Yes, well righto. Billy here. It’s been a while.
Having just wasted precious minutes cursing blue bloody murder at the moronic man at the Word programming department who deemed double spacing to be the acceptable norm and therefore the default setting in the 2007 version, I am now frightfully unsettled and contemplating a wee glass of something to quiet my nerves. However I shall carry on regardless. Greetings, yes. (Please note, I now have a template saved with my own preferences … of the word processing application variety, that is).
So. Betty and I pulled off the remarkable adventure that was a four night season at BATS Theatre. With aplomb, I may add. There were many happy punters streaming from the joint every night after the show and a couple of glowing reviews that meant a certain smug self-satisfaction was allowed to quickly pass over our faces, before our second stint at Lake Tarawera beckoned.
And we’re here now. Betty is rabbiting on over some tourist pamphlet or other. She’s determined to read them all aloud it seems, as though I may share in her excitement at ‘origami tuataras’ and ‘the world’s SECOND Tower of Pisa, right here in Rotorua’ – I assume the first is THE Tower of Pisa. The blurb screams ‘bring your sense of humour’, so it must seem as though I’ve lost mine, but really I haven’t. It’s there. Bubbling away. But I hurrumph all the same … for no particular reason, just sometimes it’s nice to hurrumph.
There was no need to hurrumph at all after the show season had ended; I wish to extend once more our most humble thanks to our ever faithful crew, supporting loved ones and the BATS Theatre staff, without them there wouldn’t have been a show at all. If you came along, bless you. If you missed it, well, tough titties.
So. On with the show. Betty and I made the trip up again with little hassle, despite a strange goings-on under the car that made an uncomforting rattling sound, we arrived. The cottage was just as we’d left it, silent and waiting. We spied immediately that Rob, the lovely chap from DoC Rotorua had bestowed some firewood upon us and had even set the fireplace in preparation for our arrival. Betty hurriedly set about in attempting to light the fire, before even unpacking the car. After urging me to try and fix the firebox (I took a couple of panels off and pointed a lot) we ultimately only succeeded in filling the entire cottage with smoke; alarms sounded, it was quite eventful. We concluded that the flue seemed to be blocked and that it would take some special attention to deconstruct the firebox any further. It could wait ‘til morning.
That day we did a run into town for some provisions. We stopped in at a op-shop next to the supermarket and delighted in finding me the dressing gown of my dreams – green and vaguely tartan, scratchy thick wool and rope binding, with a big collar thing you can fold up like some character from Star Wars; only $4 too, total bargain. Soon after our return back to the cottage, laden with food and miscellany, Rob arrived to check that all was well. We did mention the slight issue with the chimney flue and he immediately set to work in discovering the cause. After removing some internal workings to gain access to the flue, and some poking and prodding; suddenly a very mummified bird’s body dropped down into the firebox. Betty and I were most bemused at this; Rob however was unfazed and simply muttered something about ‘there might be more than that one’ before plunging again into the depths of the flue. A brief foreboding echo of sliding sounds preceded the inevitable avalanche of petrified corpses that descended, entirely filling the woodburner and threatening to pile out onto the floor. Peals of nervous laughter followed (from Betty and I at least), whilst Rob calmly set about extracting the birds for their final farewell. To which there was bugger all pomp and ceremony – they were flung out into the wilds in a plume of ashes that hung in the air like a grey mist.
Since then Betty and I have had an unusual time of it. Or maybe it’s just me. Days flicked by in a movie montage and it has felt to me like a struggle at times. I’ve been wrestling the taniwha of song – I am shirtless and browned, glistening in the sunlight; like Steve Irwin only taller, more handsome and speaking Queen’s English. I’ve been thrashing with the beast, collaring it and then being shaken off, bitten at and battered by tail and tongue. It’s the moments of suspension in the water that scare me most – when for a second the monster is like a dream, circling out there somewhere, licking its wounds. When, so deep beneath the surface, the sun flicks over head polarised through murky greens; and below is nothing but blue-black and bones. Like an insect caught in the amber of kauri gum or a wayward spirit trapped in the pounamu necklace of a mighty warrior. The thing I fear the most is how easy it is to breath in that moment. How the cool water of the lake in my lungs might help the words to come, how much I would learn from the pumice and mussel shells lying on the lake-bed, how I could fall asleep under an eiderdown of mud with a rainbow trout tucked under my head for a pillow. What dreams I’d have then, what magic would be unleashed.
However, as I am not some freshwater mer-man I must struggle on with my earthly toil, poor Betty, I don’t know how she puts up with me. All I seem to do is worry.
Oh well.
Billy.
