by I’m back, groggy but just about in one piece.
On Friday we were almost out the door when the man who owned my parents’ property in the nineties decided to drop in. It was the first time they’d met this British-born chap who liked to talk, mainly about the work he’d done on the house. He was happy somebody had bought it – its fate otherwise would probably have been demolition and three townhouses plonked on the section. Despite the delay – over half an hour – we set off to the airport in plenty of time. The fish and chip shop at Rakaia had closed down, but crisis was averted when I saw “CHIPS” through the window of a café-type place in Dunsandel. We had very good fish and chips – my last for some time – for just $9 each. We then got lost on the way to my Jucy Snooze place near the airport. I half-hoped we’d never find it and I could somehow stay in New Zealand, but no such luck. Jucy Snooze ($43 a night) consists of “pods” of eight enclosed bunk beds. After checking in on a touch screen, I walked past a pod full of teenagers – Aussies probably – swigging beer from cans. Please don’t let there be seven of them in my pod. When I found my pod – this was 8pm – it was empty. I heaved my heavy suitcase into an upper locker and did the horrible bit – saying goodbye to Mum and Dad. The bed was comfortable. In fact the whole set-up worked very well. There’s a common room with a kitchen and a pool table which was still in use at 3:30 am, after I’d managed to get some kip.
The airport was a ten-minute walk from Jucy Snooze. My flight plan was beyond the capabilities of the machines, so two experienced and very helpful humans executed the complicated check-in procedure using a black screen that reminded me of those old mainframes I used to make changes to insurance policies, back in a previous life. I had to prove that I lived in Romania and had the means to get there from Budapest. My suitcase was barely half the 30-kilo limit on the way out. Since then I’d added a painting Dad had done of Piața Traian in Timișoara, an old camera of my brother’s that must have been expensive, a pair of navy Doc Martens I bought in Birmingham in 2002, some more shoes, half a dozen books, and other assorted paperwork. Now I was over by 1.3 kg. They said they’d wave it through, but staff at other airports might not be so lenient, so I moved some books into my hand luggage and I was good to go. My flight was at 6am.
The flights to Melbourne and Singapore were uneventful. We flew over the centre of Melbourne – the brilliant Queen Victoria Market and so many places to play and watch sport. Not far from the centre was an enormous cemetery. On the second flight I started watching Everything Everywhere All at Once but gave up on it. To my surprise, I was able to watch live tennis. The end of Coco Gauff’s victory over Karolina Muchova was spectacular. After Gauff had already had five match points, the pair concocted a spellbinding 40-stroke rally which Gauff won to set up another match point. Both me and the guy next to me (he was watching on his screen) applauded. Gauff duly closed out the match on the next point. Then came the second semi-final between Madison Keys and Aryna Sabalenka. Keys led 6-0 5-3, but Sabalenka used her great power to produce the goods at just the right time and win by one of the weirdest scores you’ll ever see in tennis – 0-6, 7-6 (7-1), 7-6 (10-5). I felt sorry for Keys who even led 4-2 in the final set and didn’t do much wrong. Sabalenka, who will be a well-deserved world number one when the new rankings come out tomorrow, forgot that the final tie-break was first to ten and thought she’d won when she reached 7-3. Fancy that, you’re the world’s best player and you don’t know the rules. In a slight upset, Gauff came from a set down to beat Sabalenka in the final. I didn’t even think about watching that match – I was too busy sleeping.
