Babyboomer on board…
Day 1: Slightly lost. Ask an old derro if the 277 bus goes past here.
“No Sevens here!” he shouts and I move away just a little. “No mate, not here. Only Sixes come past here” he yells.
Category archive: Encounters
Wet and moist and dry and arid
She runs a computer and gizmo repair business in a Central Auckland Mall. When I visited with my lame duck cellphone which didn’t seem to want to re-charge, she diagnosed the problem immediately. Mould, or at least something resembling that at the end of the charger line.
Hmm” she said, casting for the word. “Wet…”
“Damp” I said, thinking it would help.
Seeing ourselves more clearly…
For a long time, my friend, a former journalist and writing pro used to be on my case.
Every few months we would catch up for a coffee at the local and have a rant and rave about all things that either fired us up or depressed us including injuries and accidental mishaps!
That is what you do with your friends, right?
Unfinished business
I met a group of fellow cycling tourists at Lake Ohau Lodge, a stopover between Twizel and Omarama on the Alps to Ocean bike trail. One of them wore an exasperated frown when she said, “Why do New Zealanders not tell the truth about the standard of the trail? What are they afraid of?” I was taken aback, as much by the irony as the question.
The day I met my birth mother (Part one)
‘William David Paget’ began the address on the envelope. Whoever could be addressing me in such a formal way?
Then I noticed the sender’s address the exterior of the envelope – Department of Social Welfare. Surely no-one was alleging that I might be the father of her child.
What do you enjoy about what you do?
Have you been asked a question recently – a simple one at that – which caused you to stop and think. Your mind flicks into another gear as it goes through the search and inquiry process until it connects with some semblance of an answer.
But what is interesting is that long after you have responded, you find yourself still mulling over the question!
The people you meet, the people you pass…
One glance and you knew she looked like everybody’s favourite auntie, her round freckled face wearing a smile which seemed like a permanent expression. Yet she’d had no cause for such equanimity.
A hat-rack please…
Went shopping for a hat-rack the other day. No big deal, this was a need rather than a want – my hats had multiplied in direct proportion to my vanishing hair.
I rang a store which stocks everything from rope to paints and plants, and asked for a hat-rack.
“No we don’t sell any” said a South African accent a little too emphatically, the way some people do when they want you off the line.
“Really?”
“I’ll put you through to hardware” she said, and was gone, though Hardware was displeased.
When robber bees invade a hive
I should begin by saying I am but a beginner beekeeper, so these are just my observations. I don’t keep them for honey, but for pollination, though my kids would tell me the joy of sticking their heads under a giant honey tap in harvest season is a hard reason to beat.