Poppa Petermeets hismatch
Mister Five comes to stay and a jaundiced old man is reminded of the blissful innocence of youth.
Jenson, now 5 years old, has come to stay for a week. This is not a unique event. He has stayed before, but at Turakina, and in the company of other carers besides myself.
This time, in Brooklyn, Wellington, with mainly me.
Huge issues – toiletry, ablutionary and dietary impose themselves – eg: ‘‘I don’t like cooked tomatoes. I only like raw tomatoes. And tomato sauce.’’
‘‘But to make tomato sauce, you have to cook the damned tomatoes!’’ ‘‘Yes.’’ My sophisticated ratatouille is scraped from the chicken, which is then drowned in execrable Wattie’s ketchup.
To the aquarium: ‘‘Why do fish live in salt water?’’ ‘‘Because they die in tap water.’’ ‘‘I drink water out of the tap and it is good for me and sea water is horrible and makes me sick. So why do . . .’’ ‘‘They just bloody well do.’’ Which became quite a useful portmanteau answer actually.
‘‘Why do sea horses sit down in the water?
‘‘Why do kina use the same hole for eating and pooing?
‘‘Why do hermit crabs live in whelks?’’
For these and many other questions, see answer above.
We departed with the words of a madly helpful attendant ringing in my ears: ‘‘Oh yes, the octopuses (large, appalling and munching contentedly on live crab lunches) are all from around here. You’d be amazed how many there are in the pools round here. Camouflage.’’
Monday dawns dismal and grey – a typical National Party day.
It was worthy of nothing more than going to the movies. We would view Tin Tin.
‘‘It’s actually pronounced ‘Ton Ton’,’’ say I pedantically.
‘‘As in ‘Ron Ton Ton?’ ’’ murmured my wife.
Off to the delightful little Penthouse, with promises of popcorn and soft icecream. (I have broken fillings on Nibblenook icecreams.)
Tin Tin wasn’t on. Some bloke called Alfred Nobbs was impersonating Glenn Close in a film Jenson vehemently did not wish to see. We spent the day cheating at quoits and watching kids’ shows.
Tuesday. Mini golf. The course at Happy Valley must rate as the best in New Zealand. You putt amid fantastical objects all made from the rejected cogs, casings and metallic guts of 19th-century industrial machines. The greens themselves seem composed of bath mat.
Jenson teed off conservatively. Wrong move. His black ball rolled back 20 metres behind the tee. After that, he cleverly adopted a running game, rushing after his putt and slogging it on the run before it could roll back towards him. This ploy served him well until the ninth where, in full pursuit of the ball, he somehow got the putter tangled with his ankles and somersaulted to a halt beside a metal gargoyle.
Restrained tears. The hole was sat out with a glass of water – mild cranial contact had been made with the rusting sculpture. The result was a DNF – which materially helped his score as the scorer didn’t count it. The ultimate score was 70/76 to yours truly.
‘‘It was close, very close,’’ my opponent reported by phone to his mummy that night. ‘‘I’ll definally beat Poppa Peter next time.’’
Wednesday was totally ruined by the carelessness of a party who had never featured in the day’s plans.
Nana Lizzie broke her toe on a concrete step while putting out the rubbish and put paid to anything except hospital visits. The thoughtlessness of some people!
Even worse, while waiting for X-ray results, I was obliged to enter a Mcdonald’s junkerie, where Jenson dined on nuggets of something and a cardboard pottle of either chips or pine needles.
How bizarre is was to watch grown men tweaking vermicular fries from a kiddie carton and sucking milkshakes with straws. Nobby in Toyland.
Zealandia! The little bugger walked for two hours. Debate raged once more. If you have crisps at 9.15am, is that breakfast or morning tea? Morning tea. No, but if you didn’t eat your Weet-bix, it must be breakfast and thus morning tea is yet to come. The debate resulted in two morning teas and at least three afternoon teas.
Thursday was cable-car day, and a day of bizarre intimacies.
The woman at the cable-car museum was telling her mokopuna about the time she’d been sitting on the outside seats of the old-style cars and Jimmy Smith had leaned over from the passing car and pulled her pigtails. ‘‘Aha,’’ said I, ‘‘and did you marry him?’’
‘‘No, but we met up years later and had a torrid affair.’’
Then later in the day, shopping in Kirks lingerie dept with Nana Lizzie, I put a G-string over Jenson’s head and called it a bib. ‘‘Oh goodness,’’ chortled a woman nearby. ‘‘I do that to my husband.’’
Then on the wharf on the way to the museum, two young chaps took off their togs and leaped into the briny. A strangely Rabelaisian day.
We chewed the fat in the evenings, up on what he’d dubbed Boy’s Hill. He never used the moronically totemic: ‘‘awesome’’.
He saw fairness as a natural state. He gloried in an optimism that brought tears of dismay to my eyes.