A Rumble Of Wet Indifference. (3/3)

Don't eat mutton pies. That's all I'm going to say
about the town of Palmerston.

Second to last town, and I use the term loosely,
before Alexandra where my father lives, could be
accurately and affectionately referred to as butt-fuck
nowhere. For that matter Alexandra could also be
described the same way, and Alexandra is considerably
larger than this place. But I'm in no rush and the sun
is still shining (through the massive plume of smoke
from a farmer's burnoff which, owing to the presence
of more than one helicopter, I would guess was now
seriously out of control) so I was happy to wait. But
before long an old guy with two kids in the back pulls
over and picks me up.
I'd actually had to turn down two rides before that,
which I don't often do, from 4x4s full of giggling
teenagers who where only going ten kays to the next
town.
Half an hour into the ride the guy gets round to
asking me what I'm up to in Alexandra and I say I'm
there to visit my father. He asks who my father is;
Alan. Oh yeah, Alan who? Gotlieb. Alan Gotlieb? Are
you Daniel?
Turns out this was the owner of the farm on which my
father lives, and his only neighbor for twenty
kilometers. That spun him out. He thought that was
great.
I got the full local history on the way, which is
always interesting, and was dropped at the door.

So I hang out with my father for a couple of days in
his little stone cottage in the middle of a deer farm,
watch Groundhog Day again (love that film), have a few
shots with the air rifle.

Three things about myself that disturb me. (Please
don't think less of me for any of this):

1. I am somewhat criminally minded. Often my first
inclination when faced with a large exploitable system
is how to exploit it. Not pathologically, but if
there's some way I can get something for free and no
one else is any the worse off, then, well... yeah.
(One word for those who know me well: InterRail.)
I'll say no more.

2. I'm a surprisingly good liar, considering I never
practice. My last year in NZ I made an insurance claim
which may not have been 100% legit (my printer broke,
and was insured, just not for what broke it), and they
sent round an investigator. I had to spend forty-five
minutes with this woman, whose job it is to detect
untruth, sitting down with her, telling her nothing
but pure unadulterated lies.
It was possibly the most nerve racking experience of
my life. Because if I twitch, if I say one word out of
place, if my eyes don't at all times, for forty-five
minutes! express nothing but sweet innocence, this
woman is going to nail me to a wall.
It felt just like an experience I had years before at
an Australian surf beach called Yallingup; I went body
surfing in a two meter swell. But no one who objects
to the sound of bones splintering actually body surfs
in those conditions, so I just bobbed around a bit. If
you haven't been out in two meter waves (six to seven
feet) it's pretty huge. Especially when your head is
at sea level. (Uuuuuuuuppppp up up up up .......
Dooooooowwwn down down down .......
UUUUuuuuuppppppp)
Then a three meter set came in. If I'd gone over the
lip of one of those things I would've been killed.
Literally killed. So I just tread water and watch them
come, trying not to get pulled back into the drop. But
I was paying so much attention to that I failed to
notice I'd been swept a hundred meters away from
shore.
And that was the feeling. Like; I just don't want to
be here now. Please, don't make me be here now. But
you just have to accept that you are, and you may well
be fucked, but that's the truth of it and you're not
bargaining your way out.
And so, in Yallingup, I managed to swim back in,
waited for a smaller two meter set to come in, and
took the drop. Got completely pummeled, made a dash
for the beach, got sucked back into another wave (I
think there were actually, if breifly, long fingernail
tracks left in the wet sand; a single despairing wail
(NNnnnoooooo-) cut suddenly short by a rumble of wet
indifference) and pummeled again, eventually figured
out which way was up (it's away from the rocks being
ground into my scalp) made another dash for the shore
(a man trying to dash through water is the most
desperate sight you will ever see), literally
draaaaaagged myself out of the surf and collapsed into
a little sobbing puddle on the beach. After a while a
guy came over and asked if I was ok, I managed to
raise one trembling thumb into the air, and he went
away.
And so, in Christchurch I lied my arse off to an
insurance investigator, and got away with it. Maybe
she sussed me and just didn't care because the claim
was so small, I don't know.
Let me stress this: I never lie. I don't live the sort
of life where I have to mislead the people I know. But
occasionally I do have to save my arse from
organisations, corporations, and government bodies.
As, I'm sure, do we all.

3. I'm a disturbingly good shot. I've never fired a
real gun and don't want to, but with an air rifle or
paintball gun, watch out.

My father dropped me off at the Cromwell bridge, a
Maori rastafarian picked me up, swapped me over to a
ski patrolman, and I was back in Christchurch.

Caught up with my sister Nico, who isn't reading this
because she doesn't like email. Hung out with my
Canadian friend Sarah, who, bizarrely, had met up with
some French friends of mine when they toured NZ
recently (I realised this when I saw photos of them on
her wall), and is also plotting her escape.
Flew out for Asia to meet up with Rosie.

And a lot of what happened over there was pretty
insane.

But that will have to wait a while. Like I said, back
off to my beloved Edinburgh this Monday (via Saudi
Arabia, should be fun) and I don't think I'll have
time to write again before I go. This year should be
an interesting one; looking forward to getting some
animation work in the film industry, maybe doing
another Beltane, seeing Iceland, Eastern Europe, the
far north of Scandinavia. If you're over that way give
me a holler, we should definitely spend some time.

much love

Daniel.