Pre-breakfast jogging has descended into walking with much huffing and puffing. I call reason on the heat, and absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with staying up late every night and having a GOOD TIME. I play a game called “Get Lost” and saunter through the streets at random. I then like to bring up the GPS points on my Garmin to see where I am and also as a practice exercise in case I am ever disoriented and injured on the South Col of Everest, or Marine Parade Napier, and have to call myself a rescue helicopter. Imagine the humiliation of wearing a device on your wrist which has more computing power than the Space Shuttle and not being able to tell the operator your co-ordinates! Oh the laughter as they winch you in, tut-tutting and sighing that such devices are wasted on idiots like me!
I follow the river which leads directly to Diamond Head, but it’s a boring route and there is a bum on every park bench. Some of them mumble at me and reach out as I pass. I find it unnerving and dip back onto the main drag where the cool aircon blasts out from each boutique and gives you a frothed icy massage as you meander by. I spot the world’s largest, most perfect sunhat in one such establishment, which is closed, but I bang on the window and make Tourist Packing Cash signs to the man unloading stock at the back and he opens up for me. I buy the hat instantly, and it will replace the other world’s largest, most perfect sunhat that I left in Australia, or Koru, or someone’s house, or a restaurant, or trekking to the North Pole, or…..HUSH CARRIE, HUSH.
Now the whole tribe of us are off on a walk to Nordstrom Rack, which is where the poor old clothing items from Nordstrom in the reals go when they are more than 30 microseconds old and therefore uncool to Americans. They are, OBVIOUSLY, fantastic for us. If I do not return, because the credit card agencies have put me in a straightjacket and called my mother, for God’s sake stop my Strava and tell Sean Connery I still fancy him.
Auntie Carrie 