to Lost Property. I don't know about Bob but I regard this as good news. Nothing can now hinder Bruce's search for a new camera.

Bruce intensifies his search for another camera and soon reaches the conclusion he will buy the Panasonic camera that is a newer version of mine. He checks out prices on Amazon.com before we set off on the day's activities. That evening Bob does a bit of research and sends Bruce the welcome news that Amazon.com have the camera he wants and they have 24-hour delivery. Back in New Zealand there are no warehouses holding stock ready for delivery and we can't hope to get such a rapid response from Amazon. There is something to be said for living near the big population centres but not much. In the end the delays don't usually matter. Bruce puts the order in the next morning, the camera arrives the day after as promised and the problem is solved. Our holiday can continue without any shopping interruptions.

On our trip to Colchester by train we are suddenly put in the reverse position. The man in the seat behind us leans forward and asks, "Is this yours?" and hands us a wallet.

We deny all knowledge and ask where he found it. "Under your seat," is the reply.

It is obvious that a man who got up from the seat and left the train at the last stop must have dropped it. We open the wallet to see if there is a contact number so we can phone him. There isn't although his address is given on a driver's license. We copy this into one of my notebooks.

After our experience with the camera we are reluctant to hand it over to the guard. It will disappear into the system and not appear until the man has renewed all his cards. The man who found it assures us that there will be a responsible railway boss at the Colchester Station who will get it back to the owner. So when Bruce and I leave the train, despite knowing that DJT is waiting outside for us to emerge, we search for that responsible person. He appears as if by magic in the form of a young man who exudes confidence and honesty.

He takes the wallet and assures us he will act immediately and try to contact the man.

Not wanting to leave this matter hanging unresolved I am keen tofind out what actually happens as seen from his end of the deal. As good luck would have it he lives in the same town as Jessica and Alice who we visited two days later. They use the web to find the street and DJT willingly drives us there.

When I knock on the door there is no response. Disappointed I try again, but still nothing. Beside the house there is a brick wall hiding the garden and Bruce suggests I look over it and there he is walking across the garden. I call out to him and he comes to the door. We tell him the story, and find out he is the man's father. He tells us his son was contacted rapidly but by this time he had already cancelled his cards.

"We didn't think we would get it back," the man says, "People aren't so honest these days."

He offers us a reward but we assure him our visit is only out of interest. We depart satisfied knowing he got the wallet back even if it wasn't quick enough to prevent the inconvenience of getting new cards. You can't win them all.

We are in the last two weeks of our trip when I lose something.

It is so easy to blame someone else when you lose something and naturally I do. It is our Turkish Guide on a trip to interesting sites around Cappadocia, a delightful woman who was just doing her job. When we are several levels down in an underground city she calls for someone to produce a cell phone with a torch on it. Out comes mine and she shines it up the shaft she is trying to illuminate. No the cell phone wasn't lost then and you might be tempted to think I am drawing a long bow when I sheet the blame home to her. But I do.

The next day we visit an Outdoor Museum, a promoters name for an ancient community of Christians who carved out chapels and living quarters from the accommodating Cappadocia rock. Many of the chapels have interesting murals and when I have trouble seeing one I pull out my cell phone to light up the detail. This is a mistake a cell phone is for receiving and delivering texts not for casual use as a torch. In this role it makes many unnecessary excursions in and out of my pocket and I become careless with its security.

Afterwards in the blazing heat we explore canyons with interesting rock formations. It is bedtime before I discover my loss. Bruce calls and texts my phone but we get no reply. We leave next morning for the south coast. Bruce keeps texting with my phone but without any response. My only hope is that someone will find the cell phone and in some unspecified way return it to me.

During the next week, Bruce keeps calling my phone and although it obligingly rings no one picks it up. It is clear that wherever it is, it is not in a place where crowds of people wander through. In particular this rules out the outdoor museum, where dozens of busloads and hundreds of people visit every day of the week.

Then I have a brain wave, "Let's text a message to my phone telling them to phone your number if they find it." Bruce is doubtful, he probably regards it as a waste of time but he gives me the cell phone and I send a text mentioning we are from New Zealand to provide what I hope is a point of difference.

We are down at the waterfront in Istanbul, on our last day in Turkey, when Bruce's cell phone rings. Beyond all expectations it is a Dutch woman who has found my phone and read the text. She tells us the batteries are getting low and Bruce with good presence of mind tells her we will text back with our instructions. After a moments thought I realise I want it back. If the phone has survived this long in the 37-degree heat then it deserves to return home. I dismiss the other alternative, namely get the woman to send only the tiny sim card. She texts back telling me it will be expensive and am I sure I want my sunburned old cell phone back. Of course I do. I ask her to send it from Holland and promise I will reimburse her in Euros.

It is now over three months since we arrived back and the phone hasn't arrived yet but I am hopeful and in no hurry to get a new sim card.

The third time we lose something we are most definitely not at fault, rather we are the innocent victims of things beyond our control. We arrive at Dalaman Airport on a flight from Istanbul. We wait with all the other passengers for our packs to appear on the carousel. Gradually everyone else peels away with their bags leaving Bruce and me along with another lady standing before the empty carousel. Just as the realisation that our packs are lost finally hits home a Turkish lady appears to take us to Lost Luggage to make a report. Losing luggage between Dalaman and Istanbul must be a common experience if they have a person ready and waiting to help you. However good Turkish Air is with respect to customer service it clearly has trouble ensuring bags get transferred from one plane to another.

The trouble is, and there usually are extra complications in these situations and it is no different now, we are expecting to be met by a representative from, as the email tells us, our Local Car Rental Partner, _Circular Car Hire_. This was the cheapest car rental company which we located through a generic care hire web site. If we spend time making the report on our packs, the representative, tired of waiting, might leave.

We decide to split up, I will go out of the arrival hall and Bruce will go off to make the report. Unfortunately in a country in the Middle East security procedures are tight and rigidly enforced. Unlike Palmerston North Airport, where exiting to the street from the arrival area (which is also the departure area), is an easily reversible process, you simply walk through the sliding door and back, at Dalaman Airport out on the street I will be as completely separated from Bruce as if we are in different countries.

Out in the sunshine I search for our friendly _Circular Car Hire_ man but he is nowhere to be found. It is not a difficult search because at this small country airport there are no other flights and the place has emptied out completely. The number of people I have to check can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

So, in my ignorance, I try to walk back into arrivals. I get through the first door OK and after a brief wait I manage to slip through the next as it slides open to allow someone to exit. A guard is on me in a second. His English is not very extensive but it is not difficult to understand the words, "Not allowed in here," as he ushers me out again. The annoying thing is this same man saw me come off the plane a short time before but regulations are regulations and I suppose from his point of view I might have loaded my back pack with explosives since he last saw me.

So there I am standing in the sun again. Normally this would not be a problem but of course I lost my cell phone in Cappadoca so I have no way or contacting Bruce. One of the men standing around by the taxis comes over and tells me that he saw a man holding a notice with names on it but he went on to International arrivals.

The directions to International are muddled but I manage to make it in, passing through the departures security system along the way. The departure hall is totally empty. Not a sign of our Rental Car representative so I head to a desk clearly labelled INFORMATION. The lady behind the desk has even less English that the rest. Finally she understands I have lost luggage and then triumphantly points toward the Check in desks of Turkish Air. I go over but of course there is no one there. I head back to INFORMATION and this time she wants me to go to the Turkish Air counter that sells tickets. However that too is closed. It is clear I am not going to reach Lost Luggage through the International Terminal.

It is a complete lock out. About now I wish we had rented a car through one of the big companies such as Avis, or Eurocar, as they have desks over in the Domestic Terminal, outside the security area. But we haven't; we have already paid our money to this small company who have now disappeared off the face of the earth.

Outside Domestic I see a woman texting and when she has finished I ask her to text Bruce inside. She agrees but when she is still typing the message Bruce emerges from the Domestic Terminal and we are reunited.

Now we can use Bruce's cell phone to call the Circular Car numbers. The first number is unproductive but an English-speaking man answers in response to the second. He will be with us shortly. Things are falling into place.

I like him immediately, a strong Russian looking man, he comes straight to the point. "Do you mind if we give you a manual car instead of the automatic you ordered? Our Automatic car got involved in a crash." We don't really have a choice and I am happy enough but of course Bruce prefers the automatic.

His office is at the side of a petrol station 2 kilometers from the airport. After the paperwork, we as usual decline extra insurance cover and I assumed we would walk over to our car. Things are not this simple; we will ride with him some distance to another town. It is on our way south so we happily agree. It is a pleasant drive which takes us through a tunnel for the toll of 1.50 TL. Just before the tollgates there is an arrow pointing to an alternative route up over the hills, but we don't take it.

The hand over is also much more interesting than anything Avis or EuroCar will give you. One moment we are driving on this four-lane highway on the edge of the town and the next we pull up behind what turns out to be our rental car. "It is a diesel which has very good fuel economy," he tells me then, there on the edge of the road, I get basic instruction on the car and we get in. There is no need to transfer the luggage, we don't have any, and drive off.

Mustafa the owner of the Flower Pension is very sympathetic to our plight and promises to make a call next morning to ensure our bags get to us. Fortunately I have most of my electronic gear in my small pack. Bruce has to buy a toothbrush and a very smart looking Turkish cap, and we both buy swimming shorts. Although we get the charming young woman at the "We sell everything" Shop to write by hand a list of our purchases in case we want to claim from our insurance, we never do. Late on our first full day a taxi with our packs arrives. It is fortunate we are there because he cannot hand them over until Bruce has signed for them. We leave the driver with Mustafa as they try to decide where he will take the rest of the lost bags in his Taxi.

You are probably wondering what has happened with the Dutch woman and my cell phone. All I can say is 'Never say Never.' We arrived back at the start of August and I borrow a cell phone from Hayley. It is a more powerful and multifunctional cell phone than my basic model, but it has the disadvantage that because of all the extra options available you have to negotiate more menu options before you get to do what you want.

In the first week of November, over three months since our return, I spot a cell phone from Stationery Warehouse for only $29 and decide it is time to give up on my Dutch lady and buy a new phone. I buy a Two Degrees sim card, put ten dollars on it and begin using the new phone. At first I don't spend time on the tedious task of copying Bruce's contact list of phone numbers into the new phone because I still hold out the increasingly faint hope my old phone will still arrive. However by the end of first weekend, I am so frustrated at not having easy access to the numbers I sit down and patiently copy them all across.

On the following Saturday morning I go to the letterbox, (there is no prize for guessing what I found there), yes a package containing my old cell phone. I am delighted. I felt sure the woman would be reliable and was disappointed when I did not receive the phone. Now by the same extent my pleasure is all the greater, because the surprise is all the greater.

Just as much a surprise are the Polish postage stamps. So far from being from The Netherlands, Monika is from Poland. Two postcards are included, one with pictures of the city she lives in (WROCLAW) and one a lovely photo taken of a white stork returning to its nest across the bright orange of a sky at sunset. On the postcard of the city Monika writes:

I hope you enjoyed your holidays in Europe. I'm sending your phone. Please let me know that you received it and that it still works

On the postcard showing the Stork Monika writes;

About 20-25% of white stork global population live in Poland. That means that 1 per 4 storks is Pole. We also have the black stork. Poland is famous among European bird watchers. If you are one of them you must visit my country! (Yes – I'm an ecologist).

The Polish names are wonderful. Monika's family name is SZYRMER. I have no idea how to pronounce it although Len at the lunch table makes an impressive attempt. He has Polish ancestors and he's been to Poland.

I print off a range of pictures, some of Bruce and me and Palmerston North friends, some of scenery and of course a range of native bird photos. Although by the conversion I do using Google, the stamps only add up to three NZ dollars, I enclose a ten Euro note, along of course with a letter. Since Monika included her email address, I email a message to her. This turns out not to be a straightforward matter, as a server somewhere in Poland keeps rejecting my message. The message reads _, Messages from your mail server temporarily deferred due to user complaints_. It never gets through but with Bob's help I continue to try

And now I want to go to Poland not only to see the white storks but also to meet Monika. I hope it happens.

##  Wrapping the House in Cotton wool

Really the name of the franchise says it all and we should have been warned, _Hire a Hubby_. I ask you what are most husbands like when it comes to doing jobs around the house? I can only speak for New Zealand Husbands and then only second hand, but the truth is they don't.

The wife has a request, "The latch on the window is broken, can you please fix it for me."

Invariably the answer is a cheerful yes and perhaps you think the job is as good as done. No, negotiations have just started. The man is busy with other things such as his weekly games of golf and there is an important rugby match on TV he just has to watch and then there is the night he plays poker with the boys. When reminded of the window latch three weeks later, he issues a wave of reassuring assertions, "I've just been a bit busy in the last few weeks but the rugby season will soon be over."

Does the job get done? Well, no, and then the wife finds something else, "The door in the bathroom is jamming and scraping the tiles. Can you fix that too?"

Again the answer is of course a smiling yes but with two jobs to focus on he hovers in a region of doubt and indecision that prevents him working on either and this is before the third job rolls in.

In the end the wife takes a night course at the local hardware store and does the jobs herself.

The man is a bit hurt, "Why did you do that? I was going to do them next weekend."

Given the average husband's track record, who you might ask would ever want to _Hire a Hubby?_ Well unfortunately the answer is us.

His name is Nic, and he hasn't done too badly on the small jobs we have asked him to do, always totally unpredictable about exactly when he will begin, but in the end he does come and the jobs do get done. Nic built our berry cage and Nic built a new fence across the front making excellent jobs of them both.

Back to the house. We have already done pretty well in the insulation stakes. We were, if not pioneers in the field, then certainly early adopters.

When I bought the house there was insulation, in the form of a product called insufluff in the ceiling. However it was old and had settled over the last thirty years making it less effective, so Bruce suggested, and I readily agreed, that Pink Batts be put on top of the insufluff. According to the experts forty percent of the heat is lost through the ceiling, so this was a very good start.

Next we investigated double-glazing at a time when it had not become fashionable. One method suggested involved chiselling out the old wooden frame and fitting a second pane of glass adjacent to the first. This sounded a Mickey Mouse arrangement to me and did not reduce the amount of wood in a window, a factor if you don't like the tedium of painstakingly painting window frames. Fortunately there was a firm in Palmerston North that did fit double glazed glass in aluminium frames. It cost about $12,000 to do all the windows and doors but what's money when your comfort is at stake.

We questioned the use of aluminium frames saying "Aluminium conducts heat - isn't there a double glazed window with an insulated frame available?" We got the usual fudged answer you expect when you are asking for something out of the mainstream, "There used to be a non-conducting frame but they were expensive and nobody wanted them."

We didn't push the issue. The firm was very professional, all the windows and doors were measured up and the fittings were factory made. The installation took place over three days, with the old windows taken out leaving only a wooden frame around the very outside and then they slipped the double glazed windows into place. With insect screens fitted to about half the windows we lived in a new environment, one without insects and with heat insulation. I did spot a design flaw in the screens, only after they were fitted of course, namely two small gaps at the top of each screen. I plugged those with tightly fitting polyurethane so cockroaches from the garden could not come inside.

As for under the floor insulation, the first product on offer did not impress me. It was a heat reflecting blanket stapled on the beams. I wanted something more substantial. Thick Polystyrene blocks installed between beams tempted me but when rolls of green stuff came on the market the problem was solved. Nic our _Hire a Hubby_ man did take on our under floor insulation job, but this is when we found out he was developing into an entrepreneur. He did not appear himself but instead sent along two young men to do the job.

With insulation in the ceiling and under the floor, with double-glazing and heat pumps we were well set up for the winter months.

There was only one hole left in our defences, namely that there was no insulation in the walls. And despite all our other insulations, and despite air temperatures being maintained at 19 degrees by the heat pumps, on very cold mornings I still felt cold. We decide this is because on these days the cold wall no longer acts to radiate heat but instead it absorbs heat leaving us feeling colder. However retro fitting insulation in walls seemed like a step too far, a job too big to be considered.

Others have found this is not an easy problem to solve. The first product and one that proved quite popular involved drilling holes through the outside fabric and pumping in an aqueous slurry that set as it dried out. I didn't like the idea of holes in the outside wall, I didn't like the idea of having so much water in the walls and I did not like not knowing if there were gaps in the insulation, after all you can't see inside the walls. One friend also had the experience of a hole in the bathroom wall that the contractor was not aware of and only after he realised he could not fill that wall did he investigate to find the bathroom piled high with the insulation slurry.

Then one day we happened to be chatting to Nic, our _Hire a Hubby_ man and the topic of insulation in the walls came up. He said, "It's no problem. I can cut out parts of the wall and push in the insulation and it won't be too expensive." When pushed he guessed a ball park figure of about $7000 for the three bedrooms the dining room and the lounge, and this included repainting the walls afterward, and removing the carpet which we planned to replace with a polished wood floor. All the 1960 houses were built with native New Zealand timber which looks great when sanded and polyurethaned. But I put the idea on hold.

However when we were planning this year's six-week trip to Europe' Bruce suddenly said, "We should get the insulation put in the walls while we're away."

It would also mean we would avoid the nasty smell of the solvent based polyurethane we planned to use on the timber floor. So we contacted Nic, explained the timetable we wanted to follow and asked for a proper quote.

Well even extracting a quote proved difficult. I knew estimating the costs of what seemed to me a very complex operation would not be a trivial exercise and I knew that small businesses often get overloaded with too many jobs coming in at the same time so I wasn't surprised. Still we kept nagging him and finally the quote came in. We agreed to his price in March. We planned to leave on the 22nd June; more than three months remain before we fly out.

Nic, who is most certainly a glass half full person, is buoyed with his own optimism, "We'll get started on the job before you go," he tells us in exactly the same way an ordinary husband swears he will repair the latch on the window before his wife's mother comes to visit.

Now we have a bit of work to do. Bookshelves are emptied and pictures taken down, ornaments come off ledges, and everything is packed in cardboard boxes. Neville Honey who lives just down the road kindly allowed us to store the boxes in his double garage. Some of the biggest bits of furniture such as the piano, a large book shelf and the largest sofa will remain in the house but will have to be shifted into the passage or other rooms. We left this last job until Nic and his team arrived to help.

Then there is the difficult decisions about what colours to paint the walls. With polished native timber floorboards replacing the carpet in the dining room and lounge, most colours might do. However I knew exactly what I wanted, a paint that hovers between yellow and orange and has the rich look of gold. This colour will warm the room visually and contrast perfectly with the deep browns of the wood.

Knowing what you want and finding a paint with exactly that colour are two different things. The paint colours have imaginative names like _Bardow_ and _West Side_ and _Moonbeam_ , names that don't give you much information on the actual colour. A couple sound promising such as _supernova_ and _energy yellow_ but they don't shape up when we paint a trial strip. The colour charts can be very deceptive; looking quite different when on a wall. After much experimentation we finally found just the right colour. It turned out to be _Bardow_ ,

As to the front bedrooms and the passage, I gave Bruce his colour choosing head. He will ensure we don't get any whishy-washy pale colours. Most people because they fear the strong vibrate colours play it safe and end up with colours as insipid as a glass of distilled water and just as forgettable. He does not disappoint choosing a rich red for his bedroom, lavender in the front bedroom and a vivid green for the passage.

With the colours chosen and most things packed away, we wait for the work to begin with the house in a very stripped down state. But the weeks passed and nothing happened. No one appears, no Gib board is removed and no insulation inserted. We remind Nic a few times and he always sounds positive but still nothing happens.

We are getting worried, if we can't get him on the job while we are here; what will happen when we disappear for six weeks? Finally we issue an ultimatum, or perhaps ultimatum is too strong a word, more a whining plea, again much like the wife, mixing guilt with demands in a desperate effort to see something happen.

Sure enough in that final week before our departure Jason arrives, not of course on the Monday as promised, just to prevent us raising our expectations too high, rather he arrives on the Tuesday and starts tearing into the walls.

"I was at home with a cold yesterday," Jason tells me.

He is a man without formal building qualifications, who Nic, we learn later, pays the miserable wage of $18 per hour, this for a man, who we soon find out, is skilled and conscientious even if he has no bit of paper to prove it.

Jason took one look at the walls and abandoned Nic's plan of cutting windows in the Gib board and thrusting the plastic green stuff through, "It's easier to take down all the Gib and then replace it," he tells me and I'm pleased. This sounds much less Mickey Mouse than pushing insulation through smaller holes. This way you can really ensure you do a thorough job.

With the help of his younger workmate Reon (the boy on the job but a big strong bonny boy) he shifts the remaining furniture from the lounge into the front bedroom. Reon then disappears never to be seen again. He may have strength but he has no skills.

The carpet and insulation are soon lifted and the best half taken over to Shirley's place. She plans to use it in her 'house-garage' in Turangi. We are glad to see it recycled. It is a wonderfully tough industrial-strength carpet which after forty-two years is only worn in the area of maximum traffic, although there is some moth damage around the corners. The carpet contains such a complex mixture of colours scattered around without any systematic pattern it is impossible to see any stains. This was both an advantage and a disadvantage, a disadvantage in that if you place a small baby on the floor, it was difficult to find her again. Well I exaggerate just a bit but you get the message. The intensity of the carpet colours forced us to have the walls, the ceilings and the sofa fabric all in plain colours devoid of patterns to prevent a massive visual fight taking place that might induce a feeling of nausea in sensitive visitors not used to such visual richness. I know some people hated the carpet but we grew to love it.

With the Gib off, it is a shock to see how little protection the walls gave us from the cold. What is left is a big hollow gap the size of the width of the timber with only a thin concrete sheath between us and the elements. We might as well have been living in a tent. With the insulation in place it already feels warm and snug. Jason plugs away at the job all week.

We think we have everything in place as we get ready to leave on our big overseas trip. Shirley has valiantly agreed to replace the lining for the curtain in the dining room and to wash the other curtains, Aloha will water the plants in the glass house and as it subsequently turns out on the patio too, Betty will feed the fish and Bryan Anderson will be the on the job supervisor. I invite others to drop by and see how work is going. We can be contacted via cell phone if there are questions to resolve. Comfortable that we have done all we can, we fly out late on Friday night.

Unfortunately like any _Hubby_ , Nic has many other irons in the fire. The jobs he has offered come in relatively small bite size amounts but they are usually considered by their owners to be urgent. Nic, and this is something we did not know, has also taken on contracts for regular maintenance on various businesses around town and Jason is soon called away on what he is told is more urgent work. After all, Nic thinks, a full six weeks stretch out ahead for Jason to work on our project

Soon we are receiving texts from Bryan telling us Jason has disappeared and nothing is happening. We text Nic and ask him to get things moving but we are 12,000 kilometres away and Nic is overconfident about what can be achieved before we return. With half the time up, Bryan reports that he hasn't seen Nic or Jason for almost two weeks. I issue an urgent plea for Nic to get on with the job. He promises he will but efforts are still sporadic. With less than two weeks to go Bryan's reports become even more discouraging, "I think you should make arrangements to stay some where else for a few days. I don't think your house will be ready." Soon afterwards I get a text from Pam, who is in San Diego, "You can stay in our house, if yours is not ready when you get back."

I text an urgent plea, well perhaps not exactly urgent but at least a fairly determined sounding plea, to Nic, to get the job done. His reply is full of the usual bouncy optimism, "Next week I will work on the job with Jason. A lot of people are coming to see Jason and slowing him down with complaints about progress"

The voice of Bryan is now just one in a chorus of many, with Aloha, Betty, Kay (slightly) and Martine (assertively) expressing their concerns about progress. In my text back to Nic, I am even more accommodating than usual, "Hi Nic, Thanks. The job to me seems huge but I suppose as a builder you see things differently."

We have no hope now that the job will be finished before we get back but at least the lounge and dining room and its floor will be complete. We put the whole operation out of your minds as we holiday on the south coast of Turkey, enjoying days with temperatures in the high thirties.

We learn later that in the last week a desperate push took place but now unexpected problems arise. The sander they hire to prepare the floor makes an absolute mess of things and Jason has to be pressed into action as a sander. Nic calls in a painter who only stays one day and then disappears. Now Jason is given the job of painting the walls and floor along with all his other duties. Poor Jason, we learn later, he worked through one whole weekend in a desperate spurt to complete the main work on the dining room and lounge.

We arrive back to find the dining room and lounge look wonderful, with the gold like paint on the walls enriched by the brown surface of a floor freed from the tyranny of carpets. Jason is pleased with the effect and so are we, "When I first put paint on the wall I thought it was going to be too bold but I was wrong, it looks good."

So what space do we have to live our lives in while the work continues? Well the big back bedroom, the bathroom and the kitchen, which has a small table to eat on. We live comfortably enough in these, in fact after a few days I wonder if we need the rest of the house. I'm exactly the same when travelling; after the second night anywhere I begin to think of the place as home. Not that toward the end of a trip I don't start being aware of things I have been missing, such as playing the piano, going to shows and seeing friends and family again, but that only happens in the last couple of days of a trip.

Nic in one of his texts did have the cheek to comment on how the furniture crowded into the front bedrooms was slowing Jason down. He has totally forgotten that four months before when the project was being planned, we pointed out in clear unambiguous terms that they had to get the floor polyurethaned as soon as possible so the furniture could be moved back into the lounge and dining room and make it easier to work in the bedrooms. This went straight over his head, and now he is blaming us for a situation he created for himself.

By this time tension was building between Jason and Nic. Jason wanted to stay on our job until it was finished, but Nic, the boss, kept calling him away to other work. No wonder our job continues only sporadically.

"He presented me a contract he wanted me to sign which would set me up as the manager of the Franchise on a salary equivalent to the same $18 an hour he pays me now. I told him I wanted to continue to work for him on an hourly base."

Same money huge responsibility, long hours, why should Jason take up the offer?

"He takes me off other jobs and when I go back the owner tears into me, demanding to know why I haven't been back. I get abused because of his management."

"My wife tells me my life has changed in this job. Now I sit around all night. I used to go out and do jobs in the workshop or make modifications to the house. She tells me the extra $30 a week I get isn't worth it."

Two months have passed since our return and work has continued sporadically, with Jason being pulled off the job for days at a time and only turning up again when we text Nic to find out what is happening but then only for another day, or rather part day if another job crops up. I really pity any woman who is married to a person like Nic and wants jobs done around the house.

Things do look different now with both the front bedrooms paint in the strong colours Bruce has chosen, the sliding doors between the dining room and lounge have been re-hung, some pelmets are in place but much remains to be done, and nothing has been done on the big back bedroom, more electric plugs need to be installed, a shelf in Bruce's room has to be painted and mounted, and his caps rack is not in place yet, Some door surrounds must be painted white, the insect screens have to go back in the front windows, smoothing installed between the carpet wooden floor boundary, all small jobs. If he was left to get on with the job himself then all would be quickly finished. But he isn't.

Watch this space...

##  Changing Online Providers is Easy, Right?

It was Pam Blackwell who noticed _Clear_ was offering special cheap deals to people who sign up with them for online access. Like all children of parents who lived through the Depression of the 1930s, Pam learned the importance of sensible prudent spending. You know the expression, _A penny saved is a penny earned_ , or perhaps you don't but all people over sixty certainly do.

Knowing that she would save a significant amount of money each month if she changed from her old provider _I-Hug_ to _Clear_ Pam goes ahead and changes. And that should have been the end of the story, but of course it isn't. Pam was probably assuming that the switch would be as easy as changing Electrical Power providers, but no.

Trouble arose in a big way on the Saturday, when Len, totally dependent on web access to carry out his research, announced he couldn't from his office computer. I can almost hear him, figuratively jumping up and down and saying somewhat grumpily to Pam, "Why did you change providers?"

Fortunately before Len has to face up to a weekend without broadband, a white knight in the form of Bob Lambourne wanders in on a social visit. When Len tells him the problem, Bob of course offers to help. Unlike most of the rest of us, Bob is a computer expert and he knows it is probably just a small matter of altering some setting and he will be on his way.

As usual, Bob sets about solving the problem logical step by logical step. He checks Len's modem and sure enough it is still set up to access the _i-Hug_ site, an access that is now being denied as they have stopped paying _i-Hug_.

Bob turns to Pam, "What information did _Clear_ give you about the settings to use on the modem?"

Pam, "I received nothing from _Clear."_ Bob realises this is unlikely but presses ahead anyway.

He makes a guess as to what the address will be but when this doesn't work, Pam is put on the phone to _Clear_ ; after all the registration is in her name. She told me the next day that she seemed to have to give her personal identification details over the phone many times, in fact each time Bob spoke to another person at _Clear_.

With the correct information Bob sets Len's modem up so it will always look for the _Clear_ site. No problem with that. Everything will now be honky dory. Well no, you guessed, it wasn't. Len still cannot access the web. I imagine Bob entered all the information again in case (perish the thought) he had mis-keyed a number. But no luck again and still Len is left without access to the World Wide Web.

I can only hope at this moment Len in his frustration didn't fall into the pointless blame game. He and Pam are in this together, yes life might have been more settled if Pam hadn't been tempted by the _Clear_ offer, but that is all water under the bridge now _._

What else could be wrong? Well Bob takes the next logical step, and wonders whether the problem is with the phone line, although the line had been working perfectly well with _i-Hug_ the day before. There was much going around examining jacks and phoning Len's number and checking to see which phone rang. Then while examining one of the old _I-Hug_ invoices, Bob noticed an important discrepancy namely _I-Hug_ was not accessing Len's computer via his usual phone number of 3552617. When confronted with this strange piece of information, for Len and Pam the penny dropped.

"Oh yes, when Kerry was living with us and using dial up so much, we put a second line into her room. And when she left we forgot all about it."

A quick check showed that _Clear_ was attempting to access Len's computer on their normal line number 3552617. While this continued there was not the slightest chance of Len accessing _Clear_ via his computer which was hooked up to Kerry's old number and hence there was no chance of getting back on line.

The phone jack in the Master Bedroom, just across the corridor from Pam's office, has a phone jack which is on the correct phone line and so they access the web from a modem connected there. Now Pam's computer has perfect web access via Wi-Fi but Len's desktop computer doesn't. Bob quickly shows that his laptop is able to pick up and make use of the weak signal in the dining room at the other end of the house. Laptops are well known for being able to pick up weak signals.

You have to say, Pam has benefited from the switch to _Clear_ ; after all before the change her Wi-Fi connection via Len's computer was always a bit erratic. The same can now be said for Len and he regards this as a deeply unsatisfactory state of affairs and must not be allowed to continue, a case when the sauce for the goose is not good enough for the gander.

One possible solution is to have a phone technician come in and rewire the jack in his home office to their usual number, but Len does not favour this costly and intrusive intervention.

Bob does a bit of exploring using Pam's computer and along the way clears up the mystery of the non-existent instructions from _Clear_. In web mail on the _Clear_ site he finds an email from _Clear_ telling Pam exactly how to reconfigure the modem. The trouble is that Pam has already taken up Kerry's suggestion that if she is going to change email addresses she should use the free service on the google site, and has never checked the _Clear_ address.

Len's problem Bob tells him should be solved by a piece of equipment with the rather phallic name of a dongle. The one he buys from a local shop does not provide the reception he hoped for, probably because (or so Len tells me later) the connecting wire is not long enough. Bob, down in Wellington to spend time with the Spagnolos, orders a more suitable dongle on line and Len finally has good web access.

There is one more surprise for the Blackwell's; Bob notices that they are still paying $16 per month for dial up access to an account they have not used for years. By cancelling this Bob saves them $192 a year.

I think Len and Pam owe Bob a free meal at one of the better restaurants in town sometime.

No one can blame Pam for what followed next, after all she was just the catalyst that got things started. To be fair Dawn Patchett was already considering the possibility of adopting broadband, and her son Mark and Dawn had asked Bob for help in the change over. Furthermore when Aloha Brown learned that Dawn was planning to get broad band, leaving her as the only dial up person left, she decided to follow suit, providing Bob would help and he generously agreed.

Betty Livingston has had broadband for years but she could not successfully down load the Adobe Flash Player. Bob came to her rescue and did the down load but then found the video she wanted to play was very slow and kept stopping and starting. A quick check showed that Betty only had a down load rate of 256 kbytes per second, no wonder everything was so dreadfully slow. You guessed it that was the cheapest package offered by SlingShot and on this basis she had signed up. There is a Chinese proverb that applies to this situation, _Cheap is not Cheap, Expensive is not Expensive_. It's a shopping adage that is worth remembering. A quick check on the SlingShot site showed that for an extra $20 a month Betty could have a fast down load rate. Betty frowned and said she would think about it.

As Bob walked down her drive, he suddenly put two and two together, and added it together to get four or should that read four and a half. He hurried back inside and asked two questions, "How much do you pay for your telephone connection?" and "How much do you pay right now for your broad band connection?" He added the figures and got an answer over ninety dollars. He informed Betty of the facts, "Betty if you change your phone rental and your broad band connection to _Clear_ you will only pay seventy dollars a month, you will not have to pay anything for the first three months and you will have a fast connection.

Betty was wooed and won and made the change to _Clear_.

Unfortunately there was still trouble ahead for Bob from all his non-paying customers. Aloha complained that one of her phones wasn't ringing and that she still seemed to be paying for dial up. Betty found her web access working perfectly one day and then it stopped the next day.

"I think it must be the modem," she tells me with the confidence of someone ignorant of the other possibilities.

I reply thinking of the story of Pam Blackwell's mouse, "The problem, Betty, is seldom what the customer thinks. It will probably be something quite different." In Betty's case the problem was of her own making. Bob quickly found the solution. A box had appeared on screen requesting permission for a major piece of software to access the central computer and she had done nothing. As a result this piece of software was denied access to the web. It's easy to solve a problem when you really know what is happening.

As an after thought Bob checked the memory on Betty's computer and found it to be a misery 256 kilobytes, hardly enough to run XP. He offered to install a further gigabyte of memory for $27. Betty took time to think it over, although if it had been a smart suit or similar she would have brought it immediately.

Bob still hasn't finished. After watching all this as spectators, we decide that, despite the inconvenience to our friends faced, we too want to change to _Clear_ , an easy change for us because we were already paying our line rental to the same company TelstraClear.

We did our calculations and found that the line rental from TelstraClear ($55) and the cost of our provider Orcon ($41) added to much more than the $75 on offer if we combined both services under _Clear_. But in addition we would get three months free service if we made the change.

Let me make it clear, we do not change providers easily. We adopt a Laissez faire policy of ignoring market trends or offers and cling on to what we have got. The change, however financially favourable it looks, will not be decided overnight or even in one or two days. Bruce works to tease out the real advantages of the change and finds our old provider Orcon is charging only $70 a month if we sign up with them for phone and web connections. However the Orcon toll call plan is not so advantageous. When I recalculate the cost of our toll calls in an average month using their scheme I find it would cost $10 more, so the real cost of Orcon is around $80.

One big worry Bruce has is what happens after the twelve months the scheme operates is over, "Will _Clear_ suddenly jack up the rental?" he asks more than once. The answer it turns out is that we will be shifted to one of the payment plans offered to all their other users with phone and web combined. Then we worry about the inconvenience of making our friends change our email address, "We are only going from Philbuck@infogen.net.nz to Philbuck@clear.net.nz, a change of only one word," I point out.

I make a suggestion, "Why don't we change to gmail, then it will be easy to swap providers whenever we want without troubling our friends."

When Bob hears my proposal he is scathing in his criticism. First new information for me, "Did you know gmail is a web based system. Your incoming emails are not automatically down loaded on your computer." Bob goes on to talk about the potential loss of privacy and in the worse case the loss of important data on this cloud based system.

I fight back on two counts with, "We can forward any emails we do not want to lose to our new _Clear_ email account." As to privacy I don't know the full implications of Bob's comment. Are we talking about access to email addresses or is it the content of the actual email that must be considered or something else altogether, so I say nothing.

And so we stumble toward making the change. I fine tune the gmail question, "Let's give the people who email us regularly the clear email address and those who we only hear from infrequently the gmail address. This way we can try out gmail and see if we are happy with it."

We finally decide to make the change and I will do it the next day while Bruce is at work. I realise this is not wise since Bruce will not be on hand to comment on any unexpected changes in the offer and if I go ahead without consulting he is sure to be very critical of the change.

I phone from Bob's place using Bob's speaker phone so we can both take part in the conversation. By choosing the number of people who are already _Clear_ customers we get through the waiting line more quickly.

My first question is, "Will our toll calling plan be the same if we change." The man agrees immediately. After answering a few more questions he says, "I will now give you a plan." I should have been suspicious, after all the plan we have asked to join up on is widely advertised, and we also know that our other friends have been able to get three months free rental rather than two months and a modem.

Then he is back and the ground shifts under my feet, "You will get two months free rental and a modem (as advertised)," so I interrupt "We do not want the modem but instead three months free rental, a number of our friends have been given this concession."

There is a long pause and then he says, "Can you please hold the line. I must go and discuss it with my Supervisor." He returns with the following offer, "We will give you three months free rental but you will have to sign up for two years." Memories of Bruce's concerns about what happens when we step over the precipice crowd my mind and I spend a long time thinking.

"What happens if we break this contract?" I ask.

"It will cost you $199."

A quick mental calculation shows we will be at least 26 dollars better off plus the reduction of rental for the rest of the first year. In the end I jump over the cliff and agree."

He goes on still playing with my agitated mind, "You have the old Z-plan for your calls. You will now have to dial 0505 in front of all your calls and you will then get them for 9 cents a minute (at present it costs us 10 cents a minute)." He says the words 'old Z-Plan' in a tired tone of voice as if he pities me for the suffering I must be enduring when I am not up-to-date.

I break in, "But I don't want to dial in the prefix every time I make a toll call." This for me is really a step back into the past.

The man is plausible, "You can buy a phone that does it for you." We are not going to start replacing our phones because of a change in a plan they said would not be changed.

"What happens if we don't dial the 0505?"

He reels off the plan that Orcon had us on, namely the rate per minute is much higher than the 9 cents but there is a cap of about $3 for an hour. So if all our calls last fifty or sixty minutes this plan is cheaper but for all shorter calls it is exorbitant.

He has me over a barrel. But what should I do, accept or reject. I am in the miserable helpless state of mind that any buyer has when he or she actually falls in love with a product and is determined to get it and then the rules change. Pigheadedly I agree to this change in a phone plan they said they would not change. He then reads back the plan and gets me to affirm at each stage that I understand and want it. Bob tells me later they record this part of the conversation as proof of our commitment.

Bruce of course is very annoyed at the changes I have so meekly accepted in order to get Clear's special offer. I suggest we cancel but Bob and Bruce both tell me that the Consumer Protection act, which allows a person to cancel a contract within twenty-four hours if he changes his mind, only applies to cold calling sales. I have signed up in the heat of the moment and now have time to regret it.

Here ends a sad story of greed and bullying in the hard world of big business.

## The Goat's Rue Story

It all began back in the early eighties when Kristina Lindstrom and husband Per Eric stayed with us at 17 Waterloo Crescent. Kristina is a Microbiologist and while she busied herself in the lab at Massey University, Per Eric cracked the secret of the Kubrick Cube.

Kristina is a lovely woman, full of energy and joie de vivre, someone who lives life to the full. While at Massey University Kristina became intrigued by the nitrogen fixing plant _Goat's Rue_. I think nitrogen fixation was a favoured topic of hers. This is a plant much despised by New Zealand Farmers. Even Martine van Hove, when I questioned her speaks darkly about how it poisons stock. "I always weed it out if I see it," she tells me. And she has a point. The New Zealand Vets warn farmers that it is a poison which can kill sheep and cattle. On the other hand in parts of the Middle East it is used as a forage crop.

_Goats Rue_ has been used to promote milk production in humans and animals and is also effective against some kinds of diabetes. To confuse the picture further it is used as a survival tool because it has a sedative effect on fish. Throw some _Goats Rue_ into slow moving water or a pond and the fish will float to the surface and are safe to eat. A bit unfair on the fish and should not be used except in extreme situations. Confusing isn't it but I suppose the effect depends on dose.

_Goat's Rue_ like all weeds reproduces prodigiously. As the seed ripens in the pod the plant sacrifices the whole stem to the ripening of these seedpods. By the time the seed is ready to drop the whole stem is completely dead. Meantime many other stems on the same plant are still green and flowering. In this way by spreading out the time over which it releases seed it improves its chances of success in the breeding stakes. It does not tolerate massive interference such as mowing but given a quiet time on a bit of essentially wasteland, it competes well with all the other weeds, even the aggressive lupin plants.

I didn't really become aware of Kristina's work until she contacted us from Finland and asked us to collect _Goat's Rue_ seed and send them to her. I protested, "Surely Finnish Customs officials will collect and destroy all the seeds?" After all this is what the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries do at the borders in New Zealand.

"No," she assured me, "They will simply ignore it."

I presume this is because of Finland's harsh winter climate. Nothing much survives until the next spring and if it does it will be in such small amounts it is easily contained. In New Zealand, the relatively mild temperate climate allows everything brought in to grow and under these conditions many plants go berserk, overwhelming native plants and shrubs.

Everyone comes to enjoy our autumn hunt for _Goat's Rue_ Seed. It was not hard to find back in the late nineteen eighties. We just walked across the stop bank to the river where there were stands of the plant which stood shoulder high. When Cho's mother Auntie Tai got involved wearing her cone shaped rural hat, I thought I was back in China again. People walking by on the River Walkway would stop and ask what we were harvesting. When we answered _Goat's Rue_ they usually left as puzzled as when they arrived. Anyone who probed would be told them how we were the world suppliers of the seed to a research program in Finland. Who can resist the opportunity to sound important?

And Kristina was quite right; I bundled the seed up in big airmail bags, addressed them and sent them off without the least difficulty. And they arrived safely in Finland. We were so enthusiastic that for a while we oversupplied the market, and the requests for _Goat's Rue_ seed dried up. We exchanged cards, we visited Kristina in Finland a couple of times and watched Kristina's children Lucas and Lisalotte grow up year by year via her annual newsletter. Kristina for her part flourished as a scientist, and began taking semi-regular trips to China. Perhaps _Goat's Rue_ is of importance in China as well as in Finland. The New Zealand farmer's attitude to _Goat's Rue_ remains determinedly antagonistic.

Then 30 years later out of the blue Kristina again requested some _Goat's Rue_ seed. The old seed was becoming less viable. Could I please send more? Of course we would be glad to, except when I walked over to the river from Waterloo Crescent I do not see a single _Goat's Rue_ plant. In the intervening years the dishevelled riverbank of Kristina's time has become a park, with lawn that the mowers cut regularly. Even on the gravel there is no _Goat's Rue_. I begin to wonder if the farmers mounted a systematic campaign to end the _Goat's Rue_ reign in the Manawatu?

When I mention this to Kristina she is naturally disappointed. We were too.

"After all," she wrote, "I don't need kilos of the seed."

In my haste I read this as, "We do need kilos of seed."

So I got serious. I called Janet's brother Jim Rutherford up the Pohangina Valley and asked if _Goat's Rue_ is still around there."

"Yes," he says, "There is lots down by the river." And I relax and Kristina is cheered up by the news. After all she has a student who wants to do more research work on the plant.

Over the next six weeks we take every opportunity to search for _Goat's Rue_ , while knowing the seeds will not be ready for picking until late in March. One Sunday Mark, Bruce and I drive up the Pohangina Valley to check out Jim Rutherford's assertion. At the Raumai Bridge we find our first treasure trove, a large area of _Goats Rue_ that has not waited for late March to seed. We find more ripe seed further up the valley in Totara Reserve. Finally we drive to the river opposite Jim Rutherford's farm and sure enough the there is lots of _Goat's Rue_ but none ripe.

Another Sunday we find a rich treasure trove of the weed (sorry didn't intend to speak pejoratively of it) no I mean plant directly across the Manawatu River from us. Late in March we get much seed from there. It definitely thrives most if it is left alone to compete with other vigorously growing weeds.

A visit to the Pohangina River near Ashhurst yields yet more seed and we never make it up the Pohangina Valley again. There is plenty right on the edge of the city. This bit by bit harvesting yields enough (once I re-read Kristina's email and find out she does not need kilos of seed.).

I expect no problems with actually mailing the seed; after all I had none thirty years ago. But I am wrong. Our local Post Shop is no longer an official Post Shop but under its Korean owner still offers all the postal services and manages to hang on even without the profitable Kiwi Bank transactions. There are many fewer customers now and Mark, the owner, stands there patiently, listening to classical music, and hoping more people will come in.

When I ask Mark about sending seed to Finland he tells me I must contact MAF to get their clearance. I mutter to myself about the need for increased regulation in the age of the International Terrorist and head home to call them up. The woman who answers is very helpful even if she has never heard of _Goat's Rue_ before.

"What's its botanical name?" she wants to know.

I answer as everyone else answers these days, "Can't you Google it?"

"Yes I can."

Then she has to look up the regulations for _Goats Rue_ Seed into Finland but of course, as I well know, she finds nothing.

"There is no need to get the seed certified. You just send it," she tells me.

A week or two later I walk into Mark's Post Shop with the seed and after choosing one of his protected mailing envelopes I confidently approach the counter.

When I pass the news on to him that I am mailing _Goats Rue_ Seed to Finland, he takes charge.

"I must contact MAF to see if these are allowed," he tells me.

"But," I say, "When I asked you about mailing _Goat's Rue_ seed a few weeks ago you told me to check it out with MAF. I have. There is no problem."

"When we did our training course, we were told we had to contact MAF before we processed a package," he says in a quietly determined way that tells me he is not going to risk violating regulations by just sending it off. I wait patiently, he may even be talking to the same woman that I did and it does not take long.

"There are no restrictions," he tells me. And I pay my money.

Fortunately he remembers me the second and third time I bring in seed and we do not have to contact MAF.

Kristina sends me the following email when they arrive:

Dear Paul,

NOW the seeds have arrived.

Thanks a lot for all your effort. It is a kind of solemn feeling to have them first hand picked and then mailed to us all the way from New Zealand. This morning they filled my mailbox downstairs and my student looked really happy when she got the packages. Felt like Christmas:

All our best wishes to our great seed company.

Yours, Kristina

I think it is the sort of reference I could use to start my own seed importing and exporting business, unfortunately I am busy with other things. Still it is a nice thought.

##  Four Students from Singapore

This year Bob's tenants are a bit different. Like every other year he advertises his house for rent on the Massey University site so he is dealing with if not exactly a select clientele then certainly he hopes a more reliable type of tenant. Most of the people he gets are either working at Massey for a set period or graduate students.

In 2012 his ad nets relatively few enquires. The market is tight and Bob is working in a relatively short time frame. Whatever happens he will leave the town on the day his flight is booked house rented or not. One or two promising looking tenants show interested but in the end decide not to sign a lease. In the end he is left with Ye Sen a student from the Singapore arm of the far reaching Massey University. Ye Sen is wanting the house for himself and three other Singaporean students who have taken the opportunity to do three months project work in Palmerston North. Bob hesitates, not because they are students but because they will not occupy the house for the full five months of his UK stay.

However after getting a character reference from Professor Kelvin Goh, who runs the course, he signs them up. However these students don't just want a fully furnished house they need linen, towels and blankets. Bob takes on the challenge and emails back thus.

Hi Ye Sen,

In respect of towels, sheets etc. I have decided that for $10 extra per week (between you, not per person) I will ensure that you have at least the following

two bath towels per person

four sheets per bed

sufficient pillows and pillowcases

one duvet per bed

one blanket per bed

a supply of towels and tea-towels for use in the kitchen

Please let me know whether you want to take up this offer.

Bob

Bob has to go on a buying spree at a Briscoe's sale to buy the sheets and towels and then he has to follow the instructions and wash them all before they are used. For a few days it looks as if he is running a laundry service

Ye Sen turns out to be a very conscientious person and emails Bob to check things out:

Greetings Robert

Sorry for the late reply. Was searching for a workable scanner these days. I have attached the agreement in this email. Okay, I will send the agreement to you by mail over this weekend.

With regards to the Bulgar alarm. May I know if it is monitored (police)? And what if there is any case of theft? We are actually very concerned, because you have your belongings in your storeroom too. I have also attached a picture of the house I have found on google map, may I know if that is the one? I can't actually see house properly because it is largely blocked by a tree.

Best regards

Ye Sen

As the day of Bob's departure approaches we email back to ask exactly when in the day they will arrive in Palmerston North. Ye Sen replies in the same polite way;

Hi Robert

We have finally completed our last exams just moments ago. Now we can finally pack some of our stuff and do some final preparation!

I heard from Prof. Kelvin about Paul contacting him about arrangement of transport service for us. I am so sorry that we didn't provide any information about my arrival. We will arrive Palmerston north airport at 3.30pm. And another of our lecturers was kind enough to arrange transport for us already. By the way, it is very nice of you and Paul to contact my Kelvin. It was greatly appreciated and at the same time, felt very welcome even before arrival.

Regards

Ye Sen

Bob tells me before he goes that he has clearly pointed out to Ye Sen that his house only has three bedrooms and it is only properly set up for three people.

Having done his best he leaves.

When Pam, Aloha and I inspect the house we find Bob has been true to his words and although there are several extra mattresses in one room he only has three beds made up ready. Of course we don't feel comfortable with the idea that four tired students will turn up at the house after a long flight from Singapore and be faced with making up an extra bed. We use a bed settee and with a mattress on top as the fourth bed.

They arrive at the beginning of June when the nights are cold. The bedrooms will be just as cold and these students are used to living in temperatures of at least 25 degrees. So Aloha, Shirley and I provide more bedding and then we relax.

Although Ye Sen expects they will arrive early in the evening, since they are being picked up this is not exactly in his hands. Sure enough the agreed time passes with no sign of the students. In the end I leave a note on the door telling them to call me when they arrive. There is a family gathering at Andrew and Hayley's place and I want to be there. I have time to eat before the call comes.

I soon get them settled in the house but warn them about the cold nights and ask them to let me know if they need extra bedding. They settle in quickly but are soon so busy on their course we hardly ever see them. They hire bikes but there is a bus stop nearby and the buses are free for Massey University Students. When I ask they assure me they are warm enough and certainly the lounge is very pleasantly hot.

I suggest they pay me fortnightly in arrears, but they prefer to pay monthly and ahead. It is a surprise to discover that although they are thoroughly computer literate they prefer to pay cash. I improvise a rent book and count the $880 dollars out while they watch.

They must find it strange that in New Zealand we live in another century, one without optical fibre and we have primitive things like data caps. Toward the end of the first month they email Bob to ask what will happen when they reach the monthly cap of 10 gigabyte. Bob thinks data transfer will slow down. He realises with all four students using Wi-Fi they will need more capacity and ups the limit to 40 GB per month and they pay some extra cost. In the end to play it safe Bob ups the limit again to 60 GB.

When Bob gets the first electricity bill, he cannot believe his eyes. He sends me to check the meter. Reading correct. "The cost of the power they used last month is $760. They must be burning fan heaters through the night." Our power bill, using two heat pumps is at most $200 per month.

One day they cook a Chinese dish for us to eat and prove themselves to be good cooks.

At the end, Ye Sen sends Bob an email telling him how happy they have been in the house and tell him it is by far the best of any of the houses Singaporean students rented. But he also (not unexpectedly given his temperament) has some concerns. I include Bob's email in response to the email from Ye Sen;

Greetings Ye Sen

On 28/08/12 21:17, Ye Sen wrote:

However, we are *very very very very sorry *to inform you there are two things that were broken or cracked accidentally over these past 3 months in our stay here..

I have attached the pics in the email. Two of wine glass were broken. and one of the light covers (the 3 combined lights in the living room) was broken when we tried to replace the fused light bulb with another. And one of the light bulbs dropped out by itself one day, and we realized the light bulb holder was filled with white hard stuff in it. I dunno where I can get those replacements (for the light bulb cover):

Please don't worry about any of those. Two wine glasses really aren't that important, and the glass lamp shade was already cracked (my fault, I tightened it up too much). I will attend to it when I get back to New Zealand.

I'm glad that you seem to have enjoyed staying in my house. It sounds as though you have been exemplary tenants and I'm sorry that I won't get a chance to meet you.

Best wishes for the future to all of you!

Robert Lambourne

The transformation in Ye Sen over the three months was quite noticeable. The pressure and stress of working long hours (probably late into the night) to get his thesis completed and handed in and to prepare and deliver a seminar shows. When I go to collect the last payment he is nowhere in sight and despite a warning several days ahead they still have to scramble to assemble enough money, even borrowing from another student who happens to be visiting. Ye Sen will leave with one friend early on Saturday morning to catch a 9 a.m. ferry to the South Island for a much needed holiday. The other two are going straight back to Singapore.

When I go over to take a look at the empty house with Glenys and Aloha there is much to amuse us. There are two beams running the length of Bob's large lounge. There we find sheets hanging to dry on lines of thin string. We take the sheets down but leave the string up to amuse Bob when he gets back at the beginning of November.

As expected given the rush when they all leave there are sheets and pillow cases to be washed and also towels. There is some food and wine in the refrigerator and we share it around. They have used the barbeque and there is a pile of partly burned charcoal on the drive. One of the new towels we find outside with a few dirty marks we are unable to remove.

The divan bed has been moved into Bob's room and his mattress and base are being stored in the smallest bedroom. There is no sign of a third bed so perhaps one of the students slept on a mattress in the lounge or perhaps two slept together in the double bed. There is also a stain on the wall at the height of a sleeping head in Bob's room and when we find a small bottle of hair darkening in the recycling bin we think the student must have transferring some to the dye to the wallpaper with his head.

So I try to get it all off and do quite well but I can't remove every trace. Bob laughs when I show him and says, "That's a stain from my head after sleeping all these years without a head board."

The recycling bin is a treasure chest of non-recyclable material. Empty wine bottles, a cycling helmet, various items of clothing and a thermos flask.

They have been good tenants but we suspect that at least some of them don't have much experience of flatting, or perhaps they did and I just am forgetting exactly what a student flat looks like. Don't get me wrong, the house was clean and well cared for and Bob ends up with lots of frozen chapattis,

##  Want to Paint My Roof Anyone?

No thanks, not right now. It doesn't need re-painting.

However after we had all the old type of lead-headed nails on the roof replaced, we decided to have the whole roof painted, not because it needed repainting but because chips of paint were lost around some of the old nail heads. If we have to do these patches why not do the rest?

The Maka, man who did the job, was a true professional. Like us all he is not getting any younger and these days only paints roofs for people he knows We were delighted when he agreed to pick up his roller and brushes for us. After it had received Maka's treatment our roof gleamed as if it was new.

I asked Maka if he would apply a top coat of paint on Kay and Ross's house, he told me that he had standards that had to be met and he would not simply apply a final coat. Instead he went patiently around the house and removed all signs of sanded over bubbles from the old. When he finished Kay and Ross's house also looked picture perfect

When Betty Livingston next door wanted her roof painted, Kay stepped forward to volunteer. She started work but then a full time teaching job at Whakarongo School The money was good so she couldn't turn it down. Somehow she still managed to not only did she do the time consuming preparation late in the autumn but also she applied the first coat. And then it got too cold and there the matter had to be left.

Now Betty is not a person who likes matters to stand unresolved. She likes jobs once started to be carried through and completed in fairly quick succession. Most people do.

In addition to all her teaching duties in those last two terms of 2011, Kay's time was taken up helping her daughter Hayley cope with the arrival of a second son, Lincoln, not to mention the active 3-year-old Aidan. Somehow she managed all that but putting the second coat of paint on Betty's roof never stood a chance against such competition.

So Betty accepted circumstances as they were. However she did expect when school had finished and the New Year began the painting would be completed. After all Kay was not going to teach in 2012. Bu we had heard the same protestations at the start of 2010 and of 2011 but each year she ended up teaching full time in the second half of the year. Still with the summer stretching ahead seemingly endlessly, Betty's hopes of getting the final coat on were high, and so would anyone else's be in such circumstances.

Let me say at the start, this has not been the best summer to paint a roof as there were many weather interruptions to slow things down. Unfortunately for Betty throughout January, Kay spent much time down in Wellington or the Wairarapa with Bret and Serena, her son and daughter in law, and especially with their children Jazzelle and Keisha. Then when in Palmerston North she spent time with Hayley and Andrew and Aidan and Lincoln. In January Bret and Serena sold their Wellington home and were getting ready to move permanently onto their farm at the base of the Tararua Ranges behind Masterton. Of course Kay was glad to be on hand and help them during the soul destroying task of shifting As a consequence come the end of January, despite Kay's enthusiastic prediction that she would start painting at the beginning of the New Year, nothing had been done.

Then February began to race by, after all it is a short month, although in this leap year there is one extra day, but Kay did appear.. Her grandchildren required endless attention and, like the rest of us, Betty saw little of Kay, and when she did Kay was in a hurry to do something else.

The crisis for Betty came about the third week in February, precipitated by the local odd job franchise _Hire-a-Hubby_ , who when they come to give a quote on under floor insulation, triggered a serendipitous request by Betty for a quote to apply the final coat on the roof. At $400 it was very reasonable (with the proviso that there would be no preparation work required, only painting) and with the knowledge that she now had someone who if she asked would paint the roof before winter arrived, and who did not have grand children who would get prior treatment, Betty was ready to force a choice on Kay.

The reason Betty had not been pressing Kay for action earlier was because she was worried about a pinched nerve in Kay's neck. While helping clean out Bret and Serena's Wellington house ready for the hand over, Kay was cleaning a high cupboard while steadying herself by holding onto one of the shelves. Unfortunately the shelf was not well attached and it suddenly slipped out. Helpless to do anything else, Kay tipped backward into a pile of boxes which unfortunately contained hard bits of equipment. She was badly bruised and ended up with a tingling in one hand. Betty had no wish to aggravate this injury, hence her patience.

So Betty contacts Kay and offers to take the painting chore off her back. Of course Kay responds to this as a challenge and begins painting some of the roof the next day. Betty cannot completely relax because not only is the weather increasingly uncertain, but there is always looming in the back of her mind the threat that Aidan and Lincoln provide. Will their health remain robust or will one of them succumb to yet one more childhood illness? No one can say. This is a time when having your fingers crossed is the best you can do.

I do my level best with the weather, checking the wonderful www.metvuw.com site I find no rain is expected on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week and then more rain. I tell Kay of this short window of dry weather and urge her to push on.

On Monday she makes good progress and there are no distractions. She is getting close to finishing but she must not disappear with the job still unfinished. There is a limit to which Betty can be stretched. If Kay stops now memories for Betty of the long month of January and the first weeks of February when Kay was too busy to dip her brush into the brown paint Betty uses for her roof will flood back.

On Tuesday, through our washhouse window I hear Kay's voice and relax. Perhaps she will finish on Wednesday after all.

When I finally go over to visit Betty and see how the job is going I find that as so often happens behind the fabric of suburban tranquillity lays a churning range of every kind of emotion. Far from being a clear day for painting, I find Aidan is unwell with diarrhoea, and Kay has brought him over to Betty's house along with Ross whose unenviable job it is to keep the little chap happy. Betty for her part is barely coping with the extra complexities of the situation. As I arrive Ross is about to play a DVD to entertain Aidan but try as he might he is unable to change the default language from Danish to English. He thrusts the remote to me to see if I can find the right button but I am no help. Ross kneels down and turns his attention to the controls on the DVD player itself. He pushes a button and everything disappears.

Betty is tense. At least twice she has asked Bob to help her set up the DVD player and as an aside to me she tells me, "I do not want to call Bob over to set it up for me again." She is too pessimistic, Ross keeps pushing buttons and restores the language selection page, but still the language is Danish.

Finally Ross asks Betty an inspired question, "Is this the right remote for the DVD player?"

Betty looks at him in surprise, "No its not."

After a bit of a search, she unearths the remote and Ross quickly changes the language to English and begins playing the DVD. I am pleased, all is well, Aidan will be entertained for at least 20 minutes.

Betty and I go out on the patio to chat. Then a slightly agitated Ross emerges into the sun with Aidan and shouts up to Kay to find out where her car key is. While Ross is searching Betty notices her keys on the table in front of us.

"Aidan wants his comforter," Ross enlightens us as he disappears around the corner.

Ross and Aidan return to watch the DVD and Betty and I continue chatting, little knowing that our inaction is about to end.

There is a sudden crash around the corner down the drive. We both leap to our feet. Has Kay fallen? Will she be injured? We endure an anxious few seconds but then I see it is only the tin of paint that has fallen and now its contents are spreading out on Betty's concrete drive.

I say only, but then the thought that Betty's drive may have an ugly brown splash on it for eternity and this a drive Betty has only recently had professionally cleaned to a virgin state, and I know I must act and immediately. We have two options. We can paint the whole drive dark brown or we can try to clean the paint off. I don't even run the first option past Betty, my intuition tells me it is not one she will countenance. However these damned water based paints dry fast and right now the spilled paint is getting the attention of the full force of the February sun.

I snap instructions to Betty, "Turn on the hose. Do you have a heavy broom in the garage?"

Seconds later Betty is spraying water on the paint while I attempt to sweep the paint down the drive and into the drains. I soon realise that I can't move much of the rapidly thickening paint with this broom, I need water too.

"Please get me the hose," I tell Betty. This decisiveness surprises me, perhaps I would not be such a bad army officer in an emergency as I have always imagined. I think Betty is impressed with the leadership I am providing and meekly hands the hose over

Now I can direct the hose when and where I want it, usually into the midst of the paint I want to move, while intermittently spraying the rest to stop it drying in a lump.

Kay comes down the roof, obviously upset by what has happened. Her first comment sounds innocent enough, although in hindsight these are not the most well chosen set of words, "I didn't do it." This is a red rag to the bull, that is momentarily Betty, and she says more firmly than might in other circumstances be appropriate, "Yes you did."

Kay obediently says, "Yes I did."

Later over lunch at Lemons Café Kay tells me what she meant. "I didn't touch it. The bucket just started sliding. For I moment I thought I could stop it but then realised that if I grabbed for it I might not be able to stop myself going over too."

"That's a really great decision," I emphatically tell her. Even Betty prefers brown paint on the drive rather than blood, although given the choice she might opt for neither.

Aidan loves nothing more than playing with water. Unasked he will go out and wash Kay's car. The sounds of water in the drive defeated the best efforts of the movie producers to keep the attention of the three year old. Ross trails out with Aidan and when I snatch a second to glance back from the spilt paint Aidan is sweeping the drive with Ross supervising. By now I know it is going to be a desperate race to clear the paint off the drive without leaving an ugly stain.

Keen to get involved Kay asks Betty, "Do you have another hose?"

The answer is negative. Bruce and I have all the hoses tied up into our automatic watering system, so I can't make an offer. With all my urgent sweeping and hosing I didn't think of Bob's hose sitting loose in his drive just across the road. Kay fills a bucket with water, although given the pressure in our water pipes this does have the effect of reducing the pressure in the hose. So it's something of a mixed blessing.

"Go over and get our broom from the garage," I tell Kay. She is gone much longer than I expect and perhaps it is about now poor Kay discovers Aidan has got his favourite comforter covered in brown paint. Kay has no choice but to drop it immediately into the washing machine, while realising that Aidan will not have his precious comforter for quite a few hours. Still on her return Kay has the other broom and is now able to help in the sweeping.

I began hosing and sweeping the paint at about quarter to eleven and it will be one fifteen before I finally stop. After more or less winning the first round with the paint cleared away there are still faint stains in a few places.

"Bring over the bleach," I tell Kay and she does but I realise too late she has brought the dilute solution. When she returns with the more concentrated solution we drop it sparingly on the concrete and, after a suitable delay to allow the bleach to work its magic, scrub it in. Betty has bleach to splash around in too.

Then I notice Betty has turned the hose off. When I ask her to turn it on again she says, "We will be wasting water."

"I want to flush the paint colour down the drains." Realising immediately the truth of what I say she turns it on again.

About now who should appear on the scene but Hayley, Aidan's mother. Neither Hayley nor Kay is happy with the situation they find themselves in.

Kay wants Hayley to return to her job at Massey University.

"I don't feel well. I am taking the afternoon off work," she tells Kay.

Look at this from Hayley's point of view. She left Aidan with his Nan on the strict understanding that the ailing Aidan would not go outside. And now after a search around town she finds him sitting with Ross in a car, while his Nan is on the roof painting. The situation to Hayley is far from satisfactory.

Kay, although at a disadvantage sitting up on the roof, again tries to get Hayley to leave Aidan and return to work. Does Kay not know what the effect on Betty's morale will be if she disappears now with Aidan? I urge Kay to let Hayley take her son away. I realise that what I say is of no consequence to Kay or Hayley as Hayley has already well and truly made up her mind.

Before she leaves she turns to me to ask where Aidan's comforter is. I pale a little as I realise there is no way around it, I have the difficult task of telling her that her son's comforter is in the washing machine. I leave Hayley to break the news to Aidan.

"I'll get the comforter," I say and flee.

When I get into the washhouse, I am horrified to discover the machine is still in a wash cycle. It is very very very wet indeed. I quickly put it on final spin and go out to tell Hayley the news. She comes in to inspect and fortunately the spin has done its job and it is as dry as you can get a wet comforter just by one spin.

Hayley takes it and disappear, later sending an unnecessarily critical text to Kay

I tell Ross to go home.

It has been quite a morning, "I will bring Kay home," I assure him. He needs a break.

The next day we find that although I have successfully got almost all the paint off Betty's drive, the street gutters still bear an obvious brown stain that continues down the street until the water enters a storm drain 50 metres away. Betty takes this in good part, seeing the funny side of having a painted gutter. However Sherlock Holmes would not take long to solve the mystery of where the paint came from.

To be honest, I am over roof painting, even though I never held a paintbrush in my hand all day. It must be psychological damage I'm suffering from or perhaps I'm just traumatised by the emotional tension between mother and daughter. But looking on the bright side, the roof is now painted and it's still only the end of February.

##  My Sister's 69Ath Birthday Party

"This year I'm having my 69Ath Birthday," Kay announces.

I know immediately what she means, namely that she was not going to submit quietly to her seventies but instead fight back with all the ammunition she has.

It is fascinating how as you grow older people, younger people (which means now almost everyone else), try to slot you into a role of their choosing. Regardless of your age this is always happening but in earlier years you ignore the implied question of you have a built in cover story that doesn't require you to mention your age namely divert attention by saying "I'm a Lecture Chemistry at Massey University.". They immediately clothe you in their stereotype of an academic: gowned figures rushing to a lecture perhaps, or reading the latest research paper in the library or even holding test tubes and doing wet research in the laboratory. And you will have another year to dream up a better response

It doesn't matter how ill informed the image might be, what it does not require is that you spend time filling in details.

Kay commented at lunch one day, "If one more shop assistant calls me 'Dear' I will hit them over the head." At least that's not something that happens to men.

When I left the University, I found I was on my own and if you are foolish enough to let your interrogator say, "Oh, so you're retired. What do you do with all your time now?" you must not be constrained by reality but instead give free rein to your imagination.

One of the things I like about being a free agent, in control of my own destiny, is I no longer had to submit myself to an annual PRP interview, where PRP stands for Performance, Review and Plan. I am accountable to no one so I refuse to accept a PRP type interrogation from passing strangers or even friends.

As regular readers will well know I find the term 'retired' a bit pejorative and challenge the questioner by saying, "No I'm not retired. If I live on into my eighties or nineties and become less mobile and live in a more restricted world, then I will embrace the word retired, but not now."

I quickly realised I needed a title that truly described my life of independence. Much as I tried I found nothing in the 20th Century that applied to me. In those benighted times having a job was paramount. If you were young and had no job you were probably a lazy bludger and if older you existed in a twilight zone sharing the shame of the unwaged.

Back in the nineteenth Century I hit the jackpot. Then there were gentry, men (usually men) independently wealth and doing their own thing. In the nineteenth Century there was no guilt attached to not working if you were Gentry. You might gamble or drink all your money away or you might study science and publish the ground breaking research papers that revolutionised the 20th Century. It didn't matter what you said because you were gentry. All the guilt of living a life of house parties and trips to Europe disappeared.

So now I say, "No I'm not retired, I'm independently wealthy and doing my own thing." Usually this so surprises the questioner they simply drop the subject. Encouraged by my success I became an evangelist urging friends to adopt the same approach.

Now Kay is doing the same thing by redefining herself as 69A and thus avoiding age stereotyping. She did fill in some details, "I want to keep teaching part-time and I'm afraid if I say my is 70 people will think I'm too old to teach.

Kay is a wonderful teacher by the only definition that matters; the children in her classes actually learn things. Parents come in and tell the Principal that and want to know if their child will be in her class. With a jokey but firm persona in the class the children like her too. It would be criminal if she were the denied the teaching she loves and the kids were denied her teaching skills..

So I entered into this 69Ath birthday terminology with great enthusiasm but I do point out to her a possible flaw, "By the time you reach 96 there will be a problem, you will have used up all the available letters of the. alphabet. At 69Z what do you plan to do then?"

One of her children gives the perfect answer, "Kay is going to have to go back to the old numbering system if she is to have any hope of getting her letter from the Queen at 100." Every cloud has a silver lining. We leave the decision about this to Kay when she has her 97th birthday

Interestingly no one misunderstood when I told them that Kay would soon be celebrating her 69Ath Birthday and most gave a nod of approval.

After six weeks spent travelling in Europe and Turkey, I sent out an email to Bret, Scott and Hayley asking how Kay's September 16th birthday celebration plans are going. I am told everything is completely in hand. Most of the celebrations will be on the 15th a Saturday; in the morning photos of the family by a professional photographer, then a massage and next early in the afternoon a High Tea to which only women are invited and finally a pot luck in the evening for family and friends. On Sunday morning there will be a brunch meal before Bret and Serena hurry back to Masterton to greet guests. At lunchtime brother Gordon will come up for a shared lunch.

I email suggestions gifts, an E-reader or a long weekend trip to an Australian city, Brisbane, or Sydney perhaps. But of course the family will meet the cost of the Saturday functions things and no one welcomed my suggestion, Nearer the time Bruce and I give more thought to the E-reader. Kay loves to read books in the bath but they don't make an underwater Kindle yet. Still there is a lot of reading time out of the bath. The other unanswerable question is whether we will adopt the e-reader with enthusiasm or leave it sitting on the shelf gathering dust and stay with paper books.

In the end Bruce, Gordon and I share the cost of the Kindle with a colourful cover and wrap it up for lunch on Sunday. Betty looking for an interesting present for Kay decides to buy her some e-books so she will have books to read from the start

At the Brunch what do Scott and Kelly give Kay but a Kindle E-reader. Fortunately I am sitting at the far end of the table from Kay with Scott and Kelly, and Scott, a creative problem solver, quickly comes up with the solution, "We will give one to Ross for his birthday." So to handle this the five of us, Scott, Kelly, Bruce, Gordon and I give one fifth of a kindle each to both Ross and Kay.

This worked splendidly. Ross publishes many e-books and now he has an E-reader to use as a consumer. In fact he already has the first Kindle in his hands and is playing with it.

Kay came up and said how pleased she was, "If we just had one Kindle Ross would probably have taken it over. Now we each have our own."

Better still Kay, who we know does like high tech things like I-phones, adopted her reader with great enthusiasm. So she (probably as the only person in the whole world who does), enters the years 69A, 69B, 69C etc with a whole new world of e-reading opening up before her.

##  Operations Everywhere you Look

Sometimes events collide in a quite random way but the cumulative effect looks planned.

It all began when Shirley came to me with a request, "Lindsay Chadwich is having a hip replaced. Can I borrow the concrete blocks you used when Gordon had his hip replaced and lend them to her?"

A fair request as these blocks lift the average bed to a height that is safe for proud new hip bearers. If the bed is too low the person when sitting on the edge will be in the forbidden position with her knees below her hips. After an operation in which the key muscles needed to hold the hip joint in place have been savagely weakened by surgery, the force needed to rise from the forbidden position may be too much and the new hip will pop out.

"Those concrete blocks belong to Bryan," I somewhat defensively reply to give myself time to think about the possible complications. My Brother Gordon is getting high on the Public Hospital waiting list to get his second hip replaced. He has been given the clearance from the surgeon who carried out his quintuple coronary artery bypass operation to undergo the hip replacement operation.

Gordon has endured a great deal in the medical context in the last few years. Despite having chest pains and despite going into the Accident and Emergency Department at Palmerston North Hospital several times, no one diagnosed his heart problem. Instead he was told it was indigestion and to take antacids. When desperate with pain he called the ambulance yet again to take him to Palmerston North Hospital, while in a hospital bed he suffered a cardiac arrest He most definitely got their attention then.

The heart surgeon wants Gordon to exercise more but the pain in his left hip restricts his activities severely. To compensate he bought an exocycle and exercises a bit on that, still he badly needs the second hip replaced.

I realised if I blindly agreed to Shirley's request, Lindsay's tightly scheduled operation in a private hospital might collide with Gordon's replacement in the Public Hospital system? In any case the thought of transferring concrete blocks backward and forwards to Levin did not appeal to me, so instead I went to see Lindsay myself and told her I would get blocks to put under her bed. Gordon could continue to sleep soundly on his.

"I need a single bed," Lindsay tells me, "John tosses and turns so I can't get the good night's sleep I will need after the operation."

"Bob has a spare single bed that I know he will be glad to lend you?" I offer on Bob's behalf, and I will get the concrete blocks we need to elevate it."

"I will pay you for the blocks," the always independent Lindsay offers.

"That won't be necessary," I say hoping to find something around our section that will serve.

As luck would have it we do and it was staring me right in the face, although it took a day or two for me to notice. A few years ago Bob dismantled his old night store heater, basically a metal case filled with stone bricks that were heated up in the small hours of the morning when the demands on New Zealand's hydro powered grid were at their lowest, The rivers that powered the generators still had to flow so the, electricity was supplied at a very reasonable cost. The heater didn't exactly heat the house, but it did provide a heat sink that took the edge off the cold bite of a winter's day.

Bob offered Bruce the bricks and although Bruce had no immediate use for them, he snapped them. He hates to see things put into rubbish storage sites and knows he will find a use for them in the future. After all when he was developing the new part of the section he even reassembled the tiles broken during the demolition work on Betty's garden into pavers for our garden. When I produced an unwanted flat piece of concrete from Betty's garage, he created a temporary seat out of bricks and concrete planks.

All I had to do was clean eight bricks, and set up an elevated single bed at Bob's place for Lindsay to try out before we shifted the bed and bricks to her place.

She gave it the seal of approval and then, between rain showers, we carried bed and bricks across town and set the bed up in Lindsay's lounge, the place where she was going to sleep. Bob returned the day after the operation to transfer Lindsay's answering machine downstairs, where she could listen to the messages. Then we left her in the tender care of the friends she has known for years.

At first Lindsay was determined to manage everything herself but fairly quickly realised that some help during the first few weeks did not weaken her position as an independent professional woman but it did make life very much easier.

There was one unexpected bonus which she told me about, "I was told to rest twice a day. I'm really enjoying the rest. I even get to read books during the day."

With all my bases covered the question of Gordon's operation took on a new significance for me. He did have one extra trick in his hip replacement operation armoury. When he phoned to cancel his second hip replacement because of his heart operation, he was given the name and phone number of the woman who had the power to juggle the hip replacement list. Normally there is no way an individual can get past the gate keepers. The best he or she can do is beg the local doctor to write a passionate letter to the hospital describing the terrible pain his patient is in and how this severely restrict his activities, and then wait. Wait, wait endlessly wait for months during which nothing seems to be happening.

By knowing the woman, Gordon had what the Chinese call a back door into the system and I was determined to make use it. I suggested he give me the number and I phoned her up. Exactly as I feared, when he called the woman somehow he had muddied the waters. She did not even realise Gordon was ready to have the operation. I assured her I was present when his heart surgeon stated most definitely that he was. Her reply delighted me, "I will try to get him scheduled for the operation when Mr Lander gets back from holiday next week."

A couple of days later Gordon calls up, "I don't know what you told that woman but I have an appointment for my pre op check up next week."

Even the pre-op is easier this time. Last time the anaesthetist put Gordon through a gruelling deep breathing test which he barely passed and we both feared the worst this time around. But he recognised Gordon and was impressed by the size of the file he had built up since he last saw him. He began to read through the saga and then asked Gordon, "So what were they treating you for just before your cardiac arrest," Gordon replied, "A stomach complaint." He slammed the file shut and said "I don't want to read anymore. You're obviously fit enough to take the operation."

The next week we both attended a full briefing along with five other people soon to have knee or hip replacements on what happens to the patient during such operations. One conclusion I remember well was that no one would be allowed to leave hospital until they could get themselves in and out of bed, walk up and down steps and shower.

For a time it looked as if Gordon's and Lindsay's operations would be only a week apart. But there was one final hiccup, a few days before the operation Gordon was bumped out of the queue because of an emergency operation but two weeks later it all took place.

When I told Wobbly, the man who was sharing a hospital room with Gordon at the time of his first hip replacement operation, that Gordon was in hospital recovering from his second hip replacement operation, he said in some surprise, "My wife Ngaire is in Ward 24 at the moment with a broken femur. I'll visit Gordon when I go up and see her in the evening." Wobbly was the life and soul of the group in hospital last time and Gordon is delighted to see him again. It is a fortunate coincidence.

Before this operation I brought all Gordon's support equipment up from Levin to Palmerston North since I will be looking after him during the first critical weeks. However my heart sinks when I go in to hospital on the third day and he tells me he is having trouble getting into bed, "I told the physiotherapist that you will help me at first.

"You must learn to get in and out of bed before you come home," I assert. This I remind myself is a stated aim of the hospital staff and it will not help Gordon if he is dependent on me for something as basic as getting into bed. Independence is what I am working for and I hope Gordon has the same goal.

My sister Kay, who happens to be visiting at the time attempts to take a more conciliatory stance, "Don't be so hard on him. He'll probably learn how to do it in a few days."

I quickly correct her. Kay is not the caregiver and she will not have to get up in the middle of the night to assist him to get in and out of bed when he wants a pee.

Fortunately he is not released on day 4 and when the physiotherapist arrives on day 5 Gordon calls me up to the hospital to listen in. She does a great job and as a plus I learn the technique he is supposed to be using to get in and out of bed and will be able to reinforce the method if necessary.

I leave Gordon to have a shower and wait for his final discharge and in the meantime go home to get his room ready. The phone rings and it is Aloha needing a bit of help herself, "Glenys was admitted to hospital last night with severe stomach pains. I need to pick up her medicine from her place and take it up to her." Glenys is Aloha's daughter who recently had a major operation in Wellington so Aloha is naturally upset.

"I hope she isn't vomiting. That could pull our her stitches from the last operation," Aloha comments as we drive to Glenys's house. It takes a while to find her tablets, the ones she must take every morning as we get diverted for a while by the search for the eye ointment in the refrigerator that is needed to treat the small dog they own.

On the way to the hospital, we call into her chemists to get a printout showing all her medication. Whether Aloha will get into Women's surgical ward we don't know as she has been warned on the phone that absolutely no visitors are allowed. We wait outside the locked door and when it opens, she does wait for permission, but just dashes in. About now Gordon phones from Ward 24 to say he is ready to go home. Aloha comes back through the locked door with good news, "They will allow me to stay for a bit longer," so I agree to meet outside in half an hour. The timing is almost perfect. By the time Gordon has his wheelchair and I have put him in the car, Aloha is waiting.

Later we learn that Glenys has a bowel blockage which will need an operation and keep a few days in the hospital. The operation takes place at 4 in the afternoon and Glenys recovers well but this is the extra operation we did not need. Enough is enough, already

If you know anyone who wants to borrow some bricks to raise their bed before a hip replacement operation, tell them to give me a call. There will be no charge.

##  A Transit and Partial Eclipse in One Year

I don't know about you but I wanted to see the transit of Venus across the sun, and not just via a continuous feed on TV. I didn't see the need to make any preparations. It was only a few days before the big day the 6th June that I get serious. I decided I need a pair of binoculars to project the image of the sun on paper, the method described several times on the radio. Binoculars are not as popular as they once were. We find the modern digital camera with its 20 x optical zoom serves us better for most things than the old fashioned binoculars. At the same time you get a photo of the distant object that you can examine at your leisure.

I looked at the weather projections on www.METVUW.com and find a massive southerly storm engulfing most of the country. The sight of the purple and blue rain patterns staining the Manawatu drained my resolve and I do nothing for a couple more days. As predicted there are showers and lots of clouds on the 5th June. I question whether any preparations are worthwhile but in the end I do phone the wife of George, a keen amateur astronomer and asked if he's setting up a demonstration. The news is not good.

"He was going to mount his telescope in The Square for public viewing but its been cancelled because of the weather report."

"Can I give you my cell phone number in case George finds a window in the clouds to make an observation?"

Penny is not supportive, "You can watch it on a live feed on Television," and this avenue close down.

Late in the afternoon someone on the radio mentions that the Astronomical Society is offering a filter which will allow you to look at the sun directly during the transit. This will be the simplest way to view the transit but it is now too late for me to buy one.

Would you believe it, the morning of the 6th June dawns clear with only partial light cloud. I curse the ease with which one bad forecast has lulled me into a state of resigned lethargy. Now the sun is shining brightly, I have to find binoculars or someone who has a pair and is planning to attempt to see the transit. The idea of a day with partially clear skies with a sun flaming across the sky continual rebuking my total lack of preparation finally precipitates me into action. I phone anyone I think could help, well actually I phoned Pam Blackwell, who I learn later is out walking and leave a message on her answering machine asking for binoculars. Then I try Aloha Brown who is at home baking.

"I used to have some binoculars but I gave them away, to Royce I think," she tells me. Royce is her son; the one who climbs mountains and runs marathons, and who now has a girl friend from Africa. He lives in Wellington and is no use to me now.

But Aloha is a wizard when it comes to tracking things down and she does not give up, "I'll call Glenys and see if she has any." Glenys is the daughter who lives just around the corner from us. Aloha does not sound hopeful and I hold no expectation of success.

However a short time later she calls back with the good news, "Glenys has some binoculars and she will leave them out on my table. "When is the transit?"

"Between 10 and 4."

Aloha wants to get the binoculars to me as soon as possible, "I'll call Glenys back and get her to leave them outside the backdoor."

I bike around and pick them up, but my troubles are just beginning.

Of course by nine thirty the skies have clouded up with solid black and dark grey bands that does not give me much hope of ever seeing the sun again. I fiddled around and managed to tie the binoculars to an improvised stand. I go indoors as ready as I can hope to be at this late stage to take advantage of any gaps in the clouds.

An hour later Martine calls. She has some questions about the technicalities of getting the image of the sun projected onto a piece of paper. Without any actual experience I offer my own confident advice, after all I didn't get to be an academic without being able to sound plausible even when I am navigating unchartered waters. Only as I finish do I realise what I am doing, and confess my total lack of experience.

"It doesn't look as if the sun will come out today," I say spreading my pessimism to wider fields."

"I'm on the veranda and I'm getting glimpses of the sun," she replies.

As soon as the call ends I rush outside and study the sky. All I see is dark clouds, but the weather is coming from the south and Martine's farm is south of Palmerston North, so it may be the gap in the clouds will eventually arrive.

Martine phones back to discuss the problems she is facing, "I have the binoculars pointing toward the sun but I am not getting an image."

This sends me into another string of advice about the importance of having the correct elevation and how holding a celestial object in the field of vision of a telescope is a sometimes-difficult problem. You cannot easily escape 36 years of programming. I think Martine sees through my charade and the conversation ends.

A short time later Martine reports on her experience, "The image on the paper is very bright. I think I should use black paper."

I still haven't learned my lesson. "The light of the sun reflected back off the page is not intense enough to damage your eyes," I say with confident authority. I just can't stop myself.

In this case I honestly believe my advice is soundly based, not based on experience, but from the fact that all the media have been promoting this technique as safe. If there is a caveat about the extra sensitive eyes of a professional artist, I haven't heard it.

Again I go outside and again see just dark clouds. Not a gap anywhere. I return to the computer

A little while later I am suddenly aware that the light in the room has brightened. I rush to the window and although the sun is not clear of the clouds it is threatening to burn through them at any moment. I rush for my make shift viewing platform. There is no time to extend the tripod and I hold the stump as I try to project an image on white paper. I do get something which may or may not be an image of the sun. I peer at it intently and I can imagine a black dot but the image is not very large and it may not even be of the sun. In truth the sun never breaks through the cloud and I am always looking at heavily screened light.

What about the eclipse of the sun?

On the day, Bruce sends me a link to a live feed of the transit from a maddeningly sunny and clear Hawaii. I leave the pictures on the screen, putting up with the glowing reports and enthusiastic interviews about this once, or rather twice, in a generation event. It is all right for them, they are seeing it but I'm not. There is a paper-thin difference between enthusiastic reporting and gloating and for me those in Hawaii cross this line

And that is that for the sun in Palmerston North. The clouds thicken again, the sky darkens further and heavy rain sets in. It is still raining at lunchtime and does not stop until around two. I scan the skies but there is no sign, or even possibility of a gap.

I need a break from the bubbling words of delight coming at me from the live feed commentaries and the transit will end at 4 so I give up. I head off to town to do business and buy a few things for the trip to Europe.

I am in the Bank of New Zealand at about three o'clock, preparing to buy overseas currency when suddenly sunlight bathes the room. I rush to the window. There is a patch of blue sky above the square and there are signs of clearing weather out toward the Manawatu Plains. I stand for a moment or two in a state of indecision. Is it worth going back to get the binoculars or not?" Then it strikes me, it will be one hundred and five years before this occurs again. It is highly likely, even probable I will be dead by then.

All thought of overseas currency flies my mind. I rush over to the carpark and drive back home as fast as the local traffic rules allow, carefully take up the binoculars that I have now precariously tied to the top of the tripod and jump in the car.

There are no breaks in the cloud near Waterloo Crescent so I head back through the city, choosing which corner I take depending on which direction looks the most promising. On the westerly edge of town I see huge blue gaps in the sky but not a sign of the actual sun.

I drive on trying to work out where the sun passing through these gaps is actually reaching the ground. Only when I am well outside the city do I see the sun bathing the range of hills behind me. Everything is clear to me in an instance, at three thirty on a June day the sun is never high in the sky and by now it is well headed toward the west. I have been steadily travelling in the wrong direction. It is too late to return.

Ahead there is another bank of cloud but the sky further out is dazzling bright with what can only be sunlight. I head toward the town of Feilding and a little way in from the edge of the town the sun attempts to shine through, if not a gap, then a thinning of the cloud. I stop and from the driver's seat try to capture something before the gap closes. It is impossible. Having to move both the binoculars and the paper I have little success. There is not much time to experiment. Then I capture an image so dazzling on the page that I can hardly look at it. I instantly gain an understanding of where Martine was coming from.

I can't see any sign of Venus and as I move the paper or was that the binoculars the image disappears completely. I glance up to get a new sighting and see the cloud thickening again.

It is now a few minutes before four. I give up and despondently return home defeated, frustrated and annoyed in roughly equal amounts.

There it is. I can at last empathise with the nineteenth Century explorers who travelled from Europe to what for them was the far ends of the globe to see the transit of Venus only to find that on the big day the sky was completely covered with cloud. I thought I understood them before but only now after I actually experience similar frustration, do I fully understand and I only travelled from Palmerston North to Feilding to attempt the observation.

There is nothing I can do but endure the reports on the Evening News on TV1 and the excited yelps of people in Auckland and Tologa Bay as they stare at the eclipse through their specially bought filters.

I wish you better luck in 2117, if you happen to be around, while harbouring the unkind hope you will suffer the same frustrations as I did.

On November 14th I have another opportunity to view an interesting astronomical event. This time it is an eclipse of the sun. Unfortunately it is North-eastern Australia that gets the total eclipse, ours will be only a 76% event. Compared to the transit of Venus an eclipse is easy if not to observe directly then to observe its effects in other ways.

Need you ask me about the weather, after all in November we can hope for many sunny clear days but you guessed it, not this year. The sky is cloudy. The clouds are not as dark and threatening as for the transit of Venus but still provide pretty effective cover. I go across the road and invite Bob to join me in observing or rather trying to observe the eclipse. We go across the road and call Betty from number 19 out to help.

Do I hear you asking what preparations I have made this time? The answer is again none, no exposed film to allow us to look directly at the sun, no telescope to project the image, nothing except our own two eyes to observe an event that will not allow us to look directly at the sun.

As the world begins to darkens, the birds commence their twilight songs, which sound very strange in the middle of the morning. One or two dogs give a worried bark and then go quiet.

There is one observation I know will work, provided we get a direct glimpse of the sun. We will be able to see the effect of the eclipse in just about as satisfying way as the direct observation. You look at the shadow under a fairly dense tree which still allows small spots of direct sunlight to come through the canopy. These spots of light will, during an eclipse, have the shape like the eclipsed sun,

But the cloud doesn't clear and Betty has no trees with a canopy of the right density. If the holes are too big a projection of the eclipse does not occur. If not enough light gets through we won't see the eclipse. The cloud thins enough to give a faint shadow but soon even that shadow disappears. This performance is repeated several times and it is not until there is a bigger gap can I pick out the new moon shape in some of the shadows of a small flowering plan on Betty's patio. Neither Bob nor Betty is impressed but Betty, ignoring all the best advice, looks up directly at the sun, and is rewarded through the cloud with the sight of the eclipsed sun. By the time I glance up I get a brief image of the eclipse before the sun strengthens too much for me to keep looking. Betty goes indoors satisfied.

Bob follows me over to number 17 and while we chat on the back patio the sun brightens and there in the shadow of a climbing rose the new moon shaped holes convincingly appeared. This time there is no doubt, all the normally spherical pools of light have a bite taken out of them. We are satisfied and give up the viewing.

I will be better prepared for the next time for any such event in the future but I promise you, I will take no notice of the weather forecasts.

## The Weather Bomb

I can't say TV Presenters didn't warn us. I saw it coming first on that wonderful weather site www.metVUW.com first. It appeared as a tight little ball of isobars out to the west of New Zealand and heading for us at great speed. On the weather map the colours represent the amount of rain predicted in the next six-hour period. This time the eye of this circle was an angry red colour which stared out angrily at me. The isobars were squeezed so close together it would have been difficult to get a fine toothcomb between them.

While I am safely on land, I enjoy a good storm. Unlike our neighbour Betty who dreams endlessly about being in a sunny hot climate where the skies are blue day after day, I like a bit of real weather. Take away the persistent summer smog and Los Angels would suit Betty down to the ground.

I once said to a LA friend without thinking, "What a lovely day it is today." Even as I said it I realised this day was in fact no different from every day in the last five months and the days will probably be the same for the next several months. I started to apologise to him for my stupidly obvious comment but he cuts me short, "This weather is the reason I shifted out here from the Mid West and I never want to stop being reminded how good the weather here is."

When we get a rainy day, I head over to Betty's place with bare feet and an umbrella, knock on her door and then splash around her lawn loudly singing the song _Singing in the Rain_. Honestly sometimes I think she believes I'm being sarcastic but what I can never do is change her attitude to the weather.

As the ball of rain and wild winds approaches New Zealand, the weather office gives a briefing on what exactly a weather bomb is. According to them it is formed when a tropical front heads out to sea from Australia and encounters contrary high level winds. Under these conditions the system sucks up more and more water from the sea as its isobars tighten a noose around the throat of the weather system, until it becomes a whirling dervish of weather dancing toward us. The weather office begins to issue severe weather warning for much of the North Island.

It will arrives on the Saturday of the weekend we are booked to see five shows at the New Zealand Arts Festival in Wellington. Wellington at the best of times has a distinctly unpleasant southerly wind which blows with a ferocity and persistence that makes its name of 'Windy Wellington' thoroughly justified.

The suggestion that a big sign reading Wellywood should be installed on the hills behind the airport to celebrate the burgeoning Film business centred around the nearby Weta Animation Studios, caused great controversy. So a competition to choose a different name was held. The popular choice was for the word Wellington but with the final few letters shown as starting to be blow away in the eternal wind.

So what will it be like in Wellington when this weather bomb strikes? We are intrigued. There is no turning back, we have our tickets. I will take down Bruce's rain gear and meet him at the airport when he flies in from Vietnam where he has been working for the last week. Then we are as prepared as we can be.

_Henry V_ on Friday evening is a vibrant performance set during some unidentified modern war where the all male cast singing thoroughly non-Elizabethan tunes. It quite rightly gets a standing ovation from the packed Opera House audience. Interestingly it reveals _Henry V_ to be an antiwar and anti monarchy play, which is a surprise to me. The first specks of rain drift down as we walk to _The Comfort Hotel_ in Cuba Street afterwards. Is the weather bomb on its way?

Overnight I occasionally hear the wind rattling the window frame and rain but not steady rain, although it is difficult to tell in a second-floor inward-looking room. When we set off to find a place to eat breakfast, we find the temperature has taken a dive overnight and the icy breath of a southerly blows uncomfortably around the corners but again not in the desperate hopeless screaming way of a wind tortured by the pressure of numberless isobars.

We are well wrapped up on our way to the City Art Gallery where they have a display of examples of modern sculpture that are in parts funny, bizarre and unexpected. Some even encourage participation. For example a large white air-filled structure invites you to sit on its soft white leather covering or plunge through closed fingers of leather that yields to the pressure of the human body and you disappear from sight. They are fun, fun fun. When we pick up our bags to leave the Art Gallery we both add another layer for warmth.

It is a twenty-five minute walk to Pipitea Marae but no rain is falling. The play, which is about the effect on a Maori family of their sons going off to the great wars warms our hearts and makes us reluctant to retreat outside into the bitterly cold city. The weather remains much the same with strong freezing southerlies and spits of rain, in other words nothing out of the ordinary for Wellington. Where is the weather bomb? I am disappointed.

To end the afternoon we visit Te Papa, the national museum. We spend most of the time viewing the New Zealand paintings. Only after I pick up my pack do I look outdoors. Rain is marshalling in huge columns, but columns that are bent by the wind so the rain hits the concrete in sideway sweeps guaranteed to thoroughly soak even the fastest as they make a desperate dash to reach their cars. Perhaps the Weather bomb is real afterwards. But we are prepared. I take off my long-shorts. Underneath I am wearing the short shorts that I usually use for swimming. Bruce does the same and we pack the extra clothes in plastic bags and push them into my already swollen canvas pack. With our raincoats protecting the shorts and everything worn above them we hurry through the rain with only our shoes getting soaked. I hate getting wet trousers flapping around my legs.

That evening in _Tezuka_ a dance company takes us through the life and comic art of this Japanese artist using huge projections of some of his comic strips, ones that address the big questions such the atomic bomb, life and death and the meaning of life. After the show the rain is still teeming down but we are in the inner city and can walk almost all the way dry under the many verandas.

At first the Sunday morning weather looks better, it is not raining and we can even see blue sky. I make a foolish decision and Bruce goes along with it. I don't want another cooked breakfast and we have all the fruit and cereal we need for breakfast in the car, which along with some milk and yoghurt from a dairy. Except by this time the rain has returned.

"These are only showers, they will soon clear," say I with hollow optimism.

"Where can we eat outside undercover if more rain comes," Bruce reasonably asks.

Unfortunately the only place we know that meets these criteria is the lookout on top of Mount Victoria.

As we drive up the narrow twisting road, the rain tumbles down again, but pig-headed as always I refuse to give up and retreat to a restaurant, or even the railway station. The shower clears enough for me to offload the food at the lookout and then I take the car the 100 metres to a legal carpark.

There is a low concrete wall around the lookout but the swirling southerly wind ensures that we get no shelter from it. Bruce is sensibly wearing layers of warm clothes and he has gloves on. I am again in shorts. Still the view is great and the food tastes wonderful out of doors. An occasional jogger reaches the top and studiously ignoring us spends a second or two enjoying the view. After breakfast we take photos as a patch of sun passes over Rongotai Airport far below us.

A quick dash back to the car to avoid another shower barrelling toward us and breakfast is over.

Although today we are only booked to see the NZ String Quart in a concert at 6 in the Town Hall, given the weather bomb (if it is no hyperbole it call it that) we try to get seats for Shakespeare's _The Winters Tale_ at one thirty. We pay 80 dollars for seats in the front row centre up in the remote third level of the gods.

The play is a disappointment, not because of the actors; after all it is the same all male company that performed _Henry V_ on Friday night but because of its clunky construction. Yes we blame the playwright, William Shakespeare. We are becoming harsh critics indeed.

"Perhaps it was one of his early plays," Bruce says by way of an excuse. Later we find out it is in the first half of his writing career, but hardly the first.

The weather is clearing now. Disappointingly we seem to have been missed the main punch of the weather bomb. The concert is terrific especially the Shostakovich and on quiet roads we are home by ten

The weather bomb has also missed Palmerston North. Instead it has landed between Whanganui and south Taranaki and wrought great damage to power lines and forests of trees and caused flooding but what consolation is that for me?

##  The Wonders of a GPS Guidance System

When Angie bought her new BMW car many options were available - for example a distance detector around the car gives the driver precise information about how close she is to any object not only in the forward and reverse direction but also right around the car. With this system there is no excuse for damaging the pristine body of your new car and Angie snapped it up. The display inside shows the car from above with different coloured bands around the car where the colour determines how much room you have to spare. At the same time annoying beeps are emitted that become more and more urgent the closer you get to the red zone and screech a continuous warning if you advance into even more dangerous territory.

"Of course the car comes with a video camera to give you protection when you are backing. But I preferred this distance awareness system," Angie tells us.

Angie goes on, "The car had a GPS system too but I replaced it with a top of the line model. By the time I made all the additions the car cost an extra 10000 euro."

Angie sets up the GPS system before we start our journey south into Italy. The genteel, crystal clear tones of the voice that guides us causes me to instantly name her The Lady. When she gives an instruction to turn right or left a display appears indicating the type of turn, especially when it is a right incline which might be easy to overlook. When Angie chooses to dispense with the voice, the lady displays a map of the region showing us where we are, like an electronic version of the old road map books, appears instead.

In general we follow The Lady's advice stringently but occasionally, seemingly on a whim, Angie decides she knows better. Immediately we deviate The Lady keeps repeating a warning, "Turn around, turn around", and graphically demonstrates on the screen the manoeuvre she wants us to perform in terms even a one-year old could understand. In the end we always obey her.

As the trip goes on she becomes a friendly extra passenger. Unfortunately she does rather render the role of the map-reader superfluous, which can be annoying to Bruce, who is used to being our guide. Does The Lady have her weaknesses and are there times she misleads you? Well the answer is yes to both but very infrequently and always in hindsight we realise it was not really her fault.

Things which are not (cannot?) be in her memory, include road changes or new roundabouts, but additions are being made to Our Lady's knowledge base all the time, Road works may or may not be flagged and a warning may or may not be still relevant, warnings of traffic congestion ahead again may or may not be out of date. In any case as more and more cars get such systems the obvious alternative routes can quickly become congested themselves. In all these situations Angie has to decide whether to heed the warnings or not and on our trip not heeding them was a successful strategy most of the time.

I don't want you to think that The Lady is garrulous or overly free with her directions. No, quite the reverse, she only speaks when it is absolutely necessary. And even when behind the scenes she might be very annoyed, for example when we have delibertlystrayed off the route she has chosen, the strongest language she uses is "Achtung, Achtung," spoken in the calmest possible way to get our attention and to let us know she is seriously concerned by our transgressions but not to over excite us either. Who couldn't like such a lady?

Angie does occasionally trick the lady. For example when we want to travel the scenic route across the mountains on our way to Pisa, rather than the uninteresting main road, she falsifies our destination and replaces it with Lucca, a town towards the end of the scenic road we do want to follow. I feel sure The Lady senses the deception as our journey unfolds but she shows not the slightest sign of resentment. Perhaps we humans have much to learn about humility from this wise woman.

It is in Pisa where we first come up against The Lady's Achilles heel. Angie confidently punches in the name of the house we will be staying in while in Tuscany and The Lady goes blank. This is not just a temporary lapse; she genuinely does not know where the place we have named is. Instead Angie has to substitute the nearest town which the Lady does recognise. When we get there we will be reduced to old fashion map reading to find the house. But Hey, how difficult can that be?

Well more than we originally thought despite the fact that we have explicit, old fashioned, directions to the house we want written by our landlady we have problems. When we hit the road near our accommodation we first turn in the wrong direction. Even without The Lady's intervention, Angie is quick to detect the error. But as we cross-town we take the opportunity to shop at the local Supermarket. There is a bit of discussion between Bruce and Angie as to how to exit the town on the road leading to our villa, but they achieve this with commendable speed with no help from me.

We are following directions written on the reasonable but mistaken assumption we will arrive on the main road south. Angie and Bruce attempt to retranslate the instructions as we drive, which is not as easy as it sounds. For example the side road we are told is 3 kilometres from the highway, but how far is this from the town? Needless to say despite all of us looking for a signpost we go through some roundabouts and end up on the main Highway heading south away from the town.

You should notice I docilely act the helpless spectator during all these operations. Without active intellectual engagement on my part, I am unable to remember the sequence of events that followed but it was complex and it did involve some vigorous debates between Angie and Bruce. Finally we decide to back track and follow exactly the route the instructions are written for and despite a couple of new roundabouts along the way, and despite the fact that rather than 3 kilometres from the main highway it is only 1, we find the side road and eventually our house.

Later we discover the reason we did not find our house on the first pass out of town. There were no signposts when you approach from that direction, only if you come from the main Highway south. How confusing is this, but we will find the same problem again during our time in Tuscany.

I debate whether The Lady can teach me German through the continuous repetition of her limited vocabulary. If all I want to do is give and take directions then her language instruction will serve me well, and although this is obviously a very useful skill to acquire when you are travelling in a foreign country, I think I need more and I abandon the idea.

When we drive north to Venice, we test The Lady's patience to the limit, and in return she happily misleads us.

"The traffic in Venice will probably be very heavy but the map shows there is a ferry from Sottomarina to Venice," This is a port on the southern most end of the lagoon which surrounds Venice. A quiet ride on a boat appeals when compared with traffic jams on the road directly into Venice.

When Angie confronts The Lady with the best route to Venice she immediately alerts us, "Achtung, the journey will involve Ferry rides." She doesn't miss a trick this lady. However Angie inputs our destination as Chioggia, also on the south end of the Lagoon so we can take the ferry from there. The Lady is not encouraging about this idea, in fact she is downright discouraging, in fact she refuses to countenance the idea. Still it will be an interesting drive up to Chioggia, and although we know this is not the direct road route to Venice we have plenty of time.

And the scenery is well worth risking The Lady's displeasure. We leave the soaring hills of Tuscany behind and emerge onto land as flat as a stretched table cloth, a place where the road is built up above the surrounding fields on its own levee, presumably to avoid regular flooding. It gives me the feeling water is not far away, and if the land is not actually floating it almost is. The river we cross is obese with free flowing water and does nothing to change this impression.

There are virtually no other cars on the road and certainly no signs pointing toward a car ferry but we are committed and push on, despite The Lady's annoying refusal to acknowledge the existence of such a ferry. At the port we hoped would be serviced by car ferries, there are no arrows suggesting there is and we don't even drive down onto a wharf busy with fishing boats to make one final check. The Lady is right again but we have enjoyed the scenery along the way and to be fair she does not rub it in.

Now we must drive around the Lagoon north toward Venice. And although there are more cars than before, the traffic is relatively light, and remains so all the way to Venice. As we approach the city, we pass a huge refinery providing a landscape which might be pleasing to Chemical Engineers but holds no attraction for us and it is not mentioned in the publicity brochures for Venice. We then cross a long concrete bridge. As a first time visitor I am completely deceived and carry the impression with me for hours that Venice is not in fact on an island at all: a great disappointment as it destroys the romance of the place making it more like a constructed Disney World with good access to cars and massive parking buildings than a set of virgin Islands.

Now we only have to board the Ferry to The Lido, except we can't find the Car Ferry. The Lady might have given the thumbs down to a car ferry at Scottomarina but she remains adamant that there is a car Ferry from Venice to the Lido. On our first attempt to approach the Ferry Terminal we end up in a queue of cars going into a Parking Building. We circle around and try again. Angie knows something is wrong, even if The Lady doesn't. "She says the car Ferry to The Lido is 400 metres further on," Angie tells us. But the road ahead is completely blocked. Our only alternative is to join the queue to the parking building. When we reach the access gate Angie gets out of the car and questions a man by the barrier. Now Angie demonstrates the full power of knowing the Italian Language as she undertakes a long interrogation of first one man and then a second. There are many excited, but never angry, exchanges and much arm waving before Angie returns to the car and does a U-turn.

Angie tells us what has happened, 'This weekend they will be holding a festival with fireworks and the Ferry to The Lido does not run from here. We have to drive north onto a spit. The car ferry is running from there."

As Angie expands a little I don't think we can blame The Lady, "Today and tomorrow are the only two days in the year the ferry does not run to the Lido from here". The rest of the year The Lady would be correct. I decide to call this 'being unlucky', rather the first sign of incompetence on her part.

At least we now know where we stand, our spirits are lifted and we head confidently north. The Lady now gives her instructions confidently seemingly unaware of the traffic jam we are about to join. The first signs of trouble happen on a normal country road in the midst of pleasant flat pastureland when we come to a complete halt and only inch forward slowly. At first I think it will be soon over. But after half an hour when we have barely covered a kilometre I know better.

Angie tells us the bad news, "Up ahead we have to merge with a highway that will be packed with the cars of people heading to the beaches along the spit at the start of a holiday week."

Our progress is if anything even slower over the next hour and a half, I think it was only an hour and a half, it seemed much longer. This crawl continues until we reach the first town, where we hope the ferry will leave from. The car needs diesel and we need a rest stop so we go into town.

The man at the gas station is very helpful, and Angie again puts her knowledge of Italian to good use. Back in the car she tells us the unwelcome news, "There is a ferry at the end of the tip but it does not take cars. We will have to leave our car behind." Her new car will eventually just have to take care of itself.

The traffic gradually eases and we finally reach the Ferry car park, just an open paddock. I am left to guard the car while Bruce and Angie set off to get ferry tickets. The mosquitoes are the size of wasps and twice as aggressive. Angie and Bruce return eventually and we lug our bags to the wharf.

Only when we get to the hotel at around 9:30 do we learn that the man at the parking building was right in that a car ferry does leave from the spit but not specific enough about where on the Spit. The helpful garage man on the other hand knew where the ferries left from but did not know that for these two days, the car ferry is departing from the same place as the people ferry. We need not have left our car behind. Angie returns next morning to pick it up while we go down to explore the beach a few hundred meters away from our hotel.

I think we can excuse The Lady for her lack of knowledge on this point and she never lets us down again.

##  Stop Press: Belligerent Boy Bullies Betty

On the first Saturday night in December we get a phone call from Betty next door. She sounds upset and no wonder.

"There's a boy outside throwing stones at the house and breaking windows. He's been trying to hit me."

It took a second or two for me to absorb this information; information that didn't really make sense. I quickly call Bruce and as we walk down the drive, I wonder what we will find at Betty's house. The term boy, like the term girl, is very flexible, covering ages from 2 to 18. I hope it will be a boy at the bottom end of the age range. In any case I expect the 'boy' will turn and flee when he sees reinforcements arriving. No one will want to tangle with a couple of fine specimens of men as Bruce Philpott and Paul Buckley, or at least we hope so. I suspect our greatest difficulty will be to stop him as he runs off down the street. At least Betty's problems will be over.

The boy is in fact a real boy, about 10 years old, with fair hair. He glances down the street as we approach, but rather than running away, he resumes throwing stones at the house, despite my shouts of "Stop throwing stones!" He makes not the slightest attempt to depart the scene of the crime. When we are standing beside him, he searches on the ground for another stone. I manage to dissuade him with another firm but gently order, "Do not throw that stone." He is curious as to what we will do next.

He tries out the words "You can't stop me," but I chose to ignore this comment, because his body language tells me he means what says.

We don't have many options. We can't force him anything. Adults in New Zealand are not permitted to hit children, although they may restrain them if it is for their own safety. We don't want to be accused later of hitting him. I attempt to continue the conversation as he seems willing enough to talk to an adult who is not screaming at him despite his determined assault on our neighbour's house.

I ask, "Where do you live?"

"I'm not telling you."

"Why are you throwing stones at that house?"

"I don't know?"

The boy attempts to test my limits with, "I've drunk some alcohol."

I ignore his comment and instead probe for more information from him, "What's your address?"

"I'm not telling you." A pause and then he says, "What's your address?"

I seize my chance, "You didn't tell me yours so I'm not telling you ours."

He seems to think this is a fair reply. It is a stalemate. All this time I have been staring hard at his face trying to memorise his features so I will be able to recognise him again, so I can give an adequate description to the Police.

Then, "What will you do if I run away?" Here he is really probing the weakness of my position."

I stall, "I will follow you." He makes as if to turn and flee and I turn with him and he gives up this game.

"Where are your parents?"

"I don't have parents. I'm in a foster home."

Bruce goes over to talk to Betty who is peeping questioningly out her front door.

Then an unexpected question, "Has she called the Police?"

"I don't know."

Bruce returns and tells us the Police have been called.

The boy suddenly seems to relax, or perhaps the stress of my intensive questioning is wearing him down. He sits on the edge of the footpath. "Will the Police handcuff me?"

I answer honestly, "I don't know,"

Finally a Policeman arrives in a red car. He sits in his car taking some notes and making a call. I will be pleased when he engages with the boy.

Then the cop comes out looking even to my eyes big and strong, looking as if he wouldn't budge even if a tank tried to run over him. Surely the boy is impressed. He slowly asks, with pauses in between some of the questions I've asked.

All the boy's defiance melts away and the boy is now fully cooperative. He gives his name, age, address of the foster home, and everything he wouldn't tell me. I wonder where all this is going. Then a properly marked police car pulls up. A woman gets out takes a few steps and then looking at the boy says, "Oh, it's you is it."

The boy is obviously well known to the Police. If you make a habit of going out in the evening and breaking innocent people's windows, that does tend to happen.

She slips some handcuffs on his wrists and says, "Get into the car." The boy meekly obeys.

The boy sits quietly while Officer Mike Yates goes over to talk with Betty. He can't do much except give advice about Insurance claims. He tells Betty he will do what he can to get some compensation for her. And then the Police depart.

Betty has three large panes of glass smashed in her sliding door. We get cardboard and tape and cover the panes to prevent anyone getting injured.

We assure Betty this is a random attack by the boy in order to get arrested by the Police so he can get some attention. He does not know her, he has nothing against her, it could have been anyone in the street. There is no danger of a repeat attack and she relaxes.

The boy seemed intelligent but he is obviously disturbed.

A woman from Social work service then arrives and reassures Betty further and tells her they will try to get some money to defray the loss of her no claims bonus.

I try to pump the woman for some official information by saying. "The boy is obviously disturbed,"

"Yes he has had a terrible home life." She then apologises yet again and departs before I can ask anything else.

We return home. It has been a very strange night. Betty does not receive any compensation from the Police or the social workers, but she expected that.

Betty's life is disturbed once again when on Monday morning she gets up early she will be ready when the glazier comes. She gets the call when she is in the shower and has to walk out dripping to answer the phone. They want to put off their visit until the afternoon, and that means Betty will miss an afternoon of classical music.

In this way the ripples of disturbance from an unexpected event spread out through a person's life.

#  Things Mean A lot

###  A Simple Question of Defrosting

I admit it I panicked. Given the evidence you might have done the same.

I awoke in the night and heard the deep freeze motor churning away and hurried out to investigate. Ours is a chest freezer, the one I have had for at least thirty years. It was a hand me down from my Auntie Bertha's estate so it must be even older. Like all Chest Freezers it is very efficient. Yes it is more inconvenient to have to rifle through all the frozen goods to get to something you want if it happens to be right at the bottom, but, when you talk energy efficiency, it is a winner. Since hot air rises and cold air sinks, no matter how intrusive and time consuming your search most of the cold air stays where you want it inside the freezer. On the other hand an upright freezer spills cold air every time you open the door.

Because of its greater efficiency and its great insulation the motor of our freezer hardly ever has to switch on and when it does it is not long before it switches off again. So why, I ask myself, is it running so compulsively now? I open the lid and feel the big lumps of ice that have accumulated around the top rim. Sure enough they feel moist and rough. I reach the obvious conclusion, the ice is beginning to melt and ergo the freezer is failing.

Next morning in the cold light of day, Bruce takes some convincing that my analysis is right. Well actually after his own inspection he completely disagrees and holds to his position.

"But," I say, "The ice around the rim is pitted the way icebergs get when they drift north into warmer waters." He is still not convinced

So I agree to give my brother Gordon, the electrician in the family, a call.

As usual he is negative about everything, "Call in a refrigerator engineer straight away before your food defrosts," is his advice.

When he learns it is over thirty years old he is completely dismissive, "Best to just buy a new freezer. The gas coils will probably be corroded. Even if they de-gas the freezer, and repair a hole another will soon appear." At least we are now on the same page of the freezer repair manual.

It is close to Christmas and I want to get the problem resolved before we go away for ten days holiday, I don't want to return to a freezer filled with melted sludge, as happened to my colleague Dr Clem Hawke when his teenage son, trying to be helpful, switched off the power at the mains as the family left on holiday.

I visit Leader and Watt and view the freezers they have for sale. As I expected, as I feared, none of the present day chest freezers will fit into the relatively small gap we have in the washhouse. Apart from one laughably small freezer which will have no hope of coping with the flood of fruit and vegetables Bruce's big garden produces. The upright freezers are also much smaller than the present chest freezer and I return home discouraged.

Bob has finally surfaced, after all it is lunchtime, but he is off to have coffee with his friend Tony. "I'll have a look when I get back," he assures me.

In the middle of the afternoon he walks in and I confront him with our problem. After examining the ice around the rim he takes a different tack.

"It should be defrosted,"

"But if the freezer is not working after the defrosting we will have no way of keeping our food frozen."

But I relent, after all I have partially transferred the responsibility of this drastic action to someone else namely Bob Lambourne.

"Let's go for a walk and then I will defrost it," I tell him.

He has a different plan, "No, let's take the food out and wrap it in blankets and leave the freezer open while we walk. The sides will warm up and we should be able to get the ice off."

Well blow me, this torpedoed the method I have been using for years, namely taking the food out and immediately directing hair driers and fan heaters on to the ice. I see immediately the flaw in my approach. By directing the heat on the thick ice, I am wasting time because the weak link, as Bob has so implicitly pointed out, is the bonding between the ice and the wall. Warm the wall and the ice must fall off.

When we get back a certain amount of force must be used to bash the ice off but it does finally break off. I take the chunks of ice out and wipe the freezer and it is ready to receive the still frozen food back in. Brilliant.

The freezer compressor motor comes on and everything works perfectly. It was the ice that was causing the problem by expanding enough to break the seal and allow warm air into the freezer. This warm air melted the surface of the ice, but worse it raised the air temperature and forced the motor to work almost continually.

At least I now know how to quickly defrost a freezer. If I want to speed the process even more I will direct the heat on the metal surface which will conduct it under the ice from whence it will melt the ice and allow great slabs of ice to be chipped off. Easy when you know how.

###  Hadlee Comments on the New Prius

Hadlee Buckley is my great nephew. He like his father, Ian, loves working on, well any vehicle they can get their hands on. Ian's business involves the servicing and repair of the big trucks that haul loads around the country but also he restores old cars, runs a bus, buys cheap cars for his children and then maintains them.

When Bruce and I bought the Toyota Prius we were seduced by the idea of a hybrid car in which the forward motion of the car and the act of braking store up energy in two batteries, which are then used to power the car. It isn't a fully electric car but as close as we can get in New Zealand right now.

I loved the Ford Laser (i.e. Mazda 323) with a great love. It hugs the road and corners well, the stick shift keeps you in full control and the fact it was a little underpowered at 1.3 litres just made it more fun to drive. Even passing is no problem provided you harvest your speed in anticipation of the best place to pass. Bruce didn't share my love; for example the semi automatic choke will not stay out, making it difficult to drive when the motor is cold. The boot is best opened from inside as the force needed to turn the lock is likely to bend it key into the shape of a pretzel. It was easy to break into, and the security device my mechanic Harry fitted, namely a secret switch to turn off the gas, although effective did mean that that if you forgot to turn it on again you inadvertently ran out of petrol.

But Harry began to struggle get hold of parts for the car and for the first time in 22 years I began to wonder if it will be fully reliable on the long trips. Well meaning but unhelpful friends are now given to make negative comments about the lack of safety equipment in the Ford Laser and in Bob's case continually fussing about small problems such as the difficulty with the choke, and all of them trying to convince me that these are sound reasons why the car should be sold.

The most convincing reason for me was Bruce's reluctance to drive the Laser. So after much discussion with Bruce I decided to change cars and the only car we seriously considered was the hybrid Toyota Prius.

Buying the car takes us to the dark side. The only firm that can maintain this car which is so ahead of its time is Toyota itself. Computers dominated the operation of the engines and in other parts of the car computer chips have to be interrogated to tell you what is wrong.

Driving the car is a very different experience from driving the Laser. Instead of hugging the road, the car almost floats as you drive making you feel remote from the driving environment. In fact the only reason the car needs the driver is to turn the steering wheel and push alternately the accelerator or brake. The more expensive model will even park the car for you.

Since we are driving for fuel economy, you feel impelled not to slam the accelerator to the floor but instead gently accelerate away so we use the battery as much as possible. I must point out his does not always please the more impatient driver in the car behind at traffic lights. A further discouragement to exceeding the speed limit even within the 5 to ten kilometre margin the cops allowed, is the fact that the speed is projected on the windscreen in large numbers in a way you can't ignore. An analogue speedometer does not exert this same power over me (at least).

I was not looking forward to breaking the news of the new Prius to Ian and Hadlee. I know they will not be impressed at our movement away from driving orthodoxy.

I meet Hadlee unexpectedly in the public carpark at Levin, the one behind the main street shops. I have no time to prepare myself and give him the preliminary briefing on why we chose a Prius. While waiting for the right job to come along, Hadlee is working at the Supermarket retrieving trolleys. Gordon is with me when Hadlee spots us.

As I get out he says something which I thought was completely appropriate. There is some dispute the next day as to the exact words that spontaneously sprang from his mouth as he sights the white Prius ghosting its way into the park. Even Hadlee himself can't remember a few days later.

But I think he simply repeated the words "Shame," "Shame", "Shame." I laugh as I hear them. He mirrors exactly my own feelings at that moment. I feel as if I am letting down the family as I discard the loyal Ford Laser for the new technology of a partly electric car. My guilt leaves me laughing in an uncontrolled way. I feel like a naughty school boy caught out behind the bike sheds.

I flee to the anonymity of the Supermarket still chuckling to myself.

As to Ian I have not yet confronted him face. I must call by and see him when next I come to Levin.

Bruce is enjoying driving the new car, so it's all been worthwhile but Hadlee's words still ring true in my ears. And I do still miss the 22 year old Ford Laser

### On Keeping Clean

At a time many years ago when I was out jogging nearly every day, the shower became part of my end of run routine and on the few days I did not run, well usually there was no shower, after all you only take a shower when you are sweated up after exercise, don't you?

It took a while to adjust when somewhere in my sixties, I decided that jogging was too hard on knee and hip joints, and reverted to biking and walking. Incidentally I only really discovered that jogging was a contact sport when I broke a bone in my hand. Despite the distance of my hand from my feet, I found when I started running the jarring that occurred each time a foot hit the ground was transmitted up to the broken bone and I felt pain. Of course when the endorphins kicked in the pain went away, but the experience taught me a lesson.

Following Bruce's routine I now shower each morning, well virtually every morning. So naturally when visiting Bruce's parents, Graeme and Kay, I take a shower every morning. The instructions I received on how to use their shower are a bit puzzling.

"Before you have a shower, lower the hot water temperature from 45 to 42 degrees," I was told and so I did, but at first I didn't always remember taking it back up to 45 again.

I rationalised the reason I was asked to take the temperature up and down was something to do with the mix of hot and cold water required for a pleasant temperature when showering. However I should have twigged because no matter how I adjusted the variable scale on the tap from cold to very hot, the water temperature didn't change at all.

I learned the truth on our Christmas visit last year.

As usual I lowered the hot water temperature to 42 and began my shower. For some reason this time I make a more determined attempt to lower the temperature and settled on a position on the tap control scale that produced a large screaming noise which rang through the whole house. Imagining the temperature of the water was a little cooler, I ignored the unpleasant sound.

A minute later Graeme is at the bathroom door calling out something about not turning the dial. Apparently that dial on the tap did not control the water temperature.

"If you want the water cooler, set a lower temperature on the scale before you start."

Finally the penny dropped, there was no cold-hot water mixing at the tap, and all the water that flooded over me in the shower, was water at the temperature set back at the gas burner.

Naturally I felt a bit of a fool, but I was pleased to know at last how to set the shower temperature to whatever I wanted, in my case 39 degrees, although I may try 38 degrees next time. It is a very good system that takes away the need for those hair trigger movements of a the tap dial to try to prevent the mixed hot and cold water shifting from biting hot to dead cold in a second.

While this works fine for showering, the system does not work well when I use my technique for washing dishes, namely to rinse everything under the hot water from the tap. Using this system the water coming out of the hot tap quickly cools off and becomes cold. The only way to get the temperature up again is to turn the tap onto full, in which case the sink is soon full of water.

Still you can't have everything.

### An Inspiring Sight

It was on a summer's day in the middle of January it happened, on a day when brother Gordon was up to visit and do some shopping. With his second hip causing so much pain' he was using two crutches and I was along to help him when required.

It is always an interesting experience to go shopping with him, as he strikes up small conversations with all the shop assistances, reminding me I tend to do the same, although our conversational topics are very different. Perhaps it is due to our Irish ancestry. When visiting Ireland, I found everyone we met did the same thing in a delightful Irish accent and I had to be in your toes to keep up my side of the conversation.

Gordon does play the age card quite a bit, either making fun of the old guys who slow things down in the checkout queues and are generally slow to react to things, while ignoring his own grey hair and 73 years.

By 5:30 he has left and I am more than ready to get out of the house for a bit of exercise. On this lovely summer evening I decided to bike up and down the length of the cycle track by the river. In such weather lots of other people are out walking their dogs, riding their bikes even one or two swimming. In the down-river leg of the journey, after passing under the Massey Bridge, I cycle along the smooth tarseal toward a point where the track takes a right turn around a blind corner.

As I bike into the blind corner, a few fit looking runners appear heading in the opposite direction, I slow, and when more runners appear I stop and stand to one side to give them right of way. But the runners keep coming in ever-greater number. There are no gaps to allow me to advance even a meter, without creating chaos amongst their ranks. There are men and women mostly young. I am pleased to see people out running on such a nice evening. For too long running has been confined to treadmills in gyms, and in recent years only few runners can be seen even on this lovely riverside track.

The runners keep coming and coming and there is no hope of escape but I enjoy watching them as they run projecting a mixture of determination and enjoyment so typical of runners back in the sixties and seventies. When I have almost given up hope of ever getting through the corner, the ranks thin a little and I make progress. And after a few more stop and starts I finally got free from the crowd and bike on down the riverbank.

The tide of runners is behind and I do not expect to see such an exceptional event again on the same evening. However if you go down river, in the end you have to return up river again, and there is only one riverbank. You can perhaps guess what happened. At the same junction the track is again jammed with a moving tide of humanity, this time they are not running but walking.

To give you some idea of the density, when I try to count them in bunches of 10 and find myself going 10, 20, 30 every second. Now the ages span the whole range with small children, teenagers, adults and the grey haired, and people with toddlers in push chairs. This diversity of ages makes this stream of humanity even more interesting to watch than the last.

A lady like me is waiting, in her case with a dog not a bike, for a gap and I turn to her and say, "Isn't it great to see so many people out exercising," and she agrees. Finally there is a slight decrease in density and another bike rider pulls past me into the flow telling me it is time to go. I am a bit slow to follow and have to get off my bike again and edge my way slowly through the crowds but I finally get free.

Biking toward the bridge inside the Esplanade proper I meet more walkers but the ranks are thinner now. Somehow I make it under the bridge, barely getting there in time to avoid the fast runners who have gone full circle and are heading back into the gardens. I pause up on the stop bank where I have a view in both directions I see every meter of the walkway, until it disappears around a distant corner but also in the other direction back down the river dense with a continual Congo line of walkers and runners. As I bike along Centennial Drive past the lagoon more runners stream toward me.

The sight of such an army of runners and walkers inspires me. I learn later this is part of a summer exercise programme organised by regular runners called the Super Sevens, where for seven weeks you run seven kilometres on one evening in the week.

I only hope the running and walking continues when the seven weeks are over. Or is this a tribal phenomenon that does not persist when the crowds are gone? I hope not.

###  The New Prius loses her Virginity

Life out on the roads is tough these days.

I might have thought that a new car would be treated with greater respect than an old banger but car accidents are respecters of no one and certainly not a shiny new white Toyota Prius.

It happened on the last Friday before Christmas Day which this year is on a Sunday and it happened in the Pac'NSave carpark in Palmerston North. While Shirley is without a licence in the months after her operation to remove a tumour from her brain I have been taking her to the Supermarket to get her groceries every Friday. While Shirley is shopping, I spend the time doing business in town But the accident was nothing to do with Shirley. I mention her because she was beside me in the car chatting when it happened.

It is eleven in the morning and the carpark is a mad house, packed with parked cars, with other cars buzzing agitatedly around. I realise now such a car park is not a safe place to take a new Prius but I have never had any trouble with my old Ford Laser, so I wasn't worried.

I exit down the access lane beside the Supermarket petrol station. However the cars ahead of me stop and I have to wait for the traffic to clear. I turn my head to glance at Shirley. Suddenly she gives a startled gasp, which signals by the primitive form of communication that took place before humans had mastered language, something between "Watch Out!" and "Oh My God" As I whip my head around in the direction indicated by her wide eyed stare, there is a jarring thud and the rear of another car fills my vision. Someone has backed out of a carpark without looking behind them and hit the Prius dead centre spanning both the front and back door.

I know what to do. I leap out immediately and prepare to get all the driver's essential details before he can flee. Two decades before when someone drove into the side of my car at a roundabout I foolishly paused to park the car properly and the driver fled into the night before my startled eyes.

The driver this time is in his late fifties or early sixties and he is very apologetic. I write down the licence plate number and when I have trouble spelling his name he hands me his driver's license. I know he will be annoyed with himself so there are no recriminations from me, perhaps the Prius expected more from me but futile rage is not in my toolkit. After getting his phone numbers and the name of his Insurance Company we part on what I hope are good terms.

Now I have work to do. Often on the last Friday before Christmas people quit work at 12 noon and by now it is 11:30. I drive around to the State Insurance shop on The Square. As I half expected, they do not process claims, only take money for new policies here but there is a white phone I can use to talk to the claims section.

The man who from his voice I judge to be in his twenties sounds heart broken when I tell him our new car has been damaged.

"The car parks are frantic at this time of the year. There are lots of claims coming in this morning from carparks." Insurance companies obviously know much about more human accident causing phenomena than the average person.

The only detail I have not collected is the man's address. "I have a witness," I tell him as together we compose a description of the accident to put in the claim application, she is Shirley Wilson and her phone number is 3577991.

Shirley is still out waiting in the car.

The young man says "I will phone the driver of the car that hit you and talk to him about the accident." He is gone for what seems a long time but when he returns all is well, "The man has agreed he is in the wrong and his Insurance Company will pay for everything and you won't lose your No Claims Bonus."

So far so good but I have more to do. I drive around to the Toyota Dealer and ask at the garage for the name of a panel beater who is experienced in working on the Prius. "Stuart Ferguson does panel beating for us. He may still be there but he will close early today"

Fortunately his premises is in the next block and he is still in the garage. He photographs the dents and promises to submit his report and quote to State before Christmas. 'We open again on the 3rd January. Come in then for an appointment," he tells me.

Well the appointment was a long time coming but eventually I got to the top of the Panel Beaters queue. He demands I leave it with him for four days. I know it is not so much the panel beating but the repainting that takes the time and in January the weather is perfect for biking.

When I phone in on Friday to see if it is finally ready, one of his staff has bad news for me. "There is a $300 excess you must pay before you take the car."

"But the accident was not my fault, the other driver has agreed he is guilty and his insurance company will pay all the costs."

"We don't have a record of that here," he continues.

I phone State Insurance and ask what is going on.

The man eventually returns, "I am sorry it is our fault. We did not send this information to the Panel Beater. I will email the information through immediately."

Knowing I am not using a panel beater recommended by State Insurance I have the presence of mind to ask, "Do you have his email address?"

A moments silence and then, "No we don't but we have a phone number and I will call him."

I wait another hour and pick up the car without paying anything.

The long saga is over. But is the Prius still a Virgin?

###  On How Not to Spend a Gift Voucher at the Warehouse

It is Friday night, the supermarket shopping has been done and as usual we have eaten our takeaways with Kay and Ross. I want to go to the Warehouse to buy a frame to mount the four pictures sent to Gordon from Australia by Gordon's daughter in law Catherine. They are photos of his second son Doug with up to date photos of the grandsons Gordon has never met, William and Jack.

Doug is a real chip off the old block in the sense he never stays in contact with the rest of his family; that duty is always left up to someone else. But Catherine his wife is always willing to help and she happily supplied the photos.

Bruce readily agrees with my suggestion, "Yes, I want to go to the Warehouse too."

Bruce disappears toward the gardening section and I buy the picture frame I want. When I track him down he is selecting music CDs in the media department of this New Zealand wide chain that sells virtually everything and at a lower price than everyone else. The arrival of The Warehouse with its trademark huge red building spells death in a small town for all competing local stores but who wouldn't buy at the lowest price; certainly not the typical New Zealand consumer.

Bruce has a mission tonight, one he hasn't told me about. His parents Graeme and Kay have given him a $50 voucher to buy whatever he likes in the Warehouse and he is well on his way to spending it at a bargain CD bin that has some amazing buys. Virtually all of Miles Davis's music is in a four CD set that costs 7 dollars. Can you beat that anywhere else.

I decide to buy a three CD set recordings of all the worlds tenors for him, after giving serious thought to a 3CD package of Maria Callas's music.

Bruce rips all his CDs to MP3 format and loads them onto his IPod where he plays them with the IPod in random play mode. This variety of best tenors will fit the format better than an endless supply of Maria Callas's music, even if she is my favourite soprano.

With so many CDs to buy we decide to go to the media desk rather than use the main check out. At the media desk, we meet a woman I always thought of as Beth Jamieson since she is the partner of a colleague in the Massey Chemistry Department called Geoff Jamieson. From the snatch of conversation from the woman behind the desk I learn her credit card is in the name of Beth Taylor. They are a thoroughly 21st Century couple.

"Hi Beth," I say alerting her to our presence. Beth is a perennially cheerful person, someone you like as soon as you meet her and I have known her for more than ten year.

The young woman behind the counter has almost completed Beth's purchase, the credit card has been swiped, the computer accepts it and then Beth produces a Warehouse Membership Card which entitles her to a twenty per cent discount on everything she buys.

The shop assistant is thrown into disarray. "I've processed it. I will have to cancel the purchase and begin again." And then, "I will need help from my manager. I don't know how to do that."

While we wait for the manager to arrive, the woman serves other people who are simply buying DVDs. A young man, who as unlikely as it seems, must be the manager on this Friday night, when with business typically light the store is noticeably understaffed.

While he works on the computer Beth chats with us, "Kimberly is wanting to buy a freezer using this 20 % discount. I don't know where she is at the moment." Then Beth looks at Bruce's stack of CDs and makes us an offer, "I can buy them for you and get the 20% discount and you can pay me later."

Who can refuse the charming Beth, certainly not us. The assistant takes over and when Beth informers her that our purchases are in fact hers, the woman does not protest.

Twice in desperation at the size of the task, the woman deserts us to complete the purchases for less demanding customers. We do not insist that all the CDs are taken out of their packages so they can be checked for any obvious flaws and this speeds up the process.

Then Bruce muddies the water further, "Can we purchase this plant and the bags of compost at this counter.

"You're not supposed to but I will do it for you." She is wonderful; even with the pressure she is under she continues to bend over backwards to satisfy us.

"Do I need to lift up the bags of compost," Bruce asks. She quickly declines, does some magic on the computer and our joint purchase is recorded

When the 20% discount is to be applied, Beth finds out that she has deposited the part of the discount card with the computer code on it and the game seems up. No discount for Beth or us. But the woman is determined, "I should be able to get that information on line" and she goes away with Beth's credit card.

Fortunately about now Kimberly comes over, "They raised the list price of the freezer by $150 and now I might as well buy a well know brand from another shop." Bruce and I will not have to wait around until Beth completes yet one more purchase.

After serving one more customer, who has only a DVD to buy, and has been waiting inordinately long time, our assistant is back. Now surely she must be thinking she can complete all this.

But no, Bruce thrusts forward his gift card and asks if that can be used.

This is a bridge too far. She glances at the card and then with a desperate hunted look you normally only see when a fleeing deer is brought to its knees by a lion and knows the game is up, she says firmly, "No, you can't include that as well."

Bruce no doubt wondering if instead of 'can't' he should read 'won't' but he doesn't protest. We all know enough is enough.

Thanking her, but in hindsight not nearly warmly enough, we troop out of the shop together where on the anonymity of the pavement I pay Beth the $80 we owe her in the slightly guilty manner of a person buying drugs from a dodgy looking person on a street corner. Then we both flee.

Bruce has not used the gift card but he has bought 26 CDs for a cost of about $70, so it's not all bad. Perhaps next time when Bruce has a gift voucher to spend and we see Beth in the Warehouse on a day there is a special discount for card holders, we will just slink quietly away.

A fun exercise but Bruce is slightly frustrated at not achieving his primary goal of spending the gift voucher. Maybe next time.

###  Sometimes You just have to go through Your Neighbour's Rubbish

It is a Thursday night and, before watching the version of Carmen Bob has on a DVD, we are eating dinner at 17 Waterloo Crescent with Bob, Julia and Pam. This afternoon Pam flew back into Palmerston North after spending ten days in Melbourne and she will not be staying for the opera.

My cell phone gives a few beeps announcing the arrival of a text. It is from my niece Hayley and reads, ' _Andrew is on page 4 of the Evening Standard tonight._ ' I am not surprised, Andrew is her husband and he has just completed the mammoth task of writing a sophisticated suite of software that will allow small businesses access to multiple web sites and applications. This will give them the power usually only associated with big firms which can afford to pay a dedicated IT person. As he is now about to launch the software, he wants all the publicity he can get and what better place than in the local newspaper.

Since Bruce and I are people of the computer age (or am I claiming too much for myself?) we do not take a newspaper, that's old fashion technology, rather we use the web to keep up to date with the news. Fortunately Betty next door is a subscriber. Every day the paper gives her a crossword puzzle and a sudoku to solve and also, as she told me one day, "It means I can check the deaths notices." When I pop over to check out page 4 Betty is out. Probably at a French Language class.

It is early Saturday afternoon before I try again. Betty is at home and she is glad to give me page 4 but first we must find it. The obvious place to look in a house hold run by someone who is both a regular tidier, and a committed recycler is the recycling bin. Soon I am bent over stretching to reach the bottom and pulling out newspapers as I find them. We return to the patio and search through our treasure but there is no Thursday paper.

Betty goes inside and returns triumphant with the Thursday paper. We pull out page 4 but as hard as we look we find nothing relating to Andrew Murphy. I hastily text Hayley, ' _We can't find anything about Andrew on page 4 in Thursday night's paper. What am I doing wrong?_ ' and send it off. A moment later I realise I have not checked the date. Damn, it is page 4 of the Thursday 9th February paper. I text Hayley straight back, ' _No Betty gave me the wrong paper. We are still looking_.' You might notice that I don't know how to write short text messages.

Betty checks in the house again and this time finds the Thursday 16th February paper. We leaf carefully through but cannot find page 4. We repeat the search even more carefully. Every page is present except pages 3 and 4.

Betty plays the last card in her deck. "I must have wrapped some food waste in it and put it in the rubbish bin."

"I will go and have a look," say I.

"No, you can't its all mucky."

"Yes I can," I reply as I head toward the garage. I can be very male macho when I want to and hope Betty finds this aspect of my character endearing rather than the behaviour of a male chauvinistic pig.

Betty watches in a state of quiet revulsion as I shove my hands through a mixture of garden rubbish and miscellaneous other messy thing. I think it is Betty who finds it in the end, a piece of newspaper surrounding a seriously decomposing speciality cheese. I drop the cheese back in the bin and we return to the patio.

The page is very damp and screwed up hence hard to read. What is quickly clear is that there is no article, it is a suite of photos. I take it carefully away and spread it out on the garden seat and hold it down by stones. The heading reads _Taking 5 at After 5_ and features photos of guests at the Manawatu Chamber of Commerce sponsored event at the Kingsgate Hotel. There are few other details. And yes there is the photo of Andrew, slightly stained by the unfortunate history of the paper but clearly Andrew.

Next time I will not delay so long before checking something in Betty's Evening Standard. Although to be fair I must say her rubbish is surprisingly clean.

### White Knights

We are driving across Wellington to take Walt Abell and John Greenwood back home, after we have all been to Circa Theatre to see the play _Peninsula_ , a slightly depressing exposure of the prejudices in a small New Zealand Town and how these prejudices affect people's lives, especially anyone who is different. I know there would be no dramatic tension if a play is about a group of eternally, glass-half-full, people enjoying life together, but is it entertainment to spend an evening with a set of glass half full people? Worse the play manages to be heavily derivative of other New Zealand plays and you leave the theatre empty of new insights or a novel way of exploring familiar themes.

We are travelling along the road behind Tinakori Hill toward Wilton Bush when I pass them. They appear only briefly in the car lights as we ghost by in the Prius but I have time to realise there were a man and a woman clearly in their third age of life and they were waving at us desperately hoping we will stop. Almost as an afterthought I do stop and back up to see what is happening.

The man speaks first, "I was dropped off here by this lady but now she can't get her car started."

A women, somewhere in her seventies, still sits behind the wheel and to illustrate the point she turns the key. The battery makes a desperate attempt to turn the motor over but soon gives up. The battery must be stuffed.

"Has anyone got a phone?" the man asks and we all reach into our pockets. I am closest and set myself up for a phone call or two.

"Do you belong to the AA," John asks, after all this is a classic case for the Automobile road side assistance program.

"Yes," says the woman." Regretfully I did not think to ask what her name was.

She picks up a purse and looks through her cards in the manner of someone who has given up before she starts. For a moment I think of taking her purse from her and doing a more systematic search but she might feel vulnerable handing all her cards over to a stranger.

I go back to the car and get a torch to help her in her search. But it is hopeless.

"I'll call the AA using my membership card," I tell her.

I hand the voice in the phone to the lady and after a couple of attempts at different orientations she manages to hear the woman. Now she does give her name but all I remember is that she was born in 1934. In an attempt to demonstrate the problem to the woman at the other end of the phone, the lady turns the key again with the same result as before. But she does not turn it off again and a warning chirp continues to interrupt her conversation until John intervenes. The conversation continues for some minutes with the woman giving all the details that the disembodied voice on the phone requires.

Finally she agrees to send their man out on the road.

"I think it's a dead battery," John comments as we prepare to leave, "The AA will be able to sell you a new one."

"I'll stay with her until the AA arrives," the man tells us and we drive away happy to have helped a fellow traveller.

The lesson seems to be that everyone, especially women travelling alone, should have a cell phone to call for help. The trouble is reluctant cell phone users may forget how to operate the phone by the time they really need it.

###  Cutting Michelle's Lawn

Michelle is our neighbour over the fence at 15 Waterloo Crescent. She is a very sweet lady separated from her husband and with two teenage children. Within a couple of years of shifting to Waterloo Crescent, Michelle has acquired another man in her life. He is a lovely gentle man and in our limited dealings very pleasant.

Ever since she moved in, Michelle has mown the front strip of grass in front of her house refusing to stop at our boundary fence but instead continuing for the next couple of metres to do the bit which is technically our responsibility. Since she likes lawns shorter than I do she almost always ends up cutting it before I get to it.

It is a lovely gesture of kindness that costs her very little and does have the benefit that the whole strip is always neatly mown, unlike all of my lawn which even I must admit gets a bit straggly at times. I think it is a beautiful sight in late summer when all the yellow dandelions are blooming but again this is not a joy shared by everyone in the street.

Betty at number 19 Waterloo Crescent pays a man to mow her lawns. Betty is most definitely a short back and sides lawn owner. Even in summer her man appears every couple of weeks and trims it even when it really doesn't need doing.

Betty's lawn mowing man ignores our strip with the result for much of the year Betty's mown couple of yards of neatly mown lawn ends at a ragged boundary of fairly long grass and flowers with ours. Of course I don't mind, the rest of the grass strip is our responsibility. However for much of the time the abrupt transition between our long straggling grass and Betty's tightly mown lawn with perfectly trimmed edges can be regarded as an unspoken comment on our different attitudes to lawn mowing; and one in which I come off worse.

One day recently when I pulled out our hand mower I noticed Michelle's strip actually needed the sort of light trim my excellent hand mower can give. So in my turn I set out to mow the whole continuous grass strip up to her drive. I am happily engaged in this good neighbourly act when Michelle drives in the gate. I wave cheerfully at her as she drives past.

There is a delay of perhaps a minute and then Roger, her new male partner, rushes up to see me. Rather than simply thanking me for trimming their lawn, he is clearly under orders to apologise and apologise he does, "We're terribly sorry that we let the lawn get in this state. It should have been cut sooner.

I cannot believe my ears. My mowing is after all just a gesture.

I hasten to explain myself, "You always mow the strip right up to my drive so I thought I would return the favour. I was not in the least concerned about the state of your lawn, after all you must know I have a very laissez faire approach to grass cutting."

I hope I assuaged Michelle's concern that I might be thinking of her as a rough neighbour who can't even be trusted to keep her lawn tidy. She is exactly the opposite.

Still the little exchange delighted me by the irony of a situation where Michelle assumed that I of all people was being critical of a neighbour's lawns. I repeat again, I run the longest lawns in the whole street, apart of course from Bob Lambourne across the road. Other neighbours could come complaining to my door any time. It does show how much importance many Kiwis attach to the state of their lawns.

I repeated the story to everyone I meet for the next couple of days.

Bryan Anderson and Mark Patchett are returning to Palmerston North on Sunday 29h April after a four-week trip to Spain. This is what they told us when they departed and they have not changed their plan, as far as I know.

However what I am not sure about, what I have not been told, is exactly what time their flight lands in PN. Shirley muddies the waters for me by saying Bryan plans to visit Australia on his way home. Now I am confused about even the day Bryan returns, but I must say he did not even tell me he was off to Australia. If all this seems very pedantic, it's because these ambiguities gave rise to the misunderstanding that followed.

As the day of arrival approaches, I contact Dawn to find out when Mark will arrive at the airport, hoping he will have time to drop in and see us after Sunday lunch. On the penultimate Sunday before arrival day she tells me, "I think his flight gets in about 2 pm but I will check this." Fair enough there is no hurry.

Finally on Friday 28th April Dawn sends an email to all those who might be at Sunday lunch. It reads:

Just to let you know that Mark's plane gets into Palmy at 3:20 pm on Sunday. Maka and I will meet him and take him home unless he instructs otherwise. After 24 hrs plus flying he may just want to sleep as he has to be back at work on Monday morning.

Guess it depends on how his flights were and if he managed to sleep on them.

I won't come round for lunch on Sunday but will phone to confirm Mark's arrival.

So it looks like Mark's mum has everything under control and we may only see Mark later in the week. However before I get over my disappointment a second email arrives, this time from Bryan.

Hi Paul - I leave for NZ in the morning. My cell phone has had a hissey-fit and I can't text. I arrive at PN airport at 3:20 pm on Sunday and would appreciate some help in getting to Te Awe Awe Street.

Regards Bryan

So everything is on again. We can all go out to pick up Bryan and to welcome Mark and Bryan back home.

I brief Bob on the latest news when I see him later in the day and am pleased he is keen to be at the airport. We head over to his place to check which flight they may be arriving in Auckland on. Soon enough he identifies an Air New Zealand flight from Singapore that arrives at about the right time. This is still a guess because if they get through customs quickly they may transfer to an earlier flight to Palmerston North. Still close enough. And I forget about arrival times.

About four o'clock a slightly agitated Bob bustles into my computer room. "Where were you and why weren't Bryan and Mark on the plane."

For only a moment he baffles me and then realising what has happened I blurt out, "But they are not due to arrive until Sunday."

As always the misunderstanding has arisen by someone making the wrong kinds of assumptions, in this case by me.

"But you watched me look up the arrival times for today's flights," Bob in a slightly accusatory tone of voice, quite reasonably points out.

"I did not know the web site you used only applied to the day on which you check it. I thought you were looking at Sunday.

"I was crossing the Square with Tony after having some coffee when I suddenly noticed the time. I rushed off to my car and hurried to the airport."

I apologise for my failure to tell him the flight was coming on Sunday.

On Sunday Bob, Aloha, Martine, Shirley, Bruce and I go to the airport, me carrying a evening meal for the two travellers, prepared from the extra food I prepared for lunch. However there is no sign of Dawn who I expect to see sitting around waiting for the plane to arrive.

Someone was ungracious enough to say, "Dawn will arrive just as the plane lands." The flight is in fact ten minutes early.

Downstairs we meet Gill Norris, one of Mark and Bryan's travelling companions. She brings us up to date, "Mark and I got on an earlier flight. Robert was using air-points and couldn't change flights." So she was here to meet her husband and we were only going to see Bryan.

We welcome a Bryan who looked as if he was auditioning for a part in the next Zombie movie, and not as one of the heroes trying to stop the Zombies. "I've caught the cold all the others had while we were travelling. We had this freezing wind from the north all the time we were in Spain."

Now I know why I like to travel during the northern summer.

We guide Bryan gently to the car, "Did you get to sleep in the hotel in Singapore?" I ask." This is a hotel like those being run as a brothel on the side, which have rooms that can be rented by the hour.

"I lay there awake for the whole six hours and couldn't get any sleep."

With a cold and getting no sleep for all those hours, it is no wonder Bryan is acting like one of the living dead. We drop him off with his meal and leave immediately so he can get some rest.

When we try to deliver the food to Mark we meet a brick wall. When Bruce phones Dawn to see where he is the answer amazes us all, "He is out at Massey working."

I give Bruce his extension number and he tries that but there is no reply. We drop into his house to see if he is there and find Maka removing rust from his car in Mark's garage, with a friend he brought around to be on hand in case the car falls off its blocks onto him. "Mark is at Massey but he has left his door open." So I put the food in the refrigerator and Maka promises to tell him it is there.

This is the best we can do. Once again my gift of reverse prophecy (see for example the trip to the Waiohine Gorge) has worked perfectly. The grand arrival is nothing like I imagined but rather a damp squib. I should have known it would be and then, this time at least, I would have been right.

### A Face Cream Crisis

When I drop into see Betty one May morning I find myself in the middle of a crisis, a face cream crisis. It takes me a while to find out why.

Gradually Betty recounts a sorry story of business mismanagement and the effect it has had on a potentially loyal customer, who is sent into a state of frustrated anger which does nothing but raise her blood pressure. It is as if the firm has deliberately set out to send her to an early grave by continually frustrating her hopes of buying their face cream, while at the same time stealing her money. Any one of these acts would have been annoying but taken together they almost send Betty over the top.

Let me go back to the beginning. Betty is always well groomed. She does not like people to come to see her before, as she puts it, "I've put my face on." I don't actually know what this means but it sounds rather serious. In Asian terms I know what is meant by 'losing face,' but that's just a metaphor.

During her morning grooming, Betty must apply some kind of face cream, and the cream of her choice is retinol cream. In the human body retinol is converted into retinal and retinoic acid, the metabolically active forms of vitamin A. There is evidence that these can slow the aging process in the skin.

So when Betty sees a firm encouragingly called _Beauty Products_ which offers retinol cream at a good price (Betty is a shopper who likes getting a bargain or if there are no bargains on offer, at least saving a bit of money) and furthermore they promise to maintain your supply of the cream by regularly sending you a jar. She signs up for two monthly delivery.

Next she is told by the firm that if she pays by credit card deductions, the jar of cream will cost only $41 rather than the $45 if she pays by cheque. Who can blame her when she hands over her credit card details? She would have been mad not to take the chance to save $24 over a year. But by doing this Betty does lose a bit of control if things turn to custard, and they will.

The first sign of trouble comes in January. Through her credit card Betty pays for a jar of cream on December 4th which duly arrives but then on January 8 she finds she has paid another $41 and of course receives another jar of cream. Obviously the cream is now coming every month. A terse email to _Beauty Products_ sorts that out and it is not until April 4th that another $41 is charged to her credit card (meaning that the two jars Betty paid for previously were spread over four months). All appeared to be well, _Beauty Product's_ intentions were good and they have mastered the problem.

Unfortunately the jar of cream never arrived. This as you can imagine was annoying, very annoying. They held her credit card numbers and as far as she can tell they will go on taking money without delivering cream for as long as they wished. By email she alerted the company to the new problem but still the cream did not arrive.

Worse was to follow, on May 7th when Betty checked her Visa account she found another $41 had disappeared down the drain that was the Retinol Company. They were back to monthly deliveries, except again nothing came. The problem was escalating. Now Betty's emails became positively scathing. Eventually she threatened to report the problem to the popular TV show _Fair Go_ or take a claim to the small claims court, if they did not cancel her contract with the company and send a cheque for $82 in the mail.

This finally brought a response, in a series of communications that up until then had been completely one sided, i.e. all on Betty's side. Their silence had not made Betty feel any better but now at last they were contrite.

_We apologise for what has happened. We found that you were in our database twice and the system thought it was dealing with two people_. _A cheque is in the mail for $82._

It all seemed over _._

But two days later, on the day I walked so innocently into Betty's house, Betty still had not got her cheque. She had talked to the Visa Company and was ready to get them involved and make a reverse payment from the firms account.

Not getting the cheque was bad enough, but then the company demonstrated in a practical way their determination to kill this troublesome customer off and end once and for all her threats of legal or TV action against them. Half an hour before my arrival, Betty received two jars of cream, which might be thought of as an act of contrition, but then included two invoices not for $41 but for $45.

Betty's agitation is fully justified. Now she has reverted to a cheque-paying customer and if she pays at the high price she would still be two jars of cream down. The situation is impossible.

The invoices have the phone number of the business, but as they are obviously (from their degree of disorganisation) a very small back yard (or garage) affair, they only have an answering machine. Try as she might Betty couldn't get through. They did not reply to the urgent messages she left on the answering machine. At every point she is blocked.

I leave her in this uncomfortable limbo, unable to assist her in any way. But later in the day she phones to tell me they have called her back to repeat their promise that the cheque for $82 is in the mail and to tell her she will not have to pay for the two jars of cream she just received. I presume the contract is now cancelled.

All's well that ends well.

###  Dawn Demolishes the Police Case

Dawn planned to retire from the legal profession when she came to Palmerston North. In Auckland she had a busy career acting on behalf of people who were battling the immigration authorities to get residency in New Zealand. Even in Palmerston North she continued to wind up cases in a field where the authorities move with frustrating slowness and always put the maximum number of obstacles in the path of good people whose only crime is that they are not already New Zealanders.

As so often happens in life, when Dawn got what she thought she wanted, she realised it was not what she wanted. Life was too boring without the challenges of the complexities of the law and the sometimes awkward judges. So she launched a new career acting for people who were facing charges for relatively minor offences. She had no wish to spend weeks preparing for a murder trial but for minor offences relatively little preparation is needed and the trial is soon over.

Another advantage is that there are lots of such cases. I imagine you could sit around for months waiting for a decent murder or rape case to get your teeth into, while smaller crimes crop up all the time. Another advantage is if you go on a roll of lawyers available for legal aid work the Police find the clients for you.

Dawn quickly became very busy, sometimes acting in court for clients several times in a single day.

If the Police have done their homework the cases when they come to Dawn are relatively clear cut. Dawn works toward gaining maximum advantage for her clients in order to ensure they receive the least possible sentence.

One Sunday evening Dawn was reviewing the files of a man charged with _Injuring with Intent_. There had been a fight between two groups of men, one five strong and the other two strong. The man she is representing is charged with knocking down and injuring a man who on the basis of witness identification.was the one who did it. As Dawn did her homework she suddenly spotted a serious error in the Police case. At first she couldn't believe it but when she increased her scrutiny her suspicions were confirmed. The Police had charged her client with injuring the wrong man.

In court next day Dawn's key witness, the man whose evidence clearly showed the wrong man was being named in the indictment, did not turn up. The Judge duly gave an order for his arrest and the trial continued after he was arrested by the Whanganui Police and returned to court. This witness gave evidence that the man named in the Police case was not the one injured by Dawns' client.

The Judge turned to the Police lawyer and asked him what the Police were going to do about it. Dawn told me later with some satisfaction that the Police left the Court Room for over an hour, no doubt studying the files with extreme care hoping to find a flaw in Dawn's case. Of course there was none.

The Police returned to court to announce they were dropping the charges and Dawn scored her first major success in a field where there is precious little room for major successes.

As she said at Sunday Lunch when she told me the story, the case was then 19 months old and she expect the Police would not try to reopen the case. And so it turned out.

###  Even a Child could Assemble it

When I drop in to see Betty next door, I find her with a wicked, slightly conspiratorial smile on her face, "I've bought a cabinet for the garage. I want to tidy things up a bit."

Betty is always waging war on her garage, the place most of us use to put the things we don't really have much use for but don't want to throw out yet. Above all else these are things we want to forget about. Betty probably does the same sort of thing but instead of being forgotten the knowledge that she is losing control of her garage is like an itch that has to be scratched

I nod and give her what I hope is the sort of smile a fellow conspirator would give. Whatever plan Betty is hatching, it is most certainly going to involve me.

"We're going to have to assemble it," Betty continues and I know immediately what she is looking forward to. Betty and I are the most incompetent assemblers of objects in the Universe and given only the usually meagre instructions that come with the product, we usually flounder around continually allowing ourselves to be distracted from the correct assembly sequence. Neither of us have had much practice in this sort of thing and neither of us want assembling to become one of our skill sets in the future but if you want a good buy then there are times you just have to bite the bullet.

"It was on special. It only cost $59," Betty says delightedly To be honest $59 for some bits and pieces of plastic in a box seems rather exorbitant; now twenty dollars, that would have been a bargain.

Betty is smiling at the prospect that lies before us and so am I. We will have fun as we mill around in our mutual incompetence and who knows this time we might just succeed. I've never assembled a cabinet before, perhaps it will be easier that the other things we have tried to assemble before.

Betty has a plan B, "If we can't do it we'll ask Glenys for help. She'll be able to do it." We both have complete confidence in Glenys's ability to assemble structures in three dimensions. Seeing her work at the most complex of structures is like seeing poetry in motion.

It is a few days before I am ready to make a serious attempt. On the Tuesday following the request, Betty and I acting as a team carry the impressive looking box out on the patio, open it and spread everything out before us. We have overcome the first potential barrier with ease namely unpacking. It is with trembling (I can't resist a little hyperbole in this sort of situation) hands that I pick up the instruction book, impressively large as instruction books go, with good-sized print. In fact the only symbols it contains are numbers that are part of an identification code for individual bits. The illustrations, at least before we start, look clear enough and the steps involved in the assembly are shown in a carefully ordered sequence of numbered panels, you know the sort of thing 1, 2, 3, . the usual numbers.

At first we don't notice the identification numbers on the black plastic pieces, and later when we do it is still a bit of a hunt to locate them. It's hot in the early October sun and I wish I had brought my cap. My jacket is already lying on a plastic table.

Our first task is easy enough. All it entails is thrusting 4 stubby plastic legs through the base and is accomplished quite quickly once we both agree this is the correct first step. Individual initiatives are not encouraged in this process, too often in the past such initiatives have led to acrimonious disagreements later.

The second step proves a bit tricky. As usual the first few puzzling moments are spent searching for somewhere to insert the piece in question but with the aid of a very clear sketch in the instruction book we finally reach the correct conclusion, namely it is a track attached to the wall to slide the shelf onto. It is Betty who discovers the well concealed numbers up the side of the wall and when she does we know where we must insert the track at 4D3F (yes I agree this does seem a madcap numbering system, but if it has some point we don't discover it at least not on the first pass). Although apparently successfully inserted as demonstrated by it not shifting when we give it a healthy tug, as soon as we try to assemble the base and walls (but not the door) the track falls out. When we try again more carefully it falls out once again.

Not a good start so against my advice, (but wisely so as it turns out) Betty produces a hammer. My self-imposed unwritten law of assembly, is that if you have to use a hammer you are doing something wrong. Betty does not cling to such old fashion dogmas. She regards anything as fair game in the assembly business even a hammer. Of course I have to give in, after all she is a very strong willed lady, and I have nothing better to offer. A bit of hammering does the trick and I convert immediately and become a hammer believer. After that we happily hammer away at anything that has the misfortune to stand in our way.

It is child's play to insert each wall into the base and raise the back into place. Progress at this stage is fast.

To complete the assembly of the top we have to insert 4 stubby legs into the gaps provided in the roof, (much like we did for the floor of the cupboard). This time there is a correct orientation for the legs as specified by an arrow on one side but as our confidence increases we quickly master this at least at an intellectual level. Unfortunately when we try to drop the roof into place by inserting these legs into the holes on top of the wall, holes that are calling out to receive them, by the worst of bad luck, the top isn't level. No matter how much we push and shove we can't improve the situation. With my penetrating scientific mind I quickly diagnose the problem, which fortunately for my self-esteem is at Betty's end of the assembly chain. One of Betty's legs, no not actually her legs, the stubby ones, has been pushed in upside down. All we need to do is take it out and put it in the right way.

Then a new problem faces us, not one mentioned in this smugly self-satisfied instruction book, namely what do you do when you can't get a leg put in the wrong way out again. The trouble is Betty has pushed the fat end of the leg into the hole, using too much force and the unnaturally expanded walls now grip the leg as firmly as if it is in a vice. No matter how we push and shove we can't get it out again. In the end we use a screwdriver to prise the flexible black plastic apart enough to free the leg.

After this frustrating delay things move quickly on. This is the satisfying part where the roof, walls and floor are moved into place. We have to screw 10 screws into the back to fasten it securely to the walls but with both of us working it does not take long. The sun peeps behind a cloud and I put my jacket back on again.

We stand back to admire our work. Our joy is short lived as almost simultaneously we realise that the two shelf sliders are at different levels. Sigh. Betty, a little unreasonably I thought, insists that the shelf must be level. I point out that it will still serve as a shelf when all the objects are stacked together at the low end. We may even get more in that way. However I can't shake Betty and nothing will do but that we tear everything apart and begin again.

A child of three can repeat a series of steps it has just been shown and we are adults with University degrees, so we attack the reassembly with an overarching self-confidence which will turn out to be badly misplaced. It is tempting to blame Martine van Hove who hearing our voices over the fence drops in for a visit. Yes we chat to her and I, at least, take the opportunity to show off my assembling skills a bit, who wouldn't, but as a result of this lack of concentration things start going wrong.

Adjusting the height of the shelf slides we quickly reassemble the walls, the back and the roof, too quickly as it turn out. Then we have to screw the back in place. I proceed confidently enough and have no problems, Betty however is in trouble. "My screws aren't going into anything," she exclaims. The male of the species, in this case me, immediately checks to sort out the problem only to find she is right. Worse it takes only a moment for us to realise that it is I, the male of the species, who has made the mistake. I did not take account of the simple fact that the edge labelled front must go in the front. Only if is it fitted this way will the holes line up with the screws. Betty kindly does not draw attention to the fact that I am at fault. My attempts to impress Martine have simply delayed the process.

The annoying thing is that instead of each new reassembly going more quickly, we simply discover one more way the box can be assembled wrongly.

With the box reassembled, but fortunately before we have the screws in place, we discover that yet again the shelf sliders are at different levels. Yes they were at the correct level in assembly number two but to line up the screws and the holes I rotated the wall through 180 degrees, since the shelf slider is not centrally located, the effect of the rotation is to shift them out of line.

We take it apart again, well almost; we can't remove one of the sliders. It was one we had to hammer quite hard to get into place and it is now securely stuck.

Brother Gordon is arriving at 12:30 so on this unhappy note we have to take a break. I have time to print out a copy of the trespass legislation for Martine, the reason she dropped by in the first place, and she at least leaves pleased with progress.

When I show the jammed slider to Gordon, he has it out before I can blink. He has an appointment with his podiatrist at 1:45 so we leave expecting to be back in about an hour. We should have been back in an hour but then like actors in the hysterically funny silent movies, between us we waste another hour.

Here is how it happened, and really neither of us is to blame. I drop Gordon off and tell him I will be back in ten minutes to pick him up again. When I get back there were no parks adjacent to the main door, so I park across the access way with the back of the Prius pointing toward him. So far so good. In the heat of the afternoon sun, in a week when we have put our clocks forward an hour and sleep patterns have been disturbed, and after the mental exertion of the morning, I fall asleep. I did not intend to but I did.

I wake from a sleep so deep for a moment I wonder where I am. Sitting up I glance at my watch. It is 2 pm. Gordon should just be finishing. Then I look again and realise it is 3 pm. I have slept for an hour and Gordon has not returned to wake me.

You guessed it. Gordon did not recognise the car from behind and has been standing waiting for an hour. We both feel rather sheepish. But either way the hour is gone and can't be recalled.

After some essential supermarket shopping, Gordon and I only have another twenty minutes to work on the box before Bruce's flight arrives. He has been in Auckland for a meeting. Betty is now at Tai Chi. We do our best and carefully repeat yet again the first few steps. We get it assembled but don't have time to screw the back down. I rush to the airport to pick up Bruce and Gordon returns to Levin. I drop in as soon as I arrive back and find Betty has done the screwing. She soon joins me in our task and we push on. Although we only have the shelf to insert and the doors to attach, there are still a distressingly large number of small pieces left in the box. We get the shelf in place and are just trying to solve the problem of the small bits of plastic that must be wedged into the corners to help support the door, when Glenys arrives.

We greet her with cries of joy, our saviour has come. She quickly takes over but like us she finds that there are some pieces that need a bit of tough love to click into place. It is always wonderful to see how the true professional works. Glenys moves smoothly from point to point and soon the doors are in place and the cupboard is fully assembled.

"We haven't used these screws," I tell Glenys. The instructions have not finished they go on over the page. Glenys has a quick look and tells me, "These are to screw the cupboard to the wall."

Betty does not want that.

"Do you want to get another cupboard to put on top of this one," Glenys asks Betty.

"No, No, No," Betty exclaims.

We carry the cupboard ceremonially into the garage and put it in place. Job done. By the next day the cupboard is full and the garage is much tidier. Mission accomplished.

Glenys has come with a house gift for Bruce and me, a mat to place inside the sliding door for visitors to clean their feet on before walking on the newly polished floor. We thank her for it. A happy ending to an interesting day.

"Even a child could assemble it?" I don't think so.

###  What Time is that Flight Again, Part 2

Pam, planning well ahead as usual, has bought a cheap ticket on the Friday flight to Auckland. Len however, with the pressure of work on his project left booking much later and he is flying out on Saturday afternoon. Both want to be in Auckland to be present for the celebration of an important milestone in their grandson Marcus's life in the Roman Catholic Church. Pam will stay on in Auckland with the family and Len will continue to Melbourne to do further work on the test-kit project.

"What time is your flight tomorrow Len?" I ask and then correcting myself saying, "What time do you want to be picked up?" Different people like to have different margins between the time they arrive at the airport and the time the plane leaves. Best if I concentrated on the essentials.

"Pick me up at 3:10."

Just to be on the safe side I call Len again around lunch the next day and ask what time I should be at his house. He confirms the 3 10 p.m. time.

Right on time I stop at the Blackwell's back door. Bruce goes inside ahead of me. When I step through the door I find Len a bit down cast. "My flight has already left," he says, "I thought the arrival time in Auckland was my departure time."

Bruce and I did the same thing on a flight to Melbourne and had to wait two days to get another.

Len tries to call Air New Zealand to sort out a new ticket but gets no response.

I say, "Let's go out to the airport you can change your ticket there. After all the next flight is less than two hours away."

Bruce is with Len in the Terminal Building during negotiations with Air New Zealand staff but he reports back later, "He had to buy a new ticket. The one he had bought allowed no changes."

"So he lost all his money on the first one." There is nothing helpful about stating the obvious, "Which flight is he going on now?"

"The woman said he had two options, either he could pay $84 and go on standby for the 5 pm flight or buy a ticket for that flight at a cost of $260,"

"What chance would he have if he went on standby?"

"She said no problem. There were 14 empty seats on that flight."

"Did he go on standby?"

"No he wasn't comfortable with the chance he might not be able to get on. He bought a full ticket."

These sorts of decisions are always decided on the basis of the individual's comfort level with uncertainty; obviously Len's is set very low.

'Besides he said the company would pay for it."

So the extra money will not come out of his pocket.

Later we learn that his son in law Dave appreciated the later arrival time. He had to take his son to the medical centre with a severe pain in his stomach. After waiting around there the pain cleared and Dave was then easily able to meet the next flight.

###  One Way of Saving Money

On the day Bryan flew back into New Zealand it was blowing a gale in Palmerston North. It was after all late September around the equinox, a part of the year when Palmerston North always used to get strong winds. Recently the equinoctial winds have been noticeable by their absence and even this season they have been relatively rare. None the less when I get out of the car the force of the wind buffets me about. If I were a sailing ship I would have reefed all sails to prevent being capsized.

I push my way toward the terminal building into the teeth of the wind thinking it is not the best sort of day for someone to return after five weeks at the end of summer in the UK. Bryan's plane is five minutes late and he tells me the cold he caught in Scotland has freshened on the flight, still despite his lack of sleep he seems wide enough awake.

With Bryan trailing his bag the wind blows us back to the car. With the bag safely stowed we move forward on opposite sides of the car to get in. Bryan has his door open first. When a moment later I open mine, and you can probably picture what happened next, the wind funnelled through the car sweeping all before it. I saw a glimpse of something white flash past me, but Bryan from his side got a perfect view and knew immediately that it was the airport parking ticket that was now dancing away from the car at a disconcertingly rate.

Bryan from his position of knowledge gave chase first. Ignoring his two replacement hips he jogged after the runaway ticket and as the full impact of what was happening finally hit me, I set off in pursuit. Our dual interest was not simply a matter of doing our citizen's duty but because without a parking ticket, it will cost us fifty dollars, while with it we would only pay 2 dollars.

This knowledge lends wings to our chase. We might as well have been chasing a fifty-dollar note. The speed of the fleeing ticket is impressive. With a mind of its own it sweeps its way across the tarmac, easily matching our respective speeds. As always in a wind, there are a few moments where it slows a little and tempts us on but another gust speeds it on its way and we fall behind again.

If you have a sense of humour, which I like to think I have, it must have been a funny sight that met a passer

by's eyes, two grey haired men of older vintage scurrying across the carpark as if on some slightly demented training run but totally wrongly dressed for it. As to us, we were totally unaware and uncaring about what impression we made, we were desperate to get that ticket. As I turned on the speed Bryan's body demanded he rest a little and I sprinted ahead impelled on by the prospect of a ticket catastrophe in the form of an open mesh wire fence, the airport boundary fence and beyond that the open grass beside the runways, territory that ordinary passengers are forbidden to access. If the ticket penetrates this fence we are lost.

At the edge of a road circling the carpark, the ticket is caught on a tiny hedge and holds for a few moments giving me fresh incentive but just as I am thinking I will be able to grab it, a larger puff of wind sweeps it over this inconsequential barrier. My heart sinks as the only barrier remaining before the fence is a second low row of vegetation which offers little prospect of holding the ticket for long. The wire fence is not built to contain parking tickets small enough to hold in the palm of your hand but instead built high to deter intruders. If the ticket goes through the wire fence I think the game is up.

Ignoring the possibility of approaching traffic I dashed onto the road just at the moment the ticket comes to rest in the next low hedge and sits there quivering in the wind. With a final spurt I reach down and grab it. As I stand up with the ticket held triumphantly in my hand I discover a taxicab stationary about a metre away. The taxi driver smiles; I waved the ticket at him and smile back grateful for the good brakes on his car. I like to think we parted friends.

Our return to the car is more measured.

As we arrived at the exit booth where the time of stay is measured and where you have to pay your money I tell the woman on duty. "Our ticket blew away in the wind," an explanation that I thought might have drawn a sympathetic response but instead she replies in a harsh bureaucratic voice, "It you lost the ticket you would have had to pay $50." Something both Bryan and I are well aware of.

Angered by her uncaring reply I snap back, "No we would not have paid the fine, instead you would have come with us to find the ticket."

This comment did not please her any more than my previous one, but as the barrier comes up I sweep away with my nose in the air, satisfied by my pathetic attempt at a clever response. You don't toy with someone who has so nearly lost their parking ticket.

###  Interference with the Queen's Mail

Actually I don't even know whether it is still the Queen's mail in New Zealand, after all NZPost is now a separate business entity whose role is simply to transfer some of the profits to the Government.

It is Betty who has her mail broken into and she is rightly aggrieved. Her story sounds incredible but let her tell it, "I posted a cheque to pay off my VISa card account around lunch time on Labour Day and on Tuesday afternoon a lady phoned from 595 Ferguson Street and asked if I was Betty Livingston. She told me she had found my Visa cheque in her letterbox, without an envelope, just the cheque. I went around and picked it up. I'm just about to post it again."

"Where did you post the card?" I asked.

"In the mail drop box outside the Winchester Dairy." This is the one I use.

What has happened? The obvious but unprovable explanation is that the person clearing the box saw the address on the envelope was National Bank, Card Division, and rightly guessed this was a bill payment and couldn't resist taking a peek. He was disappointed and later tossed it away or perhaps with some thought for Betty dropped it in someone else's letterbox.

Regardless of the explanation it must be reported, "Are you going to report it?" I ask.

Betty is reluctant, after all in this modern world it is always up to the victim to take the initiative and this usually means phoning a call centre, with the usual very unsatisfactory response. However I can't resist giving it a go, 'I'll post the letter and file a complaint for you."

Betty does not hesitate and a short time later I find myself with the letter in my hand walking down the drive. Well it should be easy, shouldn't it, after all the reputation of the postal system is at risk if the mail is being interfered with. As I am going to town anyway I drop into the Post Shop in Church Street. The man behind the desk goes away to ask his superior but returns with a negative reply, "You can't do it here you must go the Mail Centre over by the railway station.

I am not too disconcerted, the suggestion seems reasonable to me after all this is the place that organises all the mail pickups and deliveries. However if I hoped for satisfaction there I was soon to be disappointed.

"No, No," says the woman behind the desk with an enthusiastic relish I find disheartening, "You must complain at the 0800 number and she hands me a pamphlet with the number on it. Oh no the dreaded Call Centre, a place of little satisfaction and maximum frustration. But I have no alternative if I want to continue, and I do.

It does not take too long for me to get an operator but I am about to meet another brick wall. I begin outlining the problem my neighbour has had and she cuts me short, "No you can't complain, the lady concerned must call in."

"But why is that?" I protest.

She is not listening, "No it has to be her, you can't do it." A few more protests and it's all over.

Later I curse myself for not asking to talk with her supervisor.

So what choices do I have now, well really none. I am at the end of the NZPost line, I have no way of contacting anyone higher up. I can just forget the whole thing but I know it will gnaw away at me until I do take further action. One possibility is to get a woman who will call in pretending to be Betty. When I try this out at Sunday lunch it is quickly clear that I have no one wanting to join me in such a deception.

If I can find the email address of the chief executive of Post Bank I can take the matter to the top but this will involve the nuisance of writing up the whole dismal event. I could get Betty to sign the letter or in some way confirm I am making the complaint on her behalf.

After lunch as I walk to the car with Dawn, she makes a final comment, "Don't give up on this will you?"

I nod agreement. The next morning I decide to make a final desperate attempt to draw the matter to the attention of NZPost call centre. Adam answers and I warn him at the start that I will be taking notes on our conversation in case I need to take the matter to his supervisor. He agrees to that, after all he could hardly refuse as I have been already warned that NZPost may be taping our conversation for so called training purposes.

I now have his full attention. How easy life is when you are dealing with a person who is determined to facilitate actions rather than be legalistic and block progress. Adam never raises the question of whether Betty should be complaining but instead takes down all the details. Of course he asks a few questions such as whether Betty had really put the envelope into the box or did it drop on the ground. I can assure him Betty checked carefully to make sure it had gone into the box.

He then puts me on hold while he checks with Palmerston North Mail Centre about other problems reported at that mailbox. There are none. I give him our phone and email addresses and he assures me he will contact us if anything more is learned.

I would like to make a complaint about the response to my last call to the Centre but of course I have not written down the name of the women who gave me such a bums rush. I hope she gets transferred away from the Call Centre, perhaps a role as an office cleaner would suit her best.

With a bounce in my feet I drop in to tell Betty the good news. She is just as pleased as me. Case closed.

Well not quite, about two weeks later ten thousand items of mail are found in the house of one of the postmen down in Queenstown. The link with my experience is the stories that came in by people who phoned the 0800 numbers to report missing mail. One man discovered an appointment at the hospital, a power bill and an insurance renewal had gone missing. When he told the woman in the Call Centre (I am assuming he got the same woman as the one who answered my call) she simply dismissed it as an error on the part of the three companies. When the City Council reported one thousand rate demands had gone missing they were told by this terror of a woman it was their own incompetence. Can you believe her cheek? What is more interesting is no one took the matter any further

At least I hope it is the same woman, otherwise it demonstrates a culture of dismissing complaints in NZPost about lost mail, which is much more worrying.

###  Post Natal Depression and Infanticide, or is it the Empty Nest Syndrome

I don't know about your blackbirds but the ones on our section seem unable to find a safe place to build their nests, somewhere the local cats can't reach. Perhaps our birds are lazy and don't want to nest too high. The fact of the matter is cats can climb and the sound of chicks begging for food is like a magnet to them.

Can we help these stupid blackbirds? Perhaps destroy nests that are too low and make the birds start again. Even if they do manage to raise chicks to maturity, they don't build in the same place again but instead build another vulnerable nest.

It's not as if we don't have enough trees for them to use.

To be fair to the birds about three years ago they did have success, or at least I think they had success with a nest built inside a camellia tree. That year they choose a secure nesting site. Yes it was under the eaves but it could not be reached from the roof and being on top of an unstable trellis, one well covered with leaves, it gave the cat no access from the ground.

Everything seemed to be going well. The eggs hatched, and day after day both parents flew backward and forwards carrying food to their demanding off-spring. Not wanting to give them any reason for abandoning the nest I resisted the temptation to climb up to have a look inside the nest.

Finally on a sunny spring day I first checked the mother is still on the nest and she is. Then I walk around the corner and picked up a ladder. By the time I walk back she has disappeared. So I climb up the ladder and peered into the nest. Nothing, no chicks they must have taken off. She must have been a mind reader and had told the young to leave the nest before I got back. I was disappointed. I had left my run too late but at least I knew they had safely fledged.

Then I get a call from Betty next door, "I have a young bird sitting on my patio. It looks as if it might be sick."

I knew immediately what it must be and sure enough it was a young blackbird sitting looking bewildered at being out in the wide world. In response it pooped on Betty's tiles. It was strange the youngster managed to fly over the fence to Betty's but there was a gusty wind blowing. As to the parents there was not a sign.

I declined Betty's suggestion that I take the bird back to number 17, "The mother may not find it there." When I went back home what do I find but another young blackbird on our front lawn.

When after an hour the mother hasn't turned up I suggested Betty put out some food to tempt her back. When I check later Betty tells me the food has been eaten but the young blackbird is still there. So Betty puts the bird in a small plastic bucket and we release it on our front lawn. We have done our best.

Then I notice the mother back on the nest. I couldn't believe my eyes. What is she doing there? And she stays there, just as if she is waiting for eggs to hatch and she is still there two weeks later.

So is it Post Natal Depression or simply infanticide on her part that led her to abandon her fledglings. When I asked Betty she suggests it was depression brought about by the empty nest syndrome. Either way she is not a responsible parent. Whether there are more eggs in the nest, I do not know. Certainly there are no young left in the nest since she makes no attempt to feed anything.

What about the young birds? I just don't know. There are no signs of dead birds and this could mean the cats have eaten the defenceless, stupid birds. But a couple of days later I did glimpse a young blackbird flying up to the roof.

Footnote, a week later while walking near Massey University, I surprised a blackbird. She flew to safety but left on the ground exactly the sort of young birds Betty and I tried to help. The young bird sits in the grass looking up at me in puzzled fashion with no awareness of the danger I might pose. I walked on and I presume the mother flew back down to resume her self-defence lessons to her naïve offspring.

This encounter put another quite different slant on the blackbird mother in Waterloo Crescent. On the day her youngsters left the nest, there was a westerly wind with sudden strong gusts buffeting the garden. Perhaps the young birds were blown away by the wind and the mother just couldn't find them again. In this more generous scenario, she then decides, being a particularly devoted mother to shrug her feather covered shoulders and set out to raise another family.

Stop press, another week and she has gone.

###  A Woman's Purse: Is it an Accident Waiting To Happen?

Why does women's fashion demand that women carry a purse?

The short answer is because she has few pockets in her clothes to carry things like credit cards or a wallet or other essentials that a woman requires. The question then is why does women's fashion require that pockets not be added to dresses? My guess is to prevent the clean lines of the clothes being interrupted by bulky objects in pockets.

Whatever the reason it does set up the perfect situation for accidental loss. It is so easy when distracted by small children to put the purse on a table and then walk away without it. I know because this happened to my sister Kay on a Sunday in early November. She teamed up with Ross and Hayley to take her grandchildren Aidan and Lincoln to McDonalds leaving the car behind. Unfortunately as they grappled with the bulky swing doors, Kay put her purse down on a table and then swept out with the rest of the family leaving the purse behind.

This is something that can happen to anyone any time a person is carrying something that cannot be fitted into a pocket and is not attached to the body. Kay has other things on her mind. Grandchildren demand a lot of attention, especially when they are less than five years of age, a time when they seem to have a death wish. Without a moments thought they will try to run in front of a bus or fall down an open culvert. I ask you what's more important the life of the children or a purse? In this case Kay left neither her brain nor her head behind. Instead keeping all her attention on Aidan and Lincoln, she hurried out the door after them. The human race will never go extinct while there are grandmothers like Kay around.

It is not until an hour later that Kay realises she has no purse and quickly putting two and two together, she returns to MacDonalds only to be told that no purse has been handed in. It is officially missing along with sixty dollars cash inside.

Kay and Ross do all the things you have to do in this situation. The credit cards are cancelled, The Farmers Card is cancelled and the driving license will be replaced. Of course her car keys were in the purse too, along with the keys to the house. Perhaps in hindsight things might have turned out better if they had driven to McDonalds, because the loss of the keys would have sent her back looking for her purse much sooner.

Next morning at 8:20 a.m. Cloverlea School called to ask her if she would substitute teach for the day. Kay agreed, always willing to grasp the opportunity to earn a bit more money. Fortunately at home Kay has a second car key; however when she went to get the car she realised the garage was locked and she had no garage key on the backup car key ring.

No problem. Ross has a garage key on his key ring, except when he starts searching he can't find his keys. A desperate search follows, the obvious places being covered first. No keys are found. About now Kay calls me to ask for a ride to school. This is only day in the whole year when the new Toyota Prius is not waiting in the garage for just such a call. Instead I am riding my bike back home after dropping the car in the garage for its first WOF. I phone Pam but she is busy, Len is driving south to Wellington carrying his test kit for hormone measurement, Bob, Bryan and Betty, are late sleepers and not available to provide rides at such an unreasonably early hour. After them I draw a blank on people who might have a car available.

Later in the morning I phone Ross whether Kay made it to school.

Ross tells me what happened, "I managed to get one loose louvre blade out of the side window of the garage. Then I bent the metal supports of others with a pair of pliers which fortunately didn't happen to be locked in the garage. Eventually I got a hole big enough for Kay to wriggle through when standing on a chair."

Kay has the lean build of a marathon walker while Ross has a much more stocky figure, less adapted to squeezing through small holes well above ground level.

"I found I'd left my keys in the ignition of my car. Something I never do."

And so the problem of entry to the garage and the location of garage keys were solved simultaneously. Kay disappeared off to school, having already phoned to warn the school she might be late.

This experience has taught me how useful the full Burka is for a woman, Moslem or not. Imagine how much stuff Kay could carry underneath her voluminous dress if she adopted this fashion. Furthermore wearing the full Burka, the one that covers the whole head with only a grill for the eyes, means all the face creams and lipsticks and other cosmetics normally contained in a purse can be left at home. Actually there will be no need for a purse at all.

Worrying after thought, am I behaving like a Male Chauvinist Pig when I say such things?

A couple of days later Kay goes back to McDonalds and demands to see a Manager. Always best to go to the top in these situations and sure enough her purse was handed in. Never bother with the underlings always go to the top when you want action.

###  When is a Short-Cut really an Expensive Long-Cut

It happened when Bob was staying with his sister Ruth in London before flying out on his return to New Zealand. Bob told the story at the Sunday lunch held to welcome him back.

"Ruth has the upright piano that used to be mine and was in my mother's house. She and partner Jeremy live in a large house with room enough to have a few flatmates and the piano was in one of their rooms. She decided that since I was there she would like to hear me play the piano."

We are all ears as he goes on, "The flatmate was not pleased to see the piano taken away since he had lots of things on top of it. But Ruth has a firm hand when dealing with anyone sharing the house with her, making sure they know who the Queen Bee is.'

"I asked if she had any music, telling her I am not very good without music. She told me she didn't but it would not take long to get some."

When you live in London I guess you can buy anything you want. However it turns out Ruth didn't have plans to go anywhere.

"She told me we would down load free music off the web. We soon found some but when I printed it out the copy was illegible. The cartridge was almost empty."

So they would have to do some shopping anyway.

"When we got to the shop we were offered an official cartridge for 20 pounds or a refill for 15 pounds. We thought about it for a while but in the end decided to go with the cheaper one."

I think most of us around the lunch table immediately had the feeling this might not be the best decision, not from any prior knowledge but simply from the point of view of the story. If the cartridge worked perfectly there would be no story worth telling.

"We put the refill in the printer and it refused to print giving a message stating it was not the correct cartridge. We cursed the man in the shop but of course to check a cartridge you have to open the package and then you can't return it to the shop."

They are clearly not going to give up, after all they are both Lambournes and Lambournes like to get a job finished.

"We went to another shop and they told us they had the cartridge but they wanted the empty cartridge handed in too. So back to the house to pick up the old one. We took the filled colour and black and white cartridges back to the house, put them in the printer but again it refused to print."

If only they had spoken to Jeremy earlier they might have avoided the problem.

"Jeremy told us later he knew that the printer would only take the official cartridges."

I guess Hewlett-Packard do this to try to ensure substitute cartridges are not used, after all the companies make most of their money out of the cartridges. They sell their printers cheaply but then make the consumer pay the earth for the cartridge.

"Ruth was not giving up and went back to a shop and bought the official cartridge and it worked perfectly. In the end we paid 80 pounds to get a working cartridge. I downloaded one piece of music and played it and Ruth asked me if that was all I was going to play. But we downloaded more."

I guess the initial decision to choose the cheaper refill was one of those 'It sounded like a good idea at the time' decisions. But then you live to regret it. At least Bob won't be caught out again on a printer.

#  Postcards from Europe

## In Shropshire with Bob

### On Arrival

Our Air New Zealand flight from Hong Kong will land at Heathrow Airport at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday 23rd June.

Before Bob left New Zealand he helped us work out our train route to get to Birmingham and told us he would buy the oyster cards we will need on the underground and mail them out. This avoids the problem travellers typically have on arrival in Britain namely how to purchase a ticket on The Underground when all your British currency is in large denomination notes. We will also need the oyster card when we travel across England to get to Colchester to visit my cousin DJT and his family.

Just before he leaves New Zealand, Bob raises with us the possibility he will stay with either Ruth or Anne, the two sisters who live in London and then pick us up from the airport. A tempting possibility indeed as by the end of the flight we will have been travelling for 25 hours and awake for about forty. By email from the UK he confirms this plan and we are delighted to be spoiled by his generous offer.

When we emerge with our luggage half-asleep, Bob is nowhere to be seen. He has a little fun as he toys with us. I get a text saying, "I can see you." Of course we swing our heads around trying to spot him but without success. Obsessed with the idea he is somewhere outside, we continue to the footpath but again there is no sign of him. Then he appears. He has been drinking a cup of coffee enjoying our confused search.

We enter the parking building through a different door from the one Bob came out of and trail behind him wearing our packs as he searches the ranks of cars for his missing Volkswagen. In the end we go back out and come in the correct door when we find it immediately.

Bob uses the journey back to Shropshire to trial his new GPS system on a route he knows well.

Although we are on an arterial route (M40), I am impressed by the broad panoramas we get as the road emerges from low hills high above the surrounding countryside. We bypass Birmingham as we head to Church Stretton. On this major road, we get fine if distant views of the highest peak in Shropshire, The Caradoc. Bob's caravan is at the foot of this peak and we will get to know it very well in the next few days.

When we get back to the caravan Bob reveals that because he was unable to stay with his sisters, he has made a special day trip down to London to pick us up, a total of six hours driving. What a wonderful gesture and our gratitude is all the greater for knowing it.

### Getting Settled in

Since Bob only has room in his caravan for one guest, he has booked us into a very comfortable apartment on the other side of The Caradoc. It is a self-contained unit in one of the farm buildings formerly used for agricultural purposes and is one of several around a quadrangle.

"You can cross over that saddle if you want to walk to my caravan," Bob tells us pointing to a distinct dip between Caer Caradoc and another smaller peak.

We jump at the chance and immediately decide that the next morning we will not simply cross over the saddle and down, but climb to the top of the peak. The day dawns pleasantly warm with patches of sunlight pushed across the countryside by a gentle breeze, perfect conditions. As we exit our farmyard a small flock of the most unusual black sheep we have ever seen passes by. We are not the only sightseers and as the sheep disappear down the road I ask one of the women standing with us what breed they are.

"I think they're Belgium sheep," offers as a tentative explanation.

The large English sheep in the paddock we have to walk through as we begin to gain height look more familiar but these too are not a breed I have seen in New Zealand. They are also much tamer, more like pet sheep than those in New Zealand, who take flight at the first sight of an intruder.

We cross a style and enter the farm of Stephen, the farmer on whose property Bob's caravan stands. The track at first takes us through a garden of purple foxgloves and ends as we begin to climb more steeply through what has after the wet weather become a tiny creek. We emerge onto the saddle and enjoy the views on both sides. There is no sign of Bob's caravan, which is hidden by a much lower hill on the foot of Caer Caradoc.

While Bruce is taking many photos I continue the increasingly steep climb to the peak across well-grazed grass. Near the top a party of 14-year-old boys appears over the edge and descends in a good-natured scramble as they challenge each other to make ever-faster descents. I am impressed how both they and their adult leader are sensibly dressed in something approaching storm gear. The gentle breeze in the valley has strengthened into a heavy-handed wind that tugs at my clothes.

Bruce is far below, having trouble with his camera I learn later. The summit is not the sharp peak that views from below suggest but more like a flat crater on a volcano. There is a large burned patch in the middle that speaks of a recent huge fire and I wonder whether this is the work of witches.

Later Bob will tell us bonfires were built on hills across Britain as part of Queen Elizabeth's 60th Jubilee celebrations and as the highest for miles around, The Caradoc was the choice for Shropshire. Suddenly two men of around sixty, pop up out of nowhere. They have been sitting behind a small hump eating lunch sheltered from the wind. They tell me they are eating lunch but it sounds strange because we only recently ate breakfast. They must have started very early along the walkway that traverses the peak. They too are equipped for much worse weather than we will have today.

We have carried a New Zealand flag to Bob, a flag he will fly outside his caravan in opposition to the rash of British Union Jacks that have infected the country not only for the Jubilee Celebrations but also for the coming Olympic Games in London.

When Bruce arrives with his camera now fully assembled, I get him to take a photo of me holding the New Zealand flag blowing in the wind. Something about this patriotic act triggers an impulse toward colonial aspirations and, In Return< I claimed all the land I could see from the peak for the country of New Zealand (or as Bob will more correctly express it , "For Elizabeth, Queen of New Zealand"). It feels good to act like an imperial explorer in the 19th Century but back in the country which originated the practice. At that moment I didn't give a damn about those who were farming the country for hundreds of years, after all they are only natives.

As we continue our traverse we meet other people steadily walking up toward the peak on this pleasant Sunday morning. Then we almost simultaneously realise that if we continue to stay on the ridge we will end up on the road near Church Stretton rather than at Bob's caravan. Down in the valley we recognise the lane that zleads back to the farm.

As we walk back up the lane we have to avoid large puddles left by recent rain. A mountain biker comes down a hill toward us and we stand aside to let him through.

On other mornings we will take more direct routes over the saddle, and improvise a new way down each time. It is a wonderful way to begin the day.

###  The Gardens of the Village of Cardington

Although nothing was planned, we happened to be in Shropshire the weekend the good folk of the small village of Cardington throw open their gardens to the public, to raise money to maintain the local church. We have heard from Bob tales of how on one such an open day he once washed dishes flat out for three hours so the cups and saucers could be immediately reused as ever more people flocked in for afternoon tea. That must have been a bumper year for fund raising, perhaps they were even able to repair the church roof.

Bob knew such a tour would delight Bruce with his love of gardens but I enjoy gardens every bit as much, if in a less knowledgeable way.

The whole village is involved and many gardens in the outlying countryside are included too. Those without a garden help out in other ways. The village is just down the road from Bob's caravan so we walk. When we arrive the friendly welcoming atmosphere puts us at our ease immediately. When we go to the church to pay our entry fee, the three men who wait to take the money look and act as if they have just stepped out of the TV series _The Vicar of Dibley_.

Outside a farmer dressed in his best tweed jacket and tie but wearing mud splashed gumboots walks toward me. He hops aboard his tractor and drives off, demonstrating what the best-dressed farmer wears around here in a wet summer.

Our lasting impression is not only the splendour of the gardens but also the enthusiasm of the creators who wait to greet us. What patience and hard work it must have taken to get the flowers blooming so brilliantly on what, after weeks of rain, is at last a real summer's day.

At one large garden the owners have pictures of what the buildings and land were like a scant 6 years before. They showed a crumbling farmhouse surrounded by what looked like some pigsties which by some magic has been transformed into an attractive complex with interlocking gardens beside a stream. Who has to go to Provence to affect such changes, although a bestselling book is easier to write when the location is more exotic to the Anglo-Saxon reader.

One manor house dates back to Elizabethan times and is surrounded by flowing lawns and towering trees, interlaced with small pathways and secret courtyards where no doubt plans to overthrow the King could be safely plotted away from prying ears. The British winter climate hasn't changed as is shown by the forest of massive chimneys that decorate the roof, with each chimney serving fires in rooms on three levels. No matter how much wood they burned, these houses must still have been freezing in winter. We met the woman who owned it fretting over the possibility a careless visitor might slip into the gaps in the metal cattle stop and injure themselves.

Another gardener displayed plans for her garden in a year's time along with a photograph of a startlingly colourful patch of wild flowers. This year she was giving priority to eliminating a persistent weed that was taking over. To emphasise the point, at the back of the house a large patch of ploughed land stands empty of all plants. I only wish I could go back next year to see if the promise had been fulfilled.

Just as heart warming is the recognition Bob gets as we wander from garden to garden. Of course in Shropshire he is famous for being the person who appears at the end of May and disappears at the end of October to spend the winter in New Zealand. Down Under we see him in quite the reverse light.

###  Getting a Bit of Culture

Bob is taking us to experience real English Culture; a Shakespearian play at Ludlow Castle. What could be more English than that, a play by the greatest playwright in the world performed at a ruined castle? It is an afternoon out-door performance of _Much Ado About Nothing_ that has to be held inside the castle, since the inside of the castle is absent with only the surrounding walls and some rooms remaining. His sister Liz is going to the play with us and she comes out from Birmingham the night before, staying in her caravan parked just down the road from Bob's.

When on the farm, Bob helps out with the farm chores, often collecting the eggs. This evening we follow him around. He is well practised at sliding his hand under a hen sitting on a nest trying to do her duty, a hen that not unnaturally often protests with a squawk or a quick peck at the intruding limb. These are real free-range eggs laid by hens that spend all day out of doors poking around a grassy field looking for something that might qualify as food. The hens are locked in at night to stop them being gobbled up by a passing fox and the eggs sold at the gate. However Bob gets his hands on any with slightly damaged shells and feeds them to his guests. Using these this evening he will prepare a splendid evening meal for us all.

Before eating we check out the farm sheds where Stephen milks cows all year round for town supply. In the summer the cows are out grazing the lush grass but in winter they spend their days and nights in prison, well fed but no doubt counting the days until their release. I miss the bustle of animals we saw on our previous visit but this is most definitely after hours for the farmyard. Animals that are male or surplus to requirements spend all their lives indoors so their meat is suitably tender when they are slaughtered. It's not much of a life and the sight of them staring longingly at us makes me glad I'm a vegetarian.

On the way to Ludlow we stop off to view what Bob describes as a guarded Manor House from Elizabethan times. A tour bus arrives soon after us full of grey-headed passengers. We eavesdrop on the commentary the guide gives them but I soon tire of his chatter and continue exploring alone. There is nothing about this magnificent house of stone and wood that tempts me to live in it. Despite the best efforts of a fire in the large central fireplace, the house must still be bitterly cold in winter. There is a deep moat around the House but a moat without water.

After we leave the car in Ludlow and walk toward the castle, I suddenly remember I have forgotten my hat. I hurry back to retrieve it but Bob in this summer of showers does not bother to come with me, but rather makes gentle dismissing comments suggesting that I am a little over anxious.

By some mysterious process during the last ten years, I find myself understanding Shakespeare's plays as a whole, with the logic of the story emerging with great clarity. I think it began when Bruce and I went to a performance of _Anthony and Cleopatra_ at the Globe Theatre with an all male cast. Everything clicked into place. So often in the past the wonderful words of Shakespeare have seduced me by their magic and they seemed enough for any play. But as to the wider picture, I understood the plot in an academic way but only as story that relies on a series of devices that are driven by no internal logic. No longer is this true.

During the first half hour not only does the sun not come out but the clouds darken and the temperature drops a few degrees hinting rain is on the way. But it clears and by half time the sun is blazing down out of a clear blue sky. I am glad I have my hat and wonder how Bob is faring. The play is _Much Ado About Nothing_ and has a cast both animated and capable. The production is set during World War 2, which is perfect for a play that has soldiers returning from a war. The actors play their roles with a dark intensity for a play which I would have preferred to be light and frothy, more a milkshake than a glass of molasses. As you may know it is built around a dastardly deception which sets the true lovers at each others throats, and at the same time has the woman in the other central couple brutally antagonistic and rejecting of the likeable man who courts her; heavy enough stuff without hitting you over your head with it

The next day Bob's face and head are as red as a beetroot but I say nothing.

##  A Day Walk in the Welsh (and English) Hills

Bob has become famous for taking his New Zealand friends on interesting walks when they visit him in Shropshire. A few years ago they were always in the vicinity of his caravan but now he has spread his wings.

The plan is simple; take a train along one of the smaller railway lines and exit at an isolated station in the midst of the Welsh hills. Then use a map showing all the public walkways to improvise a day walk across the high rolling hills and through the valleys into England. Well this is what we did. Bob may have other strings to his hikers bow, or is that arrows in his quiver, but about these we know nothing.

In a summer of uncertain weather and much rain, but Bob chooses a perfect summer day for our walk. There is not a breath of wind and in the brilliant sunshine, the fields benefiting from all the rain, shine with a luminous emerald splendour. We exit the train at Llangunllo, a name Bob says with astonishingly fluency but I never attempt. He tells us a story about the pitfalls when attempting to write signposts using a language you don't understand. "The English speaking crew assigned to write a sign post contacts the Welsh Office to get the Welsh equivalent to put beside the English version. They get a rapid reply from the office and duly erected the sign using the words given. Only later do they learn from a local that the sign reads, ' _Translation Office is Closed."_ It's probably an urban myth but it deserves to be true.

This is sheep country and we see sheep but unlike their more anxious cousins in New Zealand they are not particularly bothered by us walking through the paddock. This must be a popular track. The first hour we spend climbing, after all we did start at the bottom of a deep valley. Then for a time the walkway traverses the undulating broad tops. At one point, unusually for British walkways, the path is fenced on both sides, and a track has been cut through the bracken which is benefiting from the absence of the sheep.

We emerge onto a Moor which has signs saying it is a nature reserve where there are restrictions. Obviously these don't extend to the sheep grazing quietly around us as we eat lunch and enjoy the view across a lovely valley with its jigsaw puzzle of fields defined by the hedges, along with one or two farmhouses to add interest. At the bottom of the valley a river too big for us to wade across bustles its way past.

With such perfect conditions sitting eating sandwiches on top of the ridge, I feel part of a poster advertising Welsh walkways. On a wild day with icy winds and flusters of snow showers, the moor will show its teeth and survival would be more in our minds than lunch.

"The valley and hills are just the right dimensions to allow you to get the best views of everything," I comment, "When you climb a mountain from the top the surrounding landscape is so far below it loses all the detail becoming only smears of colour." Thus speaks a North Islander who walks up relatively isolated volcanoes. In the Alps you will be surrounded by great peaks of similar heights to provide a panorama rich with details.

After studying the map Bob leads us along the ridge that defines this edge of the valley until we are faced with a flourishing field of grain. He studies his map for a few moments and then leads us off the ridge on a farm track and down to the road that bisects the valley. After walking for about a kilometre along the road, in a fine display of map reading Bob leads us off the road and across a paddock at exactly the right point so we reach the river at a place where a bridge spans it, or perhaps there was a sign on the road that I did not notice. This is a serious river, wide with deep pools that should be inviting us to swim on this summer's day but we have no time and push on.

We are now in England, the river defining the boundary between the two countries. We climb up to the road that runs along this side of the valley, at which point the trail disappears. Bob again shows us how to handle these tricks of the British walkways. After searching out the possibilities and checking his map he confidently heads up what to me looks like the driveway of a house. I wonder if he will use my method in such situations namely find a local and asks for directions. But no, we go through one gate, turn left and through a second gate and we are back on the track again. In what seems to me like a chapter torn our of _The Lord of the Rings_ the track ahead is blocked, not by a monster that must be defeated in a fight to the death, but an enemy no less demanding, a mine field of stinging nettle. Bob acts as if they are not there weaving his way through with apparent impunity. Is he wearing an invisible cloak? If so he does not offer it to us. Bruce and I don't really have a choice. We do not want to be lost in the English hills without a map. So we tippy-toe through with exaggerated care trying to keep the stings to an absolute minimum. Eventually all things end and we find ourselves on the side of a hill which might as well have been transplanted from New Zealand.

The track may be clearly defined on the map, but on the ground there is no sign of it. So we improvise. My inclination when in doubt is to climb, much like the Welsh sheep and Bob is of similar mind. We both ignore Bruce's desire to stay low. When I ask Bob where we are heading at a point where several ridges rise above us, he points to the highest. Isn't it always the way? Still from here the direction does look obvious.

Bruce proves to be right as Bob and I find out when we all end up blocked by a thick band of trees guarded by a barbed wire fence. We dutifully follow Bruce down the hill to a gate that gives access to a bridge over a small stream. A farmer is standing by the gate leading onto the road and when Bob shows him the map he indicates not only where we are but also exactly how we can reach our goal. We dutifully stand back relying on Bob to lead the way along a route which seems to be obvious.

"That's the way I get up there," the farmer confidently tells Bob and my confidence rises in proportion to his. I like to talk to a person who not only knows in theory were to go but has actually been there himself.

We follow the road until it branches, a branch I didn't notice from my cursory glance at the map. Now I ask you, your goal is a high ridge and one road continues down the valley and the other starts to climb toward the ridge, which would you take?

Naturally we follow the branch that climbs toward our ridge. This turns out to be a mistake, and after a short time Bob is expressing uncertainty about where this will lead. But who wants to back track down a hill again, after all how hard can it be to cut across to the ridge from where we are. So we keep going, taking the first farm track that leads to the right toward our destination. At first we make good progress and then the track turns left, while we want to keep going straight ahead. A barbwire fence and a stream block further progress. Normally a barbwire with a small creek on the other side is something we would cross with ease but unfortunately aother flourishing field of densely packed nettles guards the fence. Even Bob does not want to brave this.

We follow the farm track parallel to the stream until the nettles vanish. Without too much trouble the fence and stream are crossed but by the time I get over Bob is well ahead climbing the steep hillside like a goat. We follow until on the edge of the ridge we meet Bob coming back and the sound of a demanding voice, one that can't be ignored shouting "Go Back, Go Back". For the first time ever in the UK we were about to cross onto the land of a farmer who does not like hikers. As we follow the fence up the hill we pass a series of notices saying _Private Land Keep Out_. I find this encouraging because it must mean many other hikers have lost their way while they were trying to get to the top of the ridge.

Bob hurries on ahead and by the time we have climbed over another fence and through some trees, he has vanished, erased completely from the hillside. Although we are still not on top of the ridge, the land flattens out and it is not clear which way he has gone. A quick cell phone call sends us in the right direction.

The farm road on top of the ridge is the one Bob has been looking for and we follow this main road of walkways along the top of the bridge, When we slide off the ridge road and drop down into the valley, it surprises me to realise how much height we have gained. It takes forever to descend into this deep, deep valley but we finally make it to an official road.

Bob glances at a signpost, which says we are five miles from the village where we want to catch the train and asks, "Can you walk 5 miles in forty minutes," and we don't have to think before saying no. Showing the spirit that won Britain an Empire, Bob sets off at a fast clip anyway. He will not give up easily and we scamper after him. So begins an unfair race against the clock.

"The train may be late," Bob calls over his shoulder to encourage us and we hurry on down the narrow road.

There are no cars we could hitch a ride from. All the odds are stacked against us. Finally we hear the toot of the train. Not only is the train not late according to my watch it is decidedly early. Eventually Bob slows the pace. The battle is lost. We pause to have a bite to eat. This it turns out in hindsight to be a mistake. When we finally reach town and check the bus timetable we find the last bus left only five minutes before.

It is 5 o'clock and we are trapped in this small village. The only meals available are from fast food chains and the next train doesn't come until 9 o'clock. This pleases none of us. Bob stops at the pub for a cold juice while we search for a milkshake. A pale imitation of a milkshake is available in a small grocery store.

Bob returns with the answer, "We can take a taxi over to a busier line and catch a train from there." We jump at the suggestion but now we have to find a taxi. I ask a girl in the grocery store, but she is the wrong person. "There are no taxis," she asserts confidently. Bob is smarter; he checks at one of the local pubs, after all there has to be someone who takes customers home when they have imbibed too much. He strikes gold straight away. Unfortunately when Bob phones the number we find the driver is miles away and not available but he gives us the name of another driver. He may be in the next village but he willingly takes on the job.

Bob sits in the front seat with the driver but Bob is happy with silence and careful with his words. As we drive on in silence, I search for an icebreaker. My one attempt fails miserably and I too fall silent. The long silence must have got through to the driver who apologises as we get out, " Sorry about that, I'm usually a great talker."

We are in luck; a train going through Church Stretton arrives as we get on the platform. We are in possession of return rail tickets but not from this station. Bob is at his charming best when the guard, a cheerful woman, arrives, "We have a return ticket but it does not apply until the next station," and goes on to explain why. The woman smiles, "I enjoyed your story so much I won't charge you anything. It is a long wait until 9 o'clock."

So ends a wonderful day of walking with enough navigation challenges to make it interesting.

##  Visiting the English Cousins

My cousin David John Tomlinson, who goes under the aliases David, Dave and DJT with the last my favourite, lives with his wife Sue in not just the village of East Bergholt but in the East End of that village. In case you're wondering, there is a West Bergholt but despite the number of times we have visited Eileen, I still couldn't without a map lead you to either of them. Yes I know they are near Colchester because we often get off the train from London there but then DJT whisks us off through the beautiful English lanes to their house in the East End of East Bergholt. I suppose I should make a serious attempt to study a map and get my bearings but actually I rather like the mysterious feeling of not quite knowing where I am. Besides in the unlikely event that someone attempts to torture this information out of me, I won't be able to crack and reveal myself as the spineless coward I am likely to become.

On this visit things go exactly as before; we get off the train at the first Colchester Station, and there is DJT waiting to work his magic and spirit us away to his house. Sue and Dave have two lovely daughters who have now fled the coop and have partners of their own. Alice and Jessica don't live far away, just down the motorway in Chelmsford with their partners John and Chris respectively. Or so we are told but we have not yet met them.

Sue's mother Eileen has the most splendid garden you can imagine, one that seems to stretch for miles. Eileen loves gardening but she has her bete noire in the form of the deer that insist on coming through the hedge and munching on the vegetables, absolutely without her permission. This year DJT and his brother-in law have been constructing a cage, not as we do to protect our berries from the birds but to keep the pesky deer out of Eileen's garden.

In recent years Sue and DJT have adopted a gluten free diet and find themselves all the better for it. However this rather cramps Eileen's cooking style as they can't eat all the delicious scones and cakes she turns out. But Eileen has been doing her homework and has found a gluten free scone recipe which she will prepare for the first time on the day we visit.

On Saturday we go out to lunch with the potential second-cousin-in-laws John and Chris, as well as Jessica, Alice, Sue and DJT to a delightful country restaurant-combined with a tourist shop. At the end of the visit, although as I tell them, it is none of my business, I give Chris and John full marks as partner material for Jessica and Alice. It is fun to play the patriarch sometimes

When we visit Eileen late on Saturday afternoon, after our tour of the garden and inspection of the deer cage, we sit out of doors sampling the food delights she has been preparing. There is a tense moment as the gluten free scones are given the taste test, but there is nothing to worry about. Sue and DJT declare them to be delicious. Eileen is delighted to be able to resume doing what she loves best, namely preparing food for the family. Our ordinary scones are just as good and enjoyed all the more when eaten out in Eileen's garden late on a sunny summer's afternoon.

There is time on Sunday morning to do a local walk through the woods and across the fields around East End. While in the afternoon, DJT takes us for a walk through Rendlesham pine forest. We even get to see some deer. There are many walks of different lengths through the forest and along the way DJT checks out the opportunities it provides for an excursion with his clients in the area of special needs.

Perhaps we should return to the forest at night to see if we can sight the UFOs which visited the forest on several occasions in late 1980, sightings that were reported by many observers including trained military personnel. However perhaps in a cover up attempt neither DJT nor Sue thought to mention these sightings at the time but back in New Zealand good old Google came to my aid. You can't keep anything a secret for long in the age of the World Wide Web.

For a while we watch an impromptu game of baseball using a tennis ball. The teams are picked on the basis of gender, with no account taken of age. At first the aggressive and competitive males are batting and they don't let up on their hitting even when the tiniest girl has a turn at pitching. Justice is served when at their turn in the field by an unlikely series of nicks and miss-hits even the smallest girls (and there are more of these than of small boys) progress around the bases and score runs. The recriminations between the males at every miss-field or poorly directed throw are a delight to see and hear.

It has been a lovely relaxed visit catching up with the cousins.

##  Don't you Love Munich?

I don't know if it's because Angie Mair lives in Munich but we love Munich. Returning yet again to the city feels like coming home, at least to the part of Munich where Angie lives. The city fits us like an often worn pair of shoes, comfortable and easy to slip on. Things do change and this year Angie has a new car, and like all new cars it is pregnant with airbags that cause it to swell out at the sides, so now Angie has to manoeuvre more carefully to squeeze her car into the same narrow parking space.

When we arrive from the airport, laden down with bags, we take the lift up to her apartment but on all other occasions we walk up and down the stairs On this visit I find myself flapping my feet on the steps to produce a satisfying echo, until I suddenly realise I may be disturbing Angie's neighbours. I stop immediately. Angie's apartment is on the top floor, and in Germany such apartments have a special name on the lift panel, not that I can remember it now.

Each morning, we are up early to join Angie on her regular visit, well regular at least when she has guests, to get fresh rolls for breakfast. At this time in the morning the small shops are busy with people off to work. Angie naturally asks us what we want. I only allow myself to dither in a state of indecision until she is asked to give her order. Then I make a snap choice. Breakfast, always one of the nicest parts of the day when you are travelling, is eaten out on the balcony or if it is too cool in the conservatory.

Of course we want to go walking and when Angie suggests walking to the Palace along the canal, we jump at the suggestion. I am surprised what a short a time it takes to reach the canal and in an attempt at deadpan humour ask Angie why she hasn't brought us here before.

I have been too deadpan, and Bruce gently reprimands me for sounding accusatory. I quickly relent. Are the days of deadpan humour dead?

In truth we have done this walk before and the further we go the more memories crowd into my mind. There are bridges from which we get increasingly clear views of the Palace. At one bridge, at a place where the fish must be regularly fed, fish much bigger than the ducks, circle threateningly just below the surface waiting for food. Obviously the fish don't eat ducks but a duckling might not be so lucky.

The morning is grey and cool. We avoid spending time in the palace but instead circle through the gardens and the waterways which the Royal Family used to provided pleasant passage at a time when the roads were rough and rutted.

On the day we decide to revisit the lovely valley of the river Isa the weather is hot and sunny. At 27 degrees this is our first serious chance to acclimatise to the heat we will meet in Italy and Turkey. We walk from the centre of the city out toward the edge in a valley so deep you soon forget you are even near a city. On the occasional shingle beach, people swim or sunbath and since this is Bavaria, the more free thinking part of Germany, naked swimmers are as welcome as those who cling to togs.

The valley contains not only this lovely natural river but also, for much of the distance, a canal that robs water upstream to generate power and provide safe passage for the large commercial rafts that in summer pass by packed with people, bouncing with music and with a lone chemical toilet standing tall at one corner. Wildness and control in the same valley with neither intruding on the other, it is a tribute to the German genius for creative planning.

At first we really feel the heat as the sun presses down on us from a clear blue sky with the heat, radiating back off the gravel path providing an unwelcome encore. Finding a place to eat lunch proves difficult because when we want to stop the bank is guarded by a muddy trough. Eventually we find both shade and dry ground for the picnic lunch.

A little further on we return to the river again to paddle on a small shingle beach. The heat of the sun has had little effect on the temperature of this snow fed river. I ask Angie and Bruce to pretend to be shocked by the feel of the water on their feet while I take a picture. They mime an overreaction that comes out perfectly in the photo.

A bit later we discover where all the rafts are stopped for lunch. From a bridge we can look down as the people slowly reassemble for the afternoon float.

The rhythm of walking and chatting shifts me into a hypnotised state where time no longer has any exact meaning. Time itself becomes an elastic quantity. However when we come to a very high bridge at the edge of the city, we are ready to stop but here find there is no way to escape our prison, guarded as it is by the river on one side and the deep canal on the other. We turn around and a kilometre up stream there is small bridge crossing the canal and we are able to walk back to the high bridge. This being Munich the public transport infrastructure stretches out to the edge of town and Angie unerringly leads us to the terminal of the nearest line.

On another day we drive southwest to Marktoberdorf to visit Angie's mother and brother Luis. Luis when we last knew him was called Alois but after his father Luis died he adopted this family first name. The sun again beats down from a ctear, blue sky, exactly the sort of day I love in summer, as we amble across town to one of the best local restaurants in Marktoberdorf. Here with help from Angie, I choose a mushroom dish which uses mushrooms that do not grow in New Zealand, even if they do right across Europe. This is the Pfifferlinge mushroom, a small brown mushroom, so small you eat the stem as well.

Afterwards Angie takes us to Lake Hopfen, a lake with the perfect size for the post lunch stroll as it takes an hour to walk around the edge. This is the lake where Angie's family used to come during the years Angie was growing up. A small train toots and rattles its way past when we are about three quarters of the way around.

All the long-term locals from Marktoberdorf are enjoying a story of justice finally served. It begins many years ago with two brothers, one with a successful building business. The son of the other brother takes a job in his uncle's business and works hard. When he gets no recognition for his hard work, he goes to his uncle and asks for a raise. Instead of giving him a raise, the uncle calls a meeting of the whole staff and tells them how his nephew has tried to take advantage of his position in the family by asking for a special raise the other workers do not get. Publicly humiliated by his uncle's action, the nephew resigns and leaves. A few years later the nephew sets up his own building business and this slowly grows and becomes more and more successful.

His uncle dies without a will and by law his two sons must share the building firm equally. However one of his sons dies young leaving two children to share in their father's part of the business. To meet his obligations the surviving brother gives these children money but he retains sole ownership of the business for himself. One of the sons of the dead brother trains as an engineer and ends up working for his uncle. However again there is a split and the engineer leaves the firm and goes to the court to win his (and is brother's) half share of the business. His uncle fights him at every step as they go through the courts. During his pig headed drive to retain full ownership of the business and deny his brother's children their rights, his business is weakened and finally driven into receivership.

Irony of irony, who bought the building business, but the nephew he humiliated in front of all the staff years before. So it seems if you wait long enough you may see justice done. Many of the long-time residents of Marktoberdorf took unconcealed delight in his discomfort.

On our last morning in Munich, we head for the Olympic park, the venue of the games in 1972. The stadium and swimming pool with their tent like roofs look in just as good shape as they were forty years ago. Each year we have visited Angie there has been a food fair park but today it is shut. The park is being prepared for something big at the weekend. Dark clouds and skiffs of rain send us home. We return in the afternoon and wander around grounds that have temporary security fences in place but are not yet closed to the public. The highest peak in the grounds was made using rubble left from the Second World War. This is the only place where you can get a panoramic view across this very flat city.

One evening as we sit out in Angie's garden, the thunder we have been hearing in the distance comes closer and in the end passes right over us. First the rain teems down and then the rattle of what sounds like stones on the metal roof, turns out to be hail. Bruce and I compete to try to capture on film a flash of lightning but it in not easy. It is not easy. The best way is of course to shoot a video.

Yes, as usual we ride a tram into the heart of Munich and we walk the central tourist area with crowds of other visitors. I bought my orange Munich hat here. It is strange how at different times you pay attention to different things. When I first saw the fountain today I thought it must be new, but when Angie corrected me memories came flooding of the fountain from earlier visits. It is strange how memory works.

The finest meal we ate at on the whole trip has to be the feast prepared for us by the Italian Restaurant across the road from Angie's apartment building. They know Angie well and they treat Bruce and I like Kings. A special non-alcoholic drink to start an entrée that escapes my memory, all memory of it blotted out by the arrival of a dish of spaghetti with white truffles. We have heard of truffles, we know people rave about truffles, we know they are incredibly expensive but we have never eaten any and these are the very best of truffles. They have an intriguing flavour that stays with you. The eggplant dish with melted cheese and a tomato topping and the specially constructed strawberry dessert completed a fabulous meal. I only hope we thanked Angie enough.

##  The Seductive Beauty of Tuscany

The plan for our Italian journey is to drive south from Munich in Angie's splendid new BMW to the Villa in Tuscany we have rented for a week. While there we will explore the small hill top towns and the lovely rolling countryside, as well as to visit the beautiful city of Florence. Afterwards we will drive north to Venice where we stay for four nights before returning to Munich to end a marathon journey during which we will travel a total of about 2300 kilometres, all with Angie at the wheel.

"I enjoy driving," Angie tells me at the start, "Although you're welcome to try out the new car." I never take up the offer because the thought the car might be dented on my watch intimidates me too much.

When we see Angie in Munich the plan has already been modified, "On Saturday (the day we are due to make the trip), thousands and thousands of people across Europe will be starting their annual holiday by driving toward the beach resort of their choice. The roads will be clogged with cars. Let's leave on the Friday and go as far as Modena. That way we'll avoid the traffic jams." Sounds good to us.

It's like the circular old riddle "Why did the chicken cross the road?" In our case you ask questions like, "Why do all you fools choose to travel on the first Saturday?" The answer is because all the villas rent in the busy summer for a whole week starting on Saturday. Thus one imperative, the fact that holidays begin on Saturday, drives the other, so even if you don't start your holiday on a Saturday, you must move on Saturday to get into your villa and become part of the unwelcome holiday scramble. Angie is much smarter than that. From Modena it is only a short drive to our villa near Colle di Val'd'Elsa.

I call it a villa, because from the distant perspective of New Zealand, Tuscany is a place where people always stay in villas. In reality we hire part of an old house with slightly suspect plumbing and a large kitchen with the only saucepans being of catering size, the sort you need when cooking for a large family get together.

But I get ahead of myself. On the drive south I really enjoy the way Angie takes an interest in the country of origin of passing cars and shares it with us. "Look that's a Danish car and they've towed that caravan all this way." Sometimes the comments are less complimentary for example if we get trapped behind a slow car on a winding mountain road she notes, "These Dutch drivers just don't know how to drive the hills. They slow down at every bend."

We arrive in Modena late in the afternoon, just as a passing thunderstorm dumps its rain on us, but the weather soon clears and we explore the old town as the setting sun is turning the light yellow. All the buildings are painted in warm sunset colours of orange, yellow, terracotta and light brown which become almost luminous in the sympathetic light. When we check at our hotel, we find out the owners of houses in the centre of Modena must choose house paint from a limited pallet of colours, no blues or greens allowed.

As we will find out throughout the trip, Angie has lots of interesting alternatives to the initial plan, which we always jump at, and which always enrich our holiday. In this case the question Angie asks is, "Shall we take the slow road over the mountains to get to Pisa or go on the main highway?" This is the no brainer of all no brainers, the mountain road of course.

It proves to be one of the many memorable drives Angie has up her sleeve to entertain us during the Italian Trip. From Modena the road does a long traverse across the hills, sometimes going up and sometimes down but always with more up than down as we gradually gain the height we need to cross the mountain range. On a Saturday, at a time when the Tour de France is running, there are many cyclists taking on the challenge of the climb making me feel a bit lazy doing it in a car. Bruce and I snap panoramas out the window as the opportunity arises.

The descent on the other side is just as sharply steep as the climb was slow and gradual. Now the cyclists, risking life and limb, match the cars for speed on the most twisting parts of the road. We plunge into a deep valley and join a healthy looking river. Then suddenly, abruptly, without warning, we come to an asymmetric arching stone bridge. No simple mathematical function can describe the way it rises gradually on one side, reaches a hump and descends quickly on the other. Was the building designed by an alcoholic? Or is it deliberately built this way so bigger ships can pass up the river? But why bigger ships should want to enter further into a narrow valley with only a few tiny villages perched high on the hills is beyond us. Or perhaps the bridge builders muddled the plans and improvised the ending. Later I learn the name of the place is Ponte de Dravolo and when I study photographs I realise the bridge is in fact symmetrical and the asymmetry arose because of the angle I was viewing it from.

Equally puzzling is what the villagers living on top of the sheer hillsides do for a living. The hills are covered in trees, with no garden terraces or any sign of cultivation. There may be goats or sheep but we don't see them.

We stop in Lucca to eat lunch on top of a city wall which is mainly intact. Bruce as always finds a toilet with his unerring toilet radar and on his return he gives me instructions of how to get there. "It costs 60 cents," he announces, "But don't press the red button. I thought it opened the door but it was an alarm. It kept sounding until I left."

"Is it a unisex toilet?" I ask, something we are very familiar with in Palmerston North. But I do not listen when Bruce says, "No."

Finding enough change of the right kind to get into toilets is the curse of a trip through Europe. I manage to find three 20-cent coins and headed off. As I tell Bruce later I never read the notice that instructed users to put in only a 50 cent and a 10 cent coin. I extracted myself from the queue to the lady's toilet when I realised that a young woman is staring at me in the way a woman might at the sight of a serial rapist. I finally arrive at the men's loo. As I hesitated before the coin operated lock on a cubical door, a young man comes over to help me operate it. When he sees my twenty-cent coins he says, "I suppose they will work just as well," and drops them in. It works but when I finish I find the exit stairs blocked by a chain. I slip under and escape. Angie however is locked out. I hope the closure is for regular cleaning and not because of my violation of the coin rules but I will never know.

We access the centre of the town through an alley and discover Lucca is the birthplace of Puccini the famous opera composer. A little further on and we are rewarded with the sight of an impressive church, which we learn later has the nickname of 'the wedding cake', but no ordinary cake, a multi layered cake with white pillars between layers.

A short drive takes us into the world famous town of Pisa. Angie finds a park in a suburban street. She refuses to give any money to an African youth who has made a great show of guiding her into place. When you have paid extra money for a sophisticated distance indicator around the car, you don't pay to have someone pretend to help you back and we walk away. When we return I slip him a dollar but only as a gift.

My jaw drops when I catch my first sight of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Of course I have seen many pictures of it, but viewed on site the tilt is much more impressive than in any photos. Another 10 cm and the whole thing must certainly collapse, or that is how it looks to me. In reality much money has been spent on foundations to lock it into this precarious position. There are many people wandering around but it is late in the afternoon and the crowd is thinning. We visited the churches adjacent to the tower but do not go up the tower, even though there is virtually no queue. It is time to head off and find our villa.

### Life in the Villa

Angie has chosen well, we are in a huge old house with furniture that must date back to the start of the last Century. The kitchen has a table big enough to have all the extended family around for lunch and the pots and pans of catering size needed to cater for the crowds. Since it is summer we always eat our evening meal out under a huge tree that rains seed down on the table necessitating much sweeping each day before we eat. A cat drops by each evening to try to scrounge a meal but since we are eating vegetarian food she is out of luck. Our other guests are less welcome, big hungry mosquitoes, which soon have us rushing to get the repellent.

The big bedrooms are furnished with delightful antiques. Our bathroom is at the very top level but with a small door that gives a window into the ceiling, which is in a state of unmodified originality and gives me the unsettling feeling there may be someone secretly living there and coming down only at night.

We have plenty of space because we booked the Villa when we thought Len and Pam Blackwell would be joining us but sadly in the end Len could not fit Tuscany into a holiday schedule that for work reasons, he limited to five weeks. There is also a swimming pool which is the only place we see the other guests who are tucked discretely tucked away in sections of the house we can never explore.

Our landlady is a strong woman probably in her late fifties who uses the full flourish of the melodic Italian language to conduct conversations that spread her views far and wide. The woman is delighted when she discovers Angie speaks Italian and naturally from that point on Angie gets all the attention. When our toilet stops flushing properly it is Angie who has to go and tell her. When the water suddenly cuts off when, on our different levels, Angie and I are in the shower, it is Angie who has to communicate this fact to our landlady. When the first attempt at repairing our toilet fails, I carry buckets of water up the stairs to allow us to flush by hand for a couple of days after Angie reports the toilet is not yet repaired. As I point out, "I'm happy enough carrying buckets of water up the stairs but the landlady will want everything working by the time the next occupants arrive on Saturday." Angie sees my point and reports the problem again and this time the toilet remains repaired.

We are on a hill that gives us a view of the town at the end of a long valley, a valley that seems to channel the sounds straight up to us. Early every morning all the dogs in the village go into a frenzy of barking, barking that as it continues becomes so hysterical it is difficult to know whether the dogs are being beaten or are simply over excited at the sight of food. On our last night a rock concert is held in the village and the noise is transmitted so well that it is as if we are at the concert. I can't vouch for this since I slept right through it but in the morning Bruce tells me it was one to two hours before he could go to sleep.

###  Day Trips to Florence

"We won't take the car to Florence," Angie announces, "It'll be hard to find a park and the old city is compact and easy to walk around."

Makes sense to us and as a bonus we get our first train ride in Italy. The day before we go we check out the Railway Station which is a nearby small town. The tickets are dispensed by a machine.

"Let's buy the tickets now. In the morning there might be a queue. With the tickets we'll only have to be here five minutes before the train leaves."

In Florence our first tourist hit is a massive church with very intricate stonework that has Bruce snapping away with his camera and Angie videoing intensely. "We'll come back in the afternoon when the sun lights up this wall," Angie says.

All our days in Tuscany are very hot and today is no exception.

Bruce is the one who finds, with or without, the help of his Lonely Planet travel guide a museum packed with famous and beautiful statues. Some are Greek and many are Italian inspired by the Ancient Greek statues, and all are naked, a celebration of the human body. Some of the sculptured heads are brilliant in the way they convey feelings. At times I feel as if I am looking into the soul of the person. The time dissolves away and when we return into the heat outside it is lunchtime. Today we eat in a small park beside the River Arno, the wide but shallow river that flows through Florence. A lone oarsman trains on the water and some canoe paddlers follow.

Next we head off to the gardens of the Medici Palace which prove to consist of a landscaped hill rising behind the Palace. Like all such gardens it does not bother with many flowers, instead favouring long gravel paths between lines of Cypress trees which look like uniformed, athletes standing stiffly to attention. What gardens there are have an unkempt look and clearly need a good weeding something that does not escape Bruce's attention. Higher on the hill there is a large pond with a statue in the centre and at the highest point a museum displaying human figures in fine pottery.

As we head back down Angie points out a stone terraced stadium, "We used to eat a picnic lunch here with my parents when we were children." Clearly we are in territory Angie and her family know well. I am glad her family had picnics because when travelling Bruce and I love to take sandwiches and fruit along so we can eat out of doors where ever, and whenever, we choose. Angie's brother Luis prefers to have a restaurant lunch but Angie, the world traveller is flexible and swings both ways.

It is time to visit the Medici Palace. We are apprehensive about the likely length of the lines but there are none. Don't ask me how much the entrance fees cost, I don't know. When you are travelling using a currency which is foreign to you, you spend it like water. Besides the entry fees are the least expensive part of a trip that involves long distant plane flights, hotel charges and restaurant meals.

Whatever it cost, the Palace visit is worth every penny. Aside from the wealth of spectacular paintings and the exquisite furniture, there are the rooms themselves, with ceilings that can only be described as magnificent, covered with lovely paintings and interestingly shaped mouldings and all through the palace gold glitters. This is the sort of place I would choose to live in if I were a king. I wonder what princely orgies took place in the large marble bathroom but I push aside such uncharitable thoughts. The Medici Family was doing something right because they were in power for 200 years.

Two days later we repeated the Florence visit.

At the station we are in such a rush to board the train, we forget to activate the ticket by date stamping it. Without the stamp it is as if we are travelling without a ticket and for that you can be fined. At the first stop Angie rushes out to stamp the tickets while I stand on the platform pretending to be about to board the train to ensure it will not leave without her.

The aim of this visit to Florence is to wander through the city enjoying the structures of the buildings and people watching. We start by taking a bus to the top of the hill beside the River Arno and get panoramic views of the city. The bus stop is adjacent to a church with an impressively wide set of steps leading up to it. The pictures of the city are better here but we do not follow the crowd from a tour bus into the church.

Instead we walk down the hill and discover an even better viewpoint one that is very popular but so expansive the crowds are spread out as thinly as butter on a poor man's bread. We press a man into taking a photo of the three of us with Florence behind us. This is the photo we will use on postcards back to New Zealand.

Today I suggest to Angie and Bruce that we picnic amongst the crowds, somewhere completely different from the small park we ate in on our last visit. Finding such a place is not as easy as it sounds, because there are guards appointed to move you off steps in popular squares. We finally find a place near some road repair work, but one with a good view of the passing crowds and no officials to shift us off. I find it fascinating to be able to study the ebb and flow of the people into and out of this very famous square filled with naked statues guarding a large fountain. No one sees us and no one bothers us except the usual mother earth figures in peasant skirt and blouse that beg for money. "They are gypsy women," Angie tells us. Then a second woman appears holding a tiny baby like an advertising placard. The baby is sound asleep.

On the steps of a museum adjacent to the square two men spend the whole time moving on anyone who show signs of settling in. While we are wandering through the streets looking at the many interesting buildings and exploring the markets, we find a shop where I print the photos we took in the morning.

The train back is delayed for almost an hour and we are glad this morning Angie found a free park in the town so there is no parking ticket to run over time.

###  You did What While You were in Tuscany?

On Monday we launched forth with what we thought was a great plan for the day. First visit another of those spectacular hilltop towns and then walk to an Abbey and back.

On our trip we spend most of the day walking around towns or museums and art galleries, and doing endless interval training as we climb steps, not to forget the church towers which set us another fine climbing exercise that gets us breathing more deeply. but despite all the exercise we get every day of our stay in Tuscany, we are still driven to seek out a longer walk.

We are committed to a longer walk, we only have to find it. We visit the town of _Castelnuovo dell 'Abate_ and it is as fascinating as all the others. As usual I walk around open mouthed at the sight of so much history spelled out in the stone buildings and fascinated with the architecture, while desperately searching for new adjectives that will capture the magic of the town but failing and falling back to the usual adjectives such as spectacular, fascinating, memorable, unforgettable, magic and so on. If Shakespeare can invent new words so can I. This town is digatic in its selvicive amasura. Am I still making sense to you? If so you're doing better than me.

Perched on a particularly high hill, the views are truly panoramic, more like from a low flying plane than a peak. The complex of narrow streets provide a maze to be explored and at the highest point there is a castle with a walkway along the top of the walls, but the entire centre is gutted. After a bit of a search we find the stone stairs to the top of the wall concealed inside a restaurant, pay our Euros and go exploring. At each corner there is a slightly higher tower built so the townsmen were better able to see the enemy and defend against them.

The day by now is seriously hot, around 37 degrees in the shade and the words of the Noel Coward song _Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the Midday sun_ suddenly make sense to me. I begin to have doubts, perhaps today is not the day to do a long walk, but I don't say anything, after all the others must still be full of enthusiasm for the trip.

Somewhere about now Bruce studies more carefully the parameters of the walkway. The Lonely Planet tells us it will take about four hours for the return trip. When we find out it is twelve kilometres in both directions, I think I sense Angie and Bruce's enthusiasm being quenched by the hot breath of reality. Six kilometres an hour is for us a brisk walk, there will be no time for slow sauntering, and the idea of having then to walk back sounds intimidating.

Angie has a sensible suggestion, one we jump at, "Let's drive down and see what the _Abbazia di Sant'Anitimon_ looks like." And that's another thing from the town the walk is downhill all the way there so it will be an uphill slog coming back.

The air around the Old Abbey is dead still. The sun hammers down on us as we approach the hottest part of the day making me feel as if we are working beside a crucible of molten iron. The temperature must be well over forty degrees. Standing outside after the relative coolness of the Abbey with the sun again pressing hard down on us to retain our full attention, Bruce bravely points to a dusty track that heads up a hill and announces in the way of a member of the Philpott family, a family famous for its determination, "That's where we have to go."

I rebel, "That doesn't look very attractive on a day like this," I offer up and quickly go on with a suggestion, "Let's look for a shorter walk." There are no heated protests so we pile into the air-conditioned car and drive off.

"I'll need some diesel soon," Angie tells us, so we are able to put off the decision of where to walk for a bit longer. We stop in the first small town for some lunch in the shade of a tarpaulin amongst a group of village men drinking wine (or was that beer) and gossiping noisily. We are told there is a petrol station in the next town. But before we leave I see a walkway sign and we decide to follow it. It is pleasant enough, after all there is shade from some trees and it gives fine views across the land below; however it barely takes half an hour and this will never be enough to satisfy us.

Studying the Lonely Planet either Bruce or Angie finds mention of a walkway beside a river. This immediately attracts us with the image it brings of cool water tumbling over the rocks and trees growing alongside. Of course the reality is very different. The heat of the sun does not abate just because we see water beside us. When we get nearer the river we realise it is not flowing but consists of a series of stagnant ponds. Still it's the best we've got and we follow the track down stream. There are a few clumps of willows but none that provide shade for the path. We determinedly plug on for about half an hour (I think that was the time but I might be wrong as I could have been a little feverish by then), at which point Angie and I head over to one of the ponds and, taking off our shoes, paddle. The water is almost the same temperate as the sun and not very clean. Bruce doesn't even bother to join us. Fortunately it seems to take less time to make the return journey. Honour is satisfied we have been walking, for an hour and a half. But it has not been much fun. It is time to return to the villa we call home.

It was strange how after we have eaten dinner, as usual outside under a big tree, talk turns to a beach, no particular beach, but just a beach. It may have been Angie who mentioned it first, or possibly Bruce or even me, but once raised the topic will just not go away. In the end maps are pulled out and we check to see how far the sea is away from our villa.

Italy is not all that wide and our villa is somewhat west of centre. Bruce's Guide Book comes out and sure enough, there are quite good beaches, beaches which at first seem a long way from the Villa but when we look at it more closely the distance seems to shrink and it doesn't look too far after all. Then Angie spots near the coast an important archaeological site that dates back to 100 years BC. Unfortunately the site is well to the south of our nearest beach and it will be a long days drive to get there and back. So it is discarded

Second thoughts creep in and we begin to feel a little strange about spending a day goofing off at the beach when we are supposed to be enjoying the countryside and towns of Tuscany. But the topic will not go away. After our walk through the summer furnace that is inland Tuscany, we feel that we had earned a beach trip.

It was Angie who resolves the matter, "There is a town we should visit on the way to the coast. We could visit that first and go on to the beach from there." No one shows the slightest interest in vetoing the suggestion, in fact Bruce and I applauded it, after all this wasn't really a day at the beach, it was just a small extension of our visit to the town of _Volterra_ and will provide a bit of variety.

_Volterra_ is the town where Angie finally finds the pictorial calendars she wants to give to Kay and Pam. For Pam, Angie most definitely wants lots of pictures of the hilltop towns, places Pam has probably read about in her preparation for the Italian trip that never came. The civic building with its impressive clock dominates the square and the town is bright with coloured flags of the region, presumably we have just missed a festival event. We can see more patches of trees from the highest point, looking intensely green against the dry brown landscape.

Planning for the day isn't perfect. When we got to the beach I discovered I've left my togs behind. The beach does not have golden sand, it hardly has waves and it is crowded with people but to us it is perfect. To meet our needs African men walk up and down carrying their wares around on their shoulders. The one thing they aren't selling are togs but my tartan underpants, the ones I bought in Munich when I thought I'd lost most of my other underpants are rather like the speedos that are still favoured on European beaches. The water is very warm, almost tepid, perfect for floating around without any need to keep swimming to stay warm. One man has come prepared and sits in the water on a plastic chair reading. No danger of any tidal rips here. I don't swim much, the water is too crowded for that. At one point I get hit on the head by a ball that a group of teenagers are throwing about but when I turn and give them a wide smile, the tension they are feeling as they await an angry outburst dissolves away. When I throw the ball back I get a smile and thanks in return.

After an icecream, our half day at the beach is over and it's back to castles and churches.

###  Castles and Churches

Always explore the town you are staying in first is a good rule and we obey it. We park below the old part of Cole di Val'Elsa, crowded along a ridge high above the rest of the town, and spend an hour walking the streets on a perfect summers morning, not a breath of wind, already hot and promising to get much hotter. At a lookout we pressure a man walking by to take a photo of the three of us with the town behind. Duty done we headed for San Gimignano.

To drive in the countryside of Tuscany is to swing across deeply rolling hills with scenery straight out of a children's fairy tale. Immaculate golden fields of cut oats or wheat contrasts, with green of fields of grass, sometimes interrupted by a vineyard with the green grapes soaking up the sun as they begin to think of ripening to purple. For now they are as hard as ball bearings. Then there are the lines of the spiked cypress trees coloured in a green so dark that against the rest of the sunlit fields they look black. The view is continually changing as Angie swings around the curves and climbs to the top of the next hills before gliding into another valley with new perspectives and fresh combinations of the elements of the same jigsaw puzzle. We are never bored. When the undulations give way to flatter fields we are rewarded with brilliant yellow displays of sunflowers, their heads lined up toward the sun.

Then suddenly I see a town on one of the higher hills, with a splendid castle or church steeple soaring above the rest. Sitting in the back seat and without the guidebook each hilltop town is a surprise for me.

We know when we are nearing San Gimignano by its multitude of high towers soaring above the houses in a random array. This is town is famous for its towers. I find it difficult to believe the Lonely Planet's explanation that Bruce reads out to us, "The towers were built by feuding families who used to fight their enemies by throwing objects at each others tower." Or perhaps I remember wrongly. "There used to be many more towers," Bruce tells us. We wander along the streets demolishing it with our cameras; the hilltop towns in Tuscany are never too crowded probably because there are so many towns for the tourists to scatter themselves across.

One feature intrigues us, one we won't forget. It is a life-sized nude statue of a male standing in the street as if inviting some kind of intervention. I stand demurely beside it while Bruce takes my photo but the polished surface of the penis signals, that like the right hand breast on statue of Juliet in Verona, it has been grasped by many hands. There is even what looks like a copy of the same nude metal statue on top of one of the towers but whether its penis is shiny I can't tell.

### Siena

The Lonely Planet Guide says that Siena and Florence have been historic adversaries for hundreds of years and travellers tend to have a strong preference for one or the other. As to me I loved them both, but then I haven't done any background reading and my affections are necessarily skin deep.

In some ways it isn't a fair comparison because, don't ask me how, but for our visit to Siena I left my camera behind while in Florence I could snap away to my heart's content. Walt Abell once challenged me with the question, "Does taking photographs get in the way of really seeing a place." An uncomfortable sort of question for someone who takes as many pictures as me. My snap reply was, "Having the camera makes me look more closely at everything." Walt fell silent naturally taking this glib and confident reply as the end of the story.

Well in Siena by necessity I got to try out a bit of touristing without a camera. I find myself studying the inside of the magnificent church called the Duomo, in great detail knowing there will be no record to remind me of what is probably my only visit to this town. I will have nothing to give me pleasure for the second time on a vicarious visit through the lens of my camera. Travelling might be more leisurely without the busyness of taking photos but on balance I think I stoill prefer being a camera-clicking tourist.

In Siena, because all cars are banned higher up in the city, we have to park our car in the underground car parks at the base of the hill. However the authorities do provided a series of escalators to slide us easily to the summit.

A plague outbreak in 1348 killed two thirds of Siena's 100,000 people. How will we behave if a virulent virus breaks through our science based defences. Not a good time for hypochondriacs, who will think that the first little cough signals imminent death. With the aid of air travel the plague will sweep the world breaching our defences like a huge viral dam, flooding everything before it. Perhaps you will die regretting the years we have spent eating a sensible diet to prevent the obesity that could cause diabetes and remembering all the times we could have eaten piles of delicious butter or cream filled donuts, deferred gratification that in a plague counts for nothing.

I find it very hard to believe that a Cathedral can lose a Crypt for 800 years. Now I ask you how on earth could this happen? Does some unthinking monk shut the door down to the crypt and then out of sight out of mind, no one thinks to try opening it again for all that time. I occasionally lose something in the house but I normally find it before 800 years are up. Far be it for me to criticise the Clergy in a church as all knowing and powerful as the Roman Catholic Church, but it looks like incompetence to me. That is what happened in Siena.

Yes we visited the crypt and I hope if it gets lost again, although its less likely these days with the Crypt being mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide, but if it does I hope before 800 years is up someone will discover this book in the National Library of New Zealand and put the matter right. It is a rather bare crypt but the wall is covered in dry paintings, which doesn't surprise me after all what painting wouldn't be dry after 800 years left unattended.

The Cathedral is, naturally enough on top of the hill and its church spire is the highest structure in the town, but only by a technicality. Just a little down the hill is the piazza del Campo which is the civic and social centre and has been so for nearly 600 years. It says something for the continual battle between church and state that the tower on the civic building is higher than the church spire but since the building starts lower down the hill the Cathedral one still wins out. The sloping Piazza is nicknamed the mussel, because it has the curved cup shape of a mussel shell.

A few times each year horse races are held around the piazza with riders from different parts of the city racing to see who will be champion. Each part of the city has its own brightly coloured flags and the riders are decked out in their own colours. Bruce bought a green and yellow flag for its colourful design but we don't know which section we are supporting. We try to eat lunch discretely at one edge of the piazza but are ordered away. Bruce has the good sense to ask the official, "Where can we eat lunch then?" and sure enough behind the civic building is a large covered open area for just this purpose.

Things Lost and Sometimes Found 1

Life's Like That 1

Things Lost and Sometimes Found 1

Wrapping the House in Cotton wool 8

Changing Online Providers is Easy, Right? 15

The Goat's Rue Story 21

Four Students from Singapore 25

Want to Paint My Roof Anyone? 29

My Sister's 69Ath Birthday Party 35

Operations Everywhere you Look 38

 A Transit and Partial Eclipse in One Year 42

The Weather Bomb 47

The Wonders of a GPS Guidance System 50

 Stop Press: Belligerent Boy Bullies Betty 55

Things Mean A lot 58

A Simple Question of Defrosting 58

Hadlee Comments on the New Prius 60

On Keeping Clean 62

An Inspiring Sight 63

The New Prius loses her Virginity 65

 On How Not to Spend a Gift Voucher at the Warehouse 67

 Sometimes You just have to go through Your Neighbour's Rubbish 70

White Knights 71

Cutting Michelle's Lawn 73

A Face Cream Crisis 77

Dawn Demolishes the Police Case 79

Even a Child could Assemble it 80

What Time is that Flight Again, Part 2 84

One Way of Saving Money 86

Interference with the Queen's Mail 88

Post Natal Depression and Infanticide, or is it the Empty Nest Syndrome 90

A Woman's Purse: Is it an Accident Waiting To Happen? 92

When is a Short-Cut really an Expensive Long-Cut 94

Postcards from Europe 95

In Shropshire with Bob 95

On Arrival 95

Getting Settled in 96

The Gardens of the Village of Cardington 98

Getting a Bit of Culture 99

A Day Walk in the Welsh (and English) Hills 101

Visiting the English Cousins 105

Don't you Love Munich? 106

The Seductive Beauty of Tuscany 110

Life in the Villa 113

Day Trips to Florence 114

You did What While You were in Tuscany? 116

Castles and Churches 119

Siena 120

It's All Happening in Venice 125

Gondola Racing 125

When it Rains at the Beach 128

In the Tourist Heartland of Venice 129

Don't Forget the Islands of Murano and Burano 130

On Leaving the Lido 131

Postcards from Turkey 133

Unforgettable Istanbul 133

Dreaming in Cappadocia 139

A Bus Tour 141

The Hot Air Balloon Ride 142

Down on the South Coast of Turkey 145

The Sunken City 146

Life in the Flower Pension 148

Swimming in the Mediterranean 149

 A 2000 Year History Carved out of Stone 151

While Travelling 152

By Air 152

 A Danger not Mentioned in the Guide Books 153

 Watching my P's and Q's In Turkey 154

Turkish Airline One of the Best? 155

The Roads in Turkey 156

Theme Parks Disney did Not Invent 157

Minutiae 158

Very little things 159

A Bee in the pocket 159

The sound of a Prius Toyota approaching 160

 Upset the balance of Nature at Your own Risk 160

From Our Own Correspondent 161

From Our Reporter in Seattle; Jan 2012 161

 A Christmas Greeting Sans Mention of Children, Grandchildren or Pets. 161

The Kiwi Connection 163

What Did You Do in the Summer Hols? 163

An Insider's View of a Zoo 163

Off to Waiheke Island 167

 Out Walking in a Twigs and Twitters Reserve 168

 On Meeting a few Long Time Waiheke Residents 170

Tourists Exploring the Island 172

A Long Weekend in Whangarei 174

 Expanding a Short-Long Weekend into a Long-Long Weekend 174

The Car Journey up and back 174

 Exploring the Northland Coast around McLeod' Bay 177

 The Cat who brings Rats Inside for a Visit 178

A Successful Days Fishing 180

 Exploring the Northland Coast; Part 2- North of Whangarei 181

 How my Easter Holidays Mutate into Labour Weekend 183

Earthquake Tourists 184

A Truly Alarming Fire Alarm 186

Riding the Christchurch Rail Trail 187

Taranaki Calling 189

What is it About the 26th October? 189

 The Strange Beauty of the Crumbling Cliffs 191

The Stony River Walkway Revisited 192

 Walking the Te Araroa Trail one Bit at a Time 195

The Plimmerton to Pukerua Bay Section 196

 From The Turakina River to Bulls, sort of. 196

The Bulls to Feilding Section 198

##  It's All Happening in Venice

### Gondola Racing

As soon as we arrived at our Hotel, the Atlanta Augustus, on the Lido, Angie is ready to leave again. As we learned in our search for the car ferry to the Lido, there are special celebrations taking place this weekend and tonight there will be a fireworks display on the Grand Canal.

Angie is determined to go but it is already 9 o'clock and we are too tired to face the ferry ride into Venice, the long wait until the fireworks begin at midnight and then the ferry ride home, so we wave it away. The setting may be beautiful even unique but we can't be tempted. Of course Angie wants to record the fireworks to be part of the edited video she will assemble for her family and friends, so it is a must do event for her.

However as we learn the next day (Sunday) there is more to this weekend than just fireworks.

If serendipity has measurable differences in quality, then we experience the very best sort when early in the afternoon we discover a temporary bridge formed by connecting boats crossing one of the main canals. Originally the bridge would be formed by genuinely tying boats together. these days the boats act as pontoons to support a well-designed pedestrian bridge. This is one of the widest canals in Venice so the structure is impressive. It is built so that Venetians can walk on water to get to the quite magnificent church on the other side, a church that was built as an act of thanks when Venice escaped the great Plague, a church that tonight will be filled with worshippers.

The sight as we walk across it is just as impressive as the bridge itself with a moving carpet of people streaming in both directions. There are gaps between pontoons at the centre wide enough to let smaller ferries through but for the large car ferry, the one we couldn't use on our arrival in Venice, the canal is blocked.

On the far side we discover today there are Gondola races, again serendipitously but as I think back now I can't help wondering if it was another special surprise prepared for us by Angie. Either way it is left to Bruce and me to discover the bridge and the Gondola races in an unsupervised way.

We sit on the concrete edge of the canal with our legs dangling down so our feet are only a few centimetres above the water. The racing Gondolas are impressive craft, longer than the tourist gondolas and instead of a single man in his shirt of horizontal white and blue stripes these are powered by two men wearing the colours of the part of the city they represent. These are leaner boats more like greyhounds than sheep dogs, boats with higher prows, even when they are stationary they look as if they are about to leap forward and slice through the blue waters of the canal. The boats are painted in the same bright colour as its crew and serve the same purpose.

At first we are confused, or maybe it is only me who is confused, because for a long time everything seems quiet, nothing appears to either be happening or about to happen. The finishing line bristles with official marshals ready to declare a winner but of the racing gondolas there is not a sign. Then suddenly in a rush the gondolas appear from nowhere the crew urging their boats forward with strong rapid tugs on the oars. The crowd cheers and within just a few minutes it is all over. Then the gondolas loll around doing nothing and then another racing finish appears out of nowhere. Obviously patience is needed if you are to enjoy this as a spectator sport.

Finally for the last big race I put it all together. This time the boats start almost opposite us, jockeying for position in an imaginary line that defines the start. Then they are away.

As I survey the colours I turn to Angie and Bruce and without thinking I say, "Look at that brown boat. Brown boats never win races. Just you see." And I reach down and splash one foot in the water. Later I wonder whether the man standing behind me has heard everything but as the boats disappear down the canal all straining for maximum speed I feel a hand on my shoulder and a voice says in my ear, "If my boat doesn't come in first I'm going to push you into the canal."

I love this sort of jocular jousting and enter into what I hope is his fantasy enthusiastically. I begin to discuss my chances of taking an uncertain dip in the water with the woman on my right, "It's not me I'm worried about it's my camera," I tell her. She is very sympathetic or at least she acts as if she is which is just as important. Or perhaps she thinks my good-natured tormentor might turn on her too.

It is a long time before the boats disappear down the canal and as far as I know the finish line is out of sight and we will not see the gondolas again. However the rest of the crowd is not leaving and the marshals are still at their posts. I pass the time trying to reach with my foot a floating plank that wants to follow the gondolas while I keep trying to propel it back upstream. It fills in the time. The commentary begins to mention the Italian word for brown and I get the first inkling that my confident prediction about brown never winning could be about to be demonstrated as utterly false. It doesn't help when my tormentor bends down to say his boat is not doing very well and I should be ready to enter the water.

Finally the gondolas come back into view as small dots while the repeated mention of the word brown confirms my suspicions and sure enough this boat wins easily. He sweeps over the line and is followed by the red and blue boats at a discrete distance.

"Can I bribe you?" I ask the man behind me, the man whose face I will never see. There is a long pause before he comes back with, "Of course you can, everyone can be bribed." I decide not to make an offer, if it is too small he may just push me from my perilous perch into the canal and if too large he may demand instant payment. I clutch my camera to my chest, my only shield against a ducking. What delights Angie, Bruce and me is the way the crowd cheers even louder for the boats that struggle in toward the end of the race than they did for the winners, and we enthusiastically join in.

The mysterious man behind me fades away before I can see him but I loved his sense of the ridiculous and the added frisson of excitement he provided during the long break when no boats are to be seen. If this race is ever going to become a popular TV sport they will have to use the same computer technology that makes the Americas cup so interesting these days, or else accept the fact that audience ratings will always be low.

On the way back we visit the church, which is now filled with people celebrating their fortunate release from the plague. We cross over the bridge before it is dismantled. I don't mention the word brown on the ferry home and Angie and Bruce are kind enough not to either.

###  When it Rains at the Beach

We have come to The Lido, the northern most Island of the complex scatter of islands in the lagoon for two reasons. The first is because we can take the car right to the Hotel and leave it safely parked there, and the second is because as you can tell from its name, it has a beach, the only Island to have a beach. Bruce and I head off to the beach on the first morning while Angie returns to the mainland to bring the car over on a ferry.

The Island is very narrow and it is only a ten-minute walk to arrive at the beach. As usual at an European beach in the summer, you are given a choice of how much comfort you want to pay for. Furtherest from the beach are an array of what I can only describe as beds with shade covers. Pay for one of these and you can stretch out on a soft mattress out of direct sunlight and read a book or sleep in comfort. We ignore this option. At the next level down you can hire a deck chair with an umbrella above the chair. If the beds were seats in first class, then these are most definitely those from Economy class. You can read and doze but there it ends. Finally there are the free seats in which you put your towel down on the sand and try to ignore those in the more expensive seats. This is our choice.

The beach can take many more people, given the number of empty beds and deck chairs but from our New Zealand point of view it is crowded. However when I walk to the edge of the water and gaze to the left or right I see the same beach packed with the same crowds stretching as far as the eye can see. This takes my breath away. We go in swimming one at a time so the other can watch our tiny pile of possessions spread around the towel.

African American immigrants walk up and down selling all sorts of beach necessities, usually only of one type but with lots of them heaped around their bodies. One man has a very slow moving motorised shop with drinks and icecreams. The sun is out as advertised and as expected at beach resorts this far south but as we find out later this is not always so.

Angie has managed to catch an earlier car ferry than expected and after she too has had a swim we head off to Venice.

Only on one other morning do we take the time to swim at the beach before heading off on the ferry to Venice. On that day after our swim it is lunchtime so we decide to eat lunch before we leave The Lido. Our first choice restaurant treats us as invisible as we sit outside at a table and we get no service, so we cross the road and take outside chairs at another. A wind is getting up and dark clouds appear in what was a clear blue sky. After a few minutes putting up with the wind we decide to eat inside. At first there seem to be no tables but then the waiter appears and soon we are sitting at a window table. At this restaurant I order eggplant and received the most delicious food of my time in Venice. It consists of two slabs of eggplant lightly roasted with a delicious tomato sauce. I will spend the rest of my stay in Venice trying to find another such lunch meal but without success. Because of my precise expectations of what I want the eggplant dishes at all other restaurants to be like I am inevitably disappoint. They seem designed to hide all the properties of eggplant I like. Bruce and Angie chide me a little about my inability to adapt to the other ways of preparing eggplant but I can't hide my disappointment.

As I sit on The Lido enjoying that first eggplant dish the wind gusts with even greater intensity and rain begins to fall, rain that gradually increased in intensity.

The beach is a few blocks up the road and a steady stream of beach migrants start passing the window as we sit secure and dry. Like all immigrants they look a dishevelled, forlorn lot. Nothing about beachwear or beach toys looks good in heavy rain with lashings of wind. Colourful inflated toys delight the eye in bright sunlight but now just look foolish. As the rain increases so does the flood of people most without raincoats, after all who takes a raincoat to the beach. They are doing their best to shelter in anything at hand, mainly towels. When a bus comes down the road it is brutally packed with tourists and has windows steamed up from the resultant combination of hot wet bodies.

If ever I felt smug it is now. How easily we could have been caught on an outdoor table, it was a marginal call to come inside but we made it.

By the time we are ready to leave the rain has ceased and while we ride over on the ferry the skies clear completely and we will have no more rain while we are in Venice

###  In the Tourist Heartland of Venice

As to wonderful wonderful Venice itself, I will say little. Everything that can be said has been said a thousand times before. Go discover for yourself, don't rely on written accounts by others to pre-empt the joy you will find in self discovery of this unlikely city built on a lagoon by people happily mad enough to think it was a good idea. And it was.

What a pleasure it is to walk down streets without a car or bike in sight. The pedestrian is king or queen and if you don't like motors at all and you have money to burn, take a gondola when you want to cross a canal where there is no bridge. We ride the ferries because they were quick and we have a concession ticket, until the last day that is, when we finally find out how much they sting a tourist on a day trip. A single ride to the Lido costs almost as much as the four-day multi-pass ticket we bought at the start.

Some well-meaning people will warn you, "Don't go to Venice in July and August, it is too hot and too crowded," ignore them. When you have three large tourist ships visiting for an afternoon yes there were a few more people about, but I really had to work hard to get a photo that showed a decent crowd. Even then it was easy enough to get around. As to the heat, take a break in a restaurant, or go on a ferry ride if you're getting too hot. We saw no one swimming in the lagoon during our visit, so we didn't try either.

This year the street hawkers were selling a coloured toy that can be launched into the air before coasting back down again. When, in the evening, there are a dozen such vendors demonstrating the same toy they produce a colourful display. We do not buy any. The appearance one afternoon of a few policemen sent the Afro-Italian hawkers fleeing with impressive speed, presumably because they did not have the right documents either to be in Italy or to be selling things in Venice or both. The Police didn't have a chance of catching them.

Just walk and walk and walk, go down little alleys along the tiniest canal and see what you find. We are never blocked by a stretch of water no matter which street we take. Always at the last moment when we seem trapped and think we must turn around or fall into the water, another alley magically opens to our left or right and we continue.

Read about Venice before you come if you must, but do come, this is one place where the reality is so much better than any of the publicity.

###  Don't Forget the Islands of Murano and Burano

If you only have one or two days in Venice, you may decide to forget about the islands of Murano and Burano, but they are well worth a visit.

You've heard of Venetian Glass, then I am sure you'll enjoy a visit to Murano, the home of glass. It is a slightly longer ferry ride but if you've bought your concession ticket you might as well make the most of it. On a morning visit we have the Glass Museum to ourselves. I don't spend time studying the notices which describe the techniques used but instead I just walk around marvelling how anyone could have made such colourful, sophisticated, complex and appealing objects in a medium as difficult to handle as molten glass. In my other life as a chemist I learned some very basic glass blowing techniques, even finally, under the close supervision of the master, making a not very good condenser. He stood beside me shouting directions such as keep heating, twist it to the left and similar. So my awe at the Venetian glass objects I saw is not completely based on ignorance.

On Murano, we wander along the lovely canals past innumerable shops selling glass and occasionally coming upon large complex glass sculptures in abstract shapes. Bruce did the island proud by buying a small, no I mean really very small, bowl but quite beautiful bowl.

From Murano you can catch a ferry to Burano. By this time it is the middle of the day and a large crowd of other tourists have the same idea. The ferries out here are smaller and run less often than those in Venice. When I compare the size of the crowd to the size of the ferry that arrives, I am sure we will not all get on but we surge forward and somehow we all make it. The boat is packed to the gunnels, an expression I have often wanted to use, even if I don't know what gunnels are, but we remain in stable position one (i.e. the boat is upright) to the end of the trip.

Burano doesn't bother with anything as fiddly as glass production, it is the buildings that are the attraction. They are painted in spectacularly bright colours, colours, I haven't seen in any other Italian town. The owners compete to outdo their neighbours in colour and there must be an unwritten rule that no one can have their house the same colour as their neighbour's.

Bruce, Angie and I find the colours completely addictive and just can't stop taking pictures. We eat lunch in the tent extension of one of several large restaurants set up to cope with parties of tourists. Between groups we finally manage to attract a waiter's attention and get food.

We were so immersed in taking pictures, or in Angie's case videos, we got lost and head for the opposite end of the Island to the ferry terminal. It is not a big island and it should not have taken us long to get to back the ferry, except on the way we took as many photos as we did on the way out.

You won't regret the visit, provided the sun is shining brightly for greatest colour saturation effects in your photos and you are in no hurry to get your food.

### On Leaving the Lido

By the day we leave the car ferry is back on its usual route. Angie checks with the hotel desk to see if we need to book a place on the boat.

"You can if you like but usually we don't bother," delivered with a shrug, which suggest we do the same. On the last morning we want to make a reasonably early start, after all it is a long way back to Munich so we choose a ferry leaving about 9:30 a.m.. I am scribbling notes in the back of the car as we follow the directions of our lady in the GPS system to get to the Ferry Terminal. We swing right and join a line consisting of about four cars.

"Where do we buy a ticket?" Angie asks and we're at a loss to answer. The ferry is not yet in and nowhere around the wharf is there a ticket office. We return to the car beaten, Next moment a man in bright orange visibility jacket taps on the window. A short exchange in Italian takes place and Angie starts to move the car.

"This is the line for people who have tickets already," she tells us.

They are the lucky few, we can't even find a ticket office. I look back down the street and way in the distance I see a small shed and what looks like a barrier. Bruce and I walk back to see if this is where we buy tickets. In the distance I see the man in the orange jacket beside the shed but by the time we get there he has vanished.

"We want to buy a ticket, "I tell the woman through the glass.

"You must have the car," she tells me and when for a moment I am nonplussed she repeats the statement twice more.

As we walk back down the road, I feel a growing resentment about the behaviour of the man in the orange jacket, after all there is no reason why he couldn't have given us this important piece of information when he walked up. It is no wonder he hasn't stayed around waiting for us.

Angie starts the car and drives out on the main road looking for a street that will take us around behind the barrier. Our GPS lady gets excited and keeps telling us to turn around. Finally we click, we must drive down the road we walked down, drive past the barrier on the right and turn around and buy the ticket at the shed.

After that is it easy and fortunately by the time we get back to the end of the queue there is still plenty of room on the ferry.

Angie has another surprise for our return trip, namely a diversion through The Dolomites. On another brilliant summer's day, we have magnificent views of every peak in the mountain range. The tops of the peaks are always like sculptures of the most rugged mountains you can imagine, often ending at the top with a complex garden of peaks. As your eye slides down the rocky slopes you end up in a different garden, one of green trees and even greener meadows. We picnic beside the road at the foot of one of the peaks Angie has climbed. As we drive past Bruce and I try to take shots of the mountains, often capturing unwanted trees or getting blocked by a building but we harvest many photos of mountains that look as clear and focussed as if we were standing with our cameras on tripods.

A wonderful way to end a wonderful trip.

#  Postcards from Turkey

## Unforgettable Istanbul

It begins at the airport when we share a taxi with an Austrian woman with flaming red hair. It is a big day for her, the day she will present her fully written PhD thesis to a supervisor who has not read a word of it.

"What's the subject," I ask.

"Preservations of historic buildings," she replies, as ready to talk with us, as we are to talk with her, "I began looking at Internal Design but I found it too limiting.

"What aspect of restoration?" I ask.

"Mainly to do with raising the money to do the restorations," she replies. Her English is perfect, clearer than our flat fast spoken Kiwi variety

"I hope my supervisor likes it," the woman continues. We don't bother to exchange names, as we know we are only ships passing in the night. "I already have a trip planned for when the degree is finished."

We also hope her Supervisor gives the thumbs up but we will never know.

I can't help noticing how well ordered the traffic is in a country that others have described as chaotic. "Is the traffic always like this?" I ask her.

"No, this is the best I've seen it," she replies.

As we drive past, we see dozens of cargo ships anchored at the mouth of the Bosphorus, ready I presume for a night passage into the Black Sea. The Bosphorus, our guidebook tells us, is the busiest waterway in the world, providing the only sea entrance for goods to and from southern Russia.

At her hotel she is greeted by the staff like an old friend. This must be where she always stays.

Now our driver has to negotiate the narrow roads of the old city, where to survive you must be able to drive through gaps barely wide enough for your vehicle. Our driver seems prepared to thrust his way into non-existent gaps with a blatant disregard of the risk of damage to his own car, with the aim of intimidating other drivers to give way to him in a contest of wills he is determined to win.

Faced with the slightest delay the drivers in Istanbul take the only sensible option, they sound their horns and pretend to be angry or perhaps they really are angry. This happens even in situations where a resolution is out of the hands of all the other drivers packed in the jam. Still it seems to work and soon we are moving again, with our driver skilfully weaving the minibus through spaces that to me look hardly big enough to take a mini.

Berrin, the woman we traded emails with were when booking the room, is there to check us in. Despite the fact we have been carrying our packs without difficulty, a man of about 50 years of age, takes advantage when we free our hands to complete the check in, to whisk them away to the old lift and disappear. At our room on the sixth floor we introduce ourselves and ask him his name.

"Ganjai," he replies. I get him to write it down in my notebook so I can practise it before we meet again. This bonds us and after this he is full of smiles whenever we meet. We find out he is Mr fix-it in the hotel, the person who seems to do everything except clean out the rooms and make up the beds. He is around at breakfast time checking the food, and when I sit in a chair without a bottom cushion he quickly provides one. Communication is interesting because he speaks no English but is fluent in German, which he uses whenever he wants to tell us something. Still somehow we do communicate. We meet him the next day in the small supermarket buying the next morning's breakfast, at other times he is dusting the front desk, he never stops, or not while we are around.

Our room is not spacious, there us hardly enough room to swing a not very big kitten, but we don't test the metaphor. Not much space for morning yoga or in Bruce's case yoga and Tai Chi.

The moment you step out of your hotel and walk down the streets in a new city in a new country there is always a special excitement. Everything stands waiting to be explored, there are no familiar landmarks just uncertain promises about what we will find. We amble down toward a high brick wall guarded by double tram lines, where the urgent clang of a bell demands we step aside as tram rushes past as. The wall we discover surrounds the old Palace gardens which in the new more democratic Turkey has become a park. It is a Sunday and the park is crowded with people escaping the full heat of the midafternoon. A fountain is playing and one or two men and women have their shoes off and are paddling in the pool beyond the reach of the shower of water spurting from the fountain.

Nearby is a statue of the famous Ataturk, the man who led the Turkish National Movement in a War of Independence and thrust Turkey into the Western World by forming a modernised, westernised and secular state. He also modified the written language so it used the alphabet its European neighbours were familiar with. Ataturk is sitting with ramrod straight back in a chair in a position which invites people to climb up sit on his knees to have their photo taken. He is left with shiny highly polished knees set against the dull tarnish of the rest of a body dressed demurely in a suit.

Turkey is a bridge between two continents. The men with their neutral western clothes give nothing away about their religious persuasion but the women, provide a litmus test for the influence of the Muslim hierarchy, as they parade in every sort of dress, from long loose skirts and top and a head scarf through to those in revealingly short skirts and tight tops that celebrate the women's body rather than trying to disguise it. Occasionally a woman in the full black Burka with only her eyes showing passes by.

We have not done our homework as we discover when talking to the owner of the first restaurant we eat at, "We are celebrating Ramadan now and I don't eat or drink during daylight hours." It must be hard in a restaurant preparing food for others but not eating yourself.

For some reason I am surprised that the infidels are so freely invited into the famous Blue Mosque, provided that is you take off your shoes and dress sensibly. Although you can wear a hat which feels strange after visiting so many cathedrals in Europe where this is forbidden. As I join a line of others to take off my shoes the strangest smell wafts over me, it is strong, it is pungent, it is clearly a mixture of many smells none of them particularly pleasant and I realise it arises from the exposure of so many unwashed bare feet. Fortunately it does not follow us into the Mosque. The tile work inside is exquisite with unsurprisingly blue the dominant colour. What is strange is the absence of any furniture, just the carpet. Afterwards, now aware this is Ramadan, we move discretely away from the Blue Mosque before eating our sandwiches.

Mosques with their interlocking domes of various dimensions and the soaring spikes of the minarets dominate the landscape of Istanbul. They are endlessly photogenic especially when we are out on the Bosphorus itself.

At dusk on our first evening we walk down to the waterfront and take pictures of the Blue mosque bathed in coloured lights with a large banner strung across the top, which refers to Ramadan. A series of large explosions marks the time when the sun has officially set and then people crowd around the trolley's selling food as the days fast ends. Wave after wave of ferries come into the wharf. They disgorge their passengers and cars, fill up again and then disappear to be immediately replaced by other. It is like having a water bridge that operates in fits and starts. In the distance we can see the coloured lights on one of the two huge bridges that now span the Bosphorus.

The sounds of Istanbul are as fascinating as the sights. They interlock together giving a vivid picture of a city in motion. The clang of the trams and the squeal of the tracks as they are tortured on each bend, the all engulfing roar of the big trucks as they pass our hotel on the way to the hidden portal to a huge project to tunnel under the Bosphorus temporarily drowns out all the other sounds, then you hear again the ferries and passing ships sounding their warnings and providing the brass section to this orchestra of sound, the wailing calls to prayer are the woodwinds and each morning and night the bobbling sound of tourists dragging bags on wheels over the cobble stones an undercurrent of percussion. Bleating away through the whole sound scape are the urgent horns of drivers delayed, as they try to squeeze through narrow streets designed for horse and cart, while in the quieter moments the protesting squawk of crows and the soaring cries of the seagulls free spirits sailing above the Bosphorus, take over from all the rest.

While we climb a hill away from the Bosphorus, we meet an English couple who like us were searching for the Grand Bazaar. The husband is stationed in Switzerland for the moment and the two are taking the opportunity to explore the cities of Europe. Yes they do plan to visit New Zealand, when the man has retired. Where have I heard that before?

When it comes to shopping I am a complete loss. My eyes glaze over, everything I look at I immediately find a reason not to buy and in this bartering culture I don't want to begin a buyer-seller relationship that I cannot consummate. I trail down the centre through a corridor of shops packed with goods, admiring the colours of the gold and the beauty of the spices without breaking my stride. There are no donkeys in this bazaar, it is all under cover but I do my duty by walking through. Even Bruce doesn't stop to buy. Perhaps he too is a bit overwhelmed, not so much by any one shop, but rather too stretching in too many directions, shops that come in clumps all selling the same thing, all gold, or all jewellery or all meat or fish, or all clothes as if they have the herding instinct.

There are lots of cats, cats that don't seemed to be owned by anyone, but nevertheless are rather tame. I read in the Travel Guide that people put out food for these wandering animals. I certainly see people making a fuss of the kittens. The cats in Istanbul seem to have struck a truce with the dogs, they simply ignore each other whether they have been introduced or not

There aren't many people begging but there are many more who set up a few goods for sale on a blanket beside the street. One young woman selling a second hand scales broke my heart as I pass her several times over three days and the scales remained unsold and she remained sitting on the pavement. But worst of all is the handful of very small children who are trying to sell a few tissues. An image of one small boy curled up on the concrete like a kitten in a space between two steps sound asleep with his packet of tissues unsold resting beside him burned itself into my memory. I was past the boy before I realised the impact he had on me. So defenceless, assigned to such a hopeless task all to earn a pittance of money for the family. I didn't see him again but the thought crossed my mind that if I had given him thirty Turkish liras in the hope he would not have to come out on the streets for many more nights, it might have the opposite effect. The greedy mother realising what appeal boy has to the kind hearted might simply send him out more often. Or am I just rationalising away my failure to give him money?

Above all else in Istanbul you cannot but be aware of the waters of the Bosphorus, deep blue often chopped up by the breeze and crawling with boats of all sizes and shapes. After visiting the Palace, we found a part of the city where you can walk right on the edge of the bustling waters. Here the shore is protected by big rocks to prevent the adjacent road being captured by the sea. Fisherman cast their optimistic lines into the sea and cats patrol the shore hoping for their success, so they can join in the feast. At one point there is a line of balloons hanging from a string and thinking they may be celebrating someone's birthday I ask and find out the young entrepreneur will, for a small cost, allow you to attempt to shoot them down. We decline.

Further on three fishermen have set up a temporary camp tucked in behind a big rock to be sheltered from the brisk wind. A cat, with her adolescent kittens almost as tall at her side sits waiting for the family to be fed on fish entrails. Food was offered to one small kitten. The kitten came up but refused to eat it while it was in the human only rushing in to feed when it was dropped. Obviously the kitten was used to being fed by humans but for whatever reason still does not trust the hand that feeds them.

The sea dominates the city so naturally we want to get out onto a boat and see things from the water. Boats are easy to find. When we drop down the stairs into the area where the ferries depart, hawkers are walking up and down trying to sell us tickets to board the big tour boat. "Bosphorus cruise!" they shout at us as we pass. We wave them away with a smile, but then someone else shouts, "Bosphorus cruise," at us waving a colourful brochure. In the end we succumb and join a two-hour cruise. It is all it promises. At first the boat is not too crowded but when it makes a stop a tour party crowds on board and chooses to sit on the seats around us. Unfortunately Bruce is away taking photographs and I have to fight to keep his space. We enjoyed the excursion but want to explore a side arm called the Golden Horn.

There is nobody touting trips up the Golden Horn but our Lonely Planet guide indicates where the boats leave from, which is well away from the bustling activity around the ferries. We have to cross a very busy bus station dodging maneuvering buses as we go down an alley by a car park and finally find the boats that go up the Golden Horn. It is late in the afternoon and the bigger boats have gone, or so we suppose.

A man called Envier comes up and offers us the trip for 30 TL each. We accept and set off feeling like millionaires wealthy enough to have their own boat. Of course there is no commentary but I don't like being distracted by information, I'd rather just look. The man is excessively proud of his sons and the oldest, Mehmet, is on the boat too. As promised our boat squeezes under a very low bridge and keeps going right to the end of the Golden Horn. Here there is a low island crowded with birds. Instead of a commentary Envier directs our attention to something of interest by taking the boat close in beside it. In this way we discover a boat museum with a huge American submarine as its star exhibit. Although we see the buildings with gold trimmings in the distance going up the Golden Horn, it is only on the return journey that our silent guide takes us close in are we able to appreciate the royal buildings and boats all trimmed in gold. When we thank him at the end it is clear how much the son returns the affection of the father.

We set off on the only showery morning we have in Turkey, to walk across a bridge to the new city. Bruce has carefully plotted the route he wants to follow before we leave and is frustrated to find the wide roads on this side of the city are packed with fast moving cars. Giving up his carefully formulated plan, he leads us up a small side alley instead.

We find ourselves in a part of town devoted to everything plumbing. If you want a new toilet bowl or a toilet seat, this is the place to come. You get maximum choice on bathrooms and plumbing all in just a few short blocks. I wonder whether this is because it is so hard to find parks that shoppers want all shops selling similar things to be grouped together rather than scattered about the city. A heavy shower has us scurrying into the nearest shelter, a workshop full of what looks like metal reinforcing poles. This turns out to be the last rain of the day.

To get away from the busy road, we just keep climbing, going up flights of steps and along interesting alleys. At the top of the ridge we hit the jackpot, a long section of road without cars (a bit too wide a road for the term Pedestrian Mall to apply) with shops on both sides. By now Bruce has recovered from his annoyance at being forced to come here and is also enjoying the surprising discovery, of what is perhaps Turkey's version of a Shopping Centre.

Down the other side of the ridge and we are back near the sea. A big tourist boat attracts our attention but our attempts to get near it are frustrated by fences and buildings, probably a sensible security measure to prevent terrorist attacks. We eat a picnic lunch beside the sea, in a place made uncomfortable by the continual flow of cars, and trucks large and small passing our knees, sometimes missing them by less than half a metre This is where we see a fashion shoot with the model in a shiny silver dress. A working crane boat arrives to provide a more interesting backdrop to the shoot; the captain dutifully obeying instructions from the camera crew. I wonder if this is a profitable job for him.

As to the tourist attractions one of the most memorable is the Byzantine built cistern near the Blue Mosque, a cistern that was forgotten and then rediscovered and refurbished a number of times. You pay your money and leave the pressing heat of the afternoon sun and descend into a cooler world where the darkness is broken by golden lighting to reveal a reservoir of still water with pale fish swimming about, fish which may not have seen daylight for hundreds of years. What do they live on? I have no idea. In places the stone columns holding up the roof are carved with faces. The quiet sounds of conversation mix with the magnified splash of water to give a soothing effect that makes you reluctant to leave this tranquil escape from the bustle of people above.

Memories of our visit to the Topkapi Palace crowd together in my mind but not in the order we saw them, Memories of quiet courtyards that must have calmed an agitated Sultan even at a time when he is under attack from his enemies It is hard to think of dying in such places but in a last resort where better to be stabbed to death. Impressive in a quite different way is the unbelievable splendor of the treasures accumulated down through the ages and now on display in well-lit boxes.

Equally memorable was the sight of the tombs of Sultans placed inside exquisitely decorated buildings with the remains of the Sultan and his children inside dark green tents accompanied in smaller tents by the remains of those children who died while he was alive, with those children who would have become Sultans themselves if they had lived decorated with the same white turban as their father. The large numbers of these dead children spoke volumes for the standard of medical care and how wide spread infectious diseases were in earlier centuries.

As in Greece, the entrees and starters provide the consistently best vegetarian food Turkey. I found myself returning to my favorite Turkish vegetarian dishes again and again. I never tired of them, which is fortunate because these foods appeared again and again in different restaurants.

## Dreaming in Cappadocia

Be honest have you ever heard of Cappadocia?

Well I hadn't, but when you start planning a trip to Turkey anyone who has been there before throws this name up at you. Bruce after reading the Lonely Planet Guide is so enthusiastic he wants to spend three days there. I am sceptical, after all walks up canyons with interesting rock formations at the height of summer when temperatures can be as high as forty degrees in the shade, sounds unpromising, even a little masochistic. Roger Reeves, an ex-colleague at Massey University, who has been to Turkey many times searching for metal accumulating plants, dismisses the idea of three days, "Two days is all you need." And so it was decided.

As we come in to land at Kayseri airport a nearby town looks like a scattered collection of matchboxes perched on their ends across a brown tablecloth. Away from the airport, our minibus drives on four lane highways that are eerily empty of other traffic, which is lucky because our driver ignores the few traffic lights we meet along the way, despite the fact they are all showing red. The low lines of hills are dominated by a high mountain rising behind them, a mountain with a small patch of snow on the summit looking like a white wig worn by a bald man in a futile attempt to conceal his baldness.

The land is stubbornly dry with rugged hills, something like the South Dakota badlands, but by some trick remains lovely in its own lonely way. At times we see spiky peaks and at other times the hill sides have the appearance of crumpled paper, paper ready to ignite with the first strike of a match.

It takes a little under an hour to reach The Hotel Pamphylie in the town of Goreme. The minibus climbs the hill with some difficulty. We step out onto a dusty road on a hillside, uncertain where we should go.

A man appears and we follow him up the hill into a pleasantly cool reception area. This is Hussain, who if he gives up managing a Hotel should try his hand at selling second hand cars. He welcomes us like long lost friends before giving us a quick orientation course, "We have a swimming pool and a hot pool with a man available to give you a Turkish massage. Breakfast starts at seven. There is another restaurant just up the hill and I can recommend the food. You will get a discount if you choose to eat there." And then goes on to promote the opportunities the hotel provides for serious tourism, "I can book you a balloon ride on Butterfly Balloons, As you are staying at the hotel you get a ten percent discount. Their baskets hold a maximum of sixteen people. Other companies may charge less but they have big baskets with thirty or more people in them." Why should we want to join these cheap alternatives and risk having to jostle for a decent view and not have lots of space to get good photos? Hussain has not finished with us yet, "I can also book you for a tour of the area with a company that does not take you to a Turkish Carpet company or any other commercial company." He then rattles off some of the places we will visit. "If you sign up for both then we will pay for your transport back to the airport." How can we resist and in the end we don't.

Another guest arrives off a minibus and he has no time to give us the full personal tour. One of his men takes us to our cave room, as to the rest we must search out the swimming pool and the restaurant ourselves, not a straightforward exercise in this hotel of interlocking caves.

The Hotel is cut out of the cream coloured rock and the guest rooms are in caves or inside the pinnacles of rock that rise in isolation to heights above the town Minaret. We have booked the cave room and the only window we have looks into a cave corridor leading to another room.

We eat dinner sitting at a table with a fascinating view of a small town pieced by these isolated pinnacles, while marvelling at the strangeness of a place that is worthy of a Disney Theme Park but at the same time is most definitely real. The town glows yellow as the sun begins to set.

Next day we take the bus tour. Our guide is an articulate young woman with perfect English and the ability to make what we are seeing seem real by the way she relates it to her own life. Right at the start she says, "My mouth will get very dry as the day goes on. It is Ramadan and I'm not eating or drinking during daylight hours." I am impressed, I think I could handle the lack of food but not drinking, that's quite another matter.

There are other homely insights into Turkey's food culture, for example the Turkish delight is moist on the surface when it is prepared but in Turkey's dry heat it soon dries out to give the firmer surface we are familiar with in New Zealand. She points to holes in the ground as we drive past, "These are used for storing fruit such as oranges, lemons or grapes." Presumably keeping it at a more or less constant temperature through summer and winter.

Something she doesn't mention but we have noticed is that the code for salt and peppershakers in Turkey is different from that in New Zealand. The saltshaker has multiple holes and the pepper only one. Given that in New Zealand the humidity is seldom below 45%, the salt can become damp and hard to get out of our shakers. We should change systems.

### A Bus Tour

When you sign up for a bus tour, you never know what you'll get. The advertising always promises a long list of highlights and they are hardly ever able to deliver. For example our Turkish guru Roger Reeves tells us not to take the bus tour in Istanbul, he assures us you see much more just doing everything ourselves. But on this bus tour we hit the jackpot.

We start quietly with a visit to one of the many Turkish towns which originally had a large population of Greeks who all shifted back to Turkey under an exchange of citizens that took place early in the last Century, leaving many homes empty providing a mute testimony to the past. Our first visit is to one of these. This is an entrée to the main course. Next we visit the site of an early monastery carved out of rock. We wander around exploring rooms that have been long empty. It must have been a Spartan existence and there could never have been many monks based here. Even the dining room is not large. It must be hard work hacking holes in the rock, giving no incentive to increase numbers.

But the biggest surprise is our visit to a town that has five levels underground. The local inhabitants fled underground when potential attackers arrived, even having a level for their animals. Our guide tells us that the entrance holes were hidden in the houses. The underground village is cunningly designed to force invaders through narrow tunnels where they can be attacked one by one as they emerge. At one point there is an interesting side tunnel which invites exploration but our guide is not around to tell us where it goes. I shine my cell phone light into it and find it curves to the right. Someone peering into another hole near by calls out, "I can see your torch. I'll come around." Sure enough the two holes are joined by a semicircular tunnel. Is this another defensive ploy? I never find out.

Despite Hussain's promise that there will be no visit to a carpet selling shop, our guide tries to tempt everyone to sign up for the side trip after those who don't want to come are dropped off. Only Bruce and I leave, we don't want a Turkish carpet for our new polished wood floor at home and we certainly don't want to be subjected to the full assertive sales pitch.

###  The Hot Air Balloon Ride

There is another attraction and this is one that is mentioned in the hushed terms more usually associated with someone speaking in a cathedral when a service is underway, namely ballooning. Bryan, the intrepid explorer of our Sunday Lunch Group, is positively euphoric, "You must take the early morning ride in the balloons. It's wonderful," while Angie Mair, an even more intrepid explorer from Germany, voices her frustration as she tells us, "The wind was too strong when I was there and we couldn't take a balloon ride."

No one has ever referred to me as an adventurous explorer. Bruce long ago learned not to mention risk factors to me. As an explorer making discoveries for myself, I function rather well. However well meaning people giving me unasked for warnings about upcoming events only serve to undermine my confidence. I don't need to know that I am about to 'cross a narrow slippery track' of that this trail should only be attempted by 'the most experienced trampers.' Such comments bear down on me and excite my active imagination, driving me into an over anxious state.

We already know that ballooning is an adventure sport, a fact pointed out to us by Hassain when we check into the Cave. The word adventure implies that there are risks involved. In 2012 a balloon with 10 passengers on board was blown into a high-tension power line and everyone on board died. Somehow the collision ignited an intense fire. The canopy of the balloon caught fire and the balloon, driven by the intense heat shoot skyward like a rocket. One couple jump out choosing to die more quickly than the others who were burned to death in the basket.

Because of my memories of this accident, I do not sign up on the first night, giving myself time to think things over. I realise by morning that I will be disappointed if I turn down the ballooning opportunity simply because I might be burned to death. Besides I don't think there are any High Tension lines around Cappadocia.

"Do you need a wakeup call?" Hassain asks but we decline, after all we have cell phones to act as alarms. He goes on, "In any case the Mu'adhin will wake you with his 3:40 morning call to prayer." He is not wrong. In fact we can rely on the call to prayer to do this throughout our trip through Turkey.

It is an excited group that crowd into a small bus in the darkness before dawn. After less than a minute we are all out again, as the headquarters for the ballooning company is just down the hill from our hotel. We eat a coptic breakfast before heading for John's bus. John it turns out will be our pilot for today.

We pass fields filled with the bulbous shapes of balloons from other companies lying on their sides. "Butterfly Balloons checks the wind direction before choosing a launching point," Hassain tells us during his initial briefing, He is so pleasantly plausible we have ignored costs signed up with butterfly balloons and ignored the two Americans, the ones who always discuss big business politics at breakfast, who have chosen the cheapest balloon ride.

We are driven around a large hill and then there they are our balloons gradually filling with hot air as a dragon's tongue of red flame thrusts its way into the balloon turning it into a glowing furnace. I notice the staff are carefully holding the neck open so the flame can't touch the fabric. All too soon we are being loaded into our basket. We are going to launch first. With the balloon fully expanded above us, the staff asks for our cameras to take photos of us adventure tourists addicts preparing for another adventure.

The inevitable safety briefing follows. "If we land when it is windy I will tell you to go into the brace position," John tells us. So we practise bracing ourselves with our backs toward the landing direction, our knees bent while holding onto rope loops. John is very smart in a uniform fit for the captain of an AirBus A380 and radiates confidence and competence.

Our balloon tugs on the rope attached to a 4WD. Captain John gives the order to release and we begin to rise. Too late now to leap out of the basket, there is no turning back. As we soar higher all fears dissolve away as the view unfolds. Far below us the other Butterfly Balloons, still captives of gravity, lie on their sides as pulses of yellow light glow inside them.

We rise to meet the sunrise and soon the first blood red rim appears above the hills to the East. It quickly emerges into a bleeding ball that we can easily stare at with our unprotected eyes.This is not the nuclear furnace of dazzling light we see when the sun first appears above the Ruahine Ranges It is more like a sun filtered through the smog of Los Angeles. I ask John and he tells me what I already know namely there must be lots of dust in the air.

John is not happy with the wind direction. In a balloon we are servants of the wind and must obey its commands, "When we sent up a trial balloon this morning it was carried toward the town, now its blowing in the opposite direction." It is not a strong wind but it is gently insistent. John has a solution, "I'm going to take the balloon low into that valley where we should find a breeze that will take us in the direction we want to go." Obviously he knows what he is doing but I find it disconcerting as we abandon our safe height above the peaks to descend into a potential trap. He concentrates hard as we get close to the hill, giving short pulses of flame to stop us from striking the ground which at one point is only two metres away. The wind direction is different and we edge our way around the hill.

But he is not satisfied and we lose more height descending into a prison of high rocks, but with everything happening in slow motion, he just has time to rise high enough to escape the trap. I look behind and see the blue shape of another Butterfly Balloon peeping over the ridge behind us as it attempts to follow us around.

I listen to the ground to air transmissions, "Where are you Mohammed. Why don't you answer?" as the disembodied voice queries the recalcitrant Mohammed, Finally he replies, "I'm concentrating." I wish him well but not too long after that I hear him tell ground staff that he is planning to land. His adventures are over for the day

We rise up above the high hill we have been skirting for so long but at this point the wind dies away completely and we are more or less stationary as other balloons drift by at other heights. This is definitely a slow motion game but I like it like this.

Everyone in my quarter of the basket is continually taking photos. I lean over Bruce's head to take mine while battling for space with a French man who has an enormous lens, but the battle is amicable. We see the valleys of peaked rocks in the distance but we are poised above flat farm land. Our object is to take photos of the thirty or forty other balloons that are all around us.

Glancing over at the pointed towers of rock John says, "There is one valley called _The Valley of Love_." He gives a knowing smile and then continues, "Perhaps you can guess why." We visit _The Valley of Love_ in the afternoon and the name is just as obvious as John implied, with huge erect penises of rock crowded together, a valley that should have an XXX rating, except it is all in the mind. To the innocent they might be simply interesting rock formations, although I doubt even the most innocent will be deceived.

Yes the balloons do collide sometimes as an Australian woman tells us when we get back to the hotel, "They call it kissing," she tells me, which sounds safe enough. This same woman said she saw me in our basket and waved but I did not see her. She would have had to be hanging under a balloon on a rope for me have noticed her. She promises to email me a copy if she has a photo of me in the highflying balloon. I have my fingers crossed that it will turn up. But it doesn't.

Eventually we sink down toward a melee of other balloons on land that is dotted with green trees, which look to me as a serious hazard to a safe landing. John provides a final bit of excitement as he tries to line up the balloon with our support crew who are driving along an adjacent road towing a trailer. I see a tree heading straight toward us. The flame roars and we rise a little but not enough to prevent us hitting the top branches which fortunately bends to allow us to pass. We drop again and into another tree where he performs the same trick. Looking back I am surprised at how calm I feel during both these manoeuvres.

Then in a final act of bravado, by careful manipulation of the flame, he lands the basket exactly on the trailer and the support staff quickly secure us. But we have to drive to a field before deflating the balloon. I call out "Take me to my hotel," and the French man is kind enough to laugh at the image of a vehicle with a balloon hovering above it driving through the streets of town.

We help to deflate the balloon by walking in line across the fabric. They pull out the champagne and orange juice along with some cake. Then he hands us certificates to affirm we have done the balloon ride.

John is from the UK where he used to own his own ballooning company, "When the economy crashed so did the balloon riding business," he tells me. His son of about ten has come out from the UK for a few weeks holiday and to spend time with his Dad, "He lives with his mother." A woman is unkind enough to ask whether this is the end of his day's work, "I get up at three and it will be after ten before I am finished and I do this seven days a week," is his very effective reply. To another question of mine, "It is alright to hit trees in a balloon, what you don't want to do is hit a rock, you may get tipped out of the basket."

John in a very British way, teases his Turkish support staff, "There will be plenty of cake to go around this morning. They can't eat because they are fasting during Ramadan," he calls out gleefully. Or is this culturally insensitive?

Back at the hotel everyone who has been out in balloons this morning is ecstatic about the ride. Interestingly every one of them is also full of praise for their pilots. I develop a theory that when you put your life in someone hands, you are always overly grateful and enthusiastically supportive when he gets you back to the ground safely.

Now I urge you to take the balloon ride if you are ever in Cappadocia, it really is the trip of a lifetime, even if you don't float over the town.

##  Down on the South Coast of Turkey

In summer I love to go out to the coast, and this is the northern summer, so after our stay inland in Cappadocia we head for the south coast, where we base ourselves in the tiny town of Patara (a bit west of Antalya if you're looking on a map). It boasts the longest beach in Turkey, 18 km from one end to the other and would involve some serious walking, given the softness of the sand and the burning heat of the summer days. We don't attempt it.

The owner of the Flower Pension, Mustafa, the deputy mayor of the tiny town, is greatly concerned when we tell him the airline has lost our bags. We have nothing to wear but the clothes we stand up in and the few things in our small packs. The next morning Mustafa is on the phone to Turkish Air and we have our bags by late afternoon.

For the first time in Turkey we can cook our own food. That is not to say we didn't enjoy the Turkish vegetarian food but we do like the challenge of buying local fruit and vegetables and seeing what we can do with them. By the second day in Istanbul we have worked out how to order the best food at a restaurant, food with the most variety and at the cheapest cost. Ignoring the main menu we simply order a collection of the entrees called Mazes in Turkey. The only problem is that we quickly discover most restaurants offer the same entrees, so defeating one of the reasons for sticking to entrees.

The first evening in Patara we walk to the beach and, since as usual I haven't done any background reading, it is a surprised when we discover the remains of an ancient town occupied in turn by the Lycian, the Greek, The Roman and the Byzantine civilisations. part way to the beach. We pass under an arch and see across a paddock an amphitheatre built in rich, yellow, stone blocks. The crane and earth moving machinery parked beside stacks of the stones signals the rebuilding that is going on. The beach, with its long line of sand dunes sweeping away into the distance, could be a New Zealand beach, except for the array of sun umbrellas and beach couches, standing ready for the expected crowds, although at dusk it is almost deserted. All our other trips to this beach will be by car.

This is a rocky coast which is relieved by a few beaches. Our four-day visit will lead us backwards and forward between the twin compasses of this lovely coast and the ancient ruins.

### The Sunken City

Who wouldn't be tempted by the prospect of a boat ride that takes you over a sunken city? Certainly not me and Bruce. When on the first morning we wandered into the tiny main street of Patara, the shop that claims to book trips to the sunken city is unoccupied. I say unoccupied but there is a key in the door and we could have entered but when no one answers our persistent knocking, we walk away. By a bit of detective work we find a house, which promises trips to the sunken city, but it turns out to be an improvised family affair, "My brother runs trips but he needs ten people to make it worth his while." We are not ten people and never will be.

So we decide to drive to the village and see what we can find in the way of a boat ride. At worse we will be able to buy tickets for tomorrow and this sort of travelling is why we hired a car in the first place, so we can explore the coast on our own terms and not be dependent on tours.

The road east has been chipped out of the rocky hillsides but don't think of it as a mean, narrow, winding affair but rather a broad ambitious sweeping beast, the sort of mountain road that in Spain or Greece would have been paid for by EU money. The traffic is light and it is a joy to drive on. The views have a rugged Sylvester Stallone look. At one bend there is access to a sandy beach down a steep hillside but with so many cars already jammed into the limited parking space we don't stop.

Only when we turn off the main road and head for the village of Ucagiz does the road shrink but the views if anything improve.

My heart sinks when we drive into the village to be greeted by the sight of two parked buses and a barrier across the road. Even as I hesitate not sure what to do, the man by the barrier eagerly beckons us forward. The barrier lifts and I drive on down the hill, where we are be met by two more men who wave me into a narrow park between two buildings. This town is really well organised.

But the men have more plans for us, "Do you want to visit the sunken city," one asks. He seems to read minds. He makes us an offer we can't refuse, "For 150 TL you can see it in your own boat." We know it is probably too expensive but after a hasty conference we agree, after all it has been a long, if beautiful ride and we don't want to repeat the same trip tomorrow.

He takes us down to the wharf and shows us a very basic boat and asks our opinion. In the calm blue Mediterranean Sea we would have been happy to ride in a bathtub. But then he leads us back down the jetty and helps us board a much bigger, more impressive looking, craft. For the second time on our trip in Turkey we are hiring our own boat. The captain, who is the owner and the only crew member, is called Kursad. He has the weathered look of someone who spends much time out on the ocean. This it turns out is the wrong season for fishing, so it is fortunate that it is the best season for tourists.

"After our visit to the sunken city do you want to walk up that hill to visit the old castle." There is no road only a track along the coast. "Or do you want to go swimming."

On this searingly hot day we have no difficulty in deciding on the swim. The water seen en masse is a royal blue colour but up close we see it is completely clear. Our boat, yes our boat not a single other tourist on her, soon leaves the village behind and the hills shrink down into the sea. I could get used to this life of a billionaire. If you pay enough you can get anything in this world, and I mean anything.

However we are not the only boat out to explore the undersea city today. It is the remains of the rest of the ruined village tumbling down toward the sea that I find most interesting. The motion of the currents has scattered the other stones underwater so there are no almost complete homes. Only a city wall is more or less intact. Our boat has to weave around avoiding the continuous parade of other boats coming toward or slowly overtaking us. A party paddling in kayaks under the close supervision of their guides passes us next to the almost vertical face of Kekova Island.

We then head for a sheltered bay for our swim. We have an hour in the water. This seems to be the bay where all the other tour operators bring their clients for a swim too, so we are most definitely are not on our own. I wear a bright orange cap to make me visible to the large boats jockeying for position around me. With all this activity it is never dull. One determined woman with a small boy beside her paddles her boat from ship to ship trying to sell some merchandise. Then suddenly our time is up. Back at the jetty we pay our money and walk around the coast to some ancient tombs.

My fascination with the sunken city has been thoroughly quenched.

Fortunately we arrive back at the Flower Pension at the same time a taxi arrives to deliver our bags.

###  Life in the Flower Pension

Patara has the sleepy feeling of a small beach town at the height of summer which is exactly what it is. The tourists are few and the slow pace of things soon quenches any desire to race around with an Istanbul like urgency. We are the only customers in all the shops we visit, and we startle the staff into action. There are two vegetable shops and we alternate our business between them but after the first flurry of shopping forced upon us by the loss of our luggage, and our failed attempt to access a travel agent, these are the only shops we use.

A tractor tows a trailer with seats for paying customers who want a ride to the beach. Once long ago this used to be a sea port, but over a few thousand years towns in Turkey have a habit of shifting inland. Ephisis is an example of this phenomena, or perhaps it is the sea that gets shifted away by the accumulation of land.

We eat breakfast each morning on an open veranda with circular tables attended by wicker chairs. Every day a different member of the family serves at the table, at least the men in the family do, the women are immune from this work, although the dinners are the purview of Mustafa's wife. The Turkish breakfasts are all the same with white bread and tomato and olives and other salad like components, feta cheese but without the heavy salty flavour of New Zealand Feta, along with an egg more often boiled but sometimes served as an omelette. I love it.

Two white kittens roam the floor. We determinedly ignore the kitten's attempts to share our eggs. One likes to leap onto your lap and has to be continually tossed off. I capture the more aggressive one between two chairs and amused the Frenchman at the next table, "You've put him in gaol," he exclaims," but the kitten soon enough escapes. Other people give in and drop food on the floor, only encouraging the kittens more. Interestingly only one kitten has developed a taste for omelette, the other one sniffs a piece and even tentatively takes it into its mouth but soon spits it out again. When the kittens become too much of a nuisance they are carted off out the back.

On the second day I discover a clothesline and some pegs on a small outside balcony we can access from our second story room. That night just on dusk I go out on the balcony to hang out a few clothes. I keep hearing a strange sound not exactly a knock, not exactly a click that after investigation I put down to the vibrations in the string I create as I peg the clothes on the line rubbing against the building. Satisfied with my own explanation I continue pegging clothes. Then out of the corner of my eye I sense a quick movement. I look at the side of the house but there is nothing. I continue pegging and again the sensation at the very corner of my vision of a swiftly moving shadow. This time I study the wall for much longer but still nothing. Just as I start to return to my task something slips out through what to me is a non-existent gap between the nailed ir on and the wall. The creature dressed in black flies away. Now I wait to see what else will happen. Soon there is a veritable stream of these spooky black objects which I finally realise are bats. I call Bruce out and we both watch fascinated until the flow stops. I'm not sure whether Mustafa knows he has bats in the ceiling, or whether it even matters but I don't tell him in case he sets out to exterminate them. Each night right on schedule the bats slip into sight and fly silently away.

###  Swimming in the Mediterranean

We reach our local beach just on dusk of the first night and only Bruce tries swimming. There are still a handful of people around but they are all packing up. Bruce tries going out further into the waves but soon returns and floats around in the shallows.

"The waves have a strong churning motion and there is a lot of drift," he tells me, "That's why I stayed in close." The waves are not big but they are also not completely regular. As we sit gazing into the water enjoying the sight of the sea and the sound of the waves, there is a shrill peep on a whistle. I glance over my shoulder but don't see anyone. It must be a child playing with a whistle is my conclusion. Next the shrill peep is much closer and on the third peep even closer. I look around again and see a man stalking towards us. As he sees me turn he shouts, "The beach is closed!" obviously annoyed that his whistle hasn't done its job and instead he has to walk right out to us. It seems at first a bit bureaucratic after all beaches don't usually have a closing time but as we walk away we see a notice explaining that at night the beaches are left to the turtles. Beaches are not common along this coast and this is by far the longest, a place the turtles are drawn to it like a magnet. We have no desire to scare the turtles and given a reason happily depart.

The next day we come down in the morning with the intention of walking to the cliffs at the east end of the beach which is only a kilometre of so from the car park. By the time we get to the route up to a saddle I am very hot. From the top a sheer cliff drops away to the sea and as far as the eye can see the cliffs continue. A small boat chugs quietly along at the base of the cliffs.

When we get about halfway back the heat drives us into the water to cool off. Now I find out what Bruce meant about churning waves. There is a strong rip toward the east and I spend half my time walking back up into the current. On a New Zealand West Coast beach this rip would be treated with respect but here it is regarded as normal. At least it doesn't take you out to sea, or at least not here. The water must go somewhere.

At breakfast on our last day, one of Mustafa's sons suggests we go to the part of the rocky coast where the locals swim. He also mentions a narrow gorge which you can wade up. Both have their appeal but having time for only one we naturally opt for the sea.

The dusty metal road eases its way down toward the sea. Motorbikes, usually with a pillion passenger, buzz along in both directions. The road ends in a very small carpark which this late in the day has few cars. From here we follow a defined track which leads us to a small bay of deep blue water, but a bay crowded with locals. This is obviously the easiest one to reach but I feel a bit intimidated by the numbers. We continue along the track and come to a bay which apart from a yacht at anchor we have to ourselves. It is a bit of a scramble over the sharp rocks to get down to water level but it is worth it. Blue skies, deep blue water, scenic headlands what could be more perfect?

After a while three men join us. One decides to climb the high rock face and does so with admirable agility but his friend does not fare so well. He keeps getting stuck and pleading for help from his unhelpful friend. After a long struggle he makes it up. His confident friend now prepares himself for the jump into the sea far below. The face is not vertical and he has to throw himself away from the cliff as far as possible so he can avoid the outward curve of the rock. He jumps and disappears safely into the deep. His friend again drags things out but finally makes it down. Frustratingly I don't manage to capture either jump on film.

At the car park the owner of the small restaurant, yes there is a restaurant even on at this isolated beach hurries out to invite us to come in and try his food but we politely decline.

###  A 2000 Year History Carved out of Stone

We know a little already about how far back in time civilisations have occupied this coast. Our Pension is close to Xanthos. This town was the site of a Lycian Ruin, which was subsequently occupied by Greek and then Roman towns built out of rock blocks that survive the passage of time unchanged as a permanent monument to these civilisations. Later this coastal port became a Byzantine town.

This is a lot of history for someone from New Zealand to absorb. The ephemeral building materials used by the Maori means a thousand years a goes unmarked because the surrounding bush soon engulfs any unoccupied site. Even the sites of the fortified Pas soon subside back into the landscape despite the deep trenches dug to provide protection from the attacking tribes,

We visit many other ancient sites on our journeys along this coast. Since we are always out and about in the hottest part of the day, my memories of these ruined towns are dominated by the heat radiating out of the rock as the sun attacks us from above. Although we are walking amongst stone buildings and rock amphitheatre, the heat of these summer day always remind me of similar sunny days in Taihape, the hill country town I was born in.

I admire the patience of the two or three Turks who spend most of the day sitting and waiting for tourists to appear. I often wonder what they think of us, I mean what they really think. I hope they gain some entertainment watching as we wander around gazing in awe on such blatant displays of ancient history.

One site, accessed up a narrow dirt road, is particularly memorable because of the buried tombs. Here we leave behind the Turkish men who took time out from chatting in the shade to extract some money from us and explore the complex of tombs hacked out of the solid rock. These are not just small tombs but generous structures hacked out of the granite to produce something worthy of the dead. I have no idea whether we found all the tombs, or even most of the tombs, despite the fact we scrambled up many pathless hill sides avoiding the spiny vegetation in our attempts to see them all. In this ancient village, we see the smallest of amphitheatres amongst the many we saw on this trip, showing that even small towns had good theatre facilities in those days.

I can't give you details of the history of these places, I did not do my travel guide research before I came and I haven't since. If you want the history of these ancient sites you must talk Bryan who is our local expert.

One day we drive north to the city of Fethiye, where I discover that in the cities traffic lanes are just vacant territory open to free interpretation. There may be two lanes marked but quite often especially at traffic lights three cars are abreast. We did not stop for long in the city and then only because we found the road blocked by no entry signs. Seeing no way around the town, we stop to ask directions only to be told to ignore the signs and keep driving. No one tried to stop us and we finally reached the ghost town of Kayakoy (ancient name Karmylassos). 4000 Greek citizens were exchanged under League of Nations supervision in 1923 after the Turkish War of Independence with Turks living in Greece. The abandoned stone houses were badly damaged by an earthquake in 1957.

It was fascinating to wander through the streets and imagine living in one of the empty houses. It is a rugged site on a steep hill and as usual on all these sites there are bright red Turkish flags flying over the town. On this site we lose the track and never managed to find it again.

What is amazing is that in other parts of Turkey there is a similar density of ancient sites. When I get back to New Zealand I plan to chisel a message to future generations on some granite cliff, although such structures are hard to find in a country where even the highest mountain has all the structural strength of pile of wheatbix, as was shown when the top of the highest New Zealand mountain fell off a few years ago.

## While Travelling

### By Air

I don't know what air travel is like up in business and first class, or even in the case of Air New Zealand, 'Enhanced Economy'. To a child brought up by parents who lived through the Big Depression, the idea of splashing out money simply in the hope you will be more comfortable while travelling is unthinkable, at least where air travel is concerned. But I don't hesitate to take a sleeper on a train, and hang the cost. Who said humans had to be consistent?

It fascinates me the way The Cabin Crew control the crowds down in economy.

The weapon they use is the trolley, a beast that completely blocks the aisle as it makes its slow passage through the plane, making it difficult for passengers to get to the toilets or even to stand for long stretching their legs. A secondary weapon is the time they take before gathering in the empty food trays. If you have a seat by the aisle it is not too difficult to scramble out but in any other position you are grounded.

When all else fails the Cabin Crew alert the pilot and he announces there is turbulence ahead and to return to your seats and stay there until the seat belt sign is switched off. Of course the plane glides on its way without the slightest disturbance but the desired effect has been achieved, i.e. containment of the economy passengers. And all this in an age when we are all warned to exercise our legs while on long lights to reduce the risk of blood clots.

At least these days we have our own screens to watch movies on and we can choose the movie. No longer can the crew seize control by scheduling the movie at a time of their choosing. Down went the movie screen and we were told to close our shades, even if it was a bright sunny day outside and we want to look at the view, we can't, the movie was King.

While I wander back up the aisle to my seat, I get to see a variety of movies on multiple screens simultaneously and reach the conclusion that all the movie actors are fresh young men and women with bland features that can register only a very limited range of emotions. They are either all smiley and happy, or they frown or look weepy in an unsuccessful attempt to capture the more serious moments. When the sound is taken away it is easy to focus on just the expressions.

Another observation based on a studying a sea of sleeping or at least dozing faces is that everyone, even the roughest looking thugs, look like angels when they are asleep. I don't see how this information can be of use to anyone because as soon as they wake these angels may go out and give someone a gratuitous beating.

###  A Danger not Mentioned in the Guide Books

I can't be the only person who risks injury on trips to what used to be caiied the Old World, old world in this context being any country a 1000 years older than European settlement in New Zealand. I don't know how locals overcome this problem, perhaps you can tell me.

During every trip to Europe, and this year is no exception. I bash my head on bits of building that have been built on the unjustifiable assumption that only people of average or below average height will come. The dangers are usually cleverly disguised. For example on a staircase, it is usually not the first or second step where I strike my head, but in a cleverly disguised location at some higher level. In order to get to the top safely without bashing my head, every time I climb the stairs, I have to double my body into a safety pin and stay that way until I reach the top. At other times the trap is set at the point where a careful person is looking down in order to safely negotiate the first couple of steps. A good example of this was in the well-appointed flat we had in Shropshire.

What annoys me is that it usually takes more than one bash on the head for me to remember I must not walk up the stairs in an upright position. Who says corporal punishment is an aid to learning in schools? Whoever believes this is an idiot, it may generate pain and probably fear but it never improved learning.

In our Villa in Tuscany the whole kitchen was designed for dwarfs. No thought has been given to the slightly taller person (or perhaps the designer just hates us). Above the stove at exactly the point where when I tilt my head s I check something on the gas hobs a wooden rectangle catches my eye or my forehead. This projection interfered badly with my cooking technique.

In the case of Cappadocia I can and forgive people who lived more than a thousand years ago. They were probably on average much shorter then me and the problem was confined to the caves. If you are short and digging out a cave in the rock, you will not want to add unnecessary height on the improbable chance that someone ever six feet tall will want to visit.

The underground town was particularly dangerous. The tunnels were not of uniform height. Some were generous in the space they offered the head but in other places, probably to aid the defence of the city, the roofs were so low everyone in our party has to bend double. Bruce coming behind me would tell me when it was safe to return my head to its usual height.

Anyway to end on a positive note, this head hitting is never a problem in more modern buildings. It is just the penalty I, and others of above average height, must pay for an interest in structures that have the mystique of great age attached to them.

###  Watching my P's and Q's In Turkey

My great limitation when it comes to learning languages is my lack of a good memory for sounds. Just hearing a work spoken a few times does not lock it into my mind, instead I want to see a written representation of that same word, then I use the memory of these letters as a crutch to allow me to limp into the language.

There is never time to learn many words when you make a short visit to a non-English speaking country. Speaking English makes you lazy. In the famous tourist parts of most countries there are enough English speakers around to insulate you from your inability to string sentences together in the local language.

In Turkey I set out to learn three basic words. Instead of reading the Lonely Planet's phonetic representation myself, I asked Bruce to read them out to me. This provided no problem when English and Turkey each only use one word, thus "Hello" in English became "Me-ha-ba" in Turkish and "please" became "Lutfen." However thanks is quite a different story. It turned out to be "Te-shek-kewr e-do reem." It didn't make it any easier to find the words were spoken with the rapidity of a machinegun. The Turkish man at our hotel in Istanbul was delighted when I tried out my words on him after my first lesson.

However my pronunciation did not win him over. Instead he set out to teach me how to say it properly, which I was grateful for even though he was a hard taskmaster. I'd practise the words for thanks while out sightseeing and then get it wrong when I tried them out on him but he didn't give up on me.

In Cappadocia I started to get the words working for me. A fellow tourist over lunch on our bus tour assured me that simply saying "Te-shek-kewr" was quite enough but I refused to stop at half the phrase.

Mehaba on the other hand was easy and always elicited an enthusiastic response when I used the words on some passing stranger. I never knew enough Turkish to construct a sentence that used the word please, still if I ever need it, I will be able to say it.

Back home I still find myself saying to myself the Turkish words for thanks and now feel ready to attempt a useful phrase or two if I ever visit Turkey again.

###  Turkish Airline One of the Best?

We have almost nothing but praise for the Turkish airline.

The fact that this Airline phoned New Zealand, in the middle of the night, to tell us about a small change in departure times says it all. Yes they lose our bags on a flight of two legs, one of them requiring us to land at Istanbul Airport but they had it back to us the next day, even though the Flower Pension was a long way from the airport. All our internal flights were only about an hour duration but the cabin crew (virtually all women), served a simple meal and gave us the drink of our choice, without seeming to hurry. The space between seats is generous even for someone over six feet like me.

The planes depart on time, through a tight security screening extending to the main door of the terminal, but repeated again when we enter the departure lounge. In the Middle East where there are so many small groups willing to cause mayhem if they get half a chance, this level of security is welcome. Before entering an airport I empty all my pockets, take off my belt and watch and anything else that might trigger an alarm, and put them all in my small pack. In this way I assure myself of a painless passage past the scanners.

It is true, Bruce did not get his vegetarian meal on the flight from Istanbul to Hong Kong, but this possibility had already shown up in Palmerston North before we left. Although nothing was said on the flight print out about a special meal for Bruce, when Sue checked the computer entry before the trip began, she assured us it was clearly shown on the computer screen. Reassured we relaxed. However no mention of Bruce's meal was shown on the ticket. The catering people must have received the same printout as us. Luckily one of the options on the general meal was a vegetarian meal and the problem went away, after all an eleven hour flight without a meal is no fun.

To save the planet from global warming and at the same time save the airlines money, a classic, win-win situation, the air controllers at the airport you are heading for do not give the pilot permission to take off until there is a suitable gap in the traffic. First we are all loaded on the plane before this clearance is checked. After all by the time we have boarded and taxied the airport at our destination may be clear. The waits are usually about half an hour and it does mean we land immediately on arrival.

I strongly support this approach, even if I do miss the great views of the city we get as our plane circles around waiting to get permission to land. Istanbul in particular was a very busy airport, and on every occasion we landed there, we spent time on the ground first.

So if you get the chance do fly Turkish Air (and I'm not being paid for this free publicity).

### The Roads in Turkey

On the south coast of Turkey we hire a car so we can explore the coast on our own terms.

Roger Reeves, a man who has often been to Turkey, back in Palmerston North gives me the first briefing. "Driving in Turkey isn't a problem. Although when I was driving out of Ankara I did have an accident. We were on a multilane highway, a place where, when traffic is heavy, the marked lanes, if there are any, are ignored and drivers create lanes wherever they like. Suddenly a car to my left without the slightest warning swung right and crossed in front of me. I did my best to avoid it but there was a collision. The Turkish man in my car got out to discuss the collision with the other driver. I watched as they argued. In the end my friend came over and told me, that if I pay him $20, I will forget about the accident, otherwise the police will be called and we could be here for 2 hours. There was no obvious damage to my car so I paid up, even though I was in the right."

My problem with Turkey is the fact that for Insurance purposes every accident must be reported to the police who will submit a report. As we are told when we arrive this applies to dings in a car park even when you have not the slightest idea who caused the accident. The idea of having our holiday trip held up by the need to call the police, when I don't know a word of Turkish, is totally unappealing.

Since we will mainly be driving in small villages and through the countryside there should be no problem, so we hire a car through some generic web site that later sends us details of the actual company we will be dealing with.

The roads turned out to be of an excellent standard. The main roads all have regular three lane passing sections and in general the traffic was light. Most drivers are excellent but a small minority are simply mad, overtaking on corners and taking any risk to speed them on their way. In the cities where the traffic is heavy the real chaos. touched with a streak of madness. can be seen. Suddenly it is every man for himself in a dog eat dog world where the timid are likely to be devoured. Fortunately on the coast there are few cities and our driving life is generally tranquil. Do watch out for unexpected red light interrupting your passage around a roundabout. I shot through the first red light/ barely noticing it but fortunately this was out in the country where traffic was light.

Still I am pleased when we return car and I see the Russian looking Rental Car man walking around the vehicle checking for damage before he takes his seat and drives us to the airport without saying a thing.

###  Theme Parks Disney did Not Invent

Walt Disney didn't hesitate to copy real things in Europe. For example the famous Disney trademark castle with pointed towers exuding magic imitates wonderful Neuschwanstein Castle which was built by the slightly mad King Ludwig. Ludwig as it turned out knew what he was doing, whether he realised it or not, by inventing tourist attractions which would become magnets for people around the world. However as so often happens grey bureaucrats in the end cut off Ludwig's money but fortunately not before he had built his iconic castle.

And Walt Disney wasn't so bad at inventing tourist magnets himself in the form of theme parks based around many of his movies, and they have spread around the world since.

But Walt missed two of the most stunning theme parks in the whole Universe, theme parks that no designer dreamed of but theme parks that just like topsy grew.

I ask you what is Venice if it is not a theme park? Think of a large lagoon with an Island(s) in the middle, island(s) cut into lots of pieces by canals, Cars are banned and bikes are of no use, the only ways to get around are by walking or boating. Think of great food, historic old buildings think of massive churches and fine art treasure. Sounds Idyllic, well it is. What a relief not to have to battle cars in narrow streets at the height of summer.

Like all successful theme parks Venice is busy with tourists, and when a few cruise ships arrive it can become very busy indeed, but who wants to visit an empty theme park, certainly not me. I love streets that are densely carpeted with tourists, streets you have to weave and dodge your way through. So it gets a bit hot in summer, but take a short boat ride and you are at the Lido, which has a beach with friendly waves and a generous length unimagined by any theme park builder.

The second natural theme park is Goreme in Cappodocia, a town cupped in the hands of a valley enclosed on three sides by high edged cliffs, and forested with spikey cones of rock, cones massive enough to allow homes to be scooped out inside them, homes with floors that necessarily reduce rapidly in size as you go to higher floors. The town minaret strains to dominate the small town or at least to be seen above the cones but it is an unconvincing victory, if a victory at all.

During our visit the sound system on the minaret was erratic so the strange sound of the call to pray kept cutting out as if the singer had lost his voice or his faith in mid-flow. Our hotel has been carved out of the rock and you have a choice of either windowless caves or inhabiting a cone, we choose the former. All rooms even on the hottest day remain at a comfortable temperature. From the swimming pool on a high ledge the unlikely town is spread at your feet, and on the other side in the restaurant you gaze in wonder across another section of this strangely beautiful town.

In the morning the view is made even stranger by the appearance of hot air balloons passing low over our heads, while intermittently huffing hot to keep them airborne above our table. In fact the sky can be crowded with these balloons.

The streets thread their way between the cones, although many of the cone houses are no longer occupied. There are few cars and enough tourist shops to satisfy the most compulsive shopoholic. Here there are not the crowds that sometimes dominate Venice, in any case the town is too small to accommodate many people and because it is remote from Istanbul they can successfully handle all the visitors they get, while retaining its charm.

One feature of this Goreme Theme Park, Walt Disney, with his oppressive, hopelessly middle-class family values, would have censored is the fascinating _Valley of Love_. What does the name conjure up in your mind, gentle streams and soft waterfalls amongst meadows of soft flowers? Forget it, This _Valley of Love_ is as much in your face as a pornographic movie with its forest of towering rock structures that represent, on a scale unthinkable to the most egotistical male, erect penises. There is no way of getting around it, they cannot be anything else, they might as well have been sculptured by a great artist like Michelangelo.

But if this part of the Goreme Theme Park is too much in your face for you, then visit the nearby _Open Air Museum_ where more than a thousand years ago there was a Byzantine Monastic settlement that housed 20 Monks and in the 17th Century became a pilgrimage site for visitors wanting to see the churches, chapels and monasteries cut out of the rock cliff. The quality of the wall paintings will take your breath away but don't use your cell phone as flashlight or you might lose it.

### Minutiae

Despite introducing us to the practice on one of our other visits to Italy, Angie had to once again teach us on this visit that in Italy in the fruit and vegetable section of any Supermarket you must never touch the produce with your bare hand but instead use the plastic gloves provided. How disconcerting must Italians find it when they are in countries where everyone grabs fruit and veg with their bare hands?

In Tuscany at least there are road signs in town pointing to the local cooperative supermarket. As visitors we found this very useful but who pays for the publicity? Can book shops, shoe shops or clothing shops do the same? I saw no signs for these.

It is common in Europe where the rigid code that applies to queuing ensures fairness to everyone. In most European countries there are machines dispensing tickets showing your number in the queue. When that number is called out or shown on a central screen you go forward and do your business.

I discovered a more sophisticated form of this when I went with Angie to buy stamps at a post office. It took a moment or two for Angie to break the code but it turned out there is a different dispenser for each function the post office carries out. If you choose the wrong ticket you won't be served even if you are the only one in the Post Office.

I discovered a special skill that the Asian visitors have. They can as if by magic slip through the smallest gap in a crowd to improve their position. One moment I see an Asian woman behind me, and the next she is in front of me and I was not aware of her act of moving. I was not touched or pushed in any way and I was not annoyed. I simply admired the skill involved and wished I could acquire it.

#  Very little things

## A Bee in the pocket

As usual I dropped Bruce off at Fonterra on Friday morning so we can conveniently do our weeks Supermarket shopping at the end of the day. However as I drive out of the parking area something strange happens. I begin to feel a pain in my thigh. I keep driving but it gets worse. It is coming from my pocket. I realise immediately that it must be some kind of stinging insect, a bee or a wasp but of course I can't do much when I am driving. As the pain gets even sharper, in desperation I reach into the pocket and lift the pocket away from my thigh. Just as I expected when the pressure on the bee is reduced it stops stinging.

At last I see a place where I can park safely and I pull over. I cautiously reach into my pocket to try to displace the bee (or wasp) and find to my surprise I am touching something very very hot. I don't have any matches in my pocket, so what can it be? I probe cautiously.

Then I feel it, the smooth surface of the rechargeable 9V battery I am taking to town to get a replacement. It is burning hot and when I take it out I can see it is distorted by the great heat. I am just pleased it has not exploded in my pocket.

Then I realise what has happened. My metal keys have been resting across the two terminals shorting out the battery and allowing rapid discharge across the conducting link with the resultant build-up of heat.

Only now do I realise this type of battery unlike the small AA and AAA batteries is perfectly set up to allow this shorting to take place. The two terminals are side by side and at the same height.

Let this be a warning to all of us. It could happen to anyone who has something conducting in their pocket along with of course a 9 V battery.

##  The sound of a Prius Toyota approaching

I am waiting out on the street for Bruce to back our new Prius Toyota hybrid car out. I cannot see up the drive because my view is screened by a curtain of green trees.

Then I hear it, the strange sound of the cracking of dry leaves being crushed. and I immediately get a sense of what the ponderous approach of something very large like an elephant or a dinosaur must sound like. What it most certainly does not sound like is a car. There is no purr of the motor and no rush of wind against the body, not even the sound of rubber on concrete. The object approaches ever so slowly and then I see it, the Toyota Pruis running entirely on its the battery.

It was a strange and eerie experience. Now I will be even more careful when I back out the drive. A small child might find itself crushed beneath the wheels before it realises the danger it was in.

##  Upset the balance of Nature at Your own Risk

Dr Grant Blackwell knows all about this. He was one of the scientists that exploded the myth that any simple-minded attempt to protect a threatened species by eliminating one pest can back fire on you. For example if rats are wiped out and, if the stoats and weasels have been mainly feeding on rats, then the rats and weasels will be forced to turn their attention to birds in order to survive. The cure may well be worse than the disease

Everything in nature is linked together in a complex network of prey and predators and you disturb this at your own risk.

We discovered an obvious (in hindsight) example of this with Bruce's new berry cage. I for one thought with the birds kept out, then the berries were ours and ours alone. How naive of me. The birds might sit on top of the netting staring down at the luscious red fruit metaphorically drooling but another enemy can enter freely through the wire netting. Suddenly the slugs and snails took over. The cage provides them complete protection from the birds

Slugs and snails set to work at night, when things were cooler and when no one is watching. They don't eat entire strawberries but they do leave good-sized holes. Suddenly it is slug heaven. I did not know it but all this time the voracious blackbirds were simultaneously our friends and our enemies. While they concentrated on the slugs all is well but like the rest of us they do also enjoy a pleasant summer dessert of berries.

Bruce has fought back in the way of an organic gardener. After a bit of research he discovered slugs like the skins of citrus fruit even more than they like berries. So he scatters peel around the berries and then comes out after dark to destroy any slugs foolish enough to give way to temptation. And many do.

So now we have a balance. We don't have many damaged fruit and the slugs get to taste citric skins before they die. And on the side we may be selectively breeding a group of snails and slugs who do not like the smell of citrus skin. We can live with that.

#  From Our Own Correspondent

##  From Our Reporter in Seattle; Jan 2012

###  A Christmas Greeting Sans Mention of Children, Grandchildren or Pets.

25th December 2011: Time may fly when you are having fun, but these days it also seems to fly equally fast even when not having fun and for part of 2011 I was not having fun. Actually it could be called my version of Queen Elizabeth's "Annus Horribilus" of some years ago.

I had known for about a decade that I had a minor leak in my mitral heart valve which is not uncommon. Late last June I developed a case of walking pneumonia and when I was being examined by my primary care doc he informed me as soon as the pneumonia was under control, I needed to see a cardiologist, because my heart valve leak was no longer minor. Just what I wanted to hear!

When I saw the cardiologist in late July, she took one brief listen to my heart and informed me I needed to be evaluated by a heart surgeon – even more unwelcome "cheerful" news. In early August the surgeon took a listen and immediately exclaimed – _Wow_. Although he wanted to do surgery relatively soon, he agreed that while my condition was serious, it was not life threatening, which meant I could wait until the good Northwest summer weather turned into its normal awful winter crud mode. The surgery was set for October 18th. The advantage of this delay was it gave me time to plan ahead, but the disadvantage was it also gave me over two months to think – and fret – about it. Open-heart surgery is not exactly something one looks forward to with great joy. But I ultimately accepted my fate and the night before the surgery I actually had a reasonably decent night's sleep.

Although the surgeon said I was losing about 50% of my oxygenated blood with each heartbeat due to the back flow through the faulty valve, I was able to continue hiking in the mountains which I did up to 3 days before the surgery, albeit I had to significantly slow down the pace. As a result of this level of physical condition, I recovered from the heart valve replacement much faster than most people. I was hospitalised for four days, but because I live alone the surgeon strongly recommended I go to a rehabilitation centre –aka nursing home – for two weeks. He accepted my suggestion that my stay be evaluated on a daily basis. Although looking back I think I would have been okay being at home alone with friends checking in on me daily, I now realize my six days in the nursing home was an enlightening experience that taught me some very potentially valuable future lessons.

It is not easy being in a nursing home if you are mentally alert and it's even worse if you are also not seriously physically impaired. After about two days I couldn't help but think of what a friend once told me about her father trying to run away from his nursing home in his wheelchair. Because I was relatively mobile I would walk around the facility both for exercise and to ease the boredom. I soon learned it requires little effort to become mentally depressed when you are surrounded 24/7 by people who are mentally impaired, physically impaired and sometimes both. I soon learned to tell the difference between the two types of pitiful cries of " _HELP ME_ " with some being real, but most being imaginary. A woman several rooms down the hall from me often had night time mental meltdowns. To maintain your metal stability you have to develop a "you can look, but you do not see" approach.

Because of my rapid recovery rate by the 4th day I was fully independent and because I was now walking around the facility better than some of the staff, my physical therapists told me they wrote into their reports I should be released ASAP. The next morning when I spoke with an administrator about my release, I was told it would take at least five days to process my "parole." After I got over the shock of the sheer stupidity of that statement, I started to ask her some questions, forcing myself to remain cool, calm and collected. I began to get her attention when I informed her if I had to remain an additional 6 days after the professional staff had put in writing I was ready to be released, I would consider it to be involuntary incarceration and a misuse of medicare funds. I also told her I came to her facility because it was highly recommended by the social worker at the hospital and I would relay this information to the hospital. About two hours later I was told I would be released the next morning.

Later in the day I heard from one of the therapists that the top administrator of the facility ordered my release to be speeded up. What all this means is that patients must have an advocate if they cannot advocate for themselves. Because I was able to forcefully advocate for myself, I was released early on day 6 instead of day 11.

On day six, when I heard the door shut behind me, I could not help but think of the famous words of MLK – _FREE AT LAST, FREE AT LAST, THANKS GOD ALMIGHTY, I'M FREE AT LAST_ **.** About a week later I relayed this information to my surgeon and he nonchalantly responded with: " _Ah-h, trying to get more money out of medicare and your insurance."_ Could this obvious widespread practice be one of the many reasons why the costs of our self-proclaimed efficient private sector medical delivery system are so outrageously high?

Although numerous influential political groups claim to abhor socialized medicine, these same groups ignore the reality that we already have socialized medicine albeit the most inefficient and costly socialized system possible, i.e. what President George W. Bush referred to as the FREE medical care available in hospital emergency rooms. The bills of my heart valve replacement are clearly demonstrating, just how _non-free_ emergency room care really is. For my 4 days hospital stay medicare and my supplemental insurance paid $31,496. However if I had been responsible for my own medical bills, like millions currently without any insurance coverage, I would be paying the hospital $180,052 for the same 4 days. The added $148,556 is how hospitals are funding their _"FREE_ " emergency room care. [Note" these figures do not include the surgical costs.] While the so-called "Obamcare" has serious flaws due to the successful special interest lobbying efforts, so far I am unaware of a practical alternative being proposed by the opposition. I doubt if many ordinary Americans can afford to put hundreds of thousands into medical saving accounts to pay for their health care.

#  The Kiwi Connection

##  What Did You Do in the Summer Hols?

###  An Insider's View of a Zoo

Isn't it wonderful when your long held views get completely overturned. Unlikely as it seems, someone as knowledgeable and experienced as me can still be proven wrong and it happened to me at the Auckland Zoo.

Not that I am in any way opposed to zoos, I appreciate their educational value. It is a place where we see in the flesh creatures from around the world. Who wouldn't be delighted by the surprise and joy a child feels when she sees for the first time an elephant, a giraffe or a monkey. Hopefully the days when animals were kept in tiny enclosures without any mental stimulation are passed. Now the brief of a zoo is to save rare creatures from extinction by acting as a dating service for animals and then encouraging them to engage in acts of copulation, a service which would be quickly shut down by a vocal puritanical minority if offered to humans.

No the reason visiting zoos is not high on my list of ways to spend an afternoon is I felt I had extracted everything I could from a zoo visit. Going to yet one more zoo, rather than exciting my interest, may depress me if I see animals in the old fashioned constraining cages, lying morosely around, obviously bored and contemplating suicide. So I don't go.

I think it will be all different when we go with Richard Jakob-Hoft, a senior vet at Auckland Zoo, to take a behind the scenes look at a Zoo. At last I will have the chance to see what really goes on at a zoo away from the crowds. I will get the chance to enjoy the secret pleasure of feeling a little superior to the average punters who have paid their money.

Richard and his wife Maggie, a delightful couple, are close friends of Steve and Jan and we will piggy back on Steve and Jan's coat tails to get into the zoo. Even at the briefing I feel special, "We must be at the side gate by five to eleven," Jan tells us, "Maggie will be there to let us in."

Having parking in the zoo grounds is a bonus on this post Christmas holiday weekend. We ignore the masses of cars assembled in the public carpark and stop at a high brushwood gate, then wait while Helen presses some kind of intercom system so we can be let into our own little car park in front of the smart new building that house _The New Zealand Centre for Conservation Research_. Maggie trips as I approach her but quickly recovers. I gallantly say, " I would have caught you if you'd fallen." Maggie, a lady of generous build, shoots straight back with a smile, "No, I would have knocked you to the ground."

We join Helen, Walt, Helen's brother Geoffrey, Judy and a smiling man who, not unexpectedly, turns out to be a teacher of laughing yoga. Richard leads us out of our quiet, hidden carpark into an excited milling crowd worthy of Disneyland on the 4th July. "The New Zealand section of the zoo is now about one quarter of the whole area," Richard tells us, "When I first arrived at the zoo we drew up a plan for the future of the zoo. A comprehensive New Zealand section was at the top of the list. Unfortunately at first there were more urgent priorities, for example getting another elephant to be with our one remaining elephant."

Richard has a radiophone and is dressed in his official zoo uniform, increasing my feeling of importance. He gets a call from a woman who wants to know which drugs an ailing animal should receive. Richard, a year or two ago, starred in a weekly TV program showing the day-to-day activities at Auckland Zoo and I have to resist the temptation to look around to see if the cameras are rolling again today.

Once we are in the New Zealand part of the zoo, I quickly learn the great advantage of being with a group of lively interested people, some of whom are experienced bird watchers. It is like having a dozen eyes searching for the often-elusive birds. Time and again someone will point out a bird or lizard I would have completely missed if wandering on my own. In the magnificent bird enclosure there is even a tree top walkway amongst the bush. I am kept busy with my camera as I am alerted to the appearance of yet one more bird.

While watching the big fat long-fin eels in a tank of crystal clear water, I nearly miss completely seeing the heron on a high rock behind the pool as it reflects on the challenge of building a nest. Bruce has missed the heron so I call him back to see the bird. Before our disbelieving eyes the heron flies down to a log in the middle of the eel pool and poses for us with the light behind.

I am not good at spotting Kiwis in the darkness of the Kiwi house. "Take your time to let your eyes adjust to the dark," Richard advises us and after a while I do manage to spot the moreporks in a tree, when they are pointed out to me that is. But however much I peer into the dark corners, and despite the occasional excitement when someone who spots what might be movement at the back of the enclosure, it always turns out to be a false alarm, I am defeated. As I start to leave a kiwi strides confidently out of the shadows and walks boldly through the most brightly lit area. Even I can't miss seeing this bird but I never did spot one of the small New Zealand bats that hunt for food on the forest floor.

The blue duck that feeds in swift flowing mountain rivers is nowhere in sight, even though there is a fast flowing stream running down hill in the enclosure. This time no one else succeeds either. The Keas are not so shy. One stands on a parapet right beside the path and allows small children try to photograph it, hoping no doubt for a quick snack in return, despite the _Do not feed the birds_ sign. No doubt it has had success with this strategy in the past.

I am learning that zoos are places to visit when you have enough leisure to spend time patiently looking, and not a place to simply hurry through hoping the advertised creatures will be there waiting for you to view.

There is a lizard with patched green colouring that closely mimics the plant it is on and I do see it with a little help from my friends. We soon realise it is slowly stalking some kind of insect, and I mean slowly. After much thinking one of its four legs will be lifted carefully and then slowly placed a little nearer to the, for us, invisible insect. Needless to stay our patience does not equal that of the lizard and we are gone before it makes its final attack.

It is time to eat lunch. We take over the seminar room in the _Conservation Research Centre Building,_ sharing food left over from Christmas Day.

When Maggie offers a tour of the Conservation Centre only Walt, Bruce and I accept. Richard describes with justifiable pride this Centre that he has worked so hard to get built, "Whenever I visited a zoo anywhere in the world, I studied what they were doing and took photos to bring back with me."

The result is a tribute to his hard work and determination. There are three operating theatres, two in the same room, one for large animals like horses and one for smaller animals and presumably birds. The masks that administer the anaesthetic come in all shapes and sizes. In the veterinary field one size most certainly does not fit all. The third theatre is for operations that require everything to be absolutely sterile and this is the one I would choose if I were receiving treatment here.

"We also help maintain a register of the genetic background of all the endangered animals around the world. It is needed when zoos swap animals for breeding to ensure the maximum genetic diversity in the populations," Richard tells us.

Through a large glass window, visitors to the public display can watch operations taking place with the aid of a video camera in the ceiling, which sends images to a TV screen of the operation. And of course there are scanning machines to help in correct diagnosis and a well-equipped pharmacy to provide medication to speed the recovery. In response to my question Richard says, "Yes all the animals must be anaesthetised so they can't move while they are scanned. We have to shoot a syringe into the big cats to put them out."

Richard shows us an X-ray of the small cat he has been treating all weekend. It has hair in its bowel amongst other things and as must often be true with animals the action the vet must be take is not obious.

The same careful thought has gone into designing the holding pens for animals of very different sizes and shapes. In addition there is a pond for water birds so they feel more at home. Because a dismembered animal has been left sitting in a tank of water over Christmas the autopsy room smells of death.

Maggie insists that Richard take us into the public area, where we can listen to the heart rates of different animals and birds, "Richard's heart was recorded for the human heart," Maggie tells us with pride. But there is more, a work of art at the entrance showing a pair of hands holding a spherical stone. Again Richard is the model his time its his hands have been used. This time it is Richard who speaks up, "I wanted something from Maggie to be shown and I asked them to include my wedding ring," Sure enough we see the ring, and then the clincher, "The beam of wood it is mounted on is an Australian Hardwood found in Western Australia which is where Maggie comes from."

I depart an enlightened man, much impressed by the results of Richard's dedicated work through the years. The idea that a zoo is a place where the visitors can observe birds living their lives without the need for intervention or signposting by the keepers is new to me. This environment encourages us to discover things for ourself, and it is refreshing not to be faced at every turn with wordy notices.

Above all else I learned what a close and loving couple Richard and Maggie are and this was the greatest lesson of all.

###  Off to Waiheke Island

The plan is that we will go to Waiheke Island with Steve and Jan, and Walt who is up from Christchurch. Helen is also supposed to be coming but she is concerned about whether her old dog Pan is up for the trip. He has badly worn hips and may not be able to get up the steps .into the house. Furthermore, Pan has never been on a boat, and he might just miss home, especially if he can't join the rest of his pack on the second floor. Still Helen in the end decides to give it a go and return after the first day if Pan can't cope.

Because dogs are not permitted on the car ferry we will be using, Walt and Helen take him on the passenger ferry. Helen's report when she arrives is not hopeful, "He just lay down shivering through the whole trip on the boat," she tells us, and of course as predicted he is unhappy to be trapped on level one of the house. Allocating beds, which is not always a straight forward process on our group trips, this time is not difficult since Helen must sleep on level one with Pan, the house belongs to friends of Jan and Steve and they claim the second floor, leaving Walt, Bruce and me on the third floor.

The house is still not finished, with parts that do not have any Gib board, and the plastering has not been done. The stairs are perfectly serviceable but they are made out of a cheap boxwood which the owners will replace eventually. Yes it's the usual story; they ran out of money before the work was finished, and since it is only a holiday home it has been left like this for some time. The kitchen is complete and as usual we will eat well while we are here.

In the days that follow we see a transformation in Pan. Helen manages to get him up from level one to level two, but he is then afraid to go back down, even when Helen hangs his bed sheet between stairs to hide the long drop between the two levels. This dog is almost as scared of heights as I am.

But Pan cannot be allowed to do his business inside. He is lying comfortably on the floor when Helen signals him to come over to the stairs. He gets up, sees where Helen is standing, pretends he hasn't seen her, and walks around behind some standalone cupboards where he can't see Helen and lies down again. This pretence of not getting the message does not in the end save him from the dreaded return down the steps.

Helen faces another problem, Pan does not like the long grass growing around the house. To get him to investigate and more importantly attend to his toilet needs, she has to slash and trample it down. This he finds acceptable.

To the surprise of us all, when after a walk on the beach, he follows Helen up a long steep section of steps to get to the park on top of the cliff. He is progressing fast. By day three of our five-day visit he is coming to level two regularly and apparently without pain. On the beach by day two he is happily trotting along and even gets his feet wet in the incoming waves. When he sees one of the small dogs he likes for company he runs easily over. Admittedly his back hips do swing loosely in a peculiar way but he shows no signs of discomfort, rather it looks like he is enjoying himself. Pan is spreading his wings.

I discover a dark side to Pan. Twice when I reach out my hand to pat his head, he makes a swift pretend biting motion. I take the warning seriously and do not offer this service again. Unfortunately a visitor from Quebec gets harsher treatment. We are at a party for Kate's birthday when Patrick arrives. He goes over to greet Helen, who is sitting on the sofa with Pan on the floor beside her. Patrick reaches out his hand to greet Pan with a pat on the head and he gets the full treatment. In a swift slash he punctures Patrick's fore finger and soon blood is dripping on the floor. He has just arrived in New Zealand on a biking tour and dismisses our concerns, perhaps he thinks this is normal for New Zealand dogs but we are all upset by Pan's unfortunate response to what was meant by Patrick as a friendly greeting.

###  Out Walking in a Twigs and Twitters Reserve

On the first day, while Helen is out looking at houses to buy on the Island, Jan suggests we walk through the Forest and Bird Reserve to see a grove of Kauri Trees. We need no second invitation.

At the entrance gate we are requested to wash the soles of our shoes with a solution which kills the bacterium that is slowly destroying Kauri trees. There is an excellent map showing a circular walk that will take an hour and a half to complete. In a bush dominated by Nikau Palms there is little undergrowth' so we are grateful for the many signs which say _New Track_ , even if we don't know where the old track was.

The track climbs steadily and the signs fall away. When we finally reach the top of a ridge we have a choice of two other tracks and neither of them refer to the circular track that will lead us back to Waiheke Road. We choose the Kauri Grove, and it is not far. The wooden walkway that keeps us all safely above the vulnerable roots is occupied by two women and lots of small children. I ask where they are from, thinking the climb up to the ridge will be too much for the smallest children and am not surprised to be told that they came in from the Trig Hill Road entrance which they tell us is only a few minutes walk away.

When we retrace our steps to the junction by the process of deduction the third track must be the one we want. The track heads down hill and before long two women and a man hurry up the path toward us the man saying, "We got lost and are trying to find our way back to Trig Hill Road." On this matter we are able to reassure them and redirect them. They rush on up the path.

At the bottom of the hill, you guessed it, the track divides in two and of course there are no signposts. We are reduced to guessing and decide to take the left hand one, "I think that will lead us back to Waiheke Road," Bruce confidently asserts. Unfortunately he is wrong. We soon come upon a notice that mentions Trig Hill Road and indicates that if we continue in this direction we will reach the Scotts Terrace exit. As we return to the junction we meet one of the women from the Kauri Tree with two small children in tow.

"I am trying to reach the beach. Is this the way I go? My husband has done this walk before but this is my first time."

We tell her she will have to turn back and follow us to Waiheke Road. The children are a bit disappointed at having to retrace their steps but they soon settle again.

Back at the junction without the notices we naturally take the only other option and hope it leads to Waiheke Road. When we are sure this is the right path we turn around and check how the children are getting on. I ask whether they have enough water and food and am assured everything is fine. So we leave them.

And sure enough we eventually arrive back at the exit we want.

Later when I mention our path confusion to Jan she admits they also had trouble finding the right track. I think the problem is the same as when you ask a person who knows a computer program too well to write an instruction manual to meet the needs of the beginner. Similarly the volunteers who help maintain the path all know the paths near the part of the bush they normally work on and naturally sign posts the closest exit (the one they came in from). But no one has the responsibility of overseeing the project and ensuring consistency in the signing around the whole loop. This I postulate is why the loop track we tried to follow is never mentioned again and we are left to flounder around dealing with signs to places we did not wish to go to. It is true that we now know if we took any exit we could return to our house by walking on the roads in time to do the second rising of the bread in time for lunch. But for us it took some guesses along the way to know this.

###  On Meeting a few Long Time Waiheke Residents

Introductions to long-time residents began back in Steve and Jan's house, since Emma and her partner both live on Waiheke Island, and Emma for one grew up out here.

It is through the good graces of Jan, who herself counts as a long-time resident of the island, that we meet Kate Bryant, the mother of Emma, yes I know it all sounds a bit incestuous, but there weren't so many residents of the Island in the early days so they probably all knew each other at least by name. Jan invites Kate around to dinner. Jan gives us a briefing, "Kate is likely to come by bus because her car is not registered and since it is holiday time there are two traffic officers on the Island."

Already I am getting the hang of the culture of the Island. Why register your car, after all it is expensive, and if there are no cops on the island why bother. Of course the police come across from Auckland periodically and do a sweep to try to combat this laissez faire attitude to the laws of the land, but no doubt word quickly spreads on the local grapevine and for a day or two the buses are well patronised.

After dinner we go walking on the beach with Kate.

Kate graciously invites us to come over the next day to her home to celebrate her birthday which is very tidily placed on January 1st and we all jump at the chance. "You will get to meet other long time Waiheke residents," Jan tells us, "And get a feel of what life was like in the early days on the island."

Helen makes a cake, even though we are missing one key ingredient, baking powder. The Supermarket is sold out of baking powder and the gas station up the road only has baking soda. Decorated with fresh berries and a Happy Birthday plastic notice it looks fit for the occasion.

"Should we give Kate a cake with something plastic on top?" asks Jan and we learn more about Kate's reaction to the dominance of plastic in 21st Century life.

Bruce wraps an olive pip remover and Jan does the same with a lovely scarf and we are ready for the party.

It is a long trek up the path to Kate's little house. It was once even smaller, just a tiny bach, but it has been added onto in the organic way of all good house additions. Kate gently briefs us on the reality of living on the old Waiheke, "If you need to use the toilet then go out and pee on the gardens and otherwise take a spade with you and bury it."

We have long known the value of the nitrogen in urine to any garden and this extension is a good one, even if you have an inside toilet. As to burying your organic waste, how great for any garden is that? I like this house and I like Kate.

Then the guests arrive, and all except Patrick from Quebec I presume are long-time residents of the Island. Bernhard sits down beside me and we spend most of the evening talking, or rather listening to him, answer the endless stream of questions I direct at him. He is a sailor who has built and sailed small boats around the world. He talks of living on a small wooden boat through one English winter to save money on transport to his job. The little heater inside the boat generated steam that condensed and ran down the walls, while on the outside the water froze, lifting the paint into blisters, so he had to repaint the boat in the spring.

"I knew at 7 years old I wanted to sail around the world. When as a young man, I was ready to go none of my friends wanted to come. They had girl friends or jobs so I sailed across the Atlantic alone. There were no radios or GPS systems in boats in those days, you were completely on your own."

He made it across in twenty days but carried food for thirty days. His boat was a wooden Trimaran that was extremely buoyant since it floated on the top of waves and did not cut through them like a mono-hull boat.

There were lessons to learn, "I used to sail with anyone I could get to act as crew. On one voyage in the Pacific I had a crew of misfits, everyone smoked marijuana except me. When in a storm I ordered them to reef the top sail, they all stood around gazing dreamily up and after that I made sure I had no disturbed people who had unresolved issues on the boat."

Bernard has seen changes arising from global warming, "I used to use the old charts that captains of sailing ships relied upon in the 19th Century, so I knew where to position myself to pick up the trade winds for example. These wind patterns have changed so much now that the charts are no longer reliable."

These days he is training an enthusiastic young crew, teenagers who have lived on moored boats, "We have been doing well in the races," he tells me.

"They will be our future Olympic Champions then?" I suggest.

"Unfortunately no, they're not able to afford the entry fees for the races they need to go to in order to gain recognition. It costs $80 or more and the families just don't have that sort of money."

This saddens me.

And yes freak waves do exist, "They have satellites which can monitor wave amplitudes across the oceans and they do detect massive waves. The occur when a big storm induced wave pattern is faced with a sudden change to a different equally large swell direction," Bernhard tells me, "Of course there are few eye witness accounts but ships do sometimes disappear without trace."

Bernhard is scathing about the Auckland invasion. "Big modern houses are springing up like mushrooms," he tells me, "And worse still the Island is now part of the new mega Auckland City. When there is roadwork to be done they bring the machinery over on a barge with their own workmen and then leave again when the work is done. They put footpaths where they are not needed and don't put them where they are needed," Bernhard complains.

We feel our way back down the slippery path in a darkness broken by torches some people have thought to bring. I was not so far sighted and I follow close behind Jan who is even closer to Steve who does has one.

###  Tourists Exploring the Island

Christmas Day 2011 gave us stunning weather, with a scorching day and intensely blue skies, then the warm rains arrive and continued into the New Year. On Waiheke Island we only have one really wet day but never is the weather warm enough to encourage us into the surf on the stunningly beautiful beach five minutes-walk from the house. But we do walk the length of the bay at least once a day and Pan does get to exercise off his lead on the bench before 10 am and after 6 pm.

In the centre of town, Oneroa is its name, is **The Piano Museum**. When you visit Waiheke be sure to make time for a visit. The variety of pianos of every shape and size beckon you to play a note and the volunteers are generous in the time they spend explaining the mechanisms, the functions and the whakapapa of them all. You won't be disappointed. Then walk through to an art gallery stocked with a wide variety of art and be tempted to buy something.

I suppose you are wondering whether I have been given the job of the Island's PR boss.

And I won't stop there. Drive out to **the Sculpture Garden** and even if no one is around you simply slip your $10 into the honesty box, take a map of the grounds and go exploring. The garden is on the edge of an estuary and alone is worth a visit but the range of sculptures on display for you to discover for yourself takes your breath away. You end up on the coast at Dead Dog Bay.

I think I'd better stop there. Well no, perhaps not before mentioning that famously disputed relic of the Second World War, **Stony Batty.** No, it's not the relic that was disputed but the public access to the underground gun complex. Years ago the millionaire owner, a fat cat called Spencer, blocked the road leading to the guns to keep the public out. It took a long court action which as Bernard pointed out to me, "Almost broke the local Council," before access via the road was assured. The gun emplacement is built on a hill on top of the Island. The scenery near the gun emplacement itself is breath taking. From this high point the big guns command the whole sweep of sea ready to defend the island if enemy ships approach. We didn't see any.

The woman who took our money is blunt, "Do you want the hour tour or the half hour tour," we demur wanting to know which is which. "The tour following the white signs is longer but the cost is the same." Why did she ask, well there were slightly different maps for the two. The farm has a small flock of very very tame sheep in the grounds and some visitors go over and stroke them or take photos, while they munch their cuds without showing the slightest concern.

Bruce, Walt and I take the long tour and are soon descending the steep stairs into a blackness relived of course by our torches. The tunnels are long and you only see what is lit by your torch. It would be a great place to hold a murder game weekend. Every so often there is a short dead end tunnel, which is designed to stop the force of an exploding shell from sweeping through the main tunnels. Unfortunately they do not muffle the sound of the excited screaming by children, and some adults. They seem instead to get amplified as they sweep out of the blackness toward us.

As usual Bruce patiently reads out descriptions of the points of interest as we study three very old mechanical computers riotously named, _Tom, Dick and Harry_ or wander around the main operations room. We do not need any signs when we poke our torches into one small room to find it is a toilet.

When we climb a vertical ladder out into the gun emplacement itself and stare across the vast expanse of waters of the Hauraki Gulf, relieved by occasional islands, do we really appreciate the difficulty of actually hitting a passing ship. _Tom, Dick and Harry_ must have had their work cut out as information came in from the spotters about whether the shot was long or short or forward or back and a new elevation or direction calculated. To be honest it would have been pure luck if they hit on an enemy ship. Fortunately they never fired a shell in anger, in fact the installation was only complete in 1948 after the Second World War had ended. Subsequently the outdated guns were sold as scrap metal.

At the point where the Passenger Ferry arrives there are **Cliff Top Walks** running both north and south. The one to the north is the more spectacular but in wet weather this track is treacherous and care is needed, as more than one sign tells us. It's also best not to start the walk at high tide. Otherwise like us you will have to skirt a rocky headland and in our case a fresh slip as well. The track south runs along lower cliffs and is much better formed. You will meet more people there and if you are lucky like me, you will discover a soccer shirt from Oxford University in your size hanging on a fence and take it

You can do circular walks on both tracks by at the end circling back into town on roads to pick up your car. Both we highly recommended.

##  A Long Weekend in Whangarei

###  Expanding a Short-Long Weekend into a Long-Long Weekend

###

Finally in 2012 Waitangi Day, the 6th of February – the day the Treaty was signed, comes tacked onto a weekend. To the annoyance of everyone in paid employment the public holiday associated with the anniversary of the signing slavishly follows the date of 6th February. This means that for three days each week this holiday is isolated in the middle of the week, quite useless for longer trips away. A private members bill is now before Parliament to attach the holiday onto a weekend while of course retaining the celebrations on the 6th. We are hoping it passes.

This year Bruce wants to extend the holiday further as he explains, "To make it worthwhile going all the way up to Whangerei to catch up with Karl and Mel."

Karl is Bruce's brother and Mel his wife, and we have not met the new additions to their family. Elena is already 3 years old while Tommy is 18 months.

So he adds two days of leave and then organises free travel for both of us using his air points from business trips into Asia and our FlyBuy points awarded for customer loyalty. Not only do we get to fly to Auckland and back for free, but the five day rental car costs nothing either. Our plan is, actually my plan is, that we do some sightseeing on the day we drive north and again on the day we return south.

###  The Car Journey up and back

On the way up we stop for lunch at Orewa Beach on a day with a brisk wind that discourages any desire to swim. The sky above the bay is filled with colourful kites dragging people in wet suits through the waves. A couple of sand based sail craft add more interest to the mix. Of course we are driven to take pictures of them

After lunch we walk the route of the local section of the Te Araroa walkway that leads over the headlands to Hatfields Beach, which compared to the bustle of Orewa Bay is quiet and tranquil.

After three days up at Whangerei putting up with cloudy days and stiff easterly breezes, accompanied on one-day with heavy showers, on the day of our return drive the weather is perfect. So we stop at Mangawhai on the sort of sunny beach day we will remember in the middle of the winter storms. Still sniffing out the Te Araroa Trail we walk north up the beach and follow the wooden steps up a steep ridge to a cliff top trail. We eat lunch while enjoying the panoramic view south along the beach. The Hen and Chicken Islands are not far off the coast and Little Barrier Island can be seen further out. The day sparkles with bright sunlight dancing on the sea and the same bright sun intensifies the colours of the green flax.

Our walk along the high trail is stopped by the presents of lots of tiny (quail?) chicks scattered across the track. A mother bird flies over the track and down the hillside so we wait patiently for the chicks to follow. They do but only slowly in the most erratic disorganised way as one by one they disappear over the edge into the long grass. We hope they were all reunited with their mother.

As beautiful as the views are, even better is our first Ocean Swim of the 2011-2012 summer. I put on my snorkel mask with its correcting lens but leave the snorkel behind so I can see. When I tell the lifeguard of my plan he laughs. The water is crystal clear and warm. I try putting my face under the water but so trained am I by being able to breath through the snorkel with the mask on I have to resist the temptation to breath and risk getting a lung full of salt water. I stand up immediately. The unlearning process is just as demanding as the initial training.

We thought we had allowed plenty of time to catch our flight south to Palmerston North, and in the end we did, just. It took quite a while to drive the continually curving country roads out to Highway One. In Warkworth we were so confident about our progress we stopped for an ice cream. I then needed a toilet and it took another quarter of an hour to finally find one. This stop took half an hour and suddenly the time allowance for getting to the airport by five isn't so generous.

To speed things up, we decided to use the new four-lane toll road but when we stop at the pay station, one of the machines is out of action and there is a queue at the other. One person does not know what his license plate is and has to rush over and check. The next person in line pushes the wrong button and the machine demands six dollars forty instead of the two dollars forty for a single pass. When it is our turn, we find the interface badly designed and the computer very slow but finally we are on our way. Perhaps the old winding road would have been quicker.

I did not appreciate how far the City of Auckland stretches to the north and also how far the airport is to the south. Fortunately traffic is flowing smoothly, that is until we got to the Harbour Bridge. A large truck slows our lane to a crawl and we start to wonder if we will make our flight.

The lanes begin moving again but as we well knew at present in Auckland you have to go through city streets to get to the airport, there is no motorway link. We exited at Gillies Avenue and followed the airport signs, one, an electronic sign, announces it will take about half an hour to get to the airport. Every traffic light seems to be against us and the road is clogged with cars on the same mission as us but finally we re-emerged onto the airport motorway and again make good time.

There is one complicating factor; we have to refill the petrol tank before returning the car to the rental company. Bruce knows where the gas station is but I enter it from the wrong end and find our gas tank on the wrong side to allow Bruce to pump gas. I swing around awkwardly and come back beside another pump but still not near enough to fill the car. Then Bruce got the pumps for the leaded and unleaded gas tangled and The attendant watching our misery comes out and does the refuelling while I join the line to pay.

It was now almost five o'clock.

By the time we park our car I am getting more than a little edgy and Bruce becomes the calming voice.

I get a trolley and we pile the luggage on it and deserting the little grey Hyundi we hurry to the office and sure enough all they take is the key.

There is one more trial, well for me, not Bruce, and that is using the machine that issues the boarding pass and the luggage label. When we get to the baggage conveyer we find it stationary. We put on our packs but they just sit looking at us. After several tries someone at last gets it started and our bags move away. We've made it.

While we are waiting for our boarding call, I check my bag and find I do not have my camera.

I remember instantly where it is. I placed it on the floor in the back seat of the car and although Bruce checked carefully for any left luggage, in the darkness of the garage he did not notice the black camera case against the black carpet. The plane is boarding at any minute but I must try to get it back. I half run half and half walk back down the terminal and out to the Budget Rental Car Office.

The woman behind the counter seems new to the job and does not know how to process my request. She keeps talking of calling someone else. I finally say, "We left the car in bay 120 I will check to see if it is there." She readily agrees no doubt glad to get rid of the agitated traveller who is bothering her.

My heart leaps with joy when I see our car sitting just where we left it but I tense a little as I wonder whether it has been locked. I reach out and the door opens, I snatch my camera and flee back to the loading lounge. I sit down and then there is a call to board the plane to Palmerston North.

It has been an interesting end to our holiday up north.

###  Exploring the Northland Coast around McLeod' Bay

I much prefer living about 20 kilometres from the sea, yes just like Palmerston North. This is so I don't have half the world I want to explore on foot or by bike cut off by the sea, So I like to holiday near but not right on the coast.. Northland it turns out is perfect for this.

On Sunday we take Karl and Mel's advice and head north around the coast starting from McClouds Bay.

"You'll be back in about 45 minutes," Karl informs me when I ask how far it is, so I take only my camera and a small pack with wind-jacket and a polypropylene top.

The tide is out so we crunch over the small rocks and shells that cover the beach. At one point a keen swimmer has placed a line of paving stones on the spiky surface to provide a smooth track out to deeper water where you can swim. There are rock oysters and Bruce tells me anyone can harvest them. I am surprised any are left but there most certainly are.

At the junction of the cliff and the rocky headlands is a wharf where a patient band of fishermen and women try their luck. A large and friendly Maori lady tells me she has caught nothing. The coastal track is well formed and involves crossing successive small headlands. We are in trees at a pleasant conjunction of bush and sea.

Although Karl and Mel did not mention it we see a sign for Te Araroa and realise we are again on the New trail which runs from Cape Reinga to the Bluff. We metaphorically sniff the air like bloodhounds and keep going. Then we come to a sign telling us we will also have access to a track across Mount Aubery, which rises 216 m above sea level and dominates the view north from Karl and Mel's house. It is now almost one o'clock and we have been walking for an hour and a half but we are tempted, who wouldn't be?

Unfortunately I did not bring any water and am getting thirsty but fortunately we are at an access point beside houses and I set off up a long drive to bet a glass or two. Which I quickly down. Then the man's partner appears and she asks, "Do you want a bottle of water. We have one we don't need." In typical self-deprecating New Zealand style I decline with thanks but when she insists I relent. People are so generous, even to foolish walkers who are not properly prepared.

I cast a few apprehensive glances up at the peak, a bit intimidated by the rocky outcrops that dominate it and wonder if we will have to scramble up the steep faces to do the traverse. Sometimes I wish I was as carelessly brave as other people. As I have mentioned often before, Bruce has learned from past experience not to warn me about possible dangers along any track. For example I could have done without the warning sign at the start of the northern trail along the cliff tops on Waiheke Island, the one that stated that only experienced trampers should brave the next section.

"You're experienced," Bruce insisted and in truth there was nothing difficult about the cliff top trail, except to the extent it was placed into my imagination by such stupid exaggerations.

We don't have any food but best to get the climb out of the way, so I am happy to push on. A little while later we meet a knot of disconsolate trampers. They have bad news, "The track just ahead is blocked by a slip." Two more trampers return from the slip to confirm this.

We still go on to have a look. Although dangerous at the top it is doable but for me it is one barrier too much today and we turn back and take the direct route home along the road. But Bruce hasn't forgotten the peak and late in the afternoon, after we have watched Elena fishing beside her dad at the wharf, Bruce suggests we do the traverse right then. On our way to the southerly starting point we tell Mel what is happening.

In fact it is a perfectly formed track that traverses along the line of rocky outcrops but does not demand we climb them. The views are worth the climb. The track down the other side is longer because we end up back at sea level while we started on the road that is well up the hill. I return well satisfied.

###  The Cat who brings Rats Inside for a Visit

Karl and Mel have two cats, one older and more dignified and the other young and sprightly with the hunting skills of a leopard. One reason people keep cats is because of the way they discourage unwanted intruders such as rats and mice. Unfortunately cats with great hunting skills view the survival skills of, whoops I almost said 'of their owners, I correct myself; of the humans they share the house with, as non-existent. Consequently they set out to give the humans a few lessons, the sort of lessons a cat gives its kittens.

It is sobering to think that in general cats regard us humans as about as knowledgeable as a six-week-old kitten.

The technique these cats use is to catch the prey, as the first part of the lesson, hopefully convincing their human providers that the creatures they bring in are good eating. Having caught the animal they bring it into the house and release it giving these incompetent and immature creatures a chance to catch the weakened prey for themselves.

But most humans are raised on canned food or clean cuts of meat prepared by someone else and they have no desire to either kill another creature, especially by biting it around the neck, and even less desire to eat it. Perhaps if the cat stripped all the feathers off a bird and gutted and dismembered it before presenting it to the human in a plastic wrap, the humans might have some success, but I wouldn't guarantee it.

Now a bird brought in as a trophy kill or even a mouse might be, if not acceptable, at least not threaten the owner too much but when a large rat is brought into a house by the cat it causes consternation, well at least it does in the Philpott household. If the rat is dead the shock of seeing a dead rat on the carpet is short lived but if it is still alive in the cat's mouth and then released the whole house is thrown into turmoil.

When it first happened, Karl behaved like the male hunter provider he undoubtedly is in the seafood world, he went on the attack. He hunted the rat down and cornered it. As he approached threateningly to his great surprise, instead of cowering back when faced by such a large creature, it raised itself up showed its teeth and prepared to go on the attack. With the threat of a rat bite hanging heavy in the air, Karl sensibly retreated to regroup.

Fortunately several teenage boys were visiting, at least I assume they were boys, I don't think Karl specified their sex, and they joined in the hunt for the rat, a rat they all wanted out of the house and as soon as possible. The rat took cover under a piece furniture and every avenue of escape was blocked except the one which led directly into the cage used to carry their cat on an aircraft. With the stage set they set out to displace the rat from its hiding place. The plan worked perfectly; when finally it turned and fled it took the avenue of escape offered and ended up in the cage. The door was shut and locked and the rat was captured.

Speaking for myself, I would have taken it as far away from the house as possible and released it into the wild. Now this may be acceptable with mice, and I hope it is because I do it often, but in the case of a rat other issues must be considered. Apart from the possibility it might find its way home and end up back in the house, there is the question of its likely effect on New Zealand's unique bird life as it raids nests and eats the eggs. So the rat has to be killed.

Short of taking up arms how do you do that? Putting the cat inside the cage with the mouse, apart from the risk of the rat escaping during the operation, is by no means certain. The cat may simply grab it and wait to be released so it can return inside the house to continue the lesson.

Karl has the answer, drown it while it is still inside the cage. I don't know whether drowning is a humane killing method but needs must in this sort of situation. It is certainly better than leaving the rat somewhere to starve to death. The problem is the cage the rat is in, is not the one used for transporting cats to the vets, but the much bigger one used to carry a cat on a plane journey. In the absence of a swimming pool where can you find water deep enough to carry out the execution.. Fortunately they did not have to go down to the sea or carry it to the nearest river, Karl and Mel have one of the very large old fashioned baths, quite large enough to take the cage.

And so the rat met its end. Mission accomplished.

On the second night of our stay, Karl came up the stairs from the part of the house where Elena and Tommy are sleeping and he has news, "The cat has brought another rar in and she is holding it in her mouth but it is not dead."

There are no teenage boys around we are on our own. What is my first response? I go over and shut the door of our bedroom so the rat can't get in there. I'm not sure how much sleep I would get in a room with a rat scurrying around looking for a way to escape.

By now Karl has been down to check progress and returns with the news we do not want to hear, "The cat has released the rat and it has disappeared."

My self-satisfied thought is that it could be anywhere in the house except our bedroom. "We could leave the door open all night and hope the rat escapes," I say but I am quickly told that the mosquitoes would flood into the house and although no one added the comment, the implications was that little Elena and Tommy would be badly bitten by morning. However the outside door is opened for a while to give the rat a chance to flee if it wishes to.

Karl is made of sterner stuff. He finds a satisfyingly long piece of 4 x 2 timber and begins a systematic search of the house. He pokes the timber into every nook and cranny in the house but ignores sensibly ignores our bedroom. I watch him with the same admiration I felt for Helen when she searched our top house down in Stewart Island. Unfortunately like Helen, Karl did not find a rat.

I wish the story had, if not a happy ending, at least an ending. During the next two days and nights there is no sign of a rat although the older cat does have an unsettling habit of walking around morosely yowling as if it senses that all is not well in the household.

###  A Successful Days Fishing

Elena has been given a fishing rod and Karl is looking forward to taking her fishing. As soon as the persistent Northeasterly wind relents he takes her down to the wharf to join the line of other fisher people. The Maori lady is still in the same place still waiting patiently but so far without reward. Two teenage boys are also busy trying to catch, well really anything at all.

Under Karl's experienced tutorage Elena has instant success, with her father's help she pulls up a very small snapper. Karl takes it off the hook and allows her to hold it. She proudly shows us the trophy. Then Karl returns it to the water, as an undersized, a very undersized, snapper it is not a legal catch.

And so the success continues, almost as soon as her line is lowered she is pulling up another small snapper and then returning them to the water.

One released fish floats (not released from Alena's line) near the surface and does not look at all well. Karl enlightens me, "When I'm fishing as soon as I get a slight tug I give the line a yank and the hook catches on the side of the fish's mouth. Then when I remove the hook the fish simply swims away relatively unharmed. However if you wait and the fish swallows the hook then it will not survive."

The other fishermen, and particularly the teenage boys want to know the secret of Alena's success. They ask Karl, "Are you lowering the line to the bottom?" Karl nods. They change position and with this information try again and are soon rewarded with, yes, you guessed it a small snapper. Suddenly other people are catching fish too. Is Karl the magic charm? Few people know the habits of fish in this area as well as Karl, after all most days he commutes to work across the mouth of the harbour to the Marsden Point Oil Refinery in a kayak and often goes fishing off the this small boat as well.

Unfortunately we have already left to climb Mt Aubery when Elena gets a seriously big fish on her line. Karl helps pull it in and this will be on the menu for dinner tonight.

When we get back, I ask her how she liked fishing. "It's fun," is her reply

What more does she have to say?

###  Exploring the Northland Coast; Part 2- North of Whangarei

The day starts with heavy showers. Too late I notice Alena's car seat sitting out on the patio. Fortunately the soaked seat will only take a day to dry out. The showers continue as we drive in to Whangarei. It is difficult to tell whether the day will improve but Bruce is keen for a decision, "What do you want to do today?" he asks in a voice that demands I give an opinion.

I stall, "I've been looking at the weather. I don't know what it is going to be like."

Procrastination is no part of the start of Bruce's day.

"So," I say abandoning the alternative of a day spent exploring Whangerei city, "Lets drive north to the Ngunguru River mouth."

We explore the beaches along the road leading toward the north side of the river mouth As we drive into Wellington Bay another heavy shower sweeps through and is gone.

"Let's eat lunch here. We can scrape aside the wet sand."

As we eat a red legged seagull stalks up and down in front of us looking for a scrap, while harassed by its two fully grown chicks. Birds, still with grey coloured legs, want their mother to return to her role as their food provider.. However she most definitely has decided it is time they fended for themselves.

I try to settle the family dispute by feeding the mother and then flicking a bit of bread close to one of these bad tempered adolescents. The young birds gulp the food down but far from learning the lesson I hoped to teach them, namely that they can feed themselves now, they immediately return to chiding their mum for her inability to provide the appropriate service.

The day starts to brighten and the sun comes out as we scramble up the steps to the top of a small hill that gives us views down the beach and out across the bay to a long sandy spit. Karl told us before we left that developers wanted to build houses along the spit but fortunately this mad cap scheme to make money regardless of the effects on this wonderful breeding ground for rare sea birds was halted, hopefully forever.

We drive north to Tutukaka, where we stop to stare at the expensive boats moored cheek to jowl at one of the centres for Big Game Fishing in the North.

Bruce has found a walk in his guidebook that promises spectacular views up and down the coast.

"We must look for a road just north of the town," Bruce tells me. We see roads but all of them are clearly labelled as private roads. Well aware of how pernickety New Zealand landowners get when their private kingdoms are invaded we ignore them all.

Bruce is frustrated, "We must have passed the road by now," he announces.

"Well let's go back and check again." Say I. We do but the result is the same.

Back in Tutukaka I go into a general store and ask for directions. The young woman serving us is helpful, "It's the first road on your right, just up the hill."

"But it's labelled as a private road," I point out.

"It's not, you just drive right to the end." She also hands me a brochure showing the things a visitor can do around Tukukaka. The owner of the store, a man of about 50, intervenes, "Be sure you lock your car. A lot of cars are broken into while the owners walk out to the lookout." He pauses and then has an idea, "You can park your car by the Marina and walk up a track beside the public toilet."

I had noticed the track when we walked around the town earlier and wondered where it went. Now I know.

But he continues in his role of the Good Samaritan, "You can only do the whole walk at low tide." He takes a look at the tide tables in the Auckland Herald, "It is half tide and rising. If you go now you should be alright."

We enjoy the walk through the bush to the road. The views along the ridge that the track follows are spectacular but at the end we drop down something you become very familiar with up here, a long cascade of steps to reach a rocky bridge between the mainland and the headland. When I find the tide already surging through the narrow channel we must be crossed, I lose my nerve, and send Bruce up to the top of what will become at high tide an Island, while I retreat up the steps to enjoy a slightly more limited view.

By the time we walk back and drive north the afternoon is ebbing away. The dark clouds of the morning have gone and we are back in bright sunshine when we reach Matapouri Bay. I am thinking we will only have time to explore the beach but as usual Bruce has great expectations. There is a track up a ridge with views out to sea. We walk the length of the bay, cross a small bridge to sand and reach yet one more beach and there begins what turns out to be another impressive stack of steps.

At the top of the ridge we meet a couple who have walked from the small town of Matapouri so we complete the loop by retracing their steps.

This is a spectacular stretch of coast and one well worth adding to the list of 200 things you want to see before you die.

##  How my Easter Holidays Mutate into Labour Weekend

##

We might be visiting Christchurch at Easter 2012 but my email to Francois and Caroline Bissey reads, "Just to confirm we will be in Christchurch at Labour Weekend and hope to see you then," but it is in fact Easter. The email surprises Francois and Caroline because they know I never plan this far ahead.

The trouble is I have caught a heady mixture of Cold and Flu and am only operating on about two cylinders. My packing has big unexpected gaps, as I find out when I arrive. I don't go anywhere without a raincoat but I have not packed a raincoat. I have a cold but somehow there are no handkerchiefs. And so it goes on.

It is no wonder Francois is taken aback when I call on the Friday of Easter Weekend and ask if we can visit the next day. In truth Francois is a mixture of amazed and disbelieving and our friends listening in to my end of the conversation dissolve into heaps of laughter at my complete failure to communicate. The email was touch typed in a couple of minutes and I did not look at it before sending it off. Hence my jumbling of holiday weekends.

We visit Francois and Caroline the next morning and catch up with Sophie their little daughter who we knew so well when they lived in Palmerston North, and meet for the first time the new addition to the family, Alexander. He is as outgoing as Sophie is quiet and shy. I eventually join Sophie in a game involving shuffling little frogs around the table but Alex just comes directly across the floor and sits there staring up into my face. He is not afraid of anyone but I do not pick him up, because I do not want to give him my aggressive cold or at least that is my excuse.

The Bissey family have come through the big Christchurch earthquakes unscathed, although their very fussy landlord wants to repaint inside the house, to cover up a few micro cracks. Still he will waive the rent while the painting is going on. They are lucky that they rented a house in the western part of the city, the part which was relatively undamaged by the quakes.

### Earthquake Tourists

In Christchurch, Emergency Response Teams and City Bureaucrats seem determined to enjoy a brief moment of glory when at last all their years of training for the big quake finally puts them in a position of power. One weakness in the New Zealand psyche is the way the country can so quickly collapse into 'School Teacher- Student mode', with the leaders treating the rest of us like naughty kids and most people placidly tolerating this role.

Of course as the leaders keep telling us, it is all for our own good. You can't enter the red zone because some of the buildings that survived the quake may suddenly fall on top of you. And above all else don't come out and take a look at the damage for yourselves, as the roads will be blocked and emergency services won't be able to get through. The leaders have a pejorative name for those of us who do just this; they name us rubber-neckers and call on the rest of the country to condemn us.

As I've reported before, I think there is a fundamental need of the human spirit to see a devastated zone for themselves. I want to see what a river in massive flood looks like, I get into the Manawatu Gorge to tale a close to the big slip which will block the Gorge for twelve months. I have a primeval need to see for myself the damage the earthquake has wrought on the city but these authoritarian leaders expect us to be satisfied with the short video clips shown on the news. Videos and photos are not the same. Come on rubber-neckers of New Zealand join me on a 200-metre high hill to watch for the arrival of the next Tsunami. Think of the storm chasers in the USA who seek out destructive twisters and film them, be inspired by their example. American leaders do not make the mistake of lecturing people about putting themselves in danger. Or worse try to assert that they are putting potential rescuers at risk.

Remember how the small town closest to the epicentre of the first big Christchurch quake had a flood of visitors the very next day. With their minds captured by the example of our power hungry leaders a few of the locals protested to the reporters (who were doing exactly what we rubber-neckers are doing while claiming to be representing locals) and said people should stay away. We can take a hint and everyone did and then predictably the local shopkeepers protested that they had no customers and a plea was made for the proud rubber-neckers to return. People can be very stupid.

We were not in Christchurch or even near it for any of the big quakes but we did come down a few months after the first. I well remember experiencing a good-sized shake when we were in the Art Gallery. The building shook alarmingly, in an instance taking away our unwanted status as Earthquake virgins. Most people left the room but not us.

On this time, our earthquake visiting is very discreet, partly because since Colin and Val decided to stay at home, we had no need for a rental car, and naturally they had no desire to see yet again the more devastated part of the city we didn't go rubber-necking. We did walk a lot in the vicinity of the suburb of Bryndwr. The signs of the quake around here, were much more subtle, a chimney missing, a big concrete wall tilted over to an alarming angle supported only by metal bracing and brick fences in various stages of crumbling and cracking.

Very occasionally a larger building was reduced to rubble by the shake. By the time we were there some of this rubble was generated by the huge cranes hired to bash dangerous buildings down. These piles of rubble looked like isolated bomb strikes from an opposing army, an army that had only a few planes and even fewer bombs.

One day Val took us into the edge of the Down Town Red Zone, ostensibly to shop at a unique temporary shopping centre made out of brightly coloured containers stacked in interesting ways. We loved these improvised shops but we also enjoyed standing against the wire barrier and watching more buildings being bashed down.

We were too busy to do more Earthquake tourism and never got to see the Eastern Suburbs where liquefaction has led to the condemnation of whole streets. The land was too unstable to be used for re- building again and the plan is for new parks to spring up beside the river.

Of course it was the Christchurch City Council that gave permission to build on the sandy land in the first place but then who has to be consistent.

###  A Truly Alarming Fire Alarm

On our last day in Christchurch, Walt brings the Dunedin visitors over and we share a brunch eating Walt's famous oatmeal pancakes with maple syrup. Of course the meat eaters want a bit of bacon too. Val and Walt acting together (I think) cook the bacon on a baking tray in the oven.

Everyone has finished brunch and we are sitting around nicely full and contented, when Craig wants some coffee. Val directs him remotely to the coffee and he makes himself a coffee. Almost in passing, Craig glances over his shoulders and utters the innocent sounding words, "There seems to be a bit of smoke coming out of the oven."

He might just have well shouted the words, "Fire, Fire." Walt is on his feet in an instance and racing over to the stove.

"Did we forget to turn the oven off," asks Val in a disinterested voice. She not expecting the events that follow.

Walt glances into the oven and confirming her diagnosis. She switches the oven off. Whether his next decision was for the best, people can debate for years but he does warn, "I think I will take the tray outside."

No one challenges him, no one has a better suggestion. After he manages to open the back door which was jammed shut by one of the big quakes, he picks up the smoking tray and carries it down the side of our table.

I think by now Craig has his cup of coffee. Far from assisting Walt in his salvage operation, is safely outside enjoying the coffee in the open air when Walt appears. The tray was gone and for just a moment everything seems to be OK. The problem has been confronted and a solution found. Things seem normal.

Then a screeching sound so loud that it causes me to momentarily duck my head fills the room. It is the loudest most unpleasant sound I have ever heard. It would have woken the dead from their slumbers. Val is electrified. Totally calm up until now the noise sends her scrambling up the passage muttering something about finding the phone, not it seems to me something that will help much. Far better she just turns the alarm off but that is not going to happen.

Yes this is the fire alarm from hell. It is filling the house with noises a thousand times more unpleasant than the smoke from the bacon. At this moment I realise, I would rather die of smoke inhalation in bed than be woken in the middle of the night to this devilish alarm. In comparison, our fire alarm gives a pathetic little beep, and to be honest I'm glad about that.

Walt tries to open the locked windows to let the smoke escape. The front door is open and someone thoughtfully thinks to shut the door to the passage, which smothers the sound a little. Bruce brings down the window key from our upstairs bedroom and joins Walt in getting lots of windows open.

Val has the phone and at last I learn what is driving her. The fire alarm, like their burglar alarm, is connected to a call centre. When the alarm goes off, the call centre phones the house and if no one answers they send the fire brigade around to fight the fire. The house owner pays a goodly sum for the privilege of this intervention which in the present case is totally unwarranted.

There is another twist, while the alarm is sending signals down the phone line to the call centre it keeps cutting off Val's attempts to contact the Centre and tell them that all is well, matters are in hand and there is no fire, there is no need to call the Fire Brigade. Yes I would call this a Catch 22 situation too.

When the alarm finally stops, Val gets through and the controlled sense of panic that has been filling the room passes. Only Craig's daughter Anna and I are still at the table. Brunch is over for the day. Quiet has returned.

What impresses me most about this whole drama is that there are no post alarm recriminations. For many people the inevitable outcome of such a simple blunder as leaving the bacon tray in the oven when it is on provokes someone to point the finger at the person responsible. Worse recriminations usually follow. This helps no one, does not take the smoke away but just makes the finger pointer feel good.

In our case we all just move on, how I wish this could always be happen.

###  Riding the Christchurch Rail Trail

Walt and Colin have together organised an excursion on the cycle track that follows an old railway line out to the town of Little River. Our hosts somehow manage to find bikes for the three visitors from Dunedin and us two from Palmerston North. Getting all the bikes out to the starting point provided a logistics problem, until Colin simply cut the knot by buying a bike rack that can take four bikes.

We need a nice day and we get it. Actually fine weather is never in doubt because of a massive slow moving high-pressure system covering most of New Zealand but on Saturday, the day before our ride, a very brisk northeasterly sea breeze springs up and buffets the city. By some miracle by the next morning it has mysteriously vanished as suddenly as it appeared.

I have mixed feelings about the ride. The persistent cough that accompanies this damned cold, not only keeps me awake at night but when out exercising it returns as the deep breathing gives rise to a tickle in the chest that simply demands a stifled cough. I can only hope things go well on the ride.

Walt generously gives me his top bike to ride but I warn the others, "I may lag behind depending on how I'm feeling but just go ahead at your own pace." I start off first, anxious to get some distance under my wheels but Walt soon joins me. We both end up in a dead-end and have to drag out bikes across a paddock to get to the trail proper.

My approach to the ride is to settle down into the fastest speed I find comfortable and simply maintain that with the least number of stops possible. Soon Bruce and I are well ahead of the others. Anna is having trouble with her bike, or so I am guessing, and the others are providing support. Walt catches us up and points out to Bruce that he has the water supply in the panniers on his bike. He returns with Walt to join the others and I plug on alone.

It is a lovely morning and I am cycling through beautiful scenery. We are parallel to a line of hills that I am guessing are the sides of an old volcano but I do not stop to find out. Periodically I find myself biking through what looks like an estuary with interesting bird life but I do not stop to take photos. My only stops are for water. I hold the occasional gate open for cyclists who are overtaking me but see no sign of Colin, Anna, Craig, Bruce and Walt.

Then I come to a big sign that gives me distances and when I add them all up I get, not the eighteen kilometres Walt promised me, but fifty-three kilometres. My spirits sink. I have much more ground to cover than I ever imagined. I curse Walt's somewhat casual research. I bike on into a slight wind preparing myself for an extended ride.

The one part of the organisation Walt has left open is the time and place for lunch. During our briefing he says, "The cell phone coverage is very variable. It may be difficult to arrange a place to meet for lunch. If necessary we will just bike right through to Little River."

It is this last comment that has stuck in my mind. Not only do I have fifty-three kilometres to travel but I may not get fed until the end.

I reach a point where a road crosses the bike trail and the name is familiar. Just for a moment I wonder whether this is the lunch spot but when I see no one else I stick to my plan and head on. About five minutes later I get a call from Bruce, "Where are you? We're eating lunch here." (and he names a road I have passed).

"I've gone beyond there," I tell him.

"Then turn around and come back."

This is the last thing I am going to do, add distance by biking back and then having to bike this same section again, "I 'm not turning back," I firmly assert.

The conversation ends and I bike on. The trail is now along the edge of a lake. The cars are passing on the road close by but there is clearly nowhere anyone could stop to pick me up.

Apparently about now I ignore two attempts by our support team, Val, Koa and Spider to contact me as they drive by in the stream of traffic on my right. The third time they toot their horn and I wave back, although probably after they have rushed past. Finally I come to a picnic area on the edge of the lake where my support car can stop and I call back to get a ride to lunch. Colin supportive as always answers my call. I intend to lock Walt's bike to a fence but Colin thinks it will be safer if we put it on his bike rack.

Val and Walt have organised a veritable feast for our picnic lunch. They have left me one big slice of bread and I cram cheese and basil spread on it and contentedly attack it.

Colin tells me that I have almost reached Little River. He returns my bike and me to the picnic area and I enjoy the last stage of the ride into the town. I even enjoy following the extended cycle track through the willow trees, whereas I am told later most riders omit this and ride into town on the main road.

Bruce and I share a thick shake in the sun. He, Craig and Spider will cycle all the way back, but this is enough for me. Really I should apologise to Walt, the distance was only eighteen kilometres after all. But since he did not know I was libelling his name it hardly seemed necessary.

As everyone chats after dinner that night, I keep falling asleep.

## Taranaki Calling

###  What is it About the 26th October?

This year I forgot to mark Labour Weekend on my annual calendar, the one I prepare myself from scratch. It is only after I have run off the necessary copies do I discover the error, so all I can do is mark the holiday with a highlighter pen and hope everyone understands the code.

There have been worse oversights, one year my calendar did not include the 22nd August. The twin daughters of Tony Wright went to their father to point out the oversight and to ask him what they should do, after all a child does not like to start playing with the number of days in a month. After all if there is no telling where it will end. Mind you it is a good conceit for a children's story but I won't write it. As for the 2012 calendar, I've just discovered there is no 31st December. I wonder if anyone will notice that?

Still perhaps the confusion which later arose was because no day in October was clearly marked as Labour Day Holiday.

But let me explain, we are going up to visit Bruce's parents, Graeme and Kay, for Labour weekend and we tell them we will arrive on Friday evening. However a few days before we are due to leave, I notice on that night we are booked to go to a concert of Country and Western music. Confession time, my love of country and western music is not something I mention to anyone. So many people like to express a cultured distain for this sort of music. At its best a three-minute country and western song is like a small novel about a person's life, admittedly a rather slight novel. These songs are sung in what critics describe as a whine but I know you will not agree with such shallow interpretations.

We call up Kay Philpott and change our arrival time to Saturday morning.

Aloha Brown also loves country and western music and is coming to the Regent Theatre with us. Imagine our surprise when we get there to find the theatre is locked, the lights off and no one else is waiting. Bruce checks the tickets and discovers the deception, "The show is on the 26th October not on the19th," he exclaims in disbelief. Since there is now no time to comfortably drive to Hawera before darkness robs us of views of the passing countryside, we go to a movie instead.

I might never have mentioned this simple mistake except on Saturday afternoon Kay announces that the annual tour of local gardens is on this weekend. On the way to our first garden we visit the site where Colonel von Tempsky died during the land wars in Taranaki. Even minor military heroes are not it seems exempt from a passing bullet, even if it must have begun to seem that way to van Tempsky given how many wars he had fought successfully in.

As we pull up at our first official garden and park by the gate, a woman appears with a puzzled look on her face. She comes straight to the point, "The Open Gardens start on 26th October, not this weekend." There it is that damned date again, the date that misled us in Palmerston North. I wonder whether there is there something about the 26th October that makes it look like the start of Labour Weekend. Kay too has been misled by the subversive properties of the day. To me even now 19th October sounds too early in October to possibility be Labour weekend.

When I tell her we, meaning Bruce and I, are from Palmerston North, the woman kindly invites us in with a consumer warning, "I am still doing my weeding. I really won't be ready until next weekend. Now I must get back to the weeding and leave you to it."

But of course being a gardener she can't just leave us to it but keeps popping up to provide bits of additional information, "Visitors say we must have done a lot of work and I always have to tell them it is all my work. I started from a garden with almost nothing in it."

There is a rather technical discussions on how to grow real cranberries, "I put a plastic liner in this tractor tire and plant the cranberries there so their roots go into the water," she tells us and they are doing very well. Graeme spends the next couple of days trying to think where he can get an old tractor tire.

As we get ready to leave, she hurries out of the house with a local newspaper telling us of an open garden in Stratford today where some ladies are putting on afternoon tea to raise money for the Cancer Society.

We duly enjoy the afternoon tea and give money to the charity. I love it when serendipitous things like this happen.

###  The Strange Beauty of the Crumbling Cliffs

On a mild Sunday morning Graeme and Kay take us to Ohawe Beach just west of Hawera and after walking with us for half an hour return to take the car around to the next beach so we can walk one way with the brisk wind behind us before being picked up.

Walking along this beach of black iron sand is only possible around low tide. The seas rule the coast the rest of the time with waves crashing into the cliffs as they continue the slow erosion which will eventually take the coast back to the foot of Mount Taranaki in a few thousand years.

The cliffs tower above you revealing on their scarred sides different coloured layers with different degrees of stability. The waves fool around at the foot of the cliffs and act the role of the housekeeper as they tidy things up after serious cliff collapses. But it is the water that soaks into the face from above that wreaks the most havoc on the cliff. This morning all along the beach big piles of debris mark the recent collapses which the sea has not yet had time to tidy up.

I did once many years ago see and hear great chunks of cliff tumbling down to the beach. There was an enormous crack somewhere between a large navy gun and an explosion. The dust rises as a chunk hits the beach. After a short break the process is repeated. It was low tide and I was walking well away from the cliffs but there are times when you are forced under the face and you must continue with the hope nothing will break free while you are under it.

Don't think of smooth vertical faces, think of cliffs after giant dinosaurs have been biting great chunks out of the face at random heights producing overhanging holes alongside other parts that have not shifted and now look likely to do so very soon.

The cliffs are beautiful. There is no doubt about that, but it is not an in your face grand canyon sort of look but rather the rough chaotic beauty that it takes a connoisseur of cliffs to appreciate. To complement the cliff there is the sandy beach below which is periodically covered with beds of stones which have been sorted into size as expertly as the most obsessive collector of stones.

###  The Stony River Walkway Revisited

On Labour Day Monday, Graeme is keen to do a longer trip, something that will provide both interest and excitement. Graeme and Kay know the province of Taranaki like the back of their hands and you might be tempted to think this will be difficult. But it is only dull people or dead people who don't appreciate the fact that even the most familiar walkway is never the same twice, no matter how much you might wish it otherwise.

"Let's drive around the Mountain," Graeme suggests and of course we all jump at the chance.

For the Mountain read Mount Taranaki, nowhere else in New Zealand does one mountain so dominate the surrounding countryside. If you stay away from the sight of the slightly annoying Phantoms Peak that juts out from the north west side of the mountain, and ignore the tail end range of peaks which are the remnants of earlier eruptions of the mountain, then this volcano is completely symmetrical. Perhaps easiest just to say from the south and East Mount Taranaki is a perfect cone, with symmetrical flanks tailing away toward zero like the elderly edge of a human population distribution.

It is a day where rain or heavy showers are predicted but we don't get put off by anything as ethereal as a New Zealand weather forecast. As usual the weather rewards us, and we soon find ourselves driving under blue skies, with only a few white blobs of cloud, clouds that hardly look threatening. At my insistence, well actually the others are helpless to stop me because I'm driving, we take a brief break on the low cliffs above Opunaki Beach. Not surprisingly there are no swimmers, the summer weather hasn't yet arrived. In this period of very high tides, the low tides are just as low and today we find ourselves gazing across a desert of black sand with the water in full retreat.

As we drive on Bruce asks, "Do you want to see Cape Egmont," and of course I do.

This small diversion takes us on a parallel road close to the beach, that also gets us close to the lighthouse. Of course, like every other lighthouse, it is now fully automatic with computers in some distant city monitoring performance and switching it off and on. Computers are probably marginally more reliable than humans. This is the technology that destroyed the romance of Lighthouse Keeping, one of the world's oldest jobs. They work at the most isolated and beautiful parts of the New Zealand Coast. What wonderful books some lighthouse keepers wrote about the excitement and the dangers of their lives.

With this lighthouse behind us, I am surprised to see another lighthouse ahead. Having two lighthouses so close together might confuse passing ships. It turns out this is a project by locals to build a replica lighthouse as a museum to record the history of the coast and celebrate the lighthouse keepers. Strangely the major man focussed on in this replica is not a keeper but the world famous physicist Ernest Rutherford. Something I didn't know is that Rutherford was born in Taranaki, although he went to school in Nelson and this is more often mentioned in the history books.

We climb up the curving metal stairs to the light. This is the traditional light not the new-fangled one in the real lighthouse. When I read that the lighthouse keeper had to be on duty all night making sure the light is going, my enthusiasm for the job takes a hit.

Lots of pictures of wrecked ships decorate the walls. These wrecked ships are all shown on rocks close to the shore as if they were set on running the lighthouse down rather than using it to avoid trouble. The caption to one wreck tells us that when the tide went out all the crew and passengers were able to walk ashore with dry feet. One ship at least was wrecked because the light had gone out.

Graeme provides an explanation for the closeness of the wrecked ships to shore, "The water gets deep very quickly off this coast." There is no soft sand around here just beaches packed with big boulders worn smooth by the waves. Below the replica lighthouse a clear channel has been constructed through the boulders to the sea so in low to moderate seas boats can be launched safely. Other people keep arriving and we discover a working bee is assembling to get everything ready for the big opening.

It is time to look for a place to picnic with our sandwiches and boiled eggs. With reports of heavy rain falling in New Plymouth we have no desire to drive into the city. The beach is a bit cool and windy so Graeme suggests somewhere beside the Stony River Walkway.

It is the perfect spot, well sheltered and sunny. Afterwards Graeme has a suggestion for our next step, "Let's find the Walkway and have a look at the river." We have been eating lunch beside a pleasant small river but this is not the one he is talking about. The question is where is the walkway? Clearly it is not further up this stream as there is a sign saying this track has been damaged by floods and is closed.

We ask the woman who is preparing the swimming pool in an adjacent school for the summer where we go. I find her instructions confusing but not Graeme. Apparently we are to look for a 'stie' adjacent to the school rugby ground. I presume she means a stile but when we get to the barbed wire and electric fence there is no stile. After searching along the fence in both directions we decide it must be at a place where a large boulder guards our side of the fence and for a short distance the barbed wire in the top strand has been replaced by ordinary number 8 wire. The boulder blocks our approach to this cleared section and does not make it easier to safely cross but we finally all scramble across and now nothing will hold us back.

We cross the paddock, a paddock rich with large rocks sticking above the grass, and find ourselves on the banks of the Stony River, a quite magnificent river of fast flowing clear water, deep pools, spectacular eroded banks and strewn everywhere with piles of which the flood water has tumbled down the steep incline of a river that begins high on the mountain. Every flood must change the course of this river in unpredictable ways. Even today it would not be easy to wade across safely and we don't try

The track leads us along the bank up stream across a barrier of electric fences, each safely bridged by a solid V shaped set of steps. I try to stay close to the river as I find it so fascinating to watch. No need for many stopbanks here, the water, even when the river is in high flood descends in a torrent straight down to the ocean sweeping all before it and preventing the formation of dams which will cause the water to back up and overflow into the paddocks..

For a while we walk in a small patch of trees, on a little used track with regrowth which for most of the way has obliterated any sign of the track but Bruce leads us confidently through. Finally there is a sign showing we must take a sharp left turn and cross the paddocks back to the small river we ate lunch beside. The map shows a bridge at this point over the smaller river but when we get there we find no bridge only the foundations of a bridge.

Finally we realise the obvious, namely if a circular track is cut in the clockwise direction then it will also be cut if you attempt the track in the anticlockwise direction. We are not going to retrace our steps this close to the end so we pioneer our own route. This requires crossing over or under successive electric fences. The challenge is to make it through without getting a shock. In a couple of places there is a 'gate' a place where a section of the fence can be safely lifted away. When I try to take the plastic handle from Graeme, I get the full force of the jolt.

Kay is showing signs of rebelling, after all the paddocks are massively uneven because of the underlay of big rocks and Kay has two artificial knees. Graeme has a history of leading her into these situations without consideration for her knees. Fortunately about now we find a concrete ford across the river which at normal flow is dry and we make the other side.

Then it is straight forward, although we do leave the river too soon, but this only means we have to walk on the road for longer. It has been another great Taranaki Day Trip and it is time to head back to Palmerston North.

##  Walking the Te Araroa Trail one Bit at a Time

The Te Araroa Trail is the walking track that runs the length of New Zealand from North Cape to the Bluff. I think the idea is for you start at one end and walk the whole way but we aim to do it in small pieces. From the mouth of the Turakina River to Wellington, our local territory, we are making good if slow progress on the project.

In previous years we have walked from Scott's road to Shannon through the bush more or less following the Tokomara River Valley. This is the bit that Geoff Chapple the pioneer of the idea and the pathfinder got badly bushed in and for a time feared for his life. On this part of the trail, there is a track cut through the bush at the start and then there are a couple of crossings of the Tokomaru River, which should not to be attempted when the river is in flood and finally the trail is along a benched track beside the river. This section was built by the only person to seriously attempt to farm these unpromising hills. When he walked off the land, the bush regenerated. This section of the Te Araroa Trail takes 5-6 hours.

We have also walked from the end of this section, which is on the dam road in the hills behind Shannon, south to a road in the hills behind Levin and we have even walked along the spur track that runs over the hills into Levin. The track proper disappears into the Tararua Ranges at this point.

We subsequently leap frog ahead to Waikanae and walked through the trees beside the Waikanae River down to the beach and south along the beach, and through a park amongst the dunes to end in another park at Paekakariki. Last year we followed the road from Waikanae to Pukerua Bay at a point where the road is squeezed out into the sea by the coastal hills, and for the moment the Te Araroa Track has to do the same. However local enthusiasts are constructing a new track near the top of the precarious hills that tower above Highway One which stays close to the sea.

Are you confused by all this detail? Just remember these three sections are all worth walking

###  The Plimmerton to Pukerua Bay Section

This summer we walked a circular route that involved heading north from Plimmerton along a small road into the hills before joining a cycle track near Highway one into Pukerua Bay. Along the way we see the old Maori track that we later learned forms part of the Te Araroa Trail but not knowing about this at the time we did not walk it.

The last part of this improvised walk was around the rocky coast and back to Plimmerton. I foolishly chose to wear sandals, while Mark, Neville and Bruce sensibly wore solid shoes or boots. As a result I did much more scrambling than the others as I try to get secure footholds on the endlessly changing muddles of rock and shingle that make up the beach. After a grey start, the day is warm and sunny. We arrived back at the car over four hours after starting well satisfied with such a varied walk. I am glad we did not attempt this section at high tide. This would have required much awkward scrambling up steep rocky faces to avoid the incoming wave.

Still it cannot be said that as far as completing Te Araroa this was a particularly successful day.

###  From The Turakina River to Bulls, sort of.

Let me say at the start that we know the 22-kilometre long stretch of West Coast Beach from the Turakina River to the Rangitikei River well. Actually we always walk in the reverse direction and to be truthful only twice, the second time along a stretch through the pine forest near the little town of Scotts Ferry at the start. The main features are etched on our memorre.

For much of the walk a tower at the old bombing range acts as a marker for progress along the long intermediate stretch of beach where there are few other landmarks and the dunes change little in height or appearance. The first time it was satisfying to see bomb craters along the edge of the dunes. The Air Force has now abandoned the site, a decision forced on it by the Government's decision to scrap al their strike aircraft. This was much regretted by the military establishment and the more conservative politicians, but in my opinion it was a thoroughly rational decision at a time when all our armed forces are involved in peace keeping operations, apart that is for the war in Afghanistan.

The last section is deceptively long as you keep glimpsing what look like structures signalling the approach to civilisation but each one turns out to be only a pile of driftwood creating repeated disappoints, particularly as we tire late in the day. The final obstacle is the crossing of the lagoon. It is an intimidating obstacle of a wide stretch of open water without any clear indication of depth.

Neville, Mark, Bruce and I do not feel the need to repeat much of the seven-kilometre beach section of this twenty-two kilometre long beach which is actually on the Te Araroa Trail. Instead we decide to follow the Te Araroa trail through the pine forest to the beach. We park our car beside the Te Araroa trail marker and follow the long almost straight gravel road down to the beach. The day is sunny but in late with a coolish breeze. We walk for half an hour along the beach toward Turakina before finding a place in the dunes where we are sheltered from what on the open beach has become more of a wind than a breeze.

As we finish lunch, we see a quad bike with trailer in tow coming from the Turakina direction with three men on board. They keep stopping to study the driftwood before deciding whether to load the wood on the trailer or to carry on. Since they are stopping and starting we soon overtake them at walking pace and I can't resist going over to ask what they are doing.

"Are you collecting wood that can be used for carving or turning?" I naively ask.

"No," says one solid Kiwi Bloke who looks at me as if I am some kind of effete craftsman from another world."

"We use it for firewood it burns with a lots of heat. The other wood is rubbish that disappears without giving much heating," another burly bloke asserts.

I rejoin the others and tell them the news. Bruce says, "I am not sure I approve of them burning native timber. After all there are tight restrictions on using it for timber."

He is right, it does feel a bit discomforting but it has been washed out to sea and back onto this lonely beach, and no one else is going to bother with it.

We have tied long strips of kelp on a prominent log opposite the Te Araroa sign half buried in a dune so we don't inadvertently miss it on the way back.

Mark has a plan, "Let's try to find this lake," and points on the map.

There are potential problems as Bruce points out, "The forest roads are not numbered and it is easy to lose our way. How can we be sure of finding it?"

After studying the map, we agree that although there is no road leading directly to the Lake, little harm will be done if we follow the Te Araroa track until we come to a stream and then go back and take the last side road and follow that. If after an hour we don't find indications that we are near the edge of the forest, and hence near the, lake, we will return to the Te Araroa Track.

Everything goes smoothly, the road begins a turn about the time we expect it to. When it straightens again we get a glimpse of the lake through the thinning trees. Mark leads a direct assault on the lake, heading straight toward it across a paddock of long dry grass. We soon discover our mistake. Beneath the apparently innocuous grass lies a veritable forest of fallen pines that are so dense you cannot make progress without walking on top of them. While doing this you risk suddenly disappearing up to your knee. If you try to walk on solid ground you make slow progress. With Mark enthusiastically leading the way there is no question of making a sensible decision and turning back. After much labour we end up on a small rise with a view of the lake and wild life. Honour satisfied we take a direct route back to the boundary but over an equally treacherous hidden layer of trees.

Then there is a long slog out of the forest and down a sealed country road back to the car.

No one suggests continuing on along the road to Bulls to complete this 19-kilometre stretch of Te Araroa. We have enjoyed the walk but it is time to return to the car.

###  The Bulls to Feilding Section

It is Neville Honey who researches the leg of the Te Araroa from the town of Bulls to the town of Feilding. Yes this is an area we know well, and yes again the track is not going to traverse pristine native bush. On the contrary for about two thirds of its length we will be on country roads.

Geoff Chapple has created a trail that for much of North Island families can safely follow. Although there are sections that are more demanding, for example the Tongariro Mountain crossing and the section that requires you to go down the Whanganui River by canoe or jet boat.

Neville reports the first part of the track near Bulls will be beside the Rangitikei River, one of the major rivers in New Zealand. Bruce and I followed trail markers beside the river on a short Sunday walk a few months.

When Joan visiting from Australia decides she wants to return our hospitality by taking the Sunday Lunch crowd out to eat at a restaurant, ("I can't cook like you," Joan disarmingly tells us, "So I want to shout you all a meal"), I see my chance. Sensibly Joan is only paying for the main course so we will be well finished by two, and this will give us time to tackle the Bulls to Feilding leg during the long daylight hours of January.

Shirley subsequently decides to offer dessert at her house, but this will take up too much time and we reluctantly decline. Even just after eating the main course, we do not leave town at two. Aloha, a woman who hasn't been on one of our longer trips for many months suddenly decides she wants to walk the 19 kilometres with us. I try to discourage her, anxious that she doesn't either slow the group down, or decide to stop part way, necessitating I must return early to the car. But Aloha has decided and of course I graciously relent, or at least I hope I was gracious.

We will leave a car at each end if the walk. At the last moment, Mark has to make an urgent visit to the toilet, so it will be three fifteen before we begin walking. Neville's car we leave in Feilding and with everyone in our car we drive to Bulls to begin. The day is bright and sunny with a strong westerly wind. Part of the fun of following the Te Araroa Trail is the need to follow written directions. Instead of having us follow the track from the Bulls Bridge the instructions take us to a parallel country road for the first kilometre or so before cutting across a farmers land and gaining the riverbank.

As it is the middle of summer and there are no animals to eat the grass, the grass on the riverbank is thigh high. At first we see no sign of any markers but all we have to do is follow the river and how difficult can that be? The long grass and the need to trail bash slows us down. Most of the way there is no clear track. It is a long time before we discover a marker.

"We exit the riverbank trail by climbing up a headland," Neville reads from his computer print out. Since there are very few headlands, obeying this instruction is easy. We scramble up a steep track and emerge on the edge of pastureland. The markers are both easy to see, and become more frequent. Long grass still slows our progress. We find ourselves gradually getting squeezed between a double fence, one of barbed-wire and one electric, and the riverbank. The trail continues to narrow until we are on the very edge of a high cliff. In one short section it is even undercut so we have to cross on a fragile shelf that may or may not collapse at any time. A short distance further on we find a piece of barbed-wire fence that has been covered with rubber tubing and the electric fence is shifted across a yard. Here we gratefully cross.

Even the farm has its hazards. Near one gate a great boggy mixture of mud and water blocks our access. Bruce crosses back over the fence to get around it but when I attempt the same thing I get a sharp shock from the electric fence. I search for a way around the morass. Finally Mark uses a plastic bag of clothes he carries in lieu of a pack to force the wires of the electric fence up enough to allow us to slide safely under it at a point well away from the gate and its boggy surrounds. Finally the track Bruce is following becomes cut back to the fence by the vertical cliff leaving empty air in front of him. He has no choice and he crosses the fence again.

At one point we debate where we go next. The instructions tell us to follow a line of a pine forest and exit the farm to the road. Unfortunately there are many patches of pine forest around so we push on hoping we will find the exit we want. We do find a line of pine trees and the markers but, instead of following walkway, swap to a convenient farm track out to the road.

Here we hold a council of war. We have been walking for over two hours and still have 12 to 13 to go.

"We have been walking at about 4 kilometres/hour," I say, "It is now five-thirty so at this rate it will be eight-thirty before we reach Neville's car. By the time we drive back to Bulls to get our car it will be after nine when we get to Palmerston North." I don't want to return this late so I go on in the same bossy way saying, "I will walk back on the road to our car and come back to see how you guys are progressing. Those who want to finish the walk can go on, the others can ride back with me to town."

I bustle alone along a quiet country road which runs through attractive undulating country which gradually loses altitude, giving me fine views across the lowlands as the sun sinks lower in the sky. When I finally reach the main road, I find myself several kilometres from the car. Still in just over an hour I make it to the car.

By the time I reach the others they have started on the last 5-kilometre section but everyone is ready to stop. We've seen all the best parts and it is time to return.

It has been a most satisfying afternoon and Aloha has handled everything that was thrown at her. I apologised for my initial reluctance to take her. She had a point to make and she has most definitely made it.

And I think my return walk to the car has been prettier and more satisfying than the long straight roads the others have been following. I hope Shirley's desserts went well.

