Travels with Mr. Bill

Opotiki Mailboxes 

Talk about hot mail! A microwave re-purposed for a  mailbox, tickles my funny bone. Mr. Bill and I have seen all sorts of creative mailboxes when we are out and about. Old gas cans and water containers are fairly common but my favorite by far, is the  Evenirude outboard motor in Ohope Beach. It’s brilliant. Wouldn’t it be fun to lift the lid to collect your post?

If your correspondence doesn’t come microwaved or electronically via the internet, you can’t beat delivery by the Ohope Postie. Our Postie, Lisa, is wonderful. She delivers the mail on her bicycle, rain or shine. On beautiful days, when I cycle by her, I think that’s the best job in the world- fresh air, the open road and exercise. Not all days are smooth sailing though- even in Paradise. On windy days when I’m huffing and puffing, struggling  against the wind, I marvel as she peddles by, her basket and side saddle bags laden with letters and packages. When I get caught out in a rainstorm, I head for home as fast as I can, while she stays the course , finishing her rounds.

There are no secrets kept from the Postie. Watching her sort the mail outside Beachpoint, I waited, ever  hopeful it was my lucky day. I asked her if she had any love letters in her bag  for me. As soon as I spoke, I could hear my daughter Audry’s voice in my head saying, “Mom you are so awkward!” (at least I didn’t sing it). The Postie didn’t miss a beat. She shook her head and admonished me, that there would be no love letters for me. Then she smiled and added, “unless they are from Bill.” When I told Mr. Bill of our conversation that night, he was astonished and asked, “how did she know my name”?  Ah, Dear Mr. Bill, the Postie knows all; besides she has been delivering our mail off and on for four years now.

One time, our mail had a Kiwi adventure all it’s own. A card from our dear friend, Kitty, went on a field trip, through the Ministry of Primary Industries. Letters from Kitty are a day brightener. The envelope is addressed in her flowing cursive and is embellished with fantastic stickers. Kitty’s penmanship looks as enthusiastic as she speaks, you can hear her cheery voice as you read the words. When you open a letter from Kitty, there’s always something extra special inside- photographs, comics and newspaper clippings about New Zealand, cut from the New York Times. One of her cards must have been a real standout, in the customs mail sorting center; triggering an inspection  by the Ministry Of Primary Industries.

Now Mr. Bill and I love watching Border Patrol on TV. The inspectors have keen eyes for something that’s out of the ordinary and Kitty’s letters are extraordinary. Was it the beautiful sticker of orchids and the card’s extra weight, that caused an inspector to flag the card for inspection? Smuggled seeds are a grave bio security risk. It makes me smile to think, that when opened for inspection, the card’s contents brightened someone else’s day too, with a little bit of love sent all the way from America. Now, Kiwis are a modest lot and no one likes a bragger but I just can’t help being more than a little bit chuffed, that my mail passed inspection.

The most mysterious mail delivery  I received was passed from hand, to hand, to hand; it was a bizarre version of a chain letter. It all started with a phone call. Mr. Bill answered the  landline one May evening in 2015 and our friend Gavin said, “Open your door, there’s a package outside”. The package was an envelope, which was handed over to Mr. Bill, who passed it along to the addressee, who was me.  Just my name, no address. Inside was a generous gift certificate to The Hui, our favorite restaurant and nothing else, no note, nada! I was alarmed, who would send me an anonymous gift and where would I send a thank you note? Mr. Bill wasn’t  too concerned with the mystery, he was happily anticipating an evening at our local- on my dime! It took a bit of sleuthing but I finally solved the Case of the Secret Admirer-which turned out to be many secret admirers. Our children had purchased a gift certificate from  The Hui  for a Mother’s Day surprise. Fran, the restaurant’s owner, had left the envelope at reception, for ‘the Americans’ and it found it’s way to me. There’s no need for neither addresses nor tracking in a small town, things get delivered just fine!

May all your letters arrive posthaste and be filled with love.

Rain or shine, the Postie delivers

First someone ate all the pies, now no pizza? Well, at least there were croissants.

In May, when Louie went to the East Cape to go fishing, Madame stayed behind to keep the home fires burning. Chez Louis remained open in the mornings , when you could buy her fresh baked bread but not in the evening for Monsieur’s pizza. That was a long week.

This is how life is supposed to be in Ohope Beach- Tuesdays through Saturdays, the smell of wood smoke wafts down Pohutukawa Avenue. From 8 to noon, bread is baking in Chez Louis’s wood fired oven; then the shop is shuttered for siesta and reopens at 4pm, when you can buy pizzas. Now both Madame and Monsieur have gone away on holiday, the wood shed is closed and the town awaits their return.

In the meantime we dream of pizza.

Smoke! I woke with a start, I wasn’t dreaming, the nightmare was real. We were fresh arrivals in Ohope, still settling into the Granny Flat, on Pohutukawa Avenue. Mr. Bill was at work and I had nodded off whilst reading. My brain felt fogged with jet lag- how Mr. Bill reported to work, after traveling for  some thirty odd hours, I never know. I quickly checked the flat, no fire. I dashed up the outside stairs to our landlord’s house, no fire and no one home. No phone either. Besides, I was so rattled, I couldn’t remember the emergency number for the  Fire Brigade, anyway. It’s wasn’t 911 you dialed here but something else. Dang! I’d have to raise the alarm the old fashioned way. Faster than Chicken Little could yell, “the sky is falling”, I ran to flag down a passing car. Half way down our steep driveway, my miasma cleared; I remembered that we lived kitty corner across the street, from Chez Louis. We had landed in Paradise.

In the beginning, we ordered our pizza like Americans and ate our delicious mistakes. At 4pm on Tuesdays, Louis posts the Pizza of the Week. Mr. Bill jogs by and reports back to me, what the weekly special is. More often than not, we would choose the pizza of the week. Mr. Bill would call in and say, “I’ll have the special”. Now, they don’t give order numbers, yet every time Mr. Bill has walked into Chez Louis’s, Madame has handed him his pizza order (I think it’s his accent that gives him away). Then with a Merci and an Au Revoir or sometimes a Bonsoir, Mr. Bill would be on his way. Soon it would be Bon Appetit. Invariably, we would have eaten a few slices, before one of us would say,”hey, this isn’t the special. I thought the special this week was potato and  ham with camembert. This is tomato, beef, bacon, onions, cheese and herbs. It’s delicious, though. I think I like it better than the special”. We wondered if Louis had misheard Mr. Bill or perhaps had run out of the special and substituted this wonderful pie. Too late to bring it back, we hoped we didn’t have someone else’s dinner. Still, it niggled away until one day I read the take out menu. You guessed it- there’s a pizza called ‘special’.

Ah, Louis, how we love thee. The man from Marseille, makes the best special pizza, in the world.

       Winter Solstice full moon over Ohope Beach

June 21st, 2016

It’s June 21st and the day should be going on and on, instead at 5:10 pm, the day is nearly gone. Too soon, the sun will set on the shortest day of the year. The seasons are upside down and Mr. Bill and I find ourselves, turned ’round and round’. June is the new December!

The winter solstice occurred this morning at 10:34 in the Southern Hemisphere, making it the shortest day of the year in New Zealand. The North Island received 9 hours, 37 minutes and 58 seconds of sunlight, while the South Island had to make do with an hour less of sunshine. No one is complaining though, our southern neighbors below the Antartica Circle, did not see the sun at all.

If  the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere heralds the start of summer,we assumed that the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere would mean the start of winter. Wrong! The official start of winter is June 1st, not today. How many times, have my children delighted in repeating the school yard maxim, “to assume, is to make an ass out of u and me”? Hmmmm, it has taken a while but I finally have discovered why winter begins on June 1st. New Zealand, Australia and South Africia, have a meteorological winter, made up of the months with the most similar weather, not one determined by the sun’s distance from earth. Therefore, winter here starts on June 1st and ends on August 31st. Very tidy!

Whether or not you mark the season by the solstice or the calendar, you can tell that the season has changed. Children have donned their puffer jackets but still walk to school barefoot. The ski fields are open on the South Island.  The song, Winter Wonderland, is playing as background music on the TV commercials for mid winter sales. Half Christmas parties are planned for this coming Saturday, June 25th. Recipes in the newspaper’s Food Section, are for hearty soups and stew. Drapes are drawn at dusk to keep the lounge (living room) warm. However, the strangest announcement that winter has arrived, is that in the morning, the windows ‘rain’. Homes are not heated and windows are not double glazed. The first morning I opened the drapes and condensation rained down the windows, I knew that winter had arrived.

Kia Ora from #39                                                                                          June 10, 2016

Mr. Bill and I have settled easily into our Ohope life. We are living on the top floor of Beachpoint Apartments . Just like George and Weezy Jefferson, we have ” moved on up to a deluxe apartment”.Our new place is flat #39, which is on the fourth level but the third floor. How can that be, you may well ask. Well, it’s just one of the many quirky Kiwi things, that amuses and sometimes confuses me. The sign on our floor reads,”LEVEL 4′. However, if you take the lift and press’3′, you will ascend to the fourth floor. There is no number four on the control panel. Very odd indeed. Never does Neverland feel more like an alternate universe, than when doing elevator math- it makes my head spin! To avoid becoming someone, ‘whose elevator doesn’t go to the top’, I take the stairs.

Our first three Beachpoint apartments were all on the second floor (level one). We loved our outlook on Ohope Beach, so close to all the comings and goings. We have seen a pod of Orca whales, swim right along the shore, with a plucky terrier racing alongside them on the sand, barking frantically.Why chase cars when you can chase a whale? We have watched amused, as travelers would stop to use the public toilets, many running as fast and furious, as that whale chasing dog. We have noted the caravans rolling in at night, setting up their barbecues and hanging their laundry to dry on their campers’ warm engine grills. One day, Mr. Bill especially enjoyed the view of the pretty German tourists who didn’t bother with the restrooms, when changing into their bathing suits. Aug Wiedersehen ladies! Yes, life was definitely ‘sweet as’ on the second floor. Why, even taking out the trash was fun for Mr. Bill. Every evening, on his trip down the corridor to the garbage chute, he would shamelessly open the privacy shutters in the Smillie’s patio wall. He would poke his head through the gap, inquire what was for tea and have a chat with his mate, Gavin. Often, if he timed the garbage run right, there would be wine on offer; on those nights, the dishes fell to me, as it took a long time to take out the trash.

Alas, there were no long term rentals available on the second floor this time around; hence the BIG move up to the top level. We fretted that the outlook would not be as exciting on a higher floor. We need not have worried. The views from our level four, third floor eyrie are stunning and expansive. The Bay of Plenty is our front yard. Looking north, we have a bird’s eye view of the plume of steam rising from the volcano’s crater, on White Island (fortunately a safe 30 miles offshore). To the west, we can now see the cliffs towering above West End Beach, which marks the beginning of Ohope Beach. Turning to the east, we can see as far as the East Cape Ranges with the highest peak snow capped in winter. Behind us lies the bush. Our southern neighbors are birds and tree monkeys, a very noisy bunch. The little silver eye birds chirp sweetly, the larger Tui birds sound like R2D2, the nocturnal kid birds screech  and the tree monkeys create such a racket, that I have fled the apartment. Tree monkeys use chain saws.They are landscapers who prune trees. Kiwis have a  nickname for every profession and these climbing arborists, actually advertise themselves as tree monkeys. I cannot see that flying in the states!

#39 is on the top floor which is also the 4th level- odd numbering here at Beachpoint! Our front door opens onto the hillside behind us.