Shape of the Bay

Eventually, something gave. We were sent from the main room to ‘go and read in your room’. It seems there was a television in the cottage and father decided he wanted to watch some sports, without being annoyed by the children. At home our father’s chair was well forward of the sofa (see blog June 19^th 2012) where the children sat, so we wouldn’t annoy his viewing with our constant knee jiggling or shuffling around (as children will tend to do). Here in the three-room cottage (two bedrooms and the centre room, kitchen, dining and lounge area) there wasn’t a place to put us behind his viewing, so, it was easier to send us to the other room. I was then reading Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ and remember lying on the bunk bed imaging the storm outside to be the tropical one which wrecked his ship. The next morning, as the rain and storm had stopped I suggested a beach combing walk for debris of any shipwrecks, which may have occurred during the previous days storm. It was readily agreed to, and, after breakfast we set out into the overcast, cold day brimming with excitement.

The beach curved into the distance to the south, to a high rounded point where we could see small houses on the sides of the hill. This was across a small inlet, we discovered, when we tried to walk there. There was a tidal lagoon and small fishing boat dock at the end of the beach. And across the water was the community of Waikouaiti. There was a small hospital there, and if I remember rightly, the hospital’s training produced nurses with an enviable reputation in New Zealand, or it may be that they were in-home care nurses, I can’t be sure. As kids we just knew of them. The ‘Waikouaiti nurses’ were well known. I believe it was also because they received much of their training at a nearby mental health institution called ‘Cherry Farm’. This may not be actual fact of course (as I said, it is my history, as I remember it). Being children, we called it a ‘mental hospital’ as people did back then. Not just because we didn’t know better, but political correctness was not such an issue. Even as children we ‘knew’ a ‘trip’ to Cherry Farm was to enter the ‘cuckoo’s nest’, not just to fly over it (some will know the reference there). Was that the hospital my mother was at while we had this break with our father (disregard, a momentary thought only)?

It took us some time to walk the beach towards the inlet, with the various aged children and the mixed lengths of strides we covered. We made our way along the windy beach, passing through a few brief rain squalls, but we wanted to get to the end. Unfortunately, there were “no shipwrecks and nobody drown’ded, fact nothing to laugh at all” *

(Continued tomorrow)

*(ref. Albert and the Lion, a music hall monologue poem by Marriott Edgar (1880-1951), I learnt when young, recounted many times as a performer, and still recall easily, many years later)