The Big Red Suitcase and the Green Umbrella

I love my cousin Tom. He has been a presence in my life for many years. We are nearly the same age - he turns sixty this coming August - and he has always been a positive and cheerful person when I am down. But as those years go by, interacting with Tom becomes an increasingly surprising experience. Being with him is to understand planned spontaneous chaos. Today's trip out of the Abel Tasman was a good example. For the past forty eight hours he was undecided whether to go on his backpacking trip with Barbara today, tomorrow of the following day. He inclined, however, to tomorrow, so they could have a lazy Sunday.

This decision lasted until this morning when he abruptly changed his mind and said that they should start this morning. The question was whether Barbara would agree. In the event she did, getting her head round the sudden change of plan with the consummate ease of many years experience. They packed quickly and we were going to wait until the high tide, then go out in the yellow peril, after we had said good by to guests David, Scilla and Reuben. It was at this point that the plan changed, but it was not entirely of Tom's doing. As readers of this blog know, I travel with a large red suitcase. It is not ideal for a backpacking holiday, but I am not on a backpacking holiday. Except that getting in and out of Abel Tasman is difficult with a large red suitcase and it would be much better if I did have a backpack. It was David who promoted the change, but suggesting that he could take the big red suitcase on the ferry to Kaiteriteri, where I could pick it up. I then suggested that we could walk out at low tide, instead of waiting for the high tide and the yellow peril.

This was eventually the plan that was adopted. As I say, the planned spontaneous chaos was not of Tom's doing, it is just that being around Tom leads to this kind of situation. One has, as they say, to think on one's feet.

After leaving Abel Tasman, I was to drop Tom and Barbara as a trail head from where they would walk back to Awaroa. However, when we arrived at the turn off the main road where I thought I was to drop them, it turned out that this was not at all the place I was to drop them. Instead I was to turn off the main road and drive 11 kilometers on a very bumpy gravel road to a car park. Of course meanwhile the big red suitcase had probably arrived at Kaiteriteri with David, Scilla and Reuben who would have to wait for the hired Toyota to emerge from the wilderness and thunder down the main road to meet them. As it turned out all went well, but it was certainly an exercise in planned spontaneous chaos that only Tom really knows how to bring into existence.

Since collecting the big red suitcase, I have sped across the backcountry and arrived in Murchison. On the way I drove via the Motueka River valley, passing through Tapewa where there is a disused railway station called Kiwi. I had a coffee there and a boysenberry icecream, which is apparently the most difficult type of icream to dig out of its container - a curious if not very interesting fact.

"Not much of a place, Murchison," Scilla had said, but it does have a certain charm. At least it has a decent place to stay where I stood under the abundantly hot shower, which was a huge and blessed relief after nearly two weeks of solar trickle.

And the green umbrella? Well, that is in the garden of the Murchison pub. It is exactly the same type of umbrella Rosie and I bought several years ago in London. Whatever Scilla may say about Murchison, globalisation has certainly stretched out its binding tentacles to this place.