More importantly, if I’m passing on some important detail it has to be correct. Particularly so if someone is going to repeat that point or use it as the basis for ongoing discussion.
Now all of this preamble is to set the scene for a rather unfortunate incident that befell myself and my beloved this week.
You will recall our present place of residence is a motor camp where we are hoping to graduate from totally inept and inexperienced caravanners to less-inept and inexperienced caravanners who have managed to reverse a large caravan, not get divorced in the process and go fulltime on the road.
So far so good.
Anyway. As is the case in our new world, you tend to come across lots of people, all with a story to be told.
Like the couple who decide which way to go in their campervan based on the delicacies available at service stations in any given direction.
She works in an adult shop and she’d had a tough week (the mind is still boggling at that admission), so they’d decided on a weekend away from it all. The savouries at Servo X on the outskirts of their town are apparently to die for, so that was the way they headed.
Then there was the bloke I met standing next to the biggest, flashest American-style behemoth of a caravan I’d ever seen.
He was just “trying it”, he said. If he liked it he’d get something bigger and better. Apparently, he owns a vineyard so he can afford it.
Or the French couple sleeping in the back of their car while a tarpaulin covered all their worldly possessions on the ground outside.
A questionable existence at the best of times, but in the middle of winter you’d imagine it was downright miserable.
Not so, he said with a smile. Turns out she’s a top chef and he’s happy to forgo some of the basic necessities of life to be fed the delicacies she has been putting in front of him nightly during their round-NZ journey.
I ran into them in the kitchen one night and it has to be said, if the taste of the food supplied matched its appearance as she dished it up then I’d imagine it would be a very enjoyable trip indeed.
If I’m honest, I love this part of my new life and regularly — meaning daily if not hourly — stop for a chat with just about everyone and anyone.
This can be a source of frustration for Mrs P, especially if she’s awaiting my return from the camp kitchen with a kettle full of boiled water — already hot so we don’t have to use our gas supplies for a cuppa.
But anyway, there I am the other day returning from the kitchen with said kettle and I bump into some newcomers.
Before long the lady I’m conversing with has blurted out her whole life story. Key to the entire thing was the fact a close relative was “in Brisbane” (Queensland, Australia) and had so far spent eight years there.
She’d not been able to visit and had ended up looking after the relative’s dog while he was away.
I replied with some general queries about the weather there at this time of year and made the observation I’d never been, but Mrs P had briefly and she hadn’t really enjoyed it either.
My new friend said she she wasn’t surprised and doubted anyone would enjoy the place and that was it.
The conversation drifted to a close and I returned to a slightly peeved and cold Mrs P with the kettle, by now rapidly cooling as well, and my story/excuse.
Over a cuppa, I filled Mrs P in.
The woman was looking after a relative’s dog while he was in Brisbane and she seemed a bit upset about it all, presumably because the task had extended to eight years.
I hadn’t sought any clarification, but I deduced there was no end in sight for the arrangement and the relative would be staying put in Brisbane.
Now, as coincidence would have it, a couple of nights previously, as Mrs P and I sat in our cosy little cocoon with temperatures plummeting outside, we laughed about relocating somewhere warmer. Not serious considerations. At first at least.
Naturally, we considered Raro, Fiji, Samoa and Vanuatu, which we’ve enjoyed previously, and other places we’d been to slightly further afield like Singapore where my glasses appeared to be forever steamed up, and Dubai where you could practically feel your skin blistering in the sun.
“What about Australia?” Mrs P had suggested. “Queensland perhaps?”.
We’d left it at that until my discussion with the newcomer.
Why not Australia? Everyone else seems to be going.
No 2 Son is in Melbourne and apparently it gets as cold as good old NZ there, so that wasn’t a real option. But Queensland? Maybe those few days Mrs P had in Brisbane all those years ago weren’t enough to get a real sense of the place.
I mean obviously, some people like it. The relative of the woman I spoke to had been there eight years so it couldn’t be all that bad, could it? Hmm. Worth a thought.
Mrs P was intrigued. It couldn’t hurt to find out a little bit more could it? So off she went to find out more.
She returned a short while later somewhat red faced.
Turns out she’s gone and found the new lady, introduced herself as the wife of the man the newcomer had been talking to earlier and begun a conversation about the merits of life “in Brisbane”.
She got some rather curious looks.
Remember, I’d already told this lady Mrs P had been there before and hadn’t enjoyed it and she’d replied saying she doubted anyone would.
There was a good reason for that.
Apparently, she didn’t say her relative had been “in Brisbane” for eight years.
He had been “in prison”.
As I said at the start. It pays to get the story correct before it’s passed on, doesn’t it?
Anyway.
Before I finish I must point out Mrs P has never been to prison or endured any custodial sentence.
Nor have I.
Though I am now in what is politely referred to as the dog box and I’m not sure when I’m going to get out.
