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.