I have virtually no photos from Auckland but I have come away with my heart absolutely full.

Janis

This trip has been talked about since my last trip to New Zealand (Christmas 2009). My friend Janis wanted to do some of the walks in New Zealand and she wanted someone to do them with her. We have been friends for over twenty years. Janis’ husband, John, my husband, Philip, and I all worked in the same law firm in London in the late 80s and early 90s. I stopped work and was pregnant with Sophie and Katie at the same time as Janis was pregnant with Portia. Janis has an older daughter Dell. Two other local friends who had older children and were also now pregnant, one, like me, with twins. I hadn’t really known Janis, other than as the lovely woman with the beautiful little girl who would come into the office to pick John up. Janis, being a sociable, arranged for us to all to meet over drinks in their home. We had our children, all girls, and over time they all went to the same schools and the four of us still live within a half mile of each other (that is when Janis is not in New Zealand). For twenty plus years Janis has been my closest friend. I now live at the opposite end of her street. When the girls were babies I could ring her up, at the end of my tether, and she would just say: “You had better come round then”. We have been there for each other in good times and bad. We have learned to value and appreciate our differences and to share our enthusiasms. Unless one of us is away, we do not go a week without seeing each other, and rarely more than two days without some form of communication.

I have now been travelling with Janis in New Zealand for over three weeks. It has been pretty seamless, she takes me into antique shops, I make her sit on beaches and take photos of me for my blog or facebook etc… I haven’t travelled on my own with a friend since I was 21 and that was only a week to Turkey. I didn’t really have misgivings but when I expressed a little hesitation my daughter Sophie said: “Anna [her best friend] and I travelled together for 3 weeks – it will be fine, and lovely.” It has been, and we now have a week of island time to look forward to together before going our separate ways.

Fur Seals

On Saturday morning I got up before the crack of dawn to go to a beach to swim with some people I had never met and who weren’t even facebook friends. One of the Auckland Fur Seals, Roger Soulsby, is a facebook friend. I now cannot remember whether it was a shared friendship with Dan Abel or a liked post on “Did you swim today” that led us to become friends. It doesn’t matter. We both enjoy open water swimming. I particularly enjoy cold water swimming and his group are called the Fur Seals – that’s all I need these days to consider someone a friend. As I planned my New Zealand trip, and tried to meet up with swimmy people it became obviously that although I could do lots of swimming by myself my timings were a bit off. Auckland though, that worked, an 8.30 am, meet up at the toilet block and St Helier’s Bay (with cold showers which Roger describes as “Council Hilton”). (My adult children often remind me of the dangers of meeting people from the internet but I’ve been ok so far). Sadly, at the last minute it turned out the Roger was swimming early because he was on lifeguard duty. I went along anyway, introduced myself and set of with the only other, at that stage. skins swimmer. “We go to the buoy and then to the white stick and back, it’s about 2 km”. Ok. I’ve been in New Zealand for three weeks. Before I left the UK the water temperatures had crept up to 7 and I was managing 200m. I’ve had a couple of longish swims in NZ but I am a pootle swimmer. I forget that I am trying to get somewhere (often I’m not it is just about whether I have kept energy to get back to where I started from). Off we go. I sight the buoy for a bit and then eventually I just sight the tow float in front of me. We stop at the buoy for a chat (and I get to meet Roger as he is coming back in from his early swim). We do the right angle turn and head towards the white stick. It does that thing that objects seem to do in the water of appearing further and further away. I start telling myself that I could just turn back. And telling myself that if I put a bit of welly in my legs and a bit of commitment in my pulls I will actually get there faster. So I persevere. And when I get to the stick everyone is there, waiting for me and it is announced that I am a Fur Seal because I have swum to the white stick. I suspect that if I had been told that before I set off I might not have had to contend with the nay-sayer trying to persuade me to turn back but I was totally chuffed. The others went on for a longer swim and I headed back to shore, with one of the newer members, again sighting on a tow float, past paddle boarders and past a couple of swimming lessons, with the instructor in his wetsuit demonstrating the stroke. Chit, chat as we changed, sharing ideas for places to swim in New Zealand (next time) and the UK. The transition from internet to in person friendships safely navigated, as it always seems to be in the outdoor swimming community.

Sean and Maddie

The way this trip panned out there was no room for a visit to Australia where Maddie, the first of my “adopted” daughters, and her father Sean live. (As well as my newer friends Deborah, but I had seen her last year, and the gang from the Croatia Swim Trek Trip, Jeanette, Duncan, Yasmin and Ian). I knew it wasn’t going to happen so I didn’t even think about it.

After I had been in New Zealand a week I had a missed called from Sean. So I call him back. “Maddie and I are thinking of coming to New Zealand to see you. Do you have a week-end free?”. We talk for half an hour, effortlessly (I haven’t seen or spoken with Sean since the 2009 trip to NZ). Sean suggests that the friendships that you know are there, that can be picked up wherever you have got to in your lives, need to be re-stoaked a little more often that once every seven or eight years. The phone call suggests that he may be wrong, but I wonder. I go back to my itinerary and then message Sean and Maddie. I have a Friday night and Saturday in Auckland. And before I know it they have flights and accommodation booked. We meet at the Northern Club where Janis and I are staying and have a lovely dinner, five of us including Janis and Maddie’s boyfriend Damian. It was the easy kind of meal that you have with friends you see regularly. None of the compulsion to catch up on the minutiae of the last eight years. After my Fur Seals swim on Saturday we meet at La Cigalle, French market and bistro in Parnell. We share a leisurely breakfast and then start to amble towards Newmarket for some shopping. Sean ditches us along the way to get a much need massage. For me that was the moment when I knew the friendship was solid. Our time together was precious but it wasn’t so precious that it needed to be every minute of every hour. Eventually we all settled in a café in Newmarket. Janis, Maddie and Damian dropped back and forth and Sean and I moved from lunch to coffee to beer and wine. Our conversations roamed from personal life events to politics and current affairs, to plans and projects, and back round the circle again. Moments of quiet reflection were interwoven between intense conversations. We ordered dinner, we talked some more. Maddie and Damian headed back to his sister’s where they were staying and Sean and I finally took pity on the café staff and walked back to the Club. A walk that should have taken 45 minutes stretched to beyond an hour as at times we had to stop walking to keep talking. (One charming moment we were talking quite intensely and a man got into his car and didn’t drive off. I could tell that he was making sure that this “argument” as it had seemed to him was ok. We walked on again and he drove off behind us).

This morning Janis and I picked Sean up from his hotel and shared a taxi to the airport. We said goodbye for the final time airside as Janis and I headed off to board our plane. I don’t know how often a friendship needs to be topped up but I know that my friendships with Sean and with Maddie are good to last many more years of being on opposite sides of the world.

So that is why I leave Auckland with few photos but a full heart.

(featured image is dawn, as I made my way to join the Fur Seals swim)