A date with Sarah-Kate; Kate’s home truths

It’s a speedy trip down memory lane for Sarah-Kate

Back in the dark, dark ages, I had a convertible car. It was a red Triumph Spitfire and it cost me $7000 upfront to buy and $7000 a week to maintain because it was held together by rust.

The exhaust pipe fell off the first time I ever drove it. It drank clutch fluid like an Irishman on St Patrick’s Day. The radiator was in a constant state of near boiling. The starter motor took its sinuses to Arizona so I had to jumpstart it. Third gear went to join the starter motor and never came back.

During one of its regular stays at the panelbeaters, a drunken yob jumped on it and dinged it up even further. But I loved that car.

I remember driving from Auckland to Wellington on my own with the roof down listening to a Frank Sinatra cassette and singing along until I knew all the words to all the songs. Yes, it was highly impractical, but that little red beast was A-number-one, king of the hill, top of the heap, if you ask me. Get a tan while you’re driving somewhere? That’s my kind of multitasking.

But I guess I got boring. It’s been sensible hatchback after sensible hatchback for the past few decades. Good buys, all of them, but I’ve never forgotten the thrill of driving in the sunshine with the wind blowing in my hair and nothing but sky above me, and Frank crooning out of the dashboard.

I’ve broached the subject of getting another ragtop with the Ginger over the years, but he’s against them. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? He only has to sing the opening bars of “Bring Me Sunshine” and he’s suffering five-degree burns. He reckons I’d never take the top down in Auckland. It rains too much. I’d be squashed if I rolled. There’s no such thing as a “cassette” any more.

I was understandably, then, thrilled to arrive in the Cook Islands without him recently to find the rental car I had booked was a convertible Mini. You couldn’t get me behind the wheel quickly enough. You also couldn’t get my bags in the boot, so they had to sit in the back seat. But that didn’t put me off one iota.

Rarotonga is an island with a 32km circumference, which I drove clockwise and anticlockwise at every chance.

In the Spitfire days, getting the roof up or down involved getting out of the car, wrenching something, clipping in something else, losing two fingernails and swearing a lot. The modern Mini required a mere double-pressing of a single button.

I arrived back in the City of Sails determined to swap Dreary Hatchback Number Who Cares for something a bit more glam. First, I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way home from the airport. Then as I opened my mouth to express my determination to the Ginger, it hailed. Finally, I looked in the mirror (it had been a while) and noticed my hair looked like a haystack that had been through the mincer. Maybe some things are best confined to memories and holidays.