COLIN HOGG

WELLINGTON SMALL TALK LEAVES COLIN CRAVING SOMETHING MORE

I asked my hairdresser, “Can we please stop talking about the weather?” The state of the weather is almost always the opening topic of any conversation here in Wellington, and all that talking hasn’t made any difference at all. My hairdresser actually said it was a relief not to have to talk about it.

“I’ve done the weather five times today already,” she said, and it was still only the morning. So we tried to talk about something else. I told her that my hair seemed to be growing faster than usual and she said several other customers had recently told her the same thing.

She reckoned it was because of spring. I told her she was talking about the weather again and things went a bit quiet after that. Which was a pity. I’d been looking forward to some conversation, having been home alone for several days. The executive wife is off overseas again, probably talking her head off.

And then it turned out that I wasn’t the only one left home alone. Several of my friends had been abandoned too. One of them, when she found out, organised a dinner for all of us.

“We should have leftovers,” I told her. “Leftovers for the leftovers.”

But she said not to be silly and that she was going to do a lamb roast instead and could I please bring the mint sauce, and not in a bottle from the supermarket either.

When I mentioned to Mum (92) that my wife was away overseas again, she sighed the sort of sigh most people save for sad and terrible news. “She generally comes back,” I told Mum, but there was simply no consoling her. My mother-in-law behaves the exact same way when she hears her daughter’s abandoning me again.

I try to tell them both I really don’t mind, that I appreciate the silence, that I get a lot done, but there’s no settling them down about it. In the olden days, apparently, wives never went away and left their husbands to fend for themselves.

“Things have changed,” I told Mum, but she’s got no time for those sorts of suggestions.

Anyway, I need to figure out how to make a decent mint sauce. Dinner parties never went out of fashion in Wellington and standards are very high. I might have to ask Mum for advice. She might not be a leading feminist, but she does do a good mint sauce, as I recall. And it so happens that I’ve got my own mint in the garden, which might impress her.

In other news, my eighth grandkid is due to be born any day now. The mother-to-be, my third daughter, sends us all pictures of her heroic waistline. In the last one, the baby looked like it really wanted out, though I didn’t say anything.

This one is going to be a girl and I’m very pleased because things were getting a little boyish on the grandkid front. This will make it four each way, which is a nice balance. Until things get out of balance again, which they’re bound to, given the number of children of child-bearing age I have.

Still, I really wouldn’t have it any other way.