The rain hurled itself on the port side of the camper van; the headless mountains loomed, the leaden lake looked hungry.
‘Hold on!’ I shouted.
‘What?’ said Small.
The wind growled and the camper van took fright and lifted. I took my foot off the gas.
‘Easy girl,’ I said. ‘Down.’
Continue readingLong day today, so I’ll let the pictures do the talking about Milford Sound.
Slept well.
‘I’m going for a poo.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Come on. It’ll be fun.’
‘Let go of the door. You are not going in there.’
‘Someone has to christen it.’
‘No someone doesn’t. The camper van toilet is for emergencies only — between the hours of ten pm and six am.’
‘This is an emergency. I need to christen it.’
‘There is a flushing toilet thirty metres from here with hand dryers and soap dispensers. Go and use that.’
‘Mum.’
‘Step away from that door.’
‘Why are you so grumpy?’
The honeymoon was over and we were still at Queenstown Airport.
Covid-19, cancer, cardiac conditions. There’s an unpleasant alliteration to the crap that has been afflicting those close to us this year. My wee nuclear family is just fine, but the wider family is not. Not fine at all.
Death is in the building. Perched on a bar stool, tapping a beer coaster. No rush. Just making himself known.
A week to go. A week!
What a strange limbo this is.
I went out to buy fruit the other day, paused at the end of the driveway, sighed, and turned left instead of right.
What a coward. Instead of heading to my favourite little fruit shack up the road, I went to the big, bland, unfriendly place down the road, spoke to no one and slunk back home with my inferior produce.
It’s so stupid to be avoiding the Raspberry Man who I have enjoyed talking with so much over the last 18 months.
Today I realised why I’ve been doing it. The business of leaving is messing up the business of living. Continue reading
Sometimes it rains.
Sometimes there is work to be done.
Sometimes there is traffic.
Sometimes the food is average.
“Madame, vous aller pleurer d’émotion.” [Madame, you are going to weep from emotion.]
The Monsieur paused for dramatic effect then presented a tiny cup of amour de poire, a delicate pear wine produced high up in the French Alps, a cork’s throw from the Italian border.
I knew it was a good idea to step into this curious little shop.
“You’ll get stuck in there,” Sabbatical Man had warned, eyeing the many signs at the door that suggested an eccentricity of proprietorship and eclecticism of wares that would make a quick browse impossible. Continue reading
Face down in the white, skis at odds, snowflakes up my left nostril, I practiced mindfulness and observed silence.
The silence of the mountains.
The silence of a metre of fresh snow.
The silence of The Instructor, a relentlessly positive man, finally lost for words.
Clarity came at last.
Skiing is suicide and I am not ready to die. Continue reading
“No backups for 277 days.”
That’s what the laptop tells me today (although I am backing up – just not to the hard drive in New Zealand that my homesick laptop prefers).
Two hundred and seventy seven days!
Each day a new number that looks a lot closer to 365 than it did five minutes ago when the entire year stretched out before us.
Our year in France is evaporating – one bland, un-ignorable, inaccurate Apple warning at a time. Continue reading
Camera too small, landscape too big.
I was struggling with this problem yet again in Iceland, on the side of an enormous glacier, when an Australian approached.
We exchanged adjectives and smiled at the view.
“Still,” he said. “It must be just like home for you here.” Continue reading
