Something Thoughtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.

                                              A SUDDEN BLAST

                   I’d had a bowl of porridge and a mug of coffee (black of course – the only way coffee should be drunk) and we were sitting at the table admiring the pastel-coloured flowers of the bouquet that one of her piano students had given her. Looking out the window, admiring the camellia bush and the hibiscus and the Cana lilies, I saw most of the sky was blue with just a few grey horse-tails here and there. We’d heard the day’s dismal weather forecast, but the morning sun was warm and I decided I could take my regular morning walk under such a safe-looking sky.

            Walking shoes donned, ear plugs ready, a podcast chosen (a grisly American account of a murder – I’d exhausted the more edifying podcasts on my walks), gripping my large black, furled  umbrella just in case, I shouted my goodbye down the hall and stepped out at a brisk pace on the intended 50-minute walk.

            Quick-step. Turn left at the bottom of the street then turn right on a long, straight level road which bends gradually left about three-quarters-way along. The morning sun was right in my eyes. A body was being dismembered on my podcast. I kept looking up at the sky and saw a large bank of greyish cloud in the north-west, but it didn’t look threatening.

Tramp, tramp, tramp at the required quick-step. This was walking for health, after all. Past the two bus-stops with morning commuters waiting anxiously for the unreliable bus, past the turn-off that goes up a formidable rise, nodding at two pedestrians leading their dogs, one leashed and one unleashed,  then turning right onto the long road that is pretentiously called a boulevard.  The lab is checking the DNA of the dismembered corpse. All is going well, though a glance to the west shows ominous black clouds allying themselves with the grey clouds. Not to worry. There was still a lot of blue in the sky.

I turn right for the third time. You understand my route goes in a large circle which will take me back home. Past the fruiterer that I very much like visiting when we’re short of apples and bananas and parsnips and whatever we need – especially as there’s a butchery attached to the fruiterer. I begin to walk up a steep rise, but then decide to turn off it and walk through what I think of as a little forest but which would probably be called a grove – a little bit of nature in the midst of suburbia. Admiring the tall trees I see the sky getting even darker. Will I make it home dry? An old man with a leashed dog is walking towards me through the grove. Courteously, he steps aside so that I can walk through a half-drowned section of the path. There wasn’t room for both of us. The detectives are ready to arrest the murderer. Through the grove I go, out onto a back street, up a brief rise and back on one of the streets I began with.

Now the sky is black and threatening. I turn into our street. I’m only five minutes from home. Surely I’ll beat the rain.

At which point I am almost blasted off my feet by the strongest gust I have ever met. A horizontal rain smashes into my face. I just manage to struggle open my black umbrella and point it forward against the blast. Unable to look directly at what’s ahead of me, I push on looking down at my feet, taking side glances at driveways. My legs are lashed by the rain.

Does it take me six or seven minutes to struggle up the street before I barge through our front door? And as soon as I am at the door, the rain eases off into a light drizzle. I shake out the umbrella on the front-door step before propping it up in the laundry tub. Were the Weather Gods making sport of me, luring me into a sunny walk and then trapping me? The last few moments of the podcast play out.  The true-story villain is caught and jailed. He always is. I should have guessed that. I should have guessed how the weather would behave too.

Dear Auckland, built on an isthmus. The weather rushes across from the Tasman Sea to the Hauraki Gulf and on to the wild Pacific. There are sometimes strings of long, idyllic, blue-sky days. There are sometimes strings of depressing days with relentless rain. But the isthmus ensures that there are many skittery days where sun follow rain follows sun follows rain follows sun follows rain like a repetitive meteorological joke. “If you don’t like Auckland weather, just wait half an hour,” says one of the oldest Auckland jokes. The trap is often set.