OPINION
We went to a wedding in Waihī in the weekend. Waihī Beach, not Waihī town, of course; possibly no one has ever thought to get married in Waihī town, that small, humble inland settlement famous for a really big hole in the ground – strange how we never associate mining with love and romance. Both explore hidden depths, both look for something precious. But the preferred setting for the happy couple was at the beach, and there they were on the Friday night, hosting pre-wedding drinks. They looked pretty relaxed. They were to look completely different the next day.
We went to a wedding in Waihī, where crime was running rampant. I got up on the Saturday morning and prowled the main street in search of breakfast supplies. Others had prowled the street in the dead of night and left their mark: the front windows of the Four Square were smashed in, and a dairy was broken into. “Terrible, just terrible,” I said to a woman outside Four Square. “Yes,” she said, “and the culprits are from Matamata.” We walked along the pavement, and I said, “Matamata! When I grew up in the Mount, we regarded Matamata as the safest place on earth.” A man walked past us in front of five small children. He turned, and said heatedly, “It still is!”
We went to a wedding in Waihī, and the weather turned good on the big day. It poured with rain from heavy clouds all Friday, the sea and the sky looked stuck together like soggy sheets of newsprint. But on Saturday, the sea shone as bright as the sun in the blue sky; quite a few of the guests who arrived for the afternoon ceremony came equipped with sunglasses. It was a beautiful service with nothing religious about it, thank God, and of course I cried. Love stories are the best stories and weddings are the best love stories. The bride and groom exchanged vows and rings, kissed for the first time as husband and wife; and they had a look about them, a certain something that made me stare at them, and wonder exactly what that look meant.
We went to a wedding in Waihī, and there was no way I was going to miss it. The groom has been a dear friend for about 20 years. I love the guy. He has been there for me at some of the most significant moments of my life, such as when I broke the record for drinking the most Sighs of the Moor – a variation of Brandy Alexander – in a single evening at a bar where I basically lived for about five or six years. History was made that night and I couldn’t have done it without his support. And there he was on Saturday night, and it wasn’t quite that I didn’t recognise him when I looked across at him at the wedding table; it was more that I had never seen him look like he was looking, next to his bride.
