All Summer Long

We’ve been living in a volcano. The plane that brought us here was a thin, protracted tomb carried on the wings of a gnat, courtesy of Air New Zealand. All was going swimmingly until the crew offered us a complimentary sweet, which may or may not have altered our disposition when the lights went down and the grim reaper behind us, herself entombed in merino mink blankets, enunciated with absolute dread the words “oh” and “no”. We were dragged halfway across the sky and transported back to Universal Studios for a breakneck landing through the notorious winds of the North Island, which we’re now flying through without wings, and she’s hiccuping like Cyndi Lauper every time we drop several thousand feet; the baby in front of us, who earlier played peekaboo with his hands, he’s nowhere to be seen. And after the blue-rinsed demon delivers our last rites, we emerge from the cloud in glacial silence, and land softly in the centre of a caldera.

Next time, you’ll hear about the astringent smell of egg throughout Rotorua, a geyser (erupted artificially by the tourism sector) and our subterranean excursions in volcanic sludge.