Now in New Zealand

Brief encounter

A large Polynesian lady with silvery hair sits next to me on the not-quite-full free bus at the start of its Auckland inner-city circuit. There are two empty seats opposite. Still jet-lagged and travel weary, I stare dully ahead.

“And how are you today?” she asks suddenly, turning towards me.

“Fine,” I manage to reply, trying to sound almost awake. “And how are you?”

“Good.”

Have I had a good Christmas? she asks, then whether I’ve ever been to ‘The Mission’. To judge from her gesture it is not far away along Queen Street, the city’s main commercial artery. At once I assume she has singled me out as being in need of religion. But then she tells me she hasn’t been there either, although she has seen it on TV — whether an ad, news item, or programme I don’t ask.

She tells me about Son Number One and Son Number Two, one of whom has done something she cannot forgive; exactly what, I’m not alert enough to catch. She has four sons, a daughter and three grandchildren, one of whom, a boy of eight, she and her husband are not allowed to see. I miss the bit about why. She says it is ‘hard’. But I do get the part about her husband working on the buses, which prevented them from going to one of the children, I’m not sure which, for Christmas.

All this and much else I learn between Lower Queen Street and the University, where I have to trouble her to let me out. We part with hearty goodbyes and mutual wishes for spending a very good day.

We have been travelling for perhaps five or six minutes.