Lynette and I get into the garden at Enterprise Street and in the process I get to know Eldred, our old lady neighbour we share a garage wall with. She's a talker and happy to be disturbed any time to lend me the tools I need. I borrow a ladder from Yvonne and clear the guttering. It's got gravel textured slush in it. Heavy and lots of it. I load up the red bin while Lynette prunes the roses then we have a go at the flowering cherry. It's got branches crossing into the middle and dense growth. Overnight I worry I've gone too far. We load up the boot of the Toyota with green waste and make a couple of trips to the dump.
Saturday night the All Blacks play the Irish. They've lost a game already and the plan is to go to Paulina's to watch. I pick up Maxine and Debbie from Debbie's recently deceased father's. The two are a combination of drunk and stoned. When Debbie's sister bites the side out of a glass sending port down my trousers and onto the carpet, that's the end for their brother. No-one sees or remembers what happens but me and it's clear we need to leave. I'm the sober driver but the others want to take their cars. This is where my teacher skills come in, repeated strong orders combined with wait time. They get in the car eventually and leave me the wheel. It's a raucous night and sadly the All Blacks lose. We retire to Maxine's and more alcohol, etc. I'm taking a photo of Debs and Max with the cat in the foreground, looking like she's just sucked a lemon, when I loose the plot. I'm laughing so hard I drop my phone on the glass table. Crinkles appear all over the screen and it dies shortly after. RIP faithful object which has survived a return trip to Taylor's Mistake tucked into the windscreen wipers, a fall off the car roof behind the Clyde dam, and many journeys in my school computer bag, wriggled and jiggled and jammed under all sorts of heavy objects.
My connect to the world is Messenger and I don't really miss the phone, the odd time I want to take a picture, but that's all. The quiet is strange. Peaceful. I spend more time reading. Electronics have crept in. I needed my phone while building the house, and started buying and selling on Marketplace, finding events to go to. It's made my life noisier and kept my brain running. As adults phones overload us and our kids know nothing else. No wonder they're having breakdowns.
On Sunday I go to stay with Lynette and am ridiculouly relieved to be warm again. We do more gardening and biking. I make a last ditch effort, finishing in the dark to clear the guttering at the front of the house and the garage. It's raining when I finish and the weather is dubious for the drive back to Christchurch and I take the Pig Route because flooding closes the road between Omarama and Twizel. It's snowing as I drive over the Pig Route and raining up the coast. Grey and dreary. The coastal road is straight and I switch off as the kilometres speed by. Roads close due to flooding. It's good to be safe and warm at College Ave.
Back in town, I buy a new phone. $320 with a discount, another Samsung and an updated version of the old model... it does heaps of stuff well. I'm not a status phone user. I do want to recycle my old one but don't know where or how so I reluctantly put it in the bin.
Bertie starts a project to put a board behind my head board. Another job ticked off.
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