I may have to do some actual research for this one.

March 21st Good Friday

We are sitting on the deck of the ferry going across to Wellington bathed in warm sunshine. It’s a fabulous day and the ferry is packed. I may have forgotten to mention we were going up to Hawkes Bay for Easter.

Brent has been making all sorts of wise cracks about sinking boats and announcements in loud silly voices and I have been pretending I have no idea who he is.

After about ½ an hour of wise cracks he finally pulls out a book.  Einstein’s Theory of Relativity; I kid you not.

It’s the sort of book that impresses the snot out of everyone around you and makes them think you must be a genius until they realise you are not actually turning the pages; or, as in my case, you are holding it upside down.

Brent has it the right way up; and, he is remembering to turn the pages at suitable intervals. He really does look like he is reading it and he even has an interested expression on his face and his ears are forward.

I can’t believe he’s not even falling asleep; I tried reading it once and found it to be the best sleeping aid I’ve ever tried. They should write WARNING may make you drowsy, on the back cover in large print. I once saw a packet of sleeping tablets which had this warning on them.

March 22nd

We stayed the night with Brent’s brother and sister-in-law; Ken and Maria.
We all get on like a house on fire. They have a bunch of pets too – 4 beautiful Burmese cats, 1 baby boxer pooch, 3 kids and a gorgeous parrot who answers to the name Lord Nelson.

Lord Nelson took one look at Brent and fell in love. He had been busy rearranging my hairstyle (suspiciously nest shaped) when he spied Brent who was sitting on a stool bobbing his head at him.

“BRAAAARRRK” shrieked Brent.
The parrot looked at him quizzically; “HELLO” he said and bobbed his head politely back at Brent. Then he clambered down my arm and onto Brent’s outstretched hand. He gave Brent a thorough inspection, bending his neck this way and that before finally deciding that Brent looked best upside down. He then proceeded to plaster Brent’s face with tiny parrot kisses complete with tongue action, before helping himself to Brent’s wine.

He remained firmly stuck to Brent’s shoulder until Ken got home. Ken is Lord Nelson’s favourite person in the whole wide world since Ken rescued him a few months ago from a tree top where he was perched shrieking insults at the cats milling around the bottom of the tree waiting for him to fall out of it.

I think Lord Nelson got a bit confused when he saw Ken walk in. Brent and Ken look very similar and they sound the same too. He looked from one to the other before deciding to test drive the new Ken. He remained teetering on Ken for the rest of the evening taking the occasional sip of wine from Ken’s glass. Every now and then he suspiciously eyed Brent before deciding he must be seeing double and ignoring him.

I now understand where the phrase ‘pissed as a parrot’ came from.

March 23rd
I should know by now, never to trust Brent with buying anything – unless it’s ‘mans stuff’.
We stopped off on the way up to Hawkes Bay to buy some Easter Eggs for the kids. I decided to stay and guard the car with the help of my trusty water pistol.

Brent cheerfully arrived back at the car with a big bag which he deposited on the back seat; Easter eggs for his nephews, Alex and Nicholas; two boys.
“What did you get them?” I asked, “Let’s take a look”, I said, expecting to see ‘boy shaped’ eggs in the form of say, dinosaurs, or space rockets, or even just plain eggs wrapped in ‘boy coloured’ paper.

Imagine my surprise to behold two pink buckets with fairies dancing around the sides and the word BARBIE printed clearly over the fairy toadstools in silver glitter.

“It said they were ‘Winnie the Pooh Eggs’ said Brent plaintively as I stared incredulously at him.
It took about half an hour before I could get my lower jaw to close again.

 

March 24th

We finally made it to Hawkes Bay and Brent’s Mother.
We were rushed in for a meal of unidentifiable vegetarianism which subsequently made another four appearances at various meals during our stay.

The next night there was a family dinner during which Brent’s brother Gareth managed to make what appeared to be a flax doily and his wife Gine tackled a complicated looking embroidery.

Rachael and Kobus arrived with their two children, one of whom plonked himself in the middle of the floor with a fleet of Transformers. Nobody else seemed to notice that there was an entire war of the worlds being re-enacted, complete with stereophonic sounds in the middle of our conversation.

I could feel my temper rising.
I asked Nicholas if he’d mind moving to the other side of the couch. He stared at me as if he didn’t understand what I was saying and carried on where he was.
Finally I gave up being polite, I’d had enough. I’m allergic to noisy children and I’d had enough. I lost my temper. I don’t know where it went but I still haven’t found it.

I doubt that Rachael and Kobus will ever speak to me again and I’m not sure Brent will either, and Nicholas will probably have reoccurring nightmares in which I will star.

March 25th

We stayed the night at Ken and Maria’s again on the way back.
My brother Nigel had phoned out of the blue offering to fly me back to Christchurch to meet him and drive down to Gore for my Uncle’s funeral.

As I hadn’t heard from Nigel in about a thousand years I didn’t recognize his voice. I thought it was one of my other brothers playing a joke. “Yeah right Chris” I said; “no”, said Nigel, it’s me, Nigel, your brother”. “Oh sure it is, Stephen” I said. It was Nigel! Imagine my surprise.

We hired a car at the airport. I asked the girl at the car-hire whether she thought anyone would notice if the car we brought back was a beaten up Mitsubishi with cathydee.com plastered on the sides of it. She thought they would.

I also asked her if the no-alcohol clause included Brandy on account of it being medicinal and when I asked her if she thought the car was capable of doing 180km, Nigel dragged me away before I even had a chance to query whether my dog might be allowed a spin in it.

We decided to surprise my Mother and not tell her I was coming. She had no idea. On the way down we placed bets. We bet on whether Our Mother had guessed something was up, and then we bet on the time it would take for Our Mother to get to the door of the motel and then we moved on to betting how long it would take for someone to wind her up at the family gathering.

Nigel told me that Our Mother thought the motel was splendid. This could only mean two things…
1. That the motel was spotlessly clean and
2. That it had an actual tea pot.

Seven hours later we arrived. “Oh!” shouted Our delighted Mother and Aunt, “It’s YOU!”
I was glad to have myself reconfirmed as being myself.

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