Kevin Page: Plan to play golf to escape the rain doesn’t quite work out

A plan to escape the rain with a few rounds of golf didn’t go according to plan for columnist Kevin Page.

About a hundred years ago, as a cadet reporter for a newspaper on the West Coast, I wrote a story about the rain.

It seems appropriate — with everything within a 5km radius of where I am right now, from a piece of paper to the old wool jersey I left outside on the garden bench, completely sodden — that I should write thus again.

Obviously, in the intervening years since I was a fresh-faced (yet devilishly handsome) young scribe, I have put pen to paper (or finger to typewriter/computer key as the case may be) regarding other stories about the weather. I mention this particular tale because it related to rain that appeared to be falling continuously. A bit like what we’re experiencing at the moment.

So, there I was all those years ago back on the West Coast where “the weather” was my round. I inherited it from a colleague who messed up the rainfall calculations one month to the dismay of the editor who penned one of the all-time great corrections and solemnly advised the readership: “The weather is now under new management.” Think about it.

Anyway. Doing “the weather” consisted most mornings of answering a phone call from the aerodrome where a gruff-voiced individual would immediately begin delivering numbers the millisecond you picked up the phone.

There was no “hello” or identification of who was calling. No sharing of pleasantries. Just a series of numbers that were to be transferred to a ready-printed sheet for printing in the paper. The total amount of rainfall for the previous 24 hours was the first number called out.

Now, as you are probably aware, it rains a bit on the West Coast. A lot in fact.

Coasters don’t tend to dwell on it. It is what it is. You just get on with it. Nothing stops. Why should it. I distinctly recall literally swimming in full football gear to a field, which by then was an elevated island just so we could play a game. The visitors from Christchurch somehow found a small rowboat to transfer them the required 20 yards – and then got completely saturated during the game anyway.

I always figured that was kind of amusing.

But I digress.

So, I’ve got hold of the rainfall figures for this day, do a bit of back checking and realise we’ve had six wet weekends in a row. Being super-keen and eager to impress, I bash out a story to that effect and rush it to the editor.

It goes down well and features prominently in the edition of that day.

Later he congratulates me and tells me I’ll have to update it and write a new story each weekend after that. And so I did.

The exact number escapes me if I’m honest, I was a bit of a rainfall zombie by then, but something like 23 weekends later we got our first no-rain-recorded weekend.

I should just clarify rain recorded on some weekends could have been a thimbleful at 2am on an otherwise sunny Sunday. I’m sure that happened once or twice during that period, but in the editor’s mind it still qualified as a “wet weekend” and so it went on.

It was a popular ongoing story I recall. Like Most Wet Weekends In A Row was some strange victory to proudly savour.

It didn’t feature in any volume of the Guinness Book of Records as far as I’m aware but it was certainly a conversation starter and classic small-town newspaper fodder.

Just an aside here, the paper also used to run a column each day saying who had left town and who had arrived on the railcar from Christchurch each day. “Mrs Smith from Marsden Rd has gone to visit her sister for a week”, that sort of thing.

It lasted for many years until some scurrilous individuals worked out they could go burgle the Mrs Smiths of the town and indeed take their time about it because the paper said she would be out of town for a week. How times have changed.

But back to the rain.

Just a week ago I thought I’d struck gold with the opportunity to give the rain we’ve been having a miss for a while and head to Napier for five days of golf and, er, relaxation with the lads.

Sadly, the rain followed us and by day three everything was a bit damp as we battled away, purposely hitting into trees so we could find shelter. Well, that’s my excuse anyway.

Luckily, day four saw golf for the day abandoned as we tucked into an early-morning breakfast at our hotel. This would provide us with an opportunity to relax, dry everything out and be ready to get back on the horse again the next day.

To celebrate I recall ordering a round of cocktails for a couple of similarly damp individuals and we laughed and reminisced about previous golf trips for a couple of hours as the rain continued to belt down outside.

It is fair to say a few more cocktails were consumed during the day and into that evening. I can’t quite remember. Nobody was outrageously worse for wear but as fun, sit round and catch-ups go it was a doozy.

Next day, with wet socks from surface water sloshing round my feet the entire time, I posted my worst score in over 25 years of playing the game. Enough said.

Later, in the clubrooms, one of the lads offered me a consolatory whisky.

“Do you want water with that?” he inquired.

I didn’t.

Like everyone else I’m sure, I figured I’d seen more than enough lately thank you