Like the Spanish City, to me

A word to the wise, said a colleague of mine a fortnight or so ago, the mother of two very lively young boys.  Take as many weekend breaks as you can before the baby’s born, because after that comes a period in which you are more or less housebound.  By this collegial advice was the decision that the señor and I should spend Waitangi weekend in North Otago further strengthened.  As the pregnancy fog, which I understand is said by most researched accounts not to exist, continues to envelope my mind, it felt also like an opportunity to do something involving fine-motor skills — such as driving — before my previous accomplishments of coordination and logical sequences of thought desert me completely.

We went to Waianakarua, the ancestral seat where we’ve stayed before, not so much a village as a place between two places: farms and forest immediately south of Herbert and a little north of Hampden.  The river has two forks which meet the coast not far to the east, and there is a quiet and scenic back road to Kakanui and thence Oamaru.  With the car overdue a service I was worried about the brakes, but should as it happened have paid more attention to my right leg going numb over the downs south of Timaru; the return of sensation hit me in the night with the kind of intensity that leads to waking oneself up by shouting “Cramp!  Cramp!”  This, I learned later in the week from an obstetrician, is part of the ongoing stretching of ligaments and pinching of nerves that is my occasional painful lot at present.

The finest, brightest of Waitangi days gave us the opportunity to visit the Forrester Gallery in Oamaru for the first time, which we did after a walk along the bank of the north branch of the Waianakarua River on which I commented to the señor at the river’s shallow banks and low flow.  We saw at the gallery the newly-opened White Gold and Fishermen’s Daughter exhibitions, the latter of which included a ceramic work called “Contained River” that reminded us, with intensity, of the river along which we’d just walked.  Reader, we bought it, our first piece of jointly-owned original art.  The decision, which took just a few hours reflection to decide upon, gave a curious and excited feeling to the rest of the day, as if a representative from some community board were about to appear from behind a wall and congratulate us on joining the upper-middle classes.

The cheese factory was closed for the holiday which meant more time spent in the whisky cafe instead, where the señor took seriously the four-part tasting that I could only take in at the nose (and then not much at that).  On a visit to the town cemetery at Awamoa we were interrupted in our contemplation of my family grave by two women in a four-wheel-drive proceeding up the site road slowly, while two boxer-type dogs capered joyfully either side.  I find it hard to fault those who pass so brazenly by “no dogs allowed” signs, since I once promenaded Arthur similarly and (in my defence) obliviously through much of central Whanganui.

The family grave we have set ourselves the small task of maintaining looks clean and bright, so the señor extended the power of the anti-moss spray we carry in the car for this purpose to two infant graves nearby.  In my condition I can fathom the death of infants even less than usual.  It seems so utterly unreal, so improbable, as to make the usually surprising fact of my grandmother’s name in her stone on the ground both cold and hard.

Perhaps on the rebound from our art-buying activities, we concluded that the afternoon should end with driving the streets listening to Dire Straits, and were able to secure a CD from the local WareWhare for that purpose.  The discman long dormant in my glove box no longer seemed an object of ridicule, and we headed first up to the lookout at South Hill and then down to the Botanic Gardens to greet the fancy hens and pigeons in the aviary.  The suburban streets had more than a few bogans out driving, who perplexed me continually by stopping when they had the right-of-way and angrily waving me through.  Local road cultures are counter-intuitive at times.

We chanced a southern run to Moeraki for evening’s end, tracking the boulders at low tide and following the shoe prints of a horse, prints that stopped with a certain mysteriousness beyond a certain point.  Emboldened by equine evaporation — surely a sign of something — we headed inland to the fishing town itself, where we were permitted an outside table at Fleur’s Place, where I nursed my trucker’s arm sunburn and the señor the first of several glasses of pinot gris.  The boats were coming in at dusk, a jetski was attempting to tow a waterskier, and the waiters of this famous seafood restaurant kindly took our request for an off-the-menu vegetarian antipasto.  It tasted sublime, the main feature some large, unfamiliar and roasted green chillis, whose seeds set off a fiery party in my mouth but not, curiously, the señor’s.  It is hard to exaggerate the beauty of this location; suffice to say the tranquility was barely disturbed by a limo-full of hens a-party, who spilled out on to the jetty for wine and Midori then spilled back into the vehicle again, off to Oamaru in search of further nightlife.

We ate well in town the next morning before taking an inland route to Omarama, the better to rendezvous with a broad church of Norwich Terriers and their gracious host, in whose bright living room we drank tea before heading north again.  The passenger in my lap continued to take much of my energy and a route home usually characterised by shooting through became instead a journey of frequent breaks; a far better problem to have, I would add, than, say, dreadful morning sickness!  This then, was our good weekend away and my turning into the second half of my decade, reunited on return with five terriers of my own, among whom one very pregnant, of which more later.