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I went to New Zealand in November for a month, but it didn’t turn out quite according to plan, as I spent the second week in Queenstown Hospital, newly diagnosed with diabetes. After a week of watching me fall asleep all over the place, my friends ganged up with the guide, and I found myself going first in a taxi to the local medical centre, then in an ambulance to the hospital.
In the circumstances I was incredibly lucky. The next day we would have been out in the wilds of Fiordland, scenic and spectacular but less accessible than the urban civilisation of Queenstown; I might have needed a helicopter rather than an ambulance. The hospital was quite luxurious. I had a single room, and I could sit in the rose garden, walk by the lake, or watch the sun set over the Remarkables, the mountain range so called because it runs directly north to south. I was visited by an excellent Diabetic Nurse, who taught me how to check my blood sugar level and inject insulin. She arranged for a dietician to come and see me, which was reassuring, as she said I was eating the right food and the right amount, though I should spread it out over the day instead of generally just having breakfast and an evening meal. I was also visited by a local octogenarian lady, who had been diagnosed with diabetes when she was in her sixties and told me how she had learned to cope; we both had Type One diabetes, which generally attacks teenagers rather than pensioners. When I rejoined the group I found that one couple were a retired doctor and nurse who had run a diabetic clinic; they gave me more help and advice. I am still not very good at getting blood out of my fingers, but injecting insulin is much easier than I expected; I even coped with three in-flight injections, assisted by a charming Singapore Airline stewardess, who hovered beside me and protected me from anyone who might push past and jog my elbow while I was wielding the needle.
I seem to have spent the first day or two in hospital sleeping while being rehydrated. Later in the week people kept saying how nice it was to see me up and about and how they had seen me earlier when I was asleep. Everyone was kind and friendly. There was an old fashioned cleaning lady, the type who sweeps right under the bed. She told me proudly that she was ‘all Maori’; her husband had gone there from Spalding thirty four years before; she once won some money and paid for him to go back for a holiday, but he hadn’t stayed the full time; he missed his New Zealand family. One of the nurses was gradually travelling round the world, working in New Zealand while she saved up to go to Asia. She saw a sticker on my suitcase saying ‘I crossed Lake Titicaca by hydrofoil’, and we compared our experiences of South America: her main hazard was that a security stop kept being put on her credit card, whereas twenty years ago we were more concerned with the terrorist threats of the Shining Path.
I had enjoyed an unexpected highlight of the tour before we reached New Zealand. We spent two days in Singapore and visited Sentosa and Fort Siloso, where there is a reconstruction of the Surrender Chambers, with life-size waxwork models. I can remember the Japanese surrender in August 1945 (we wrote ‘VJ Hooray’ all over the pavements in coloured chalk), but the British surrender in the winter of 1942-43 is familiar only from films like Piccadilly Incident. I didn’t last out our whole tour of Singapore. In the botanical gardens I gave out before we got to the orchids; our guide found me a seat in the shade and brought me a bottle of water. However, I recovered in time to go to Raffles and drink Singapore Slings.
In hospital I was afraid at first that they might fly me home from Queenstown, but the doctor decided that I could cope with the North Island. The group had travelled round South Island back to Christchurch, and I flew there to join them. This was my first personal experience of the luxury of airport assistance, although I had accompanied friends and shared their buggies or jogged along after their wheelchairs. It is delightful to be wheeled around, to bypass the queues and board the plane first.
I didn’t really feel well enough to do justice to most places in North Island. Normally I am a compulsive note-taker, but I was content to let everything wash over me. In Wellington I enjoyed going round by coach and seeing impressive public buildings and luxurious private houses. I could cope with only one floor of Te Papa Tongarewa, the Museum of New Zealand, but I enjoyed sitting in the Lady Norwood rose garden, listening to a jazz trio play 1930’s hits. Napier was much more manageable; we had only one night there, and I would have liked a longer stay. A local resident took us on a walking tour, told us all about the earthquake of 1931, and showed us some of the old houses which had survived and the new art deco buildings which sprang up within the next two or three years. In Rotorua we went to the Agrodome where we saw a display by trained sheep and working sheep dogs. The sheep jumped up onto stands with the names of their breeds; one sheep (probably carefully trained) went to the wrong name. ‘That sheep’s Australian,’ said the presenter. ‘It can’t read.’ There was also a tempting shop; I bought two new hats. Further north we passed through Auckland, then went on to Cape Reinga, where the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean collide. We drove along the Ninety Mile Beach, where an occasional steering wheel sticking up through the sand provides evidence of quicksands.
New Zealand is still full of memories of the Maoris. There will be more about the Maori culture and religion in the March NewsLetter.
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