I have had some abominable summer holidays in my time, but
the holiday I barely survived last month stands alone like a
towering scarecrow in a field of wretched.
Of course, being semi-retired, it could be argued my whole
year is a holiday.
But when my hard-working wife schedules January for
unrelenting joy, I crank my own holiday lust up even further.
We went first to the Ida Valley. Gorgeous place, great
people.
Problem solvers like Deloitte could learn a thing or two from
our neighbour Barney.
Possum in the barn? Gun. Politicians? A piece of 4x2.
Our holiday home, a former hotel, is also seen by some as
gorgeous, but I am that rare breed who doesn't enjoy stepping
into a rustic shower and finding a spider the size of a
frisbee staring up at me.
There is this quaint middle-class urban ethos that says
run-down is cute.
And so what if a mouse leaps from a drawer? I don't buy that
ethos.
While we were there, we lost both hot and cold water, the
toilet broke down, and the mower effectively blew up.
On some days, incredibly, it rained waterfalls and was cold.
More crucially, we forgot to bring peanut butter.
The poet Turner, who lives a mere blur of bike spokes across
the paddock, did however visit.
Turner can sound like Winston Churchill at a book opening,
but back in his patch, sitting outside the hotel, he reverts
to a weary philosophical mutter.
It is a sound like no other I have ever heard.
As darkness drew in, and hedgehogs began rustling in the
unmown grass, I moved around behind him and pressed my ear to
the back of his neck, trying to find the source.
All I could discern were the words environment and bastards.
Then we went off to Auckland and the Coromandel.
Auckland was blindingly hot and rained sheets, turning the
Mount Eden village into Lake Karapiro.
On a wheeze, I bought a quiche from a deserted takeaway bar
near Symonds St.
At Auckland Hospital they diagnosed me with gastroenteritis,
projectile diarrhoea and a knucklebone cluster of prolapsed
haemorrhoids.
Those of you with particularly vivid imaginations may just be
able to contemplate the pain of having all three of these at
the same time.
On my release, still savagely ill, I flew home. I was
admitted to Dunedin Hospital a few days later, the
transplanted kidney now under threat through dehydration.
The fact I couldn't eat and had resorted to vomiting muscles
and tendons instead of food, was possibly taken into
consideration as well.
Our 35th wedding anniversary, the whole point of the trip
north with my wife and her family, came with me doubled over
a toilet in Ward 7C and my wife shedding tears of sympathy
and endearment from Hahei Beach on her XT cellphone.
Yes, that disaster came next.
I dragged myself back to bed and sent her the poem I had been
working on by candlelight all year - Happy Anniversary to the
woman that I loveI hope the sun is shining down on you from
up aboveAnd if it isn't shining down I'll give it a big
shoveHappy Anniversary to the woman that I love.
But I made my mark in Ward 7C.
The next day, while finger-pricking to test blood sugar, I
failed to notice a smear of apricot jam from breakfast on the
finger and finished up testing the jam, not the blood.
Clean fingers for finger-pricking is Diabetes 101, but I was
of course undone by illness.
The result was dangerously high. I whanged in some insulin,
and finished up in a coma two hours later, surrounded by a
rescue team.
As I drifted back into my January summer holiday, I heard
someone say, is this the Roy Colbert who writes for the
ODT? Yes, came a reply, with the sigh of a long low
sunset, yes it is.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
