Kia ora Koutou, it began like any other day — its winter and the day lived up to that — cold, grey with intermittent showers, so entirely unsurprisingly I decided to do the washing and pegged it out in the damp chilly air where it added to the overall mood of the day by hanging sullen and limp and looking like it would wait until Spring before it deigned to dry.
I came inside, went to the bathroom and discovered the toilet wasn’t flushing correctly so I texted the drains man who texted back immediately and said he’d be there right after lunch. He’s the same one who’s fixed drains problems ever since I moved here.
I decided to make a cup of tea — everything is better with a cup of tea — and discovered there were no teabags in the store cupboard. I’d used the last one in the jar for my first cup of the day which I’d sipped lying in bed listening to RNZ. I had another look. Through the dim gauze of my eyesight I saw the three containers of tea leaves were still there. One was green tea and the other two were gumboot. I didn’t know how old they were but thought, well, they have boiling water poured over them so would have to be okay wouldn’t they? Just to be on the safe side I asked Mr Google and read that as long as they’d been kept dry and in clean containers I was safe so that left only the question of which to choose.
Two tins and one glass jar. There were no labels on any. I sniffed at them. They had a dry faintly off hay–like smell which apart from being very unattractive told me nothing about the actual tea.
‘Oh come on,’ I told myself, ‘this is not a matter of life and death, if you don’t like one you can chuck it and choose another.’
I wondered about Mr Google. What did he know? Then I thought don’t be silly, there is no Mr Google, its just a name you made up because that’s the search engine and you feel better about using something that has a name rather than a mysterious infallible being who knows everything.
I put boiling water in the teapot, rinsed it, emptied it, then put a heaped teaspoonful of leaves in it and poured boiling water over them, left it to draw.
It was like drinking old dry hay that had had boiling water poured over it. I decided that plain boiling water was preferable.
Then I thought what about some soup? A cup of tasty hot soup would be delicious. I got the soup out of the fridge, stuck some in a cup, put it in the microwave, set the timer and pressed the little button. There was a flash and the microwave stopped and so did the fridge and freezer.
I rang the electrician who was nice and sympathetic but all the guys were out on jobs so it’d be around four hours before one could call. ‘Sorry Renée,’ he said, ‘its possibly the switch in the outside box,’ then he added, ‘but you can’t see well enough so better not touch anything because it might not be the right one.’ I’ve had the services of the same electrician all these years and they know about my eyesight because they put in brighter lights for me for that reason and, like the drainlayer, I knew someone would turn up, just not right now.
The computer had stopped too so there was nothing for it. I would have to lie on the bed and read. Oh dear. What a nuisance but someone has to do it I suppose. I decided I might as well go the whole hog so I got the cheese crackers and lathered them thickly with peanut butter, crunchy of course, then added some jam, because someone had given me a jar the day before. I got a glass of water, picked up the plate of biscuits, grabbed the iPad and retired to bed
Some days…
Renée
