Just Two Things
The leaves are less crunchy now on dog walks. There are occasional plumes of woodsmoke above the houses, and the windows of cars parked on the street overnight are fogged with condensation.
The stillness of winter is beginning to settle in Wellington, and so the next few months will take effort, even to find just one or two good things in each day.
It’s so quiet on mornings like these, you can hear the dog’s claws scritch-scritching on the footpath.
That counts as one good thing.
Karori Road is having a mid-life crisis, or something. First, you watch a bus drive through roadworks, bumping against every cone. Then a reversing car backs gently into yours outside the shops. Its back bumper nudges your front bumper. The driver then appears to think about it, before conceding he’s probably gone too far. He inches forward a laughable amount and switches off the engine.
You expect him to look at you apologetically when he gets out, but he doesn’t. This must be the way he parallel parks — by feeling along the hard edges of any available space.
The next weird thing is that a trailer of calves pulls up outside the bookshop. You’ve lived in this city twenty years but before that, in regional or country towns where livestock outside shops were no big deal. There’d be farm dogs in cages on the back of utes, cottony sheep being driven to shearing, horse boxes every five minutes.
What’s startling to realise is how long it’s been for you between calves. Who have you become?
Texting with Usha.
YOU: Cher is 80?
USHA: Well, not all of her.
There are lost things all over the suburb. A purple pair of togs in a wet circle near the pool. Pink gumboots on Fancourt Street, although someone picked them up after a week. A dropped scarf tied into a hedge.
A working dog with a slender nose was grubbing in your rubbish on Wednesday morning. A roaming dog is an unusual sight, so you try to tempt him within touching distance. You might catch him and take him to the vet. But he shies away and trots into the road, which is wide and flat in both directions, though busy at this time.
An SUV is approaching and the dog pauses in its path. The driver has forever — an absolute age — to slow down, but for some reason, doesn’t. She’s going to hit him, so you gallop into the road with your palms up, shouting “Wait! WAIT!”
The dog scuttles down a driveway and the driver glides past, vaguely smiling at you. “Moron,” you think, while also noting her immaculate red lipstick. Matte, definitely. And likely MAC?
Why can’t you have just one thought at a time? You’re entitled to be furious, and how often can you say that?
You’re on a lean, gazing deeply into the fish-tank when the dentist calls you in.
”There’s a catfish in this tunnel, hiding from me,” you explain, and she shrugs, like she’s heard this before.
You’re here for a procedure to coat one of your molars in a protective lacquer. She numbs your gum with a medicated roll of cotton, and you pass the time talking about how much dentists earn. Not as much as you might think, it turns out, unless the dentist owns the practice or franchise. If not, you’re simply a hired sickle probe, with your fate in someone else’s hands.
Dental practices can be competitive over the available clients. Like hairdressers, a dentist who is leaving can’t take their clients with them. They simply vanish, and instead a masked person you’ve never met tells you to open your mouth wide.
“You must really love teeth,” you say. She laughs, agrees, and injects you.
Texting with Usha.
USHA: Ebola.
USHA: Nothing else. That’s all.
There was a fire in the science lab today, your daughter says at dinner. The teacher was demonstrating reactive elements by placing a quantity of such a metal in cold water. Everyone stepped back as instructed but instead of a small flash or fizz, the beaker burst into a long tongue of flame which shot sparks and licked the ceiling.
“She told us to open the windows so the fire alarm wouldn’t go off but the fire alarm went off,” says your daughter, between bites. “We had to evacuate the whole school, and everyone went out onto the turf. People were asking us what happened and we told them and kids were like, shaking our hands and thanking us for getting them out of a test.”
A fire engine arrived to inspect the classroom and check it for toxic fumes. You ask if the fire-fighters were good-looking and your daughter makes a face as if to say, well, obviously. Her classmate asked for a selfie with one of them.
“He said yes,” she says, with satisfaction.
You’re putting on a lace blouse for an 80th birthday party at the local pub. You love this blouse. It took you months before you committed and bought it. It cost more, probably, than your first car, so along with the pleasure of a beautiful, heirloom piece you feel guilt mixed in as well.
Your Mum is impatient with the way you diminish compliments if ever you wear something nice. Apparently, you say things like, “It’s twenty years old,” or “I got it in a sale,” or “This? It works out at, like, fifty cents per wear.”
“Instead of brushing compliments off, just say thank you,” she says, exasperated. Cut out the pointless, demeaning explanations. “You don’t have to tell them the brand or the price. If you must say anything, just say you bought it online.”
She’s right. This has always been one of your irritating impulses, tossing nice remarks back like they’re sardines to seals.
You arrive at the party, which is in a lovely private room with a balloon arch, a beautiful cake and coupe glasses of bubbly lined up on the bar.
“That’s a gorgeous shirt,” one of the young bartenders says.
“Thank you,” you say. Then you add, “I got it from…the internet,” and flap your hand around.
Her respect dissolves into a kind of pity. You take your glass and ask to be excused.
This week in obedience class, it’s Walking to Heel. You and your dog arrive last to the paddock, open and close the swing gate and join the circle. As the instructor begins to speak your dog saunters into place, cocks his leg and urinates generously over his little orange cone.
The instructor strides over while unscrewing her drink bottle, and rinses off the wee. Nobody says anything, but you and he are in disgrace.
Your son’s home from school with a chesty cough. You take him to the GP, who prescribes antibiotics. As he’s filling out the prescription you notice a world map on the wall behind him, thickly studded with coloured pins.
“Are those all the places you’ve been?” you ask, indicating the pins.
The doctor looks up. “No, they’re all the infectious diseases.”
You pause, then ask, “Is Ebola up there?”
He says it will be.
You feel rough this morning but take the dog for a quick runaround at the off-lead park. You walk past a powerfully built council contractor, who wears heavy boots and vinyl overalls. He’s checking and securing dredging equipment in his truck.
“Happy Friday,” you say, and he grins.
“Happy Friday,” he says. Then he shouts after you, “We made it!”
And there it is. The second good thing.
Hello and welcome to new readers, and an 💋air kiss💋 to regular ones! Ours has been a plague house with a chunky cold lovingly passed from person to person, which is why I was in no fit state to blog last week. I’m still in no fit state, probably, and absolutely honk of Vicks.
My upcoming Listener piece is a love letter to RNZ National, while also giving it a tickle in the ribs for its quirks — like, for example, its obsession with rat-trapping and native birds. 😁 God! Every five minutes they invite in some beardy guy to talk in animated terms about throttling mustelids. There’s literally a kākāpō chick count once a week, not to mention the daily bird call on Morning Report.
I know! It’s adorable! It’s the slowest possible listening experience! I love it! I’m bored out of my skull! If I hear another item about pest-proof fencing, I’ll throw my cup at the wall! I’d defend this station to the death in a select committee environment!
Anyway, here’s a taste of the column if you live outside NZ or if you don’t have a Listener subscription:
Who else wakes you up with the soft bleatings of the Chatham Islands snipe? Produces updates about milk-solid prices, and programmes about woodcarving? Who else believes a tote bag is a prize worth ringing in for? It sees only the best in us.
One of the magazine’s editors emailed me this week with an ominous “SOME MAIL FOR YOU” in the subject line, and I read it through my fingers. Luckily it was benign and so I replied, “Thank goodness it wasn’t an angry reader.” And she said, “We try not to send the angry reader responses.”
This wasn’t reassuring.
Nice post Leah
my least favourite time of year this windless cold when I wish the weather report had been more specific about exactly what they meant by a 'three layers day'
Brilliant writing as ever, Leah.