I returned from holiday a week ago. I nearly didn't make it back. I couldn't find my way out of Mt Maunganui. I figure it might have been a time-vortex-thingee. Or an alien dome above the town? Perhaps it was like in "The Village of the Damned" (book: "The Midwich Cuckoos") and all the female inhabitants would wake up tomorrow pregnant with blonde-haired alien babies in their tummies?
I'd been sitting in the driveway of my rented Mt Maunganui holiday home, all set to leave The Mount for my home in Wellington. I'd plugged my satellite navigation system into the car's cigarette lighter and.... phhhhhtttt!. The radio/clock/cassette player and, worse, the satnav, all gave up the ghost. Okay, yes, yes, I know - I should have thrown out my cassette player decades ago, but I have every audio book in the Harry Potter series, most of the 'Torchwood' audio books, and loads of others on cassette. My car is now the only place I can play them.
I digress... I finally penetrated a pesky Mt Maunganui force field, and to keep my brain alert and aware, and no radio to keep me awake ... I sang. For an hour or so I raked up songs with place names in them. For the following couple of hours it was songs with girls' names in the title. Then, it was Christmas carols. My self-imposed requirement being that I had to sing at least two lines of any song, otherwise it didn't count.
All the way from Waikanae to my home in Miramar (over an hour), I endeavoured to come up with every word from "Away in a Manager", a seemingly impossible task, seeing that the last time I'd sung it, I had been in Sunday School. I'm now a senior citizen.
Still, a good job well done. I survived the trip. And my garage-man fixed the blown fuse. He said he was too busy to invoice me and just to give him beer money. I don't nowadays drink (not because I'm a prude; I just don't like the taste of alcohol, I always want a lollie afterwards). I had no idea how much cash to give him. I hoped $10 was okay. How terrible if beer is now something like $100 a glass. Or it could be $1 a glass. Did I hit a happy medium (as the boxer said about the cheerful spiritualist)?
Oh, here's another picture of Hataitai Beach on Christmas day.
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