Let us know before you go
Even Facebook aficionados find it hard to keep up with the comings and goings of others. People move on and move off and one day you think haven’t seen someone for an age and you learn they’ve gone to Motueka, Mokoreta, Mokotua . . . somewhere like that but no-one’s quite sure.
It’s like the map has changed and a bit fallen off, like maybe Banks Peninsula.
But this week to my real delight we met dear friend Moira, she with her mum, me with my lad, and she said you live here in town now?
And I said yes, a hundred mail redirection orders, one more told.
Once, unwittingly, I faded from someone’s orbit.
Every day for two years, after dropping my Joseph at kindy I would stop at a nearby dairy and buy the day’s provisions – apples, bread, butter, bananas and a birthday card – every day.
Then one day he turned five and went to school in a different direction so I never went back to that shop where I’d always enjoyed a chat and good service. Retiring parks
Later I did think director Robin
about this. Pagan’s calm and
pleasant manner
Did they miss me,
will be missed.
think me a miffed customer – as if! – or think maybe I had died or gone to Motu or Moko?
Same thing, I guess.
But the truth is I never veer over to shops or petrol, always choosing whatever is at hand; on my left, as it were.
Then I read that the Invercargill City Council parks director Robin Pagan would retire from the green and beautiful by Labour weekend.
We will no longer meet him, so calm, pleasant and nice in Queen’s Park.
But we know and can say cheerio and not think we have wandered the wrong pathway and missed him.
I do think, let’s know before you go. And it is not just people we miss. Sometimes you remember long ago useful stuff and wonder where it has gone. Like camphor balls which kept moths away from warm clothing stored over summer.
It is not considered a ‘‘safe’’ product now, I was told, offered instead some plastic balls supposedly infused with the scent of camphor which faded before we became accustomed to it.
And what, I wonder, of miracle spot cleaner carbon tetrachloride, the judicious use of which almost eliminated the need for costly dry cleaning of school uniforms, blazers, coats and the like? Has it quite gone too?
Look, in future, let’s know before you go.