THE PEOPLE YOU MEET

Part of the fun of wandering around in small New Zealand towns is meeting with interesting characters. In a McDonalds restaurant I got into conversation with a senior local lady and her "pommy" husband who came out in the 60s from London and had not taken out NZ citizenship. Talk about Christchurch led to the revelation they were born again Christians and anticipating the inevitable invitation to come to Christ, I thought I would divert them by joking that the large number of churches destroyed and damaged(mainly because they were old 19th century buildings) might suggest that the devil was getting back at the building zeal of the original settlers.To my surprise they agreed and said that Christianity was not about churches-clearly a very evangelical duo and it required some skill in efecting a polite withdrawal when the lady gave me a pamphlet from her hand bag. They had a son somewher in Melbourne so I left them puzzled and wondering why I hoped he didn't live in St Kilda.
The other notable encounter was was with a former horse trader and now real estate agent in Cambridge. He had just popped into the pub on his way home from a meeting about mortgage interest rates. I discovered he had lived in and loved Adelaide when Donny Dunstan was in power and made friends with Australian Northern Territory cattle station owners ( some of whose properties were as big as European countries) They kept him drinking for two days such that he had to cancel all his other sales appointments. When he pointed this out to them and that he had lost busines, they said we just wanted to get to know you Alastair and as we like you, just buy the right kind of horses for us and send them up to us!!!
Then we got to rugby as it used to be played in amateur days and we discussed the great stars of the UK and NZ when I was at university. We agreed that one of the greatest games ever was NZ vThe Barbarians(invited players from all European national sides) at Twickenham. I was commenting on the side stepping skills of Welsh great(Phil Bennet) when my companion said "Guess who the mug was who was bamboozled by this move? It was me and the rest of the team never let me forget it!" Yes-he was a former ALL Black((no wonder the pub patrons were looking at us intently) who played in one of their great all conquering teams.After this revelation the conversation was fascinating with lots of inside information about what went on, on and off the field in those days. He is still very involved in International sport as two of his daughters represent NZ at Olympic level in rowing and cycling and his son in law is an America's cup sailor. He told me that Cambridge was expanding based on sport-they won a competition to build a new cycling velodrome-but against the strenuous ogjections of older, nimby Poms-who had come there along time ago, made big money out of NZ and put little back into the community and for the future of local youth. Good time to shake and leave.
Interesting the people you meet.