about the one where Amy gets lost, stuck in mud and loses $5...

With my flip flops lost somewhere in the ever deepening mud and cow poo, absolutely no clue as to my whereabouts, I suddenly had the notion that perhaps I was incapable of avoiding disaster when out on my own...

After a morning of job applications and CV pruning (yes I like to think of it in gardening terms!) I was feeling increasingly inclined to get outdoors and enjoy the sunshine. However every time I tried to leave the house,an enormous rain cloud would drop its load over head and I would have to put off my constitutional a little longer. Eventually though I took my chances and wondered off down the road, intent on catching up on some reading.

I headed towards Totura park and the hill walk at the back. As I reached the bench that looks out over the fields and park land, the rain arrived once more and I was soaked. Sheltering under a tree with no leaves didn’t really help. The shower didn’t last long and soon I was sitting on the soggy bench trying hard to focus my attention on the book in front of me. This was a pretty pointless exercise however when all I really wanted to do was sit and have a really good think. I hadn’t done any ‘thinking’ for a while but now, with Ollie work and no one to disturb me I could enjoy some proper thinking. After an hour I felt like walking again but this time I took the path up into the wood. Wondering along through the bushes and plant life I pretended I was in a jungle. But I was missing my machete for cutting branches. 

Half way round the ‘bush trail’ I noticed a small track leading off to the left. My curiosity always at a high I couldn’t help walking ‘off track’ and seeing where this less ‘beaten’ route might take me. After a few minutes I found myself in a huge field, the clouds gone and the sun beating down. Nice! The long green grass and ‘openness’ reminded me so much of home and the countryside I grew up in. It was like I was seventeen again and taking a walk to escape some revision or go over events from a pub gathering the night before. Today though my mind was more on where I would be in five years time and if I would still be stuck in the pigeon hole of work that is ‘hospitality’. Oh dear lemons I hope not!

Anyway, about ten minutes into my field adventure I saw, just in the corner of my left eye, a small heard of cattle, and they looked like bulls! Having always suffered a terrible fear of cows, ever since my dear mother left me behind when she ran to get away from a stampede, my attention turned immediately to finding an exit. All I could see was field and a large fence in the distance marking out the back of the park woods. At a slightly hastened pace I marched off at a diagonal hoping with all my fingers and toes crossed that New Zealand had such a thing as a ‘stile’. And indeed they do! I happened upon the largest stile I have ever seen! And I was about to hop over it too when all of a sudden I felt this squelchy liquid speeding through my toes. I looked down and to my horror I couldn’t see my feet. They had disappeared. Down into a large patch of stinky mud and cow poo! I had forgotten a golden rule of field walking...‘where there is a stile, there is always a huge mud pool surrounding it’.

Trying my best not to panic whilst having flash backs to my younger years of being banned from the mud when I was ten and then almost sinking to my death in a mud pit at a WW! exhibit in Belgium a few years later, I tried to step onto the wooden planks just in front. I pulled hard with my feet but they wouldn’t budge. When they did...they were both flip flopless. Determined not to loose the only footwear I have worn since I got here and knowing Ollie would be furious if I had to replace them, my feet returned to the quagmire for another attempt at releasing the shoes. I absolutely refused to put my hand in so all I could do was a kind of lunging tug that looked as if I was walking on the moon. WIth one flip flop safely back between my toes and on the stile I continued to pries the other out. Finally and with a great sucking gulp sound I saw my left foot for the first time in two minutes. I would have kissed it if it hadn’t have been covered in the thick brown gloop. 

Free of the mud I now had another challenge to face. Walking in flip flops is nearly impossible with slippery feet let alone ones with clumps of mud and slime all over them. As I staggered down through the wood looking as if I had defecated in my shorts I suddenly realised how much people would stare if they saw me. I HAD to find the small stream and wash myself clean. Not only could I not see my feet but the mud was splattered all up the rest of legs and as I guessed correctly, on my back and neck too. As the first couple approached me I panicked. I’m not usually one to get embarrassed but I did look so dreadful and really wasn’t in the mood to answer anyone’s bemused questions. Wading into a bush I bent down and covered my feet with dead leaves. Then, I knelt down and pretended to be examining some sort of invisible wildlife on a tree stump. ‘Hi there,’ the two women sang as I used my pretend magnifying glass to get a better look. ‘Hi’ I croaked, looking up them like a lost troll creature. Feeling utterly foolish I continued my decent looking desperately for the ruddy stream.

I was stopped short by a steep set of steps leading downwards. After stepping down the first one I realised I now had a serious problem. My feet, now also littered with bits of leaf, were still so sloppy that if I tried to take a step downwards, when I placed one flip flop below and put pressure on it, my whole foot would slide super fast into the toe hold and I would jerk forwards. I had never had the thought ‘I could fall and brake my neck’ before but I was certainly having it now! After a couple more steps I almost gave up and sat down. Not only did I look like ‘Bambi on ice’ but I was now in quite a dangerous position. I didn’t want to completely degrade myself but I could see no other option than to sit down and bum shuffle! Luckily my senses came to me just in time and i agreed with myself to just take each step slowly and tentatively. During this time I also constantly swore at the huge chunk of a book that in holding was putting me entirely off balance. 

Ten minutes later I was at the bottom. And even better than that, i had found a break in the stream where I could wash. Holding on to a branch, I dipped each foot into the cool water and got my hand down there to help too! It took a while to find the actual colour of my feet and flip flops but eventually they looked sort of back to normal. Now any sensible person would have been grateful not to have a broken leg or neck at this point and would have headed home. But not me. Not Amy. I quite fancied hopping over to the other side of the rocks and sitting on a sunny tree stump I could just make out through the trees. In order to get to such a place I first needed to cross a slightly wider stretch of rocks and water. I had to be careful not to get swept along and down the sharp drop to my right but I figured the place I had chosen was pretty flat and besides, I used to do this all the time at Barleston Downs! 

Strutting out with my right foot I started to make the crossing. No sooner had I done this, I immediately regretted my decision. The rocks were as slippy as hell! Instead of my right leg staying where I had put it, it suddenly launched off at an angle and I was left doing the splits and flailing my long arms to try and regain balance. My book went crashing into weeds and gunk as I tried hard to get my lost leg back. Finally after some pro shuffling and muttering to myself I was back on safe ground. It was then I decided to have another go. But as the same thing happened, only this time with both legs sliding, I agreed to listen to Mum in my head. She was calmly yet with obvious hidden hints of panic saying ‘Now Amy darling, I don’t think that’s a good idea’. 

Now to be fair I had had Oliver’s voice in my head saying ‘Come on Ame don’t be daft you’ll only slip over’ ever since I had had the plan to cross the stream in the first place. Mum and him are the two main voices of advice in my head and I often take their words, but I always chose to listen to the one that lets me get furthest into my idea first! You might be wondering why my Dad isn’t one of the voices? That would be because he’d be ahead of me, probably trying the same thing and getting told off too!

It was about time I was heading home so I found my way back onto the bush trail and soon I was back in the centre of Totura Park. I was just on my way back up the hill and home when I remembered the $5 I had put in my back pocket for some Malteasers. Feeling around and finding nothing, I realised, I had lost the note. Of course I had, I’m Amy, this is what happens to me. Angry at myself and refusing to accept I’d lost not only the money but also my chocolate fix, I turned around. I decided that the note must have wriggled out while I was sitting on the bench earlier so I walked as fast as I could back up the track and the big hill. Not surprisingly really the $5 was nowhere to be seen. I doubt anyone had taken it, more likely it had been caught in the wind and flown off to get eaten by a chicken on someone's farm. 

By the time I got back to the house I was tired, annoyed, very hot and very smelly. I walked into the garage. Charlotte sniffed ‘What’s that smell?!’ and then laughed as she caught site of my muddy frame. And i did stink. Getting undressed for the shower, clods of dirt fell off me and the bathroom filled with that farm yard smell. When Ollie got home I told him what had happened. He laughed, but he wasn’t surprised...

11/01/12