It pays to be flexible

The original plan had been for Elspeth and me to meet Helene Ritchie, former politician and author of a thoroughly researched book, ‘The Burned Letter’ which dealt with her Jewish family’s escape from Europe as refugees and the fate of the many members of her family who were murdered in the Holocaust. Via Elspeth she had given me a signed copy of her book. Even though I was sure our paths must have crossed at some stage when we were growing up in Wellington I don’t remember ever meeting her. We’d planned to drive down to Wellington to meet her for coffee at Zealandia. Disappointingly, the meeting got cancelled, so I took advantage of the unplanned free time to go for a long exploratory walk in the Waikanae wetlands.

It turned out that I bit off more than I could chew. After a very pleasant but vigorous walk for an hour or so I reached a road, and decided to use my GPS to follow the streets and take a shortcut back to base. The GPS said that it was a 14-minute trip, which was fine until closer scrutiny showed that to be the duration by car. Covering the 11km on foot would take a whole lot longer. The GPS told me that the quickest way home would be to largely retrace my footsteps. The upshot was that my walk took an energetic two hours, about twice what I’d planned. Fortunately the weather was perfect and there was plenty of birdlife to be seen.

I had arranged to spend the afternoon with old friends Janet and Jill at their Waikanae bach. Shortly after I got there we had a scratch lunch, mainly of food left over from the previous day’s Vic reunion, while we had a great time with plenty of talk and much catching up of news. Janet’s London-based daughter Fiona was visiting briefly, and it was good to see here again. The last time had been in 1988 when she visited Brisbane as a child with her father (my old mate, the late John Campbell) and her brother Douglas. They stayed with us for a few days while we all visited Expo88.

I had largely written off the prospect of a swim at my all-time favourite beach, but Janet convinced me that it would be warm enough, at least to avoid the worst effects of frostbite, so I decided to give it a go. We decided the 5pm would be the optimum time when the tide would be right and the air would still be warm. She was right. The sea was very swimmable and we were able to dry ourselves comfortably in the sun afterwards. After a dinner of Chinese takeaway followed by fond farewells to Janet, Jill and Fiona I headed back to my comfortable lodgings. A busy but enjoyable day.もっと詳しく