Places

In my happy place.

In the summer of 1974, I was a finalist in the Miss Junior Ohope Pageant.  This was back in the days when beauty pageants took their show on the road across NZ’s beaches every summer in the name of some brand or other. When they hit Ohope Beach, I pitched up at the first sniff of potential prize money, elbowed all the other surnburned eight year olds out of the way and belted out “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool” by Jimmy Osmond* at the top of my voice. I can’t remember where I placed but I do recall my prize was a block of Icebreaker chocolate (I’d say that’s a third, right? And what happened to Icebreaker chocolate?)

*This became strangely coincidental when I later met a young man from Liverpool with very long hair and then married him.

We just got back from New York and, ten days later, it feels like a hazy, crazy dream. Holidays throw me way off course, away from the relatively calm current of normal life and into another river – some with white water – until they spit me out on the other side and back into the main current. It usually takes me a few days to acclimitise – how exactly do I make my living? Then I drift along quite happily until the next one sucks me in, churns me up and spits me out again. I love it.

This particular excursion was full of rapids: New York doesn’t do calm water.