COLIN HOGG

SOME LITTLE VISITORS HAVE COLIN RUSHED OFF HIS FEET

It might have been ambitious, offering to have the two Auckland granddaughters come and stay with us for a whole week, though that didn’t occur to me until I collapsed, exhausted, on the sofa at 8pm for the third night in a row. I barely had the strength to think about how exhausted I was.

“How are you coping, you poor old thing?” asked the darling wife kindly, and also collapsed next to me. She looked a bit run ragged herself, I thought, though I didn’t say so. We got about half of a half-hour TV show in before we both gave up and went to bed.

Then, before we knew it, in the calm dark before dawn, just when you should be enjoying that last and best bit of sleep, came whispers and pitterpattering up the stairs from the bedroom below. I could feel the little girls staring us awake for another action-packed day.

My darling, who’s sensible about making plans, organised herself some time off work and booked a few things to take our lively little mates to. She suggested we split the outings up so we each got a bit of a break here and there.

She took them to cultural events – a play, the ballet, a slime-making class. I took them to the movies – Transylvania Hotel 3 and Incredibles 2 (all the best kids movies have numbers in the titles) – to the playground up the road, into the city shopping (for a game of snakes and ladders).

We went to the supermarket too, where I was told off by a checkout woman for buying the silly overpriced toys

I let the girls slip into the shopping trolley.

“I don’t have the strength to resist them,” I told her, but she wasn’t amused. She was too busy glaring at my beer.

There wasn’t a lot else in the trolley. Some Cheerios. Ice cream. Shameful really. “I bought the real food earlier,” I tried to tell her and it was true. Five-year-old Kura and eight-year-old Miharo thought this was hilarious. We went home and played snakes and ladders, a game that seems designed to last forever.

I told them I’d take them for a walk to the playground. “When?” they asked.

“In 10 minutes,” I told them. “Now!” they chorused.

“Ten minutes is as close as grown-ups can get to ‘now’,” I told them. Later, I showed them how to make pikelets and they were a lot more impressed by that than the Beatles records I played them, hoping to turn them onto the classics.

But, exhaustion aside, we had a great time. No tears. No awful accusations. They didn’t even miss Mum and Dad and baby brother (that) much, who stayed home. They all turned up on the eighth day for a few days before taking the girls back north.

The energy levels shot up a few notches when Tiaho was in the house. He charged around like the world had no edges, tried every cupboard and drawer handle, and considered the stairs with glee.

Then they were gone and, suddenly, silence.