Lost and Found

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Before Nic and Garath left, Gareth drew us an awesome map of New Zealand, with all the places we should visit marked clearly on it, along with descriptions of the areas and what things there are to do there. It was pretty comprehensive. In fact it is so comprehensive that we have decided it is the only map we are going to take on our 4 week camping jaunt around the North and South Islands. As there are no roads marked on Gareth’s map, we are allowed to use sign posts, the compass on my watch that is now Mal’s,and also to ask directions locally to specific attractions or addresses. That is all. No other maps.
Having rejected Mal’s suggestion that I get the map tattooed on my back, we decided instead to guard it with our lives for the next 9 weeks until we are safely ensconsed in NZ.
Had it not been for my butter fingers during a game of scrabble last night, there’s a good chance that we would have spent the day we leave here searching high and low for our precious map, with no success. Where I found it, we never would have looked.
It was halfway through an arduous game of scrabble - during which Mal had already got his letters out, so I was facing an uphill battle - that the blank that was in my hand, slipped from my grasp, onto the floor and then between the stats in the decking to the ground below.
The wooden bungalow that is our current home is raised about 5 foot off the ground, underneath is a thick covering of sand into which all the grey water from the shower and sink drains. It is into this abyss that the scrabble tile fell. Bearing in mind these are travel scrabble tiles - about half a centimetre square, I thought Mal was joking when he chivalrously said I could wait until morning until going to and look for it.
But he wasn’t joking. Crawling between the plants that flag the pathways between bungalows, I squeezed under the floor of our balcony and began looking for the proverbial needle in the wet, smelly, sandy haystack. There was no chance I was going to find it, but I did spy a blank piece of A4 paper. Thinking the other side might contain some of our complicated calculations of the various flight prices and route variations to get to Borneo, I retrieved the piece of paper, which felt and looked like it had got wet and then dry again, to discover it was in fact the hallowed map.
Conceding that the scrabble tile had been sacrificed for the greater good, I climbed back onto the balcony clutching the prized document tightly. Never again will I let it out of my sight. It was at this point that Mal and his 20/20 vision took my place under the bungalow - returning just a few seconds later with the lost scrabble piece between his thumb and forefinger.

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