Cycling NZ26 - Day 21 - The Prodigal Children Return

Hooray!  Hooray!  You’re back!  Where have you been.  You must have so much to tell. Oh how have I missed you my children!  

Well yes. Today …oh sorry, yeah yeah, sorry I’m happy. I’ll take those thank you…. Sorry thats just google listening to and typing verbatim into my BLOG my conversation with the waiter in the Indian restaurant here in Blenheim. I didn’t ask it to. I did not invite it. It just did. One never knows when the internet is listening in does one? 🤔. I hate the internet…

Even my brother of course. A man who has fulsomely wrapped his life around social media. With Alexa’s beady ear always on the prowl for every single utterance in the living room. So of course when he had an argument with his partner, or perhaps his son, good old Alexa interjected with its opinion at the most inopportune moment... Just before having its innards re-arranged and its cables ripped out…

But yes. My legs are back!  The knee pains are mostly gone too!  Whilst some of that is due to my ickle illness, a bunch of it is down to, well…

I took a close look at Brooks the other day. Aw the poor fella. His tobacco smoke leathery skin was limp and saggy and his nose was well out of joint.  The poor fella. Hairy Melon has grown a pair of quite monstrous cheeks strong enough to crack walnut shells. You’ve got a problem getting that lid off yer jam jar have ya?  Give it to her. Stick it into the place where the sun never shines and with a RAARRGGHHH! she’ll rip it in two!  

Poor old Brooks. So I got my spanners out and used them like steel tongs to pull his face back into shape. Ah thats better!  Smooching along today without a care in the world yet fearful of giving Hairy Melon another accidental love bite in case she ripped his face off!  Again. 

So I’m well on the mend. South Island is gonna be so good to me…

Anyway, today was another short run into Blenheim. I’m rubber necking the scenery and fail to spot the cycle route closed sign. Nonetheless 3 old gents on ebikes had also missed it and were kind enough to stop me from making the same error. 

What I’m finding at virtually every chance encounter is that folk are so happy to chat. Prodigal children determined never to return to their birthing grounds.  A bunch of whom are ex-pat types - some of whom have been here since the 50’s. Others are relatively newbies to this land. 

So far in all my travels I have only found one person who wanted to be elsewhere.  But now feels trapped. 

That conversation happened some days back in the town of Putaruru. You know. The place where I took the video of the trucks in the street. To me this man lived in a beautifully manicured part of the country. Not that far from the newborn blue spring where I dared to wet my glass. 

On the back of his comment to the waitress to go home and get into her bikini for it was a beautiful day, I said that I already had mine on. Well the conversation that we struck up told me all about this place - a beautiful place - where there is nothing to do. He’s a man who had spent some years working in Harrogate. A man who absolutely misses the social life that living in a large town might bring. My God man!  It must tell you something about life here when he is desperate to go back to Harrogate!. 

Yes I see his point. Watching those grand design programmes where folk build a fantastical home in that remote place because of the beautiful view across the valley. Every day to wake up and swing the curtains wide with a TA-DAAHH! There it is. And there it is the next day. And the next. And the next…. And…. I don’t know about you but even I sometimes find myself admiring the intricate patterns in the dust cobwebs at home just to have something different to look at.  

And so it goes here. One gets numb to the beauty of this place and starts to crave more of a social life, more variety.  Something that is missing in many of the most beautiful of the most remote towns in this country.  In many ways we are lucky with our mix back home. 

Nonetheless, many folk here are head over heels in love with this place and full of life with no intention to ever become prodigal nor go back to the UK. 

To finish today’s entry I’ll share with you 3 conversations that I’ve had with folk here.  It’s so worth listening to them and their stories … the 1st and the 3rd are different generations of men but BOTH are from Rochdale. 

Whats wrong with Rochdale?

What a silly question, Wayne…

Ciao for now…