By Lucy

I wasn’t sure how it would feel coming back here. If it was nostalgia, if I would have grown to dislike it, or if it would feel like coming home.

To be honest, it was a little anti-climatic. It felt surreal to be back, but also completely natural and a non-event. As if the whole month in Glenorchy had been a bad dream and now I had woken up and been reassured by the familiar look of my room.

I was relieved when I saw the white van in the driveway as I pulled up. I had been worried about what to do if I was far too early and she wasn’t home yet.

I half-expected her to shout or offer me a hug in excitement, but her response to me returning was muted. I could see the exhaustion lines around her eyes, though, as she starts rattling off things that have changed. The woofers are named Tess and Simon (“he’s a bit of a drip” she confides), they have a car but are currently out. Someone hit her van not even a week ago and she’s still shaken up by it, especially because the man got in her face and yelled at her about it (I believe Simo; having driven with her, Gary and Kelly, I’d trust her the most).

Earl is back, yay! She is in heat but other than that, she’s better behaved now. Luigi is still on his arthritis meds and has taken to eating every apple he can reach, which includes jumping to grab low apples off the branches. Both took a minute to remember who I am.

For whatever reason, she’s decided to tell the woofers that the whole place, including the woofers cabin, has been rented out on February 3rd and we all have to leave. They were leaving on February 6th anyway, so I don’t understand why we’re lying to save us 3 days, but it’s her choice. I do recognize that it is some affection and preference for me, which I appreciate.

She dismisses me to let me go clean up and unpack, but comments that there is stuff from the car to be unloaded if I have the time.

I don’t really need to unpack or unwind from the road, though. I didn’t spend that much time on the bike and I am pretty relaxed from the weekend spent at Anne’s. Also, the more mess I make in the cabin, the more I have to clean and repack to move back to my original cabin in a week anyway, so. I change out of my riding clothes and head back to the house. It’s just 2 bags of potting soil and a sink/vanity to unload.

I half-expected her to have chowder on the stove, or to ask me a million questions about my travels, but she mostly talked about a new house she bought. When other women get stressed, they buy clothes – Simo buys houses. Between this one, the other house on a trailer in the back 40, the house in Methven, and now this new one she’s got pictures of being cut in half and loaded onto a trailer, she’s got 4 properties for giggles. She asks me if I can peel potatoes for dinner, but there’s only 2 potatoes and one baby potato left in the bag. Oh no! She comes up with a substitute dinner while quickly putting in a food order for the next morning, my first job tomorrow.

My second job is to welcome the guests, which is something only I can do. They’ve paid for the B&B experience.

As I head back out into the yard to go back to my cabin ’til dinner, Gary pulls in the driveway. In a white car I have never seen before.

He rolls up so close to me that the bumper is almost kissing my shins, but I don’t flinch and just smile as he puts it in park and gets out.

“Hey Gary, ya miss me?” I yell.

“Like a hole in the head.” He replies, with a big grin.

“Where’s the ute?” Kiwis call trucks “ute” for some reason.

He freezes and I can guess the answer before he even gives it. “My son is borrowing it for work.” He finally says, after a long pause.

Ah yes, the trouble child. The one I’m not supposed to know anything about, and that’s all I’ll say.

At dinner, I can see what Simo says about Simon being a drip. He’s not chatty, which isn’t a flaw in and of itself. You can be reserved in manner and still be interesting, funny, or pleasant to be around. He just sort of gives off a vibe of preferring to be his cabin alone, in contrast to Tess, who is bubbly and definitely probably has ADHD.

They’re from Wisconsin, although they barely know where Ontario or even Duluth is. Americans are weird.

Gary barely picks at his food. He leaves behind most of his chicken, which I immediately grab. He refuses to eat leftovers, and I need the protein.

Apparently they’ve had “4 or 5 weeks” of solidly cold, rainy weather. Richard was telling the truth when he said Mt Hutt was white the other day. Simo says the river was raging with all the water and she’s surprised they haven’t had a frost with how cold it’s been, it shocked some of her plants. I find it kind of amusing that it became cold and rainy when I left, and now it’s supposed to be sunny and warm when I’ve come back. Fisher King much?

It is quite chilly, but unlike the cabin, this one is set up for guests and has an electric blanket. Still chilly to go to the bathroom, but I don’t need to set a fire to sleep.

I feel so good being back here. It’s hard to describe why, but it feels like I’ve had a headache for the month I was at Glenorchy and it’s finally gone. I sleep for 9 hours and feel very refreshed in the morning.

Morning is chilly, but you can feel the change in the air already. I don’t have to feed the chickens, so I wait ’til 9 and head to the house. Both Simo and Gary have left already, but I know the drill. The groceries show up first thing, so I put them away. There’s some damp laundry in the washer, so I put it out onto the line. Tess and Simon don’t wash the eggs and put them in cartons, for some reason (they’re expected to), so I tidy the kitchen, sorting several days worth of eggs, emptying the dishwasher, tidying what I can off the counters. That kills a couple of hours.

Now what? My biggest task is to wait around for the guests to get here. Simo plans to be back around 5, which means if the guests don’t show up sooner, I have to hang around the house ’til 5. I decide to have my creatine dose and go for a run now, then shower and change into my “good” clothes, then I can have lunch and tidy around the house while I wait for potentially 3 hours.

I track Tess and Simon down; they’re weeding the path behind the house. “I’m going to go out for a jog, so I have time to shower before the guests get here.”

“Ok.” Tess replies. “Umm, the chickens seem to be escaping.” She points to a couple hanging out on the lawn.

“Ok. Let them out this afternoon and I’ll go see if I can fix it.”

When I go back to my cabin to change into jogging clothes, I notice there’s a large rip along the bottom of the chicken netting.

I enjoy a jog along back country roads. Not as beautiful as Glenorchy, but significantly less traffic.

After my jog, I make myself some lunch, grab a needle and some thread, and stitch up the hole.

There is a confusing number of dead baby starlings around the property. I say confusing because most of them are squished into the driveway, so nothing has eaten them.

I barely have time to change into my clean clothes, open the doors and turn on the lights when the bell rings. The guests are here at 1:45, technically too early to check in, but I’m not going to tell them to leave and come back in 15 minutes. This is good in the sense that I don’t have to wait around, although I am startled and frazzled, what if I forgot something. I show them their room and make them a pot of tea, on a silver tray with milk and biscuits, and leave it in the sitting room. The guests are obviously Old Money English and are tickled pink to be waited on by a proper young lady in a prim bun and a coat. They seem especially delighted that I am a foreigner; I guess it makes this place seem posh and exclusive, that the wait staff are flown in from another country. They want breakfast as late as possible; Simo will be pleased. She can sleep in after her long day today and yesterday.

I grab some cookies and head back to my cabin. The cookie drawer is full of open, stale packets with 3-5 cookies in each. Might as well empty it out, I bet Gary won’t eat stale cookies.

It is such a nice, warm day. Presumably because this cabin is somewhat insulated, it tends to keep the cold in, so I open the door to let the heat in. The animals missed me; Luigi comes down to lay on my porch. Some of the chickens wander over and hang out at my door. I am very much enjoying have a couch, for now. If nothing else, this place is teaching me that I value my space and alone time.

I grab the set of wipes and give my bike a quick clean, balance the back of the seat on the rest, and take some quick pictures. I get some interest in my ad right away… just scammers. There is this scam going around with vehicle sales where bots pose as interested buyers, asking questions, haggling a bit… and then they ask you to go to this third-party site and buy a “vehicle report”. It’s only 20 bucks, but it’s fake. No vehicle report is forthcoming, they have 20 bucks and your credit information, and they disappear without buying your vehicle.

Dinner is pasta, as Gary isn’t around. It’s the beginning of the school year, which is why she had to go in to the school and meet the new staff etc etc.

It’s very windy that night. The doors and windows rattle in their frames as the building sighs with the wind. It keeps waking me up. In the morning, the yard is scattered with apples and pinecones, shaken from their branches.

Wednesday is the same pattern as before, sans chickens. Tidy the kitchen, sort the eggs, once the guests leave strip and remake the room. Put the wet laundry out.

I’ve been laying the foundation for the lie that I am leaving on Monday, same as them. Our old friend Jan is in Fairlie, on a farm, although he got another (illegal) job in Australia and is leaving on the 30th. I’ve been talking to Tess about the “job” I have there, and how eccentric Jan is. I think it helps that the job doesn’t sound very good, so if for whatever reason they find out I’m at the estate again, they’ll just assume it’s because Jan’s a space cadet and the job was terrible.

There’s been a mushroom boom. Lots of mushrooms have popped up, some large enough they look like they could be used to club someone. Including some gem-red Amanita Muscaria, which is poisonous, but it looks so darn pretty!

I gathered up the fallen apples before Luigi could eat them. They are Golden Delicious, I confirmed with Simo. I grab two myself as I head back to my cabin in the afternoon. There’s something delightful about being able to casually grab an apple off a tree as you walk by, and snack on it.

No Gary tonight, so we have pasta again. Guests are staying for dinner, so we get dinner at 7.

Simo tells us a story about how she almost got detained in Russia. She was so odd for her generation. Because she was going to university in the UK, she was flying back to the UK on an Italian passport, and she was visiting south Africa, and Air Russia was the cheapest flight back but included a layover in Russia. This was still USSR, so the soldiers couldn’t understand why an Italian woman was flying from south Africa to England by herself and found it suspicious. We were in stitches from laughing at the end – of course, we can laugh now, but it was legitimately terrifying for her at the time.

She also tells us Dunedin is such a university town and is so prone to parties that she would have been scandalized if her kids had decided to go to school there. She tells us lots of stories from the news and says the geology students are particularly noteworthy for it, which makes me wonder about Bianca. Too late to ask!

I can’t sleep Wednesday night, for whatever reason. But then I don’t have to be up for the chickens, so it doesn’t really matter. I sleep in ’til 9, eat breakfast quickly and head up to the house.

She wants the cloakroom and front bathroom cleaned Thursday. So I take everything out, wipe it all down thoroughly with Pledge, including getting down on my hands and knees and wiping the floor. Too many nooks and crannies to be worth breaking out the mop. After lunch, I have to bottle jam and the first bottle is for me! It’s fresh yellow plum jam, sweet but with a little zing at the end, which I love.

I message Kelly about weekends. The two woofers here get every weekend off, but Kelly doesn’t always want to work every weekend, so I check with her before scheduling days off. Her oldest dog died over the Christmas break, 14 years old, and the middle one isn’t looking too hot either. She wants Sunday off, so we arrange it with Simo; I get Friday off, work Saturday and Sunday.

I ask Simo for my box of stuff. I’m 100% out of shampoo now. She freezes. “I thought you said to throw it out cuz it’s rubbish!”

“No, I said the mouse was rubbish.”

“Oh!”

Crap crap crap. I don’t want to be mad at Simo, but that’s annoying. I can’t fully remember what was in the box. I know the guideline is “if you can’t remember it, it probably wasn’t that important”, but shampoo isn’t “important” and I’d still like to have it.

Fortunately, cuz Simo doesn’t believe in throwing out anything that can be reused, most of it is still around. Gary has been using my shampoo. The body wash is missing, but I still have some. I panic about the Soroptimist cap when she mentions taking stuff to the second hand store, but it’s hanging by the door with Gary’s caps. My pants are upstairs in the painting closet. My beautiful pressed flowers are on her desk, too pretty to throw out.

Am I missing something else? Possibly. I think the only thing I’d be terribly upset about is the Soroptimist cap, because it is technically hard to replace; the ladies just ordered them, they’re not going to order more for a while.

Speaking of, I get some startling news at the end of my shift. One of the Soroptimists in Thunder Bay has a new cancer diagnosis. She’s stepping down from all her positions, effective immediately.

Two emotions register right away. The first is the urge to go back to and stay in Thunder Bay. Take over her positions and keep them running, build on them, build up the Soroptimists.

The second is pure jealousy. She’s stepping away from purely volunteer work, and desk positions at that, for a cancer that is very treatable. She has the ability to. Meanwhile, I limp along best I can, rolling with the punches. The memory of my parents telling me other people have it worse, so I should suck it up, is vivid.

I shake my head. As Rich would say, no one wins at the pain Olympics.

Do I stay in Thunder Bay to stop the Soroptimists from collapsing?

I go to Simo’s desk. “I need career advice.” I explain the situation to her. It’s likely that no one else can take over her position, or they would have already. Although it’s hard to say how things will shake out, as the email was just sent. At the end I add, “I just resent it getting in the way of me coming back to New Zealand.”

“Aha! That’s your answer, isn’t it?” Simo says.

What?

Oh.

She’s right.

I decide to go on a run. Turns out, the Zombies couch-to-5K trainer is only free ’til week 4. It costs 10$ a month, but then, I’ll be finished it within the month cuz I train every other day and not 3 times a week. Ten bucks is acceptable.

I think as I run. I guess I do want to stay here. Freudian slip for the win? I’m not sure when that switch flipped in my head, but Simo pointing it out has cast it in cement. I do want to come back more than I want to stay in Thunder Bay, for now. All of these working holiday visas are time-sensitive, they all evaporate once I turn 35, but Thunder Bay and scaffolding work will always be there.

I start playing Rimworld again with a vengance. I was so stressed out at the last place I couldn’t even relax to play video games!

Gary comes back for dinner. He argues with Simonetta about something she wants done tomorrow – it’s supposed to be sunny and he’s got hay to bale. In the middle of it, I say, “Make hay while the sun shines.”

Gary looks at me like I had 2 heads, before smiling. “Yeah! Make hay while the sun shines!”

Is that not a saying in New Zealand? Personally, I’m kinda chuffed to be able to say it with regards to actual hay-making. I prefer to stick up for Simo, but he’s right this time; it is time sensitive.

---

Yay, Friday, my day off! Not that it makes a difference, still up at the same time. Play Rimworld, write a bit, play a bit more. I need pictures of my shirt for the blog. I should have had someone take a picture of me at the rally, rookie mistake.

Well, I’m sure I can get Tess to.

I feel bad disrupting someone while they’re working, but they’re not really working, in the sense that it is time sensitive. I walk across the yard. Earl is still chained up in front of the house, but Luigi is nowhere to be seen, so they can’t be far.

I walk behind the house. They’re weeding where I cut back the primroses not even 2 months ago.

Tess is chatty and I get sucked in. It’s different from the bond I have with Simonetta, or the bikers. I get the feeling Tess is like me in a certain way; a polyamorous, pot-smoking hippie, the kind of person who would hang out with Winter. The kind of person I haven’t talked to in a while, even before I left for NZ.

Finally I have to ask, “I wanted some pictures of my new shirt with the bike, do you mind?”

She’s super excited, starts planning where the best light will be. I have to talk her down; I just want a picture of me in the shirt next to the bike. Actually, I wouldn’t mind a proper photoshoot, but I needed just a quick picture for the blog. I keep thinking I’ve spent so much time within driving distance of Christchurch, I should hit up some photographer groups. Especially if I come back again.

I head back to have lunch and go to my cabin.

At 2:30 she comes by for the pictures. She really wants to talk about the bike as well, but then I’ve noticed I have that affect on females. Just like I used to be, they are interested in bikes but too anxious to approach a male about them, so I’m the best thing!

“You told Gary you were at a motorcycle rally?”

“Oh yeah, tearing up Greymouth.” I say, throwing up the horns. Then I laugh. “Nah, it wasn’t that crazy. Bikers are brothers, pretty chill. There was a movie about it last year -“

“- Oh yeah, that chick from Killing Eve was in it -“

” – Jodie Comer.” We say at the same time.

Well, why not watch it here? Since I have the guest cabin, there’s a TV I can hook my tablet up to. I bet there’s some snacks around this place. “We could do movie night.” I offer.

She’s all for it. Movie night is set for Saturday night.

Dinner with everyone Friday night; Me, Tess and Simon, Gary and Simonetta, Ethan is back, and so is Alex, Simonetta’s middle child that she adopted from Russia. I’d know who it was even if they didn’t introduce him; Russian is a hard accent to shake. He is absolutely covered in tattoos, which makes me wonder at Simo commenting about how big my tattoos are. He’s been working on the house in Akaroa. His wife is also here, visiting from Auckland for the weekend. It’s a lot of people to fit around our tiny staff table!

Having the tableful of people feels good, though. After Gary retires early (still eating like a bird, I’m worried about him) us kids have the run of the place.

“I always wanted to go to Chicago.”

“Why?” Ethan asks, snorting out chunks of food.

Why. So many reasons. Chicago is where Route 66 starts. Chicago is where Divergent is set and I did like the first book. It’s also where Bikeriders is set. But also, I just tend to be drawn to dirty, gritty places, like Ross. Or Thunder Bay.

“It’s got a lot of history.” When Ethan rolls his eyes, I add, “It’s not like Detroit.”

“Some parts are!”

“I’m not gonna head right to Garfield Park or something!”

We keep talking for a long, long time, but I’m the one to leave the table first, which I hate because I’m enjoying the crowd, but dinner is always so late and I’m such an early riser.

It’s foggy Saturday morning, which is rare here. When I go to let the dogs out, I discover there is a giant pile of firewood in front of the woodshed. Must have been why there was a tractor here the other day. Still, why isn’t it in the woodshed?

Kelly is here the next morning. We go upstairs to turn over a couple of rooms and she starts dishing immediately. It’s not just that Simo wanted me back, she’s also starting to get frustrated with these two; they blew out the seal on one of the ovens and it’ll cost her a bit to fix, cuz she had the oven shipped over from England. But it is also that she missed me – Kelly thinks she told a woofer not to come at all so I could be here. Aww! It’s lovely to be missed. Beyond that, to be irreplacable.

When I mentioned that I’d like to be out by March 3rd to make things easy for Simo but I’m not sure where I’d go, she offers me her spare room. Which is nice of her, but I think that would just be a back-up option. I’d probably end up taking care of her two big aggressive dogs, which I am terrified of, and probably some free carpentry work as well – she keeps talking about how she wants to reno her bathroom.

I mention to Simo that we are doing movie night. She laughs at the idea, but offers me some chips a guest left behind as snacks, “burger flavour”. She says she doesn’t understand the “American” idea of eating while watching a movie.

Dinner is early that night; she has a bunch of guests for dinner and so she wants us to eat and get out quickly.

After dinner, Tess grabs a backpack – backpack? – and we head down to my cabin. Boy does she have a haul! Chocolate bars, biscuits, and a bottle of Jack Daniels. We hardly needed the chips, although she likes them. I teach her how to use tea as mix, yes I mix whisky into my tea and no you can’t stop me.

Movie night is a lot of fun. We giggle, talk over the movie, take pictures. Whenever something startling happens in the movie, she gasps and grabs my arm for support.

Watching Bikeriders was a mistake. I thought I knew what pain was from the Vagabond breaking things off when I went back to Barrie, but that was a baby break-up compared to August. Every time Benny threatens to abandon Kathy, it’s a white hot cut to my heart.

After the movie ends, I get up and move to sit at the table. In theory just to shut off the player, but in practice so I can give myself physical space for my emotions.

“Wow, I can’t believe that!” She says, “Could you imagine being in a relationship like that? It can’t be real.”

Don’t say anything.

Let her leave.

Cutitoutcutitoutcutitout

“It’s pretty real. I was in a relationship like that.”

Too late now.

She gives me opportunities to back out, but she clearly wants to listen and I can’t resist the urge to get it all out.

“Do you think you’ll try to get back together with him?”

I feel like every time I’m at peace, something reignites the feeling.

“I can’t come back to New Zealand and be dating him at the same time. He won’t…” I shrug, “He just won’t be ok with it. It’s one or the other. And I do the same to Simonetta, coming and going.”

“She really missed you.”

I freeze. Tess jumped right into it, like she was waiting for the moment to say it.

“She’s so much more affable with you. She talks highly about you. And Gary missed you too. Ethan…” We both laugh. Ethan is his own thing. “She gives you twice the work she gives the rest of us, but you’re totally on top of it.”

“When…” I look down at my hands, “When I left the first time, I cried cuz I missed Simonetta.”

When I look back up, Tess nods, like this makes total sense. And there’s the parts she doesn’t know. That Simo lied to get her to leave early for me, and that Simo told some other woofer not to come because of me.

Tess offers some examples from her relationships. I smile, cuz we’re already through the looking glass. “You’ve had too many exs.” Cuz she’s been dating Simon for 4 years, and she’s only 25.

She blushes. “I’m polyamorous.”

So some were overlapping. And bi, cuz she mentioned a girlfriend. It’s a good thing she’s leaving in 2 days, before we really confuse poor Simo.

“I thought I was poly. The biker guy didn’t want to be, and I was ok with that. I’m not really sure what that makes me. People online just say that you can’t switch from poly to monogamous.” And I have few people to talk about that with.

We talk about it. She points out that I’ve never really been into the poly scene in the sense of actively pursuing more than one partner at once. I don’t get the itch to have multiple partners, I just never understood monogamy. Also, it’s not like me and the Vagabond were at risk of being monogamous for 40 years or something. It was an easy compromise to make.

It’s past 10:30. We should cut this out now, before it is way too late at night. We both have work tomorrow.

I’m sad she’s leaving Monday.

“Don’t let this keep you up ’til midnight.” She says, as she hikes her backpack full of snacks onto her shoulder.

“I’ll try.” I say. Which is true, I’ll try. I won’t succeed, but I’ll try.