‘Don’t pack too much,” Greg said. “You’re not going on holiday.” He meant my wheelie suitcase, the little blue travel bag I regard with an unaccustomed emotion: nostalgia. This cheap suitcase, bought long, long ago from one of those cheap and cheerless chain stores in Auckland’s Queen St, has travelled to unattainably exclusive hotels across the world.
In the heyday of travel journalism, hacks like me with bags like this were flown business class to such places. Which, of course, ruins you forever for going long haul anywhere in some horrible economy seat.
Still, my little cheap blue suitcase and I had stayed at some of the poshest hotels in the world: the Langham in London; the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok. Was it fabulous? Of course it was. It was also ridiculous. You are meant to have posh pyjamas when the butler arrives with a nightcap of orange juice and a glass of properly grand champers and a posh choc. Mine were from Farmers.
But for this journey, I wasn’t packing my battered, well-travelled blue bag for a posh hotel. I was going to hospital in Wellington, two hours from home at Lush Places, which is where I wanted to be on holiday.
It was two days before Christmas and things needed doing. The two duck legs were in the fridge. They were supposed to marinate for two days in wine, orange zest, thyme, star anise, cinnamon and red pepper. I planned to serve the slow-cooked duck legs with a cardamom and bay leaf pilau, because we are partial to a pilau, and a watercress and orange salad.
That was to be Christmas dinner. (And yes, by the way, I do have a slow cooker. It is called an oven. It’s quite easy to use if, say, you want to cook your duck legs, or any other braise, for 21/2 hours. You simply push the button that says 160°C and leave well alone.)
I had my battered copy of Cuisine magazine’s Christmas issue of 2004 opened to the Party Prawn Cocktails recipe. That was to be Christmas lunch. We have been having Party Prawn Cocktails for Christmas lunch since 2004.
Instead, I was, sort of gratefully, in hospital, having been fast-tracked for an op on the shoulder I had stupidly fallen onto while doing a spot of what is supposed to be that genteel country pursuit, gardening. I had broken my shoulder, or at least chipped a shoulder bone. I felt like a decrepit old fool. I moaned like a decrepit old fool.
They knocked me out completely to do it. A general anaesthetic is the weirdest thing. It is the closest thing to being dead, I suppose. You come to with no memory of having been almost dead, and no memory of having awakened from being almost dead. Then a nurse is offering you a cup of tea and to butter your toast.
Everybody moans about how hard it is to get into the public hospital system, with good reason. I got lucky. But once you are in, at least at Wellington Hospital, you are treated like a queen. Even if you are a right pain in the bum and insist on taking your IV machine outside every hour to vape, necessitating pushing a door buzzer to be let back in.
A day after the surgeon fixed my shoulder, my nurse walked me and my old blue suitcase down to the lobby, where I was to be collected by Greg. She was tiny, beautiful, from the Philippines. I must have been a bit out of it. I was still on a portable drug drip. I said: “I like you.” She said: “Do you? Why?” I said, “Because I never meet anyone who is shorter than me.” She kissed me on the cheek. I may have cried a bit.
My little blue suitcase and I came home. Greg cooked that perfectly planned Christmas dinner, perfectly. I didn’t make pav or lemon posset as I usually do. Instead, we had apricots and strawberries hand-delivered by neighbours, with ice cream, a compote made by a one-armed me and slices of the posh panettone sent by my virtual friend, K, from Auckland.
My 2025 has begun with an arm still in a sling. But also with kindness.
