Early this afternoon Jeanette and I popped down to Waikanae Beach for a change. ‘Pop’ is a universal New Zealand word, which may be used whenever you think it fitting, it would appear. You pop a letter in the post, you post your application over the counter, you pop into the library to pop you overdue back.
You can pop an idea, you can pop a question, you can pop popcorn down your throat. Just pop away, whenever you please. Perhaps I caught pop-alarm and have over-emphasised the use of the word. Perhaps not.
Anyway, we popped down to the beach, by driving down, parking at the beach general parking, and sitting on the bench atop the dunes, and watching the various users on the beach.
Being the last weekday of the school holiday, a number of the groups contained children, making the most of the last sunshine of their holiday before Monday rears its ugly classroom face. The tide was out low, leaving a very wide stretch of firm sand for the beach-goers. There were a few couples dotted here and there, the odd line fisherman or two, and one or two individuals, one walking a small terrier-type dog.
To our left sat a couple some yards away, in their late sixties, I would guess. Looked very much like Janet and John, as far as I could tell.
Then another car arrived, and out popped three old ladies, also in their late sixties, possibly early seventies, who knows? They strode up the incline, and greeted Janet and John. I think. The group of five then set off towards the beach.
And so it came about that this quintet, Janet and John arm-in-arm and two of the additional trio supporting each other, handbags swinging in the breeze, started doddering northwards, as if searching for lost coins or ill-placed doggy poo. They doddered left and then corrected course by doddering slightly to the right. They did not speed up, nor did they slow down, they simply doddered.
Did you know that Dodder is also a leafless parasitic plant, which cannot survive on its own? Cuscuta gronovii, having dense clusters of small, white, bell-shaped flowers on orange-yellow stems that twine about clover or flax? Well, it’s true.
Some time later, we got up and followed the dodderers on the northern side of the beach. We stopped occasionally, looking at the various shapes, colours and textures of driftwood, which is fairly common along this stretch of the coast. We veered a bit left to look at a huge tree trunk brought in recently by the stormy sea, and then we veered a bit to the right, as a course correction. We did not speed up, nor did we slow down, we simply strolled along at a comfortable pace.
We did not catch up with the quintet of late-sixty dodderers. We are strollers, not dodderers, correct?
Why the silence? We’re not dodderers… I think.
