Blog 12th, Thursday January 11th - Golf a Good Walk Spoilt.

Container ships come and go as idle as a ship upon a painted ocean – E. Duncan.

You can just see the outline of the container ships in the grey mist as they begin their long voyage across the seas laden with milk, butter, and frozen bovine meat.

There are floods in Coromandel, Gisborne, and in California, and I wonder if we might have to commandeer Moo Hefner’s large wooden boat, but I doubt he’d let two of every species on, as he is not in the slightest bit interested in saving the world.

I am pleased with myself as last night I just had one 5 mg melatonin instead of a 5 mg melatonin and half a zopiclone, which results in that weird sensation of staring at people too long out of enlarged eye sockets for the whole of the next day — like a part of your brain is still sleeping. My stomach still hurts as if I am an overstuffed toy, like the one I made at kindergarten with a big needle and wool that kept coming out. I don’t think I could make one any better now, as my creative skills have not improved one bit from infancy, despite having a grandmother who could create beauty with just some hairs on a stick, coloured water, and a piece of paper.

I am unpacking the dishwasher and I ask Mum where the jagged blades of the bread knife go. She eyes the blades fondly, bestowing the highest of accolades on them.

“Without them, of course, life is useless. When it comes to putting things away, I am very particular. I have learnt over the years it may take more time, but it’s worth it,” she says, as she pops them back in their original box in the bottom drawer.

Mum looks at our crusty golden loaf of bread, sighing, “I have been a devoted Vogel’s eater all my life, and now look at me — I am suddenly a devotee of Baker’s Delight high-fibre white. It’s as if I’ve adopted a new religion; as if I am suffering from a crisis of duty. I am sure one day I will return to Vogel’s.”

Minty rings and tells me she and Frankie came to see me in my morphine-addled state every day all the way from Leigh. I am so grateful. She tells me I must use the old shower in my wing with its little high wall. “Use it or lose it,” she encourages me, “or at your age, die.” She continues, “My friend Sam had a Caesar and then went home to three kids, so consider yourself lucky.”

I tell Mum Minty says I have to use my shower, as each ascent over the wall will save me from the onset of old age. She says I am getting better as I am getting argumentative. I stand in the old-style shower and the pipes splutter and splurt like my new pipes did three days post-op, and then the water comes out cold.

I report this travesty to Mum, who comes in and remembers she has very economically turned off the hot water to the guest bathroom. As we are leaving my old bathroom, she discovers my heated towel rail is on, and I feel like a hedonistic Kardashian with no respect for the environment or Mum’s fiscal prowess.

I try to get back in her good books and congratulate her on the clever system in her wardrobes where the lights go on when you open them and off when you close them. She says, “Well, it doesn’t work, as you don’t close the wardrobe.” I tell her that Mark (Moley’s husband) hates drawers and cupboard doors left open.

“Of course he does,” Mum says. “I don’t like that either. I am automatically tidy and it’s getting worse as I get older. Why would you just half shut a drawer? It’s a state of mind. What’s the benefit of leaving it open? It’s the art of finishing what you start. I put dishes in the dishwasher or wash and put them away. I never put them on the sink to dry or to wait for washing. Ash, I always finish what I start.”

I think sadly of a project I am doing for Mum and Maryse and Boydie about our trip to the Marquesas Islands, which it was my job to document. Not a word has been seen in seven years, and the trip is now only spoken about in whispers so as not to hurt my feelings.

We sit reflecting on my shortcomings as Mum pours our coffee.

“Darling, I like my coffee made with a level dessertspoon, but I think you might like it rounded.”

Charley arrives and asks where the best pan in the world is, as he wants to make an omelette and has a favourite pan. Mum, recognising his hyperbole, says, “Oh no, you’re not a Taurean, are you?”

Mum is a Libran and I admire Librans in their balanced state. They don’t rise and fall like we Taureans, and it is a widely held belief that a calm life rather than a wild ride is more congenial overall.

“Happucino, your pan is the best in the world and I am the best salesman in the world.”

“Are the others as good as you?”

“No.”

“And do you have a career path, darling?”

“Nope — just sales figures and getting new clients.”

After Charley has left, we decide to go for a walk to the shops. I am sitting on the hall chair putting on my outdoor shoes when Mum calls me into the kitchen to sit in my outdoor shoes at the table while she reads me a poem that Maryse has sent her — about a grandfather who pulls nightmares and happy dreams out of an invisible sack.

“Pull the drawstring.Quick, Boy.Ah, tonight, e moko, we will all dreamSweet dreams, only special dreams.Rubbed hands against my browAnd happiness into my head.”

What a lovely thing for Mum to pluck this bit of loveliness from nowhere and share it with me. I think of a bird alighting in a tree and bursting into song for no reason at all.

My friend Davey arrives to check I’m alive. Davey is now past his allotted three score years and ten and does teapots at the gym, sells chainsaws at Stihl, and volunteers at the golf course. He says golf is a good walk spoilt, and that he is not very good at it and never seems to improve no matter how much he plays. He is hoping to become an honorary fishing inspector and catch those villains who deprive our grandchildren of the thrill of finding tuatuas on Pakiri Beach, cat’s eyes in rock pools, or catching sprats off the local wharf.

Davey says New Zealand should become the organic, cruelty-free farming capital of the world. He says when he was a child he picked up hay, rode horses, milked 120 cows a day, and never went on holiday. He says a rural upbringing is the best childhood of all.

Mum is suspicious of my writing as she thinks there is no plot — which there isn’t.

“Mum,” I ask, “what is it you like in a story?”

“Well, I read one line. And I like it enough to read the next.”

We watch The Crown, and Diana says to John Major, “You can tell the state of a family by the state of its marriages.”