KERRE MCIVOR
KERRE UNPACKS THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM HER FAMILY TRIP TO FRANCE
It’s fair to say that I committed a number of egregious sins while I was on holiday with the husband. Losing my credit card three days into our month-long trip was enough to make the Irishman grind his teeth a little. Losing his credit card when I lost my mobile should have incurred at least an eye roll and a long suffering sigh. But no. We were on our way home.
The credit card, like our good selves, was exhausted. There was no money left. And as I explained to him, the credit card would be safely tucked into the iPhone cover and turn up. There are only so many places a phone can be on board an aircraft.
And I was right.
Cathay Pacific found my phone, and it travelled back from Hong Kong to Auckland with the credit card safe and secure inside the cover.
In the meantime, I’d bought another one as I couldn’t afford to wait a week for my phone to turn up and, quite frankly, I’m disinclined to use my runaway phone. As I mentioned last week, it made a habit of disappearing on me while I was in France and causing me, and a number of other people, a great deal of inconvenience.
Driving on the right-hand side of the road took some getting used to and having the husband translate the navigation instructions from French to English wasn’t all that helpful either. We had a few full and frank roadside discussions about what it meant to be a good navigator. I felt that if Tom wouldn’t fiddle with the machine and get it speaking English to me, he needed to discern where we were going and which direction we’d need to turn long before I was actually on top of the intersection. He felt that bellowing ‘Left!’ a nano-second before I had to turn was plenty of time for a person with reasonable reflexes.
But what really drove my poor husband to despair was the number of bags I brought on holiday with me. I had two very large suitcases, a medium-sized suitcase, a small cabin bag and the radio transmitter which I used to broadcast my Sunday morning show from Ireland.
It was fine when we were merely travelling from the house to the airport and handing the bags over to the airline crew. It was not fine when we had to load them all onto trains, then off trains, then onto other trains, then into taxis, then up the stairs of chateaux and then down the same stairs, and then back into taxis and onto trains again.
Even I was forced to concede I had massively overpacked. I would have only worn half the dresses I included. Certainly the exercise gear never saw the light of day. My te reo textbooks stayed locked away and as for the changes of shoes, I lived in my jandals.
My profligate packing was underlined when Sarah’s (Kate’s other mum) own mother arrived for the final two weeks of the holiday. This glamorous, chic woman in her seventies arrived with a suitcase the size of a briefcase and from this tiny carry-on bag, she produced a number of stylish outfits that looked to be different every night. A scarf knotted just so and her dress was transformed. Tops in different colours were paired with the same trousers.
Every time Heather appeared for drinks at sundown, beautifully made up and impeccably presented, my husband would say how lovely she looked and how remarkable it was she travelled so lightly. The last two words were spoken with heavy emphasis. He’s right. I must sit down with Heather and find out how she does it. But then, is style something you can ever learn?