It has been an interesting experience.
When the call came to help out I didn't hesitate. I mean, why would you?
My weeks for a long time now have been full of work-seeking phone calls, rejections, housework and the brainwashing world of infomercials.
In fact, if the call hadn't come through at that specific moment in time I think I might have ended up with another ladder, air fryer or anti-wrinkle cream being delivered. The courier companies must love me.
Anyway. The call. Driver Dave is a man down. Can I help for a bit? I'm all over it like a rash.
I've known Dave since school in our tiny South Island town. He is the only person I know to have got a jaywalking ticket. All the more impressive in our town because the roads back then didn't have any footpaths!
Sometimes it doesn't pay to be a cheeky 13-year-old when Mr Policeman asks you a question.
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So. A day or so after the call, I'm in the thick of it.
I'm driving along and I'm re-establishing contact with the part of my brain which requires total concentration. This is because the roads nowadays seem to be filled with a lot more cars. And potholes.
And I have to say some of these potholes are huge. I'm left with the distinct impression there's either been a cut in maintenance budget or we are leaving them to become a tourist attraction in their own right.
I half-expect a coffee cart to be in place alongside one of the larger ones on my return journey.
Some can't be missed and the crunch as you go in and then out the other side is like that feeling you get when you land hard. It goes right up your spine to the base of your skull and leaves you thinking some villain has bashed you on the head and made off with your sanity.
And that's just one pothole. Imagine that 30 times a day, if you are lucky. Imagine what it's doing to the nuts and bolts of your undercarriage.
That's the vehicle's undercarriage, of course.
It would be fair to say I'm a battered and tired individual, come the end of the week. And I'm poor. I've been working so hard I've not been able to get into the bank to sort some cash for the weekend.
Driver Dave offers to take me to the bank, lecturing me as we go on the stupidity of my goal to be the last person on the planet without an Eftpos card or access to internet banking.
Dave is pretty competent behind the wheel and knows all the shortcuts but even he is finding the traffic exhausting these days. And where he lives in the Bay's big smoke, there's never any parking, he says.
This is proven by the monotonous circle around the bank branch we seem to be doing as 10 minutes turns into 15 and then 20.
We've done the normal customer parking and street park hunt, been down a couple of service lanes, done an illegal u-turn and peed the oncoming traffic off (as you do) but still, there's nothing.
With the end of the working week sitting tantalisingly close, I tell Dave to pull up at the next set of lights and I'll get out and run back to the bank. If he keeps looping round, I'll catch him on the return.
I'm reminded of Dave's jaywalking ticket as I get out in the stationary traffic to find a policeman sitting in his car one back, wagging a finger at me before driving off.
If I'm honest, I would have taken a ticket for jaywalking. It would have made for a better ending to this tale of physical endurance and wasted time at the end of a demanding week.
When I finally got to the bank, I found a note on the door saying this particular branch had been closed but there was friendly service and ample free parking outside the such-and-such branch a few kilometres away.
• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories with kevin.page@nzme.co.nz.
