Month: July 2021

Some of you might know that my partner, Johan, is Dutch. He was born in the Netherlands, and despite 45 plus years in NZ, Dutch remains his native tongue.

In fact his English is as good as mine, if slightly accented. His mind works on sounds and visuals, not on the written word. So he has trouble distinguishing ‘off’ and ‘of’ or ‘van’ and ‘fan’. He knows a van has wheels and a fan has blades, but he can hear no distinction. No matter, he can speak three languages. Have actual fluid conversations in three languages, understanding both the tone and content. Make and comprehend jokes in three languages.

I can only do that in one language, the English I was raised with. I learnt Latin for three years at school and that was a doodle. Figure out the structure and it all falls into place. Easy! But it is a dead language. No one speaks it. The rules are regular and never change. It is like learning the alphabet or the times tables. And of course I have largely forgotten it, except for the odd bit of lawyers’ Latin that needs translating.

After five years of high school French, and three months living alone in a French provincial city, I can just get by en Francais. I can shop, order food and converse with a waiter in a restaurant, exchange polite greetings, and have been known to give and receive directions in the street. I can follow a conversation to the extent of knowing what it is about, but not to the point of joining in. I can read most things, but please no comprehension tests.

For the past year or so I have been trying to learn Spanish on DuoLingo. I practise every day, first thing in the morning and last thing at night. I remain in the present tense. Worse, my bilingual grandson ignores me when I speak Spanish to him, and his Argentinian father just laughs. It seems I am not a natural linguist, and that an A-grade in School Certificate and Bursary French does not guarantee coherency when in France. That it is was nearly fifty years ago that I learnt it probably does not help.

My son-in-law also speaks three languages – Spanish, English, French, and now he is learning Te Reo. My daughter spent two months in Istanbul and came back with a raft of Turkish conversation and everyday sayings. She has picked up basic Spanish from her husband and in-laws.

They put me to shame – all of them.

But while I can get my head around French and Spanish, and have even attempted a bit of Italian while on holiday, the oddity and sound of Dutch is more than I can manage. When I first met Johan I thought it would be easy. Listen to spoken Dutch and it does not sound that dissimilar to English at first, or to the cartoon German my generation grew up with in comics and war movies. It is a Romance language, so the structure is not dissimilar to French or Spanish, and like all European languages some words are the same. I can manage “hello” (hallo) and remember how to say “thank you” (dank u wel), but how am I to remember “please” (alsjeblieft)?

Try saying that when you are dying for a red wine. By contrast, “por favor” is pure simplicity, and “s’il vous plait” drops sonorously off the tongue.

How do I deal with this instruction, for example:

Nowadays, ij in most cases represents the diphthong [ɛi], except in the suffix -lijk, where it is usually pronounced as a schwa. In one special case, the Dutch word bijzonder, the (old) sound [iː] is correct standard pronunciation, although [i] is more common and [ɛi] is also allowed.

But the real kicker is that horrible sound they make in the back of the throat. Somehow the word groot (“big”) is pronounced pronounced “ɣroot” with ɣ denoting the guttural sound. Not only can I not make this sound, I don’t want to make it!

Most mornings I am subjected to the Dutch evening news – NOS – which with the Netherlands being conveniently 12 hours behind us appears on Johan’s computer at breakfast time. The coverage is much better than TV1 and less Euro- or America- centric than the BBC or CNN. Of course I can only pick up a vague idea of what is being said, but the film clips are self-explanatory, and if I show interest Johan translates. It is an interesting window on another part of the world, but sadly it does little for my language skills.

None of this may matter, considering I have spent a total of 48 hours in the Netherlands thus far. But perhaps, now that I have my COVID vaccination passport, I might get back there someday. And if I do, I want to be sure to know how to ask for a glass of red wine!

Mag ik een glaasje rode wijn, alstublieft?

Last night I caught a glimpse on the tv news of an incident involving two Australian officials at a news conference in Tokyo while being asked about the opening event. This morning I watched it properly after I saw it labelled in the NZ Herald as, “Awkward moment during press conference”. Check it out on https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/australia-stunned-by-annastacia-palaszczuk-slap-down-in-tokyo-by-john-coates/HW2DLJRHWTLCVZ7R3Q3E2LHIJE/ or in the online version of the Herald.

It made my blood boil. Here were two representatives of Australia on a world stage. One was a woman, Annastacia Palaszczuk, the publicly elected Premier of Queensland. The other was a much older man, John Coates, President of the Australian Olympic Committee and elected by no one except other sports administrators. One is managing a State, a pandemic, and promoting a successful bid for a future Olympics. No doubt she would rather be a home in Queensland doing something useful than in a COVID-racked Japan. The other is serving on the International Olympic Committee with all the unearned glory and privilege that entails.

They are from the same great sporting country, representing the interests of the Australian public and its athletes. Neither would have been sitting at that press conference without the efforts of the other. That they each have a different focus and role to play is self-evident. One would expect mutual respect, if not liking.

Yet when Ms Palaszczuk expressed reservations about attending the opening ceremony because of the pandemic, Mr Coates sunk his teeth into her like a dingo into a new-born lamb. Without a thought for her position or dignity he purported to pull rank, although I cannot imagine what rank he thought he had to pull.

“You are going to the opening ceremony,” Coates told Ms Palaszczuk in front of the world media. “None of you are staying behind hiding in your rooms”. On and on he went with his lesson about his view of protocols and the economic impact of the opening ceremony, while everyone sat stunned and embarrassed.

The thing is, he may have had a point about the importance of attending the ceremony, but the manner of conveying it was classic, old white man chauvinism. It was jaw-droppingly arrogant, and it made me cringe and flush with fury at the same time.

While it is true that Australian politics are more robust than ours, and that I have grown accustomed to the relatively veiled misogyny of the NZ professional classes, I still find it shocking that a man like John Coates is allowed to front a public role in this day and age. It is not that he is an unfamiliar type. There were and still are plenty of men like him around. Self-important bullies, with no thought for others who bluster and blunder their way through school, work, clubs and institutions. They will back off from attacking other alpha men – they are cowards after all – and don’t hesitate to put the boot in when you are not in a position to retaliate. But for the most part they do not display their venom on public stages, and in this case on the widest imaginable international stage.

It brings me up short. I thought we were making progress. As a young woman and professional, I and most of my female peers, were talked down to, sexually harassed and manhandled, ignored, patronised, underpaid. Men like Mr Coates were what we grew up with. But they were an older generation, and quite frankly and thankfully they are mostly dead or retired – remember I am now pretty old myself.

Change was incremental and equality of opportunity and treatment is not absolute. But it is better.

Last night was a reminder it is still not good.

I hope this is not becoming a habit.

Insomnia comes in bouts.  You would think, having slept little the night before, that you would sleep like a log the next night.  But it is not so.  It turns out I can function perfectly well on 3 hours sleep per night for days on end.  It is not the long day following a sleepless night that bothers me.  My body seems not particularly to notice the lack of rest.  It is the hours in the middle of the night I am awake that bother me.

Once upon a time I could always sleep.  There were years when life was crashing down on me in waves, but my saving grace was that I could always sleep.  I would go to bed overladen with stress and fear and wake the next morning ready to put one foot after the other.  For years I lived like that, getting through each day as best I could, falling into a deep sleep, and living to fight another day.  I would get up each morning and urge myself forward with the thought that I could go back to bed and sleep again that night.  And I did, until degree by degree things got better and life turned on an upward curve.

Two things changed my sleep patterns.  One was menopause, and god knows that is bad enough.  Waking in a cold sweat with night clothes so soaked in sweat you have to get up and change and then move to the dry sheets on the other side of the bed is no ones idea of fun.  Menopause eventually passes, but in my case at least, my body has lost the ability it once had to self regulate temperature efficiently.  Now, if I awake for any reason during the night, my body flushes with heat.  I fling an arm and a leg out from under the cover to cool down, or sometimes throw the whole thing off to lie naked on the mattress.  It only lasts for 10 minutes or so, by which time I may have fallen asleep again, only to wake chilled to the bone until the cycle starts again.  The trick is to stay awake just long enough to cool down and pull the blankets back up again.  A balancing act I have gotten better at over the years.

The other thing that blew my sleep pattern right out the window was knee surgery a decade ago.  Having an artificial knee is better than not being able to walk, but it means I cannot lie in one position in bed for any long period of time.  I have never been able to sleep on my back without having nightmares so I lie on my side.  Legs straight would be my preference but the knee joint does not like that.  In the foetal position with one leg stacked on the other soon leads to pain and discomfort.  Slinging one leg forward of the other is good for a while, but twists my spine putting stress on my lower back and hip.  I have tried using a pillow for support, but I cannot tolerate anything that restricts my movement.  On a bad night one or both hips will join in the protest and I will toss and turn to seeming eternity.

One way or another it is a red letter day (or night) if I sleep right through till morning,but usually I do go back to sleep and get through most nights in blocks of 2 – 3 hours without long wakeful periods in between.  I can live with that.

Then sometimes, as in the last fortnight, insomnia sets in.  I wake, go to the bathroom, cool down and release muscle tension by the act of getting up and moving around, but sleep does not return.  I do not normally leave the bed for more than the minute or two it takes to go to the bathroom.  So I lie sleepless, for hours at a time.  Typically I may fall asleep at 5.30 or 6 am, just in time to be woken up to get ready for work.  Occasionally I will get up and do something – write a blog for instance.  But I do not wish to make a habit of it.

I am sitting in my office with the door shut so that the light does not disturb Johan asleep on the other side of the apartment.  There are no cars going past at this time of the night, so it is very quiet.  When I look across the lane that separates my apartment block from the one opposite I can see that none of my neighbours are up.  The lights in the lane are on, but all the apartment windows are black.  I can tell this is the case for both buildings because a light on in my building will reflect in the windows opposite.  I have been sitting here for an hour already – not just writing, checking my emails and other things as well.  I know that in the next little while the neighbour opposite but one floor up will be awake and out on his deck smoking and pacing.  No matter what the weather he is up before anyone else and outside in a t-shirt and shorts pacing, just pacing.  I feel the same way.

This morning I actually woke a little before 2 am.  Recovering from a cold my nose was blocked and Johan the same so that he was snoring up a storm.  I tried to sleep for an hour or so.  Did all my yoga breathing tricks but nothing worked.  In the end I gave up and resorted to writing.  I wish sleeplessness brought with it some profound thinking or brilliant breakthroughs in the miasma of ones life.  But sadly it does not.  So 2 ½ hours after I awoke, I am going back to bed!

Good night 😴.

It is 4.24 am and I have been awake for over an hour. I am sure you recognise those nights when your brain is fully functioning but your body just craves rest. My mind has roamed far and wide in the early hours of this morning, but this is where I have alighted.

I have two cousins of whom I am very fond. No names, because these are real people and it gets me into trouble when I give these out. But they are both girls – whoops, they were girls long ago and will be forever to me. They are the same age as me, and close when we were children because of that. Each are from different sides of my family, as different as can be, but similar in that to me they are larger than life characters.

The other similarity they share is that as we moved into young adulthood we grew apart. We were educated, gained our job skills, met partners and raised families, all without any real contact. I knew where they were, how they were, heard when children were born and relationships came apart. There was, as there always is, a family grapevine, although it was not always accurate beyond the broad facts of the matter. There was in each case a gap of over 35 years in the time we were apart. But in recent years, to my great joy, both are back in my life.

In the case of L, the fact that she is still alive for me to love is a miracle in itself.

L lives in Queensland now, on the coast north of Brisbane with her son, daughter-in-law, and grand-daughter. She is happy there, after an adult life lived in remote and exotic (to me) Darwin. A place so hot and humid she cautioned me about coming to visit anytime except the cool season. Recently she came to see me, taking advantage of the trans-Tasman bubble and fortunately not getting caught in its pause. We caught up about many things, not least of which is what she refers to as, “the cancer that cannot get enough of me”. L is recovering from her 4th bout of breast cancer. I have had one go-round, and the impact was minor. She has had four, and each one with major surgery, chemo, radiotherapy, on-going medication, and side effects way beyond anything I ever experienced. Along the way she lost her partner to cancer, and nursed him to the end. When she visited she was walking with a cane while awaiting hip surgery, but that had not stopped her visiting every living relative between Christchurch and Auckland and doing a fair bit of sight-seeing while she was at it.

But L is not defined by her illness. She is vibrant, beautiful and shines, with enthusiasm for her life, her children, and her grandchildren. She takes life at a tilt, full on now just as she was when we were kids. There were many cousins in our family but L and I spent the most time together, staying in each others homes and spending holidays playing and exploring. We were perpetually at war with her brother who she teased mercilessly, roamed freely wherever we chose in those less fearful days. We swam, ran, played, ate, bicycled, watched movies, listened to pop music, gossiped, schemed and lay in bed at night endlessly talking and seemingly never sleeping. She was the first person I ever shared a bed with, topping and tailing as toddlers, one’s feet in the other’s face. The first person I ever went into the city with without an adult. We tried on clothes we had no money to buy in Milne & Choice, sat on the wharf steps eating ham sandwiches for lunch with an older cousin who worked in town, and got lost trying to find the bus station to get home.

She awed me with her irrepressible energy, her ever present grin, her curls, and the amazing clothes her mother hand-made for her. I have no idea how we could have drifted apart, but that is what happened.

D is a different proposition entirely, but also a big influence as a child. She and I were, quite unknowingly as children, rivals. On my father’s side of the family we were the first grandchildren, although many followed. D is older than me by a few months, so technically the senior grand-child. Her family lived in newly developed Henderson, and mine in One Tree Hill then Otahuhu, so we mostly met at our grand-parents house. Every Friday night after shopping for most of my growing years, or at weekend visits or family events.

We were both acknowledged to be ‘clever’. That is to say we read books voraciously and raced through school ahead of the pack. Our mothers, both incapable of praising us for this or anything else, nevertheless reported our academic successes to each other and our grandparents in a manner that suggested it was due to their own genes and good parenting. It was not, dear reader. It was a genetic accident.

But to my mind, D had it all over me. Not only was she clearly the favourite by far of our kindly nana, she was taller than me, skinnier than me, a year ahead of me at school, and most important of all she could draw and paint. She was an artist! A skill I lacked entirely, although now I understand that my lack of innate drawing ability would not in a more enlightened climate have prevented the development of artistic skills. In those days though, it seemed to me that D had it all. Talent, beauty, lovability, and an age advantage. I liked her, admired her, was a little shy of her, and felt wholly inadequate in her presence.

Even so, we were girl cousins and we hung out together. There were younger siblings and cousins to lead and leave in our superior wake. There were family events and parties where the adults left us to our own devices and got drunk and silly. There were schools and new houses and endless family dramas to explore. D, it seemed, grew like a weed. I grew more like a pumpkin. We were both outliers from our family. Similar in more ways than we knew, but very different on the surface.

She left school to go to university at the end of the sixth form, and after that I hardly saw her. But oh, how I envied her early independence. D’s career was stratospheric. Off to London the moment she had her degree, writing for Vogue, television script writing, a published novelist. By the time she returned to live in NZ we knew each other only by repute. We had husbands and families, and met I think only at our grand parents funerals. I ran into her once at a friend’s party and had to introduce myself, so unknown were we to each other. By that time we both had successful and well-established careers, but I remained envious of her artistic flair and more creative life. I still am.

I cannot remember how it was that we came to reconnect some years ago. I know we had both been beaten up a bit by life. Her marriage had ended in divorce, mine in widowhood. We had picked up, put ourselves back together, and found new trajectories. I like to think we are wiser and less cocky, but others may beg to differ. Anyway, we now find our similarities, values and shared understanding of our family so much more compelling than our differences. It has been a joy to get to know D again without the barrier of competition for affection or glory. We are friends and family, and I find I value both a great deal.

The truly amazing thing about L and D and our relationships is the ease with which we fell back into synchronicity with so much time and living in between. The tone of voice, the cadence of speech, the laugh, the smile, the quirks that make up the cousins I knew as a toddler and child are still there. They fall into place as easily and naturally as rain falling on a tin roof. We know each other in ways that no one else does. We know things about each other, about our families, about what shaped us as adults that no one else – not our friends, not our children not our partners, or even our younger siblings – can ever understand or appreciate. And that is a priceless gift.

I am so grateful to have both of these women, my cousins, my friends, back in my life. One day I will have to get them together.

WHAT? WHY? Have I taken leave of my senses?

It is a combined birthday celebration for my grandson and partner. They both eat anything and everything, as do I. However, members of one family are variously gluten-free and / or vegetarian. One of my daughters eschews sugar, the other dairy. It can be a problem. All the rest are vigorous carnivores and omnivores. I once served a meatless casserole and you should have seen them all digging around the serving dish, searching surreptitiously for the non-existent chunks of meat.

Fortunately I have a week off work, so I have time to spend planning and preparing.

I have considered and discarded the idea of making everyone eat gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, vegetarian food. For a start my son-in-law is Argentinian, and he would think I was abusing him. Beyond that not one person would actually be happy with the selection (the vegetarians are hooked on sugar, the dairy free daughter would get no protein, etc, etc ), and the essence of the celebration would be lost.

Ah, you may say, “But the food is less important then the company”. Well that may be, but in my family the food is bloody important. If you do not show love through food you do not love! So I have to figure out how to feed – show love to – this eclectic group of people. Thank god no one has a nut allergy – or do they? Note to self, “no nuts”.

So I have it sorted I think. There are gluten-free dishes. There are vegetarian dishes. There are gluten and animal protein free dishes. There are dishes with meat. There are sugar-free dishes. There are dairy free dishes. There are dishes with dairy and sugar. There are no nuts except as a separate nibble. What have I forgotten? I always forget something and offend someone. When I had an alcohol-free son-in-law I had to pretend there was no sherry in the trifle when I forgot and got that wrong, but we are not having trifle this time. Too complicated anyway, since it has dairy and sugar and alcohol!

I have spent the whole of this afternoon sorting it all out, and doing most of the shopping for ingredients. The next couple of nights I will start cooking and freezing or refridgerating. On the day I will haul everything up to the Lounge on the roof of my apartment building, because my apartment does not fit 18 people. I will have to get up early to set it all up so that I have effectively usurped the tables and space I need. The wine and drinks get loaded into the fridge upstairs. I bring table cloths, plates and platters, napkins, cutlery, food, tea towels, rubbish bags – you name it I bring it all upstairs in the shopping trolley that lives in the basement. I will cheat a little and use the glassware in the cupboards in the Lounge kitchen.

Then I set about making it look nice – maybe some flowers. Mustn’t forget to set up a music system.

You can see I have done this before.

About 20 minutes after the time I asked them to come (or sometimes 30 minutes before) people will start arriving. None of them will be able to figure out how to get into the building no matter how many times they have come before, so there will be a series of calls on my cell phone requiring someone to pop downstairs to admit each group or individual. My mother will arrive with whoever I have persuaded to collect her, and create a huge disruption until we finally have her settled in a chair and carefully explained who anyone is she has not met before, and even some she has met before. My 3 year old grandson will have to be inveigled to interact with anyone other than his parents or Johan, until he gets his bearings at which point he will become the focus of all attention for the duration, and perform like a seasoned entertainer.

We will eat (a lot) and drink a bit. Everyone will relax. Mum may or may not make some embarassing comments. Everyone will talk over the top of everyone else. We will raise a toast to Johan and Nolan. Hopefully, a good time will be had by all.

People will eventually leave. In a straggling manner. No hurry, no rush. I am happy for anyone who wants to linger.

Then everything goes into reverse. We (someone always helps) pack up, clean up, load up the trolley again and take it all back downstairs. Empty the Lounge fridge or what we leave behind will be drunk by the time we remember it is there. Vacuum up the crumbs. Downstairs dirty dishes go in the dishwasher or the sink. Linen straight into the washing machine. Leftovers given away or into the fridge.

That is when I collapse. All over. Job done. Till next time.

I would, of course, not have it any other way.

Happy birthday darling boys.

Johan is a very good driver. He is also a fan of Formula One racing.

Because I am lazy and like to day dream and stare at the passing scenery while in the car, Johan almost always drives when we go out together. That is to say I put myself voluntarily into the position of letting him drive.

We have two cars. One is a very upmarket but slightly middle-aged Citroen station wagon. It is Johan’s pride and joy, the third in a line of the same car in earlier models. He is a life long fan of Citroens, which is apparently a Dutch thing notwithstanding that it is a French marque. This is his car for life, meticulously maintained by Bishop’s garage, which is an inter-generational business that specialises in Citroens. Money, sometimes scarce, is always available for car maintenance.

Even so, if you saw Johan’s car on a regular non-red letter day, and if you dared to look inside it, you could be forgiven for assuming he lived in it and was a particularly careless housekeeper. You see it is a work vehicle, a dog carrier, a dead letter box, a water bottle transporter, a spare wardrobe, a tool box, and many other things as well. Not to mention the discarded McDonalds containers, since that particular fast food chain is Johan’s go-to for food on the run when I am not around. Before I get in the car he has to remove the dog bed from the passenger seat, clear the foot well of trash and water bottles, and hope I am not so picky as to demand anything more.

But that is not all. When he turns the engine on many interesting and disturbing things happen. For one thing, the car has hydraulic suspension that also allows him to load his work equipment more easily by lowering and raising the vehicle. So the car may go up or down, depending on how he has set it. Since the car is not that new, it does not have some factory – fittings and options that are more or less standard now. But Johan does not like to miss out. So the windscreen is festooned with add-ons. There is the practical and imminently useful rear camera. Of course there is a go-pro also for forward filming, although he has never figured out how this works. There is a bracket for the mobile. But most important, and definitely most annoying, is the speed detector and scanner that reacts not just to Police radar, but to every other vehicle with an RT device on the road with a loud and unsettling screeching noise. On the plus side, we never get a speeding ticket when we go out of town in Johan’s car, which is not the case when we take my car.

It is black, and since we own a property up a long metal road, it is often very dirty. Our neighbour, Terry, exploits this by engraving amusing comments and cartoons in the dust. But Johan has a special relationship with the RubaDub car wash in Manukau Road. Every so often, when we need to transport rather finicky people (my law firm partners for instance) the car goes in for a full valet and emerges immaculate. Any very smart indeed it looks. Oh, and it has a big motor and goes very fast.

My car is a near new BMW. Many of you will know that it has an unfortunate recent history. But now, with a brand new motor all the way from Germany and fitted by the local BMW agents, it is purring along as perfectly as you have a right to expect of an expensive German piece of machinery. My car is white, so I have to admit it gets a bit grubby on the outside, but otherwise it is clean and tidy and not the repository of junk. I do not have to cringe if a friend or colleague gets into my car for a ride. Nor does it have distracting extras fixed to the windscreen or make an annoying noise when it is switched on, or disturb your sense of equilibrium by lifting you up or down. It is nowhere near as interesting as Johan’s car, but it is convenient and practical, and also goes quite fast.

As I have said, Johan drives both cars, and he loves driving. His driving skills are, in a technical sense, very good indeed. He has great reactions, knows how to control the car in all situations, and is attentive to the road. BUT, he is a menace to other drivers and a terror to his passengers. You see Johan has two conflicting beliefs – one is that you should arrive at your destination in the shortest possible unit of time, and the other is that the shortest distance between any two points is not necessarily a straight line. The traffic that lies between him and his destination is his enemy, and each trip is an engagement in battle. He is the guy that drives all the way up the exit lane on the motorway and sneaks back into the mainstream at the very last moment. He NEVER pulls up at an intersection in the lane that indicates the turn he wants to make, because he can always get ahead of the traffic when it moves and sneak into that lane further up. Even if the queue of traffic is shorter in the correct lane, he will take the wrong one because it is not challenging enough otherwise.

If there are multiple lanes, like on the motorway, he will play favourites. He does not like to have cars immediately in front of him, so he will duck and dive lanes all the way. If the traffic comes to a halt, the ducking and diving becomes more, not less, intense. He uses certain vehicles as markers, and tries to pick the fastest lane in a traffic jam. He often loses at this game, but that never deters him. At peak hours our short trips around the city are an adventure. Despite having a highly suspect sense of direction he refuses to take the obvious routes in heavy traffic so that, for example, we recently travelled from Grey Lynn to Newmarket via Mt Eden. From the St Lukes mall last Friday he ignored the signalled entry directly onto St Lukes Rd (the direct route to our home) and took us on a comprehensive tour of all three levels of the carpark before emerging into the inevitable traffic jam on Morningside Drive and home via Kingsland.

On that particular trip, he also got caught out trying to be smart by a particular feature of my car. It has a default setting that switches the engine off when you are not moving, and switches it back on as soon as you lift you foot off the brake. But we (both slight acceleration freaks) have detected a slight lag in this process, so we switch it off whenever we remember. On this occasion though, Johan had forgotten to do so. So in order to beat the little green sewing machine next to us off the traffic lights, he stabbed at the button and inadvertently switched off the motor. Then he tried to start it again without putting it in Park. The car did not move. The little green sewing machine disappeared into the distance, and Johan swore.

He swears quite a lot when driving, even though he rarely does so when speaking outside the car. He curses everyone on the road, impugns their heritage, their intelligence and their driving ability – often for the very same things he does himself. Occasionally we get a letter from Police, often addressed to me because he has been driving my car. This means some outraged and offended fellow motorist has noted the licence number and reported him to the Police. But of course it is just a warning because there is no way to prove any offence has been committed. In fact, probably no offence has been committed, but Johan’s driving pattern has driven someone to complain vigorously. We never bother to respond, but I am not sure how many warnings my driver’s licence can take before I have to start defending myself.

Of course Johan does get the odd speeding ticket when he drives my non-radar proofed car. But that is hardly surprising for someone who thinks every car in front of him is a danger on the road. On the other hand, he has never had a crash with me in the car. I am not sure if that is good luck, or good management, or the intense degree of concentration I put in on his more excitable days to ensure we get where we are going in one piece. There are the times when I dare not take my eyes off the road for a second for fear of what will happen next, the tights gaps where I cover my eyes with my hands, and the overtaking maneuvers where I actually scream out loud. Johan is undeterred, and thus far unscathed.

But there are other days, where he wants to see the scenery and enjoy the sunshine. On such occasions we tootle along at 80 kph, and he will even pull over to let faster cars pass. We once travelled from Rotorua to almost to Auckland in this manner, but the onset of the southern motorway jolted him out of his reverie and back to the drive and conquer mode. I was almost relieved. I fear he is only really concentrating when using the car as a weapon.

Admission – I love it when Johan drives.