David in Pen and Pics

Even the car looks relieved as it pulls into our drive and kids ooze, tumble out. Welcome hugs. A long drive after a committee decision, ‘Let’s visit Poppa’.
Committee decisions, no one is actually in charge, there is a moment of each looking at the other, ‘Now wot?’ followed by chatter, dawdling inside and clattering down the stairs.
Food.
No-one is in charge of lunch. No person has come out in spots deciding on a menu, facing the ‘I don’t like’, and propelling a trolley through Covid quivering crowds.
Fridge, larder, dining table fruit bowl, Poppa’s home made bread, oh – and the pizza and peanut brownies. Real peanut brownies. No brownies were harmed in following the Edmund’s recipe. Just as my Mum did.
Family news, small groups form, young ones talk of things that for me, a wrinkled Poppa, are now above my head.
A walk. An explore around the older parts of Thames. A&G Price, an enormous and old building where, when ‘Poppa was a boy’ real steam locomotives were manufactured. And today there is still evidence of railway lines. You know when I grow up I’m going to be a steam train driver.

Small boys excel in getting lost. Disappearing from . And the site. While some could become anxious hardened old tuskers like Poppas, small boy graduates, are relaxed. A chance to sit down. After all Thames, New Zealand, was discovered by big boys getting almost lost. And lost boys have an inborn GPS. A tummy. Time and hunger lures small boys homewards.
The boys emerge clutching trophies of interesting stones and unidentified discarded objects.
The kids stuffed into the car, we drive up to the monument and view of the Firth of Thames. Ponder, what did it look like in Capt. Cook’s day? We read how in those early ventures the noise of native birds in those uncut forests was almost too hard to bear.
A view of the rooftops of the businesses along the main street of Thames. The Thames cinema looks enormous. Deceptive from inside the four auditoriums. Sadly in a few weeks to be permanently closed. Cinema survived TV but at home streaming devices have turned the current.
Monuments are sacred places. Monuments are climbed by small boys. Yes a boy gets stuck. We wish him well. We promise, at home, to raise our plate of cake in memory of a climber who failed to unclimb.

Low speed, lots of corners and the road now is tar-sealed. The ratatat of corrugations and dust are yesterday.
Driving through shade and covered by ferns and native trees provide a break from all day sun. Almost at the destination and my phone sounds an alert. Nowhere to stop on this narrow road. I guess. Another Covid alert? More likely a third tsunami warning. Tsunamis are waves that come in waves. But we are safe. Locked in a valley, yes, but at an altitude now of at least 80 metres. I park the car. A solitary car under the trees the same as all the previous late summer visits. Holiday folk have gone.

• 

I check my phone – these days we can get reception in the valley. A tsunami alert. Somewhere a tsunami may have been and gone.
Simple back pack, a quickly scratched together picnic. Make-do picnics offer surprises. Cheese, rye biscuits, eggs, dried fruit – real fruit and baking. Bottle of water.
Summer crowds have left a well-worn track. Storms have left a well-torn beach, devoid of sand. Where once was sand, comfortable to sit on, are river boulders. A search for the ideal blend of bum and boulders, a wriggle and now seated, let the picnic commence.
There is light chatter of water from the river. The buzz of late summer cicadas. Welcome Swallows swoop in mysterious aerodynamics. All day, every day is picnic time for the Welcome Swallows skimming on the water surface for insects we don’t see.
No traffic, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, chain saws, or car alarms. The peace of regenerating native forest. A nearby cliff face an abstract artwork of colourful, embedded minerals. Grey, boulders, trees in shades of green, blue sky, always-changing white cloud. Let the picnic commence.

Picnic ate. Always more food than needed. Post prandial dawdle away from the tinkle of the river and a walk around the forest track. Shade, silence. A cry of alarm – a bird I can’t identify. Nearby freshwater stream, a good flow after recent rain and its course long stabilised with well established trees. A a rich green moss never seen in the sunlit areas, borders the track.
Silence. A tapestry of time as lichen inches its way up a tree trunk. Should that be ‘centimetering’ its way? Easy for us old fellows to get behind.

Silently, the stream flows. As it did yesterday, and tomorrow…

Past the school to the compulsory stop.
Early morning traffic light is light.
past the ‘Ice-cream Dairy’, the racecourse and the open road sign.
Contractors with flags, and ladders fixing stuff up a pole.
Pass a council mowing thingy cutting back to scruffy, rural grass verge.
Then silence. Silence except for a duck.
A pool to myself.
The early summer splash, frolic and out days are over.
Exercise. Day by day the distance increases.

The duck flies off.

Most seem to know each other. Some seek people they have not met before. Comfortable self introduction. Flippancies dispensed with, issues in common with our past recalled.
“If we were in that situation today…?”,

Gracious, calm and self assured, cruises about the guests like a defused nuclear missile. Greetings, expectations that certain things will have taken place by now.
Others, the second of an ‘other half’ are happy for quiet isolation, just to observe. A good Samaritan adds company, sunshine.

Now the shoes. I can see to the back of my wardrobe because preloved clothes removed and to become reloved clothes.
I have exceed my 5,00 steps for the day. Pacing Pollen street to get inner souls for yours truly, Sinner, and dates from favourite shop Restore – plus a luxury mix of nuts.
A river swim, now warm and busy with swimming buddies – God save the eels. Not even Google knows how many strokes of swimming I’ve accomplished. But Google has just told me of others who have locked on to my favourite spot.
A walk around the top of the hill, sunset.
Bonsoir.

Solitude
Behind me the bush soothes the sound of the road.
Out of sight, around the corner children chatter on a flotation device
A lone duck propels himself towards me
On the way home I shall buy a bottle of sparkling Rose.