Even columnists have holidays - well, sort of - and this one, laptop chained to his ankles, has fled to parts north.
So forgive me if for a moment I drop my guard, eschew the affairs of mice and men, and wax lyrical about the view. I am sitting on the deck looking over the late-flowering flax, and the spindly wind-ravaged manuka, across the estuary. It's low tide.
I can see the odd wading bird pecking at the exposed sand and mud, scouting and stalking the ribbon of water twisting its way across the flats. Up closer, the tuis have yet to return, but I'm sure come dawn they'll be back leading the rousing chorus.
Meanwhile, the others, frowning upon this busman's break, have ventured forth in disgust to Farewell Spit, making the short traverse from east coast to west at its base. The sun is hovering over the yardarm and I am working up a thirst. Writing columns is work after all, and there's a barbecue to be prepared ...
When the days begin to fray at the edges and flow into one another you know the R&R is beginning to rub off. I like the French word "vacances", and I'm sure the interpretation is etymologically suspect, but it carries the suggestion of an emptying out; and that's what holidays are for: emptying out, recharging, and when you no longer know if it's Tuesday or Thursday, perhaps for looking forward.
Of course this - the holiday column - would not be possible without technology and, as much as one might wish to resist it, it does have a tendency to make a compelling case. At a celebrated local venue the other night - let's call it the Mussel Inn - I spied at the next table a woman reading a novel on a Kindle. Or was it an iPad?
Perhaps she had not seen the totem pole towards the entrance decorated with the corpses of discarded and lost cellphones; or perhaps I wasn't looking and the pole has now gone. After all, even the outside bar at the inn does transactions by eftpos to oil the wheels of trade and commerce - and who isn't grateful, when there's a large crowd and you're dying for a cool, thirst-killing Captain Cooker.
I'm not yet ready for the Kindle or any other kind of e-reader. That may be because it is too much like work, which for most of the time occurs in front of a computer screen. Or it may simply be because I like the tactile experience, the sandy, dog-eared, smudged, scrunched-up hardiness of the written word on paper.
What is more, the electronic rendition is yet another step in erasing the marks of the writer's labour, as if novels and poems and academic treatises are conjured up by magic.
My reading, of which I wrote optimistically a couple of weeks ago, is not going quite as well as I had hoped. But I did the other day happen upon an interesting commentary on this very matter - the rise and rise of e-books. It did not make comforting reading for authors, traditional publishers or bookshop owners, all of whom face the challenges and depredations of the plethora of digital formats.
The main advantages of e-books, as far as I can see, are cost and as a bulwark against excess baggage. But how many e-titles can you read at once anyway. My little protest against the removal of the author's mark, and the sweat of his or her brow, is to carry on buying books. And if the cost is reduced does that mean the poor author will receive even less for his or her troubles?
But I digress - which is probably another sign that I am letting go. Unfortunately, as is too often the case, the days left of this sojourn are bearing down on us at an alarming rate.
Tomorrow (as I write, and today as you read), we will make the trip over to Wainui and up through the western edges of the Abel Tasman National Park to Totaranui. Thence we will pull on our walking shoes and tramp and wade, across another estuary, to Awaroa. We will have earned our lunch, and an easy water taxi ride back.
The next day I might go out gathering pipis, tuatuas and cockles. I have a hankering, prompted I suspect by the recent visit of Italian friends, for a spaghetti alle vongole. I'll saute a little garlic and finely chopped onion in olive oil, boil the spaghetti separately, steam open the tuatuas in a little white wine to coincide with the al dente pasta, drain and throw it together with a good handful of finely chopped parsley, and dress it all with a knob of butter and a generous sprinkling of grated parmesan.
But I seem to be getting ahead of myself. There's a barbecue to prepare.
• Simon Cunliffe is deputy editor (news) of the Otago Daily Times.
