The Malevolent Mexican

One awesome thing about working in a West Auckland bar is you are always meeting interesting people. Of course, almost all of them are stark raving mad in one way or another – it's almost a required character trait out West – but some of them stand out more than the others.

• The creepy cricket connoiseur who wears a trilby hat and gumboots and frequently asks me to dance with him on Saturday nights. I am not certain why he feels the need to have a companion to dance with as he finds it completely satisfactory to grind with a pillar. For hours. It is very disturbing.
• The “Dothraki” - a group of women who enjoy wearing bright purple headscarves and strange glasses, tell silly jokes (usually at my expense), and spend most of their time getting completely sozzled. Their nickname was recently given to them by my manager who is now up to episode six of A Game of Thrones and is completely obsessed.
• The many, many, many women who come in on a Sunday night and are convinced the bartender looks like Johnny Depp, despite his indignant protests to the contrary. Trust me - this is hilarious to watch and listen to.
• The lesbian jujitsu practitioner from the dojo next door who once asked me to come over and share a bottle of wine with her after work. It is difficult to turn down a woman who could quite easily rip your spleen out through your ears. It is even more difficult when you have inadvertently given her the impression that you might be bisexual. You see, when she asked me what my “preference” was, instead of replying, “I prefer to maintain a celibate lifestyle and don't like to get involved in sexual relationships”, I may have missed the mark slightly and said instead, “I'm, um, not really into, um, anything in... particular...”. The conversation became quite complicated after that.
• As a fitting follow-on from the previous story I shall mention the two men who are under the impression that I am some sort of “loose woman”. I was taking a bowl of fries out to a couple of stereotypical Westies – hairy, bourbon-swilling, not yet evolved to a state that appreciates either washing machines or showers. As I placed the fries on their table one of them asked me, “Does your phone number come with that?” In a moment of total brain absentee-ism I replied, “Sorry, that costs extra.” Needless to say I spent the rest of the night assiduously avoiding them.
• The slightly drunk man who coerced me and another waitress to arm wrestle for tips while his wife moaned in embarassment. (I won.)
• The people who obviously don't read/watch The Lord of the Rings often enough. One night a group of people wanted to head upstairs to the Mezzanine floor. “Can we go up there?” they asked me. “Or is the way shut?” I peered up the stairs where a red velvet rope provided an obvious clue. “Yes, the way is shut,” I replied and, unwilling to pass up this most excellent opportunity to quote the greatest work of fiction ever created, continued, “It was made by those who are dead, and the dead keep it.” Blank looks ensued. Honestly. It makes me angry how people can be so ignorant.

But possibly the most memorable person – who actually inspired this post – is the Malevolent Mexican.

He came in one morning last week with a document folder and death in his eyes. “I'm here to have a meeting with your manager,” he said brusquely.

“Sure,” I said. “Did you have an appointment at all?”

“Yes,” was his terse reply.

I phoned the office upstairs to see if my manager was available. “Actually, he's gone out, he's not due back for another couple of hours,” the adminisitration lady informed me. “And his phone is playing up so I can't ring him. Plus I don't think he particularly wanted to meet this guy anyway.”

Cunning, I thought. Agree to meet a man you don't particularly want to see, arrange a time, and then make sure you're far away and uncontactable when he shows up. This must be Good Business Accumen, or something.

“Huh,” I said, and hung up. I steeled myself for inevitable confrontation. “Sorry, but my manager's out and he won't be due back for a few hours, I'm sorry.” I say 'sorry' a lot when I'm working.

The man's mouth narrowed. It drew attention to his moustache which I had previously not noticed due to the fact that it was so thin and sinister. It was like pencil line drawn on his face.

“Does he have a cellphone I can ring him on?” he demanded.

“Um... actually... he's been having a lot of trouble with his phone recently so... no, you can't call him. Sorry.”

The look he gave me made my heart quail. Ah! It spoke on how he was certain this was an elaborate plot to make his life even more difficult! All the anger he had experienced, ever, in life, from the time he was a small child and the other boys laughed at the puny size of his willy, to the more recent insult of the departure of his girlfriend who left him to go to Germany with a businessman who had a larger bank balance than him – all flared out from his eyes, swirling and eddying around him in incandescent rage.

It never altered his voice. That was the most terrifying thing – that he was able to suppress and control such intense fury.

“I have driven,” he said, his voice low and steady, “all the way from Northcote solely to have a meeting with your manager.”

“I'm really very sorry,” I said helplessly.

He stood, seething, for several more seconds. I trembled and prayed for salvation.

“I shall write a note for him asking to rearrange the meeting,” he said at last. “Please see that he gets it.”

“Of course,” I hurriedly assured him. “Did you need paper?”

“No.”

“Or a pen?”

“No.”

“Okay!”

While he wrote I took the opportunity to study him. He was wearing a normal blue business shirt, though he had rolled the sleeves up to his elbows and undone the first few buttons. A large expanse of chest hair showed through the opening. Evidently, the rest of the hair that should have formed a part of his moustache had migrated south. Understandable. No living thing would willingly be a part of that face. The shirt was tucked into belted jeans that flared out at the base. And his shoes had little heels on them.

Moustache, shirt, flared jeans, heeled shoes – to me, he looked like some sort of sleazy Mexican such as one sees in movies.

I described him, later, to someone else from work, who immediately guessed he was from the porn industry.

It is a testament to my upbringing that I am more willing to identify someone as being a Mexican rather than a porn industrialist. However – it turns out that I was wrong.

The business card he handed to me along with his note was overlarge and featured several bikini and stiletto-clad women standing next to cars.

After the man left – his heeled shoes going thud, thud, thud like beats of doom against the concrete floor – I found out that he was wanting to host some sort of event at our bar along the lines of having scantily clad women strut about onstage. Fortunately, my manager is not keen. I am glad. I think my soul might just shrivel up and die if I had to lay eyes on that man again.

Word Doodling

Izak convinced me to post a snippit of my story that I've been working on for the past couple of eons. So. Here is the first draft of the intro. Dun dun dun dun.

Lay your hand upon me, stranger, and hear what I would say. I have watched you from afar, heard you call when no one else would listen. I know who it is you are seeking. I had hoped you would find me.

Who are you? What… are you?

Who am I? I am the same as you – an abberation in the system of life. I breathe the cool air, feed upon the products of the earth, and the sun warms and sustains me. I am no more, and no less, significant than any other creature. I have walked beneath the aging trees. I have sung songs and foretold the future. I have laughed, I have danced, screamed, cried, shouted in fury and sighed in joy. I have loved and been loved in return. I think that I have experienced every known feeling. But for all this – I am dead. Much like you. As to what I am – well. Look at me. Can you honestly say you have never seen anything like me? Your eyes are not blind. I am what I appear to be.

But who and what are you, silver-haired stranger? Are you my first pilgrim? Missionary Woman once foretold that I would be a Prophetess, even an Oracle. Somehow I don’t think my current state is how she imagined my life. I’m dead, after all. But Missionary Woman always says that death doesn’t exist the way we think it does. I don’t know what she means by that. I’ve never known what she meant. Sometimes I think she’s so full of odd sayings she ran out of space for common sense.

Still. You came this way seeking answers. I don’t have all the answers, but I know the ones to the questions you seek. You are looking for a man named Kunze. I know where he is and I shall tell you where to find him. But I have a price for my knowledge, pilgrim.

What is it that you want?

Your ears. I require you to listen to me and remember what I tell you. You see, stories are intriguing things. People can create a hundred different versions of the same story, I’ve noticed. And there have been many, many different stories told about me. But none of them have been my own version. I have never told anyone my full story. But I shall tell you, for two reasons: first, because you have a sharper mind than anyone I have ever before encountered and you are not likely to forget my story. And second – because you are my first pilgrim. It’s been years since I died and became what I am. Years. You are the first pilgrim. The first to come to me in all that time. Who knows when the next pilgrim will arrive? I cannot afford to be too picky.

Besides – regardless of whether you remember my story or not, the point is that my version of the story will have been told and shall exist in some sort of formless way. Perhaps you have heard of the Realm of Thought? Philosophers like to argue about the nature of its existence. The story shall live there, forever, for anyone who wishes to hear it.

You are in a hurry to leave. Time is pressing. Your companions are missing, dead, or dying. You cannot afford to stop and listen to the ramblings of a mad thing. I understand. But look up at the branches above you. Do they sway and murmur in the breeze or are they as still and silent as death? You are right, they do not move. But, ah, you think. Perhaps there is no wind here? A logical assumption. Turn your head to the left. A moth rests upon thin air. Its wings do not flutter and yet it does not fall. To the right, the stream ceases its tumbling over rocks; frozen water that is not ice. Even your heart does not beat. Nothing is moving.

Your thought is faster than time. Our minds are joined. You wish to know, and swiftly. I wish to tell, equally as swiftly. Time is subjective to our desires. While we speak an outsider looking in might almost have just enough time to sneeze or scratch his bum. So you see – no harm can come of your lingering to listen.

So, pilgrim. Do you agree to hear my story?

Yes. But you must tell me where Kunze is.

Of course. But the story must come first. Else you shall have no reason to stay and listen to me.

Very well. Tell.

My Love Life, or Lack Thereof

- I tried posting this last night but my internet was, as usual, being a real bastard. -

It is a well documented fact among my circle of acquaintances that my love life is certainly much less than ideal. For example, I have been single now for the past five years; and of my only two boyfriends, the first was one of my best friends (no real complaints there) and the other I went out with for a grand total of thirteen days. Every other potential relationship I've had since then has been fraught with peril and pitfalls. But, courtesy of work, I have an epic new story which is so absurdly typical of how my life seems to function.

At the beginning of May this year a large family group came in to celebrate the birthday of a particular red-headed young man. I was assigned to wait on their table and, during the course of the evening, this same young man asked me to stay behind and have a drink with him once I'd finished work.

Well, it was his birthday. You can't deny people things on their birthday. I agreed, and immediately began to panic.

The last date I'd gone on had been over six months previously and was just a bit of a disaster. The most exciting topic of conversation we'd had was about the properties of steel. He was an air-force engineer, I was working on a design project incorporating steel... and yes, the conversation was just as dull as that explanation. Enough said. Incidentally, this man got married three months later. Huzzah.

So it was with some trepidation that I approached this date – or, as I liked to think of it, my impending doom. I had a massive freak-out to some of the staff, who were both amused and sympathetic. My manager signed me out early AND offered my date a free drink (curse him and his fuzzy beard. I was so panicky I was keen to work until closing).

In any case, as I was changing out of my work gear into more normal clothes, I reminded myself of one of my fundamental philosophies: The secret to life is to go through it pretending to know what you're doing. And so I went into the date faking confidence and calm I did not feel.

The date went well enough. He seemed to be quite a nice person, but unfortunately I was still to panicked to take a serious interest in him. We chatted about all the normal things – work, study, music, etc. with only a modicum of awkwardness, and afterwards he walked me to my car.

“This was cool,” he said. “I'd like to take you out to dinner some time.”

If I'd possessed even a modicum of guts and good sense, I would have said something like, “I also enjoyed tonight, but, alas, I do not think I am ready to pursue a dating lifestyle. It is most unfortunate, but I must refuse your offer of dinner.” I very much wanted to say this. Unfortunately, I am a coward. What I said instead was, “Well, perhaps you should”, in a voice filled with suggestion as a sweet smile played across my face. We exchanged numbers and I gave him a hug – yes, I actually hugged him. It was his birthday, after all.

Then I hopped into my car, went home, buried my head under a pillow and tried to blot out life.

He rang me two days later to try and arrange another time to meet. Luckily, I had the excuse of a hectic work and study schedule that wouldn't allow me to see him for at least a week. And after that, I invented all these elaborate reasons as to why I couldn't see him, because I am a coward and can't tell someone when I'm just not interested in them. Finally, I outright lied to get rid of him, and the upshot was that he ceased to phone, text, or even notice my existence whenever he happened to come into work after that. (There is no need to tell me I'm a terrible person. I already know. See my previous post: Everybody Lies for another example of my skills at deception.)

I implimented a no-dating-people-I-meet-at-work policiy and assumed that would be the end of the story. But I was wrong.

Several months passed. And tonight, the story came to a startling conclusion.

The red-headed young man came into work this evening. He hung about in the bar having a few beers with his mates. We resorted to our usual scenario of pretending not to notice each other. A little later, I saw my manager (a different manager to the aforementioned one) speaking to him.

“Hey, you know those guys you were talking to? Do you know them?” I asked him shortly after.

“Only the red-haired one,” replied my manager. “He used to come into my old work quite frequently.”

“Really?” I exclaimed. “I went on a date with him once.”

He grinned. “You know, he came out as being gay about six months ago, love.”

Time, proverbially, came to a halt.

“Noooooooo,” I gasped. “He's not. He didn't. You're kidding me.”

He wasn't kidding me.

I did some mental calculations. The beginning of May was almost six months ago.

This man, a very short time after going on a date with me, decided to accept the fact that he was gay.

I thought: This is such a me thing to happen.

I howled with laughter. I had to. It was a choice between laughing or crawling into a muddy hole in the ground and hanging a “Do Not Disturb” sign outside.

The Problem with Venting

"Zara," I said, "You are becoming quite unbearable to live with."
I looked around the room. The table was decorated with a collection of used plates, many adorned with the shrivelled husks of used teabags. On the sofa a blanket lay discarded, its folds overflowing onto the floor; dvds were scattered, homeless, around the TV. "Are you referring to the current state of my physical surroundings?" I asked in reply. "Admittedly, I have been a tad lax when it comes to the more housewifely side of things. But that's just because I've been working so much - you know I'm working 40 hours this week? Even though I'm a student with two huge assignments and an exam coming up? And that I'm working six whole days in a row? And don't forget that when I work I do so for about six hours and don't get to sit down or take a break. Is it any wonder that when I get home I collapse upon my sofa and have no energy for things like cooking and cleaning? Or even writing, which is what my whole life is supposed to be about?"
"Your physical surroundings are indeed substandard at present," I observed. "Although I am very used to it. You're not the most, hm, shall we say, fastidious of individuals. But that was not what I was referring to. Actually, I was referring to what you have just so aptly demonstrated."
"What?" I asked, perplexed.
"You've been very negative recently. All you ever do is complain about work. I'm beginning to wonder if people are getting sick of it. I'm getting sick of it. You're usually so ridiculously positive. You know - skipping about the place saying things like 'Fantastic!' when someone asks how you are. What has changed?"
"Nothing has changed," I mumbled. "Except, well, there's a lot I'm not happy about at my work, like I said. That's why I moan. Because I'm grumpy."
"EXACTLY!" I cried. "You're GRUMPY! You're never grumpy! You consider it an offense against yourself to have any sort of negative emotion! Snap out of it, woman! There is always something to complain and get upset about - and yet you never do, because you think it's a waste of time and energy. You find it easier to be happy. Which brings me back to my question. Why so angsty? What has changed?"
"Your face has changed," I snarled.
"In that case, so has yours," I replied good-humouredly.
"Harumph," I muttered.
"Which reminds me of something else. You're actually considering cutting your hair short. Even during the whole getting-upset-and-driving-off-the-road fiasco you didn't cut your hair."
"I thought about getting a tattoo, though," I pointed out.
"But you didn't, because you did other stupid self-destructive stuff," I snapped. Good heavens, I thought. I'm beginning to lose my temper.
"Yeah? Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm human! I'm ALLOWED to get angry and upset from time to time! Everyone else does!"
"Ahhhh," I said wisely. "I think I see what has happened. Oh, my darling, you are branching out into the world! You are encountering people with different mindsets, people who don't consider anger and annoyance to be something to be wrong and set aside! And you think, ah, these people who bitch and complain and get angsty still function as people and live their lives! Surely it is alright to get grumpy about things occasionally?"
"But it very well could be! Humans experience anger and other negative emotions for a reason. It's a message letting us know that something is wrong. And at present, work is full of wrong. Hence my anger and annoyance. Which is why I complain."
I seized a cricket bat from my Cupboard of Miscellaneous Metaphysical Items and proceeded to beat myself with it.
"Don't - complain!" I cried, emphasising each word with a good, hard thwack. "By all means feel the angst - but don't pass it on to other people! Sharing negativity just begets more negativity, which does not do the world any good."
"You are right, of course," I said hastily, ducking another swing of the cricket bat.
"And another thing! If work engenders such feelings in you - get another job!"
"I've been looking!" I cried. "It's hard - I've no guarantee that another, similar job would be any better! It could be just as terrible, or bad in a different way! At least with my job I can feel like I'm actually doing something to better my comunity - waitressing for the Waitakere Licensing Trust is probably ethically better than anywhere else."
"Who said anything about waitressing? Do something different. Apply for that job driving chickens about the place. Or the one at the home brewing store."
"Oh, haha, now you're just being silly," I said. Although I had to admit, driving those chickens around did sound appealing.
"I'm not. Something different would be good for you. Promise me that tomorrow you'll go look for a new job."
"I'm working tomorrow," I said morosely.
"Well, on Wednesday then."
"I'm working Wednesday too."
"How about Thursday?"
"I think I just agreed with one of the other waitresses to cover her shift on Thursday..."
"FRIDAY!"
"I'M WORKING ON FRIDAY BECAUSE APPARENTLY I HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH MY LIFE!"
"Fuck, Zara," I said, awed. "You're right. Your work life really does suck. Get a new job."
"Okay," I said humbly.

How to Write a Book

She took a stick and outlined on the ground the whole alphabet along with the punctuation marks, and asked me how many letters there were.
               “Twenty-six,” I replied.
               “You see, that is a very small number of letters. Can you call what I have outlined a book?”
               “No,” I answered. “It’s just an ordinary alphabet, that’s all. Ordinary letters.”
               “Yet all the books in the English language are made up of these ordinary letters,” she observed. “Do you not agree? Do you not see how simple it all is?”
              “Yes, but in books they’re – they’re arranged differently.”
              “Correct, all books consist of a multitude of combinations of these letters. People arrange them on the pages automatically, guided by their feelings. And from this it follows that books originate not from a combination of letters and sounds, but from feelings outlined by people’s imagination. The result is that the readers are aroused by approximately the same feelings as the writers, and such feelings can be recalled for a long time. Can you recollect any images or situations from books you have read?”
              “Yes, I can,” I replied, after a moment’s thought.
              For some reason I recalled Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and began to tell the story to her. She interrupted me:
              “You see, you can still depict the characters from this book and tell me what they felt, even though quite a bit of time has gone by since you read it. But if I were to ask you to tell me in what sequence the twenty-six letters of the English alphabet were set forth in that book, what combinations they were arranged in, could you do that?”
              “No. That would be impossible.”
              “Indeed, it would be very difficult. So, feelings have been conveyed from one Man to another with the help of all sorts of combinations of letters and forgot them right off, but the feelings and images remained to be remembered for a long time.
              “So it turns out that if you link emotional feelings directly to these marks on paper without thinking about any conventions, one’s soul will cause these marks to appear in just the right sequence and combinations so that any reader may subsequently feel the soul of the writer.”

The Story of Rupert

I was happily driving in my car yesterday afternoon when I felt a strange tickling sensation upon the back of my hand. I glanced down.
"BLEEARGHuuuuuuurrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!" I yelped in shock and alarm. A small green praying mantis was perched upon my hand. I suppressed my first instinct to flail my arm about until it fell off - what had this poor, innocent creature ever done to me except surprise me with its presence? As a way of apologising to the praying mantis for my earlier rude shrieking, I decided to give it a name - Rupert. So now, of course, I had a dilemma as well as an insect on my hands. I was driving along the motorway, so I could not exactly open the window and release Rupert into the wild. Rupert, I decided, must remain for now on my hand, and when we stopped I would find some convenient shrub or tree to be his new home.

This was all good, in theory.

For the first few minutes Rupert looked like he was having fun. Perhaps he enjoyed the sensation of rushing along at what for him must seem incredible speeds. He kept rocking back and forth and rubbing his pincer-like forelegs together in glee.
"Aww," I said, gazing down at him fondly. "Rupert's such a little daredevil. So cwoote!"
Ah, yes. Rupert the Daredevil. Eventually he must have become bored merely sitting upon my hand, for he decided to take his adrenaline rush to the next level. He decided to move.
"Aha! Ahhhaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhehehehe!" I shrieked in near-hysterical laughter. He was unbearably ticklish. He meandered lazily across my hand, sending me into paroxisms of giggles, before taking a brief stroll across my steering wheel.
"Yes, Rupert," I choked, wiping tears of laughter from my eyes, "this is a good place for you to remain. Please stay there for the rest of the duration of the journey."
Rupert was a rebel as well as a daredevil. He actually had the temerity to disobey me and crawl back onto my hand and once more I was subjected to his torturous tickling.

At long last he decided to climb onto my sleeve and make an expedition up to my shoulder. I felt like an environmentalist pirate.

But you know how driving is. You become distracted; there's so much to think about. When I reached my destination I looked for Rupert on my shoulder - and then all over my sleeve, on my seat, on the window, heck, I even looked under the seat. He was gone. Vanished. Never to be seen again.

O, Rupert! You brought me joy and laughter, however briefly. I miss you. Please come back to me, or at least flip me a text sometime to let me know if you're okay. I hope that, wherever you are, you are happy and living your life to its greatest potential.

The Day Her Car Was Weeded

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while. This is because exciting things rarely, if ever, happen in my life. It makes a terrible story, which is why I don't write about it.

But today, I have a story.

And not just a "story". A Story. An Adventure Story, featuring such fantastic plot devices as a long journey, dense fog, a crochet needle, and obnoxious weeds.

The story starts on Monday morning when Zara wakes up feeling depressed and not knowing why. Sometimes Zara gets irrationally angry and frustrated with life. She is so miserable she actually chose to leave her staff work party far too early simply because she couldn't stand to be around people. (Before this, though, she'd found herself a book and started reading, much to the disgust of her colleagues who were all getting drunk downstairs.)

Tuesday is no better. In fact, it's much worse. In a way, it feels like she's two people - there is normal Zara, who is functioning much the same as usual, though with noticably much less energy and enthusiasm ("flat" is the adjective someone used to describe her). The other Zara is shrieking like a madwoman inside her head, keeping up a constant furious stream of insults, expletives, and generally negative commentary on every single action Normal Zara and everyone around her is doing. Work that evening goes something like this:

Normal Zara asks a customer whether she might possibly take their order, an unnaturally wide smile stretched painfully across her face.
Crazy Zara shrieks a very angry name inside of Zara's head, though whether she's directing it at the customer or Normal Zara is unclear.
The customer hems and haws over whether to order steak or pork and asks for a recomendation.
Normal Zara replies that the pork is much more delicious.
Crazy Zara goes on an angry rant with the main points being that, a), Zara is a vegetarian and promoting any form of meat makes her a liar and a hypocrite and b), the customer is a sadistic evil bastard for wanting to eat meat in the first place. She is very impolite in her choice of adjectives.
Later on, Tom-the-Manager asks Zara how everything's going. "All good?" he asks.
"Yep," mumbles Normal Zara, somewhat unnormally unenthusiastic for her. Usually she practically skips with glee and uses words like "Awesome!" and "Fantastic!".
"Cool," says Tom-the-Manager, and stalks off.
Crazy Zara erupts at this innocuous statement and reflects on all the many ways she would like to rip out his liver, force it down his throat and choke him on it, while flaying his ridiculously fluffy beard off his face and using his blood to repaint the ladies' bathroom.

And so the night wore on.

Sitting in her car after work, Crazy Zara seizes control of Zara's body. She shrieks and cries and hits her head on her steering wheel, all the while shouting, "Why? Why?" But neither Crazy Zara nor Normal Zara know the answer because they don't even understand the question.

***

On Wednesday Zara decides to try to make herself feel better. She sleeps in, makes herself pancakes, knits, and watches endless episodes of How I Met Your Mother. Nothing works.

Work that day is a repeat of Tuesday. Zara has had enough. She spontaneously decides to go on a road trip to the one place in the world where she has only happy memories of - a little-known, decidedly ugly beach near Tapora, a village perhaps fifty people in the world have heard of. Her grandparents used to take her fishing there during the summer when she was a kid. Zara often says that she considers fish to be highly-evolved plants and therefore justifies her eating them. In truth, whenever she eats fish, she is reminded of the love of her grandparents and the happy times she spent with them. She loves this beach. She feels as though everything there was a gift especially for her - the mudflats, the mangroves, the crabs that scuttle anxiously away over the sand, the jellyfish stranded across the receeding tideline (a most unwelcome gift, that), the many types of shellfish to be dug for, the mullet that leap out of the water as the sun goes down, the grass that feels for some reason much pricklier than anywhere else, the black swans that honk obnoxiously to each other in the shallow water, the public garden made out of driftwood and beach-scavenged items... somehow, the existence of these things seems much more significant here than anywhere else. If there is any one place that could ever make her feel happy, it is here.

Zara decides to make an expedition of it. She goes home and gets those items she thinks she might need - blanket and pillow, her crochet and writing pad, and a few other extra goodies. She sets out.

She's driving a bit too fast. She's feeling reckless and wants to do something mad. She copes well enough on the wider, better-travelled road from Auckland to Hellensville. After that, though, the road gets steadily windier and narrower. Heavy fog has set in and visibility is low. This does not dissuade her, although she slows down a bit once she turns off onto the road to Tapora. Tapora is such a nowhere place that parts of the road aren't even sealed. They definately don't have any recommended speed signs as you go around corners, which she had relied on earlier to help navigate some of the trickier corners.

The inevitable happens. She takes a corner too fast. Her tires skid on the gravel and suddenly she is swerving wildly. She veers off the road, somehow managing to drive along the side of a very large, steep bank - at least a 50 degree angle. She is convinced the car is going to flip, that she's going to continue to roll down the bank and she's going to hit her head and break her neck and die and her can of drink is going to go flying over all her crochet - but she bounces, her car flies up into the air and crash lands into a two metre high clump of kikuyu grass, narrowly missing an ancient cabbage tree and a small stream at the bottom of the bank.

Zara spends approximately a third of a second marvelling that she is alive. Her predominant thought is of how embarassing this is. She fires up her engine, puts on the four wheel drive mode and tries to power on up the slope. How terrible. Apparently her gigantic off-roader isn't very good at keeping off-road because no matter how hard she tries, her car will not move. Eventually she gives up, turns off the motor, sits back, and laughs heartily.

For someone who up until recently was very depressed, she can see only the good side of the situation. How awesome is this? She's stuck in a ditch on a deserted road in the middle of the night, her car will not move, she can't get reception on her phone, but HEY! It's a new experience and totally fun! She decides to wait until early morning when hopefully some local farmer will come by to tug her out. Until then, she might as well get some sleep. But first she decides to calm down by crocheting a little. The image of a young woman crocheting at one in the morning inside of a giant vehicle parked half-way down a steep bank in one of the most abandoned roads in New Zealand strangely appeals to Zara and she laughs heartily. She is enjoying herself immensely and she suddenly realises that her depression is cured. This only serves to make her feel more awesome.

Eventually she sleeps, curled up in a ball in the back seat with the seatbelt digging into her.

***

At around five-thirty in the morning traffic starts to drive by. A logging truck stops and checks to see if Zara is still alive. He looks slighly stunned as a ridiculously over-cheerful young woman excitedly and happily informs him, that, actually, everything is amazing, and they both exclaim in awe over the path of destruction Zara's car made, revealed in the light of the logging truck's headlamps. He can't pull her out, but does inform her that the rest of the logging crew were to be around shortly. Zara hops back into her car and crochets as she awaits rescue.

Five men in utes and one park ranger later, Zara finds herself back on the road - but not without mishap. The towrope the first man drove all the way home in his ute to fetch snapped as he tried to pull me out. Thankfully, the park ranger had a special cable thingy and that worked much better. Unfortunately, the entire underside of Zara's car is now covered in grass. People always complain about kikuyu. Farmers don't like it because it takes over the paddocks they craze their livestock in. Gardeners don't like it because it invades their gardens and leaves it a giant, weedy mess. There are endless horror stories of people who have tried and failed to remove kikuyu from their gardens - it's so difficult, it's nigh impossible. What you don't generally hear about kikuyu is how hard it is to remove from cars. The first man in the ute - name of Daniel - very kindly spends a good hour and a half trying to pull all the grass out from her car. It was twisted all around the drive shaft which - apparently - is a bad thing and can't just be left. He has to use a hand saw to slice it off. But he succeeds after much pain and effort, and Zara is left in awe of friendly Kiwi men and humanity in general. This man is now three hours late for work and it's his daughter's fifth birthday, and here he is helping some useless city girl weed her car and being wonderfully good-natured about it.

Zara plans to courier a pack of beer to him. She figures it's safer than driving and delivering it herself.


***

And that, dear friends, is the end of my story.

I stopped by in Wellsford to see my dad and tell him the story. I accosted him outside his work and said, "HI! Guess what! I have a totally awesome story to tell you!"
He looked apprehensive. "You're engaged?"
"Er... no."
He looked positively fearful. "You're pregnant?"
"No!"
"Well, what, then?"
"I just crashed my car! -" and he put his head in his hands and he wept. But not literally. Because that would be weird.