Total Immersion

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.

And Finally, Good Evening

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.

Soon, Only 365 Days Till Christmas

She pauses, looks up, squints and figures out labels. Decisions. Behind her another examines an item, replaces it on the shelf. Our supermarket aisle, the whole super market is in pause and ponder mode. We are not shopping for the next meal, we’re shopping for Christmas. A porridge of slow moving people who are patient, pleasantries exchanged.

The intersection, busiest I’ve seen since I moved here. Cars wait, indicators winking, time to nod, shout a quip to a fellow pensioner on the footpath. Road rules politely oberved, Indicators wink, wink, wink.

Shopping lugged from car to larder, or stuffed in the fridge. After Christmas that fridge will have the Big Dig. ‘Best Before,’ da de dah.

A humid early summer afternoon.

Swim

Wot is a Geodetic Datum?

Sunday morning walk. Early. Our main street.
A lone contractor’s truck.
One fellow both arms leaning against the tray,
Breathing out memories from the night before.
His mate returning from the all-night
Pay, grab and gobble Burgher bar.

Stop by our best little provincial book shop, Carsons.
“Paris Indoor Style.“
A white cube. Inside that cube are white cubes.
Furniture. There must be, out of sight, a sign:
‘Please do not sit on The White Cube’

Leave town, up the steps, now a view of The Firth
Captain Cook, 1769, it was Spring.
1500 steps so far.
Highest point. 58 metres above sea level.
That is based on a standardised geodetic datum

From childhood Holidays…

Then it was a gravel road,
The car a cocoon of dust
From Waitakaruru, to Thames,
Where today, retired, I live.

Pollen Street, three old guys,
One of them is me.
Chortling, sharing aches and pains,
Growing old, it ain’t for sissies.

Grahamstown, an almost gypsy vibe.
Op-shops, cafes, a music shop, I stop,
Two strangers, two guitars and now,
Both tuned, becoming friends.