We're older than we should be

Went to dinner the other Friday night with old friends.  Two old friends and their respective marriage partners.  

The Young Nethertons

The 3 originals - moi, Linda (in middle), Dene (back right)
David (at back left) married to Linda & Nicki (the 'young' one in front right) married to Dene

I refer to 'old' as in terms of the length of our friendship as it is a friendship that began many decades ago.  Because of the length of the friendship I guess one has to be honest and admit that due to the number of annual celebrations each has had it means that they too are personally 'old'.

The resultant outcome meaning, I too must be 'old'.

That boring, rote phrase comes to mind, 'But we don't feel old'.  We don't.  And we're not.  I doubt you would get any of the three, or their partners, to openly consider themselves 'old'.

It's a different time nowadays - where age is meaningless, our age is ageless.

Reflecting back on our own parents in our childhoods am sure we all would agree that they were indeed, very old.  They did old things.  Like gardening, knitting, baking, sitting in the lounge chair reading a book.  Yes, our dads still went to work and our mums cleaned house all day, that was the norm for any parents in our neighbourhood in that era.  But our parents and the neighbouring parents were all old.  They dressed old, the things they didn't do, or did do, their seemingly mundane everyday living meant they were 'old'.

For those of us gathered at the restaurant table on Friday night there could be no comparison between the parents of our childhood times and ourselves; us parents of grown up children, us whose children now have their own children.  We're not old.  We are that Peter Pan generation that is unique, the never to be repeated again generation.

One of our group has just recently given up playing regular golf and has turned her attention more to her hobbies of serious artistic painting and regular yoga, and in summer is swimming in the local estuary waters at her seaside home. 

The other in the group is still working full time, enjoying his relatively new interest of riding his bike around the suburban cycle ways of Auckland, walks the dog and enjoys his passion for photography and wandering the aisles of the Mega Mitre 10s or the like.

And me, myself, still miraculously managing to churn out a run most mornings, be they at now ridiculously slow rates of knots per kilometre and shortened to thirty or forty minute stints.  I'm still enjoying lifting weights at a gym, be it at spasmodic  intervals, tramping on Mondays with new found tramping friends, sometimes dust cobwebs off an old bike and pedal it somewhere, maybe attend a weekly indoor spin classes, ducking (literally) into the local swimming pool to churn out a kilometre of freestyle, travel constantly from one place to another to keep up social and personal commitments and seem to have an inability to sit still when at home as somehow march out over 20,000 steps in a day just by 'doing things'.

Would our parents, the parents of the 50's and 60's ever have considered downward dogs or tree poses as a pastime, or rpms, or leg presses, or dumb bell curls and strokes per minute or sculling as anything comprehensible they would do?   Mind you, there probably were no yoga classes, no gyms or weights in those days - but who's splitting hairs?

What I am saying is that aging now, for us, is not aging as it was for our parents.  Old for them was once they hit 40 and they honestly considered when their 50th birthdays came they were senior citizen material.  My father retired at 57.

Thus, back to my first paragraph - went to dinner with old friends the other night, three of us who grew up in a street named Netherton Street, in Auckland; three of us who enjoyed the blissful childhood years of the 1950's and 1960's.

 

Come mid teenage hood our lives separated and went their various ways; careers, marriages, children, broken marriages, broken and restarted careers - but many decades later, through osmosis, we re-met, reignited our friendship and have maintained contact ever since.

It is rather nice.  Yes, very nostalgic but also very uncommon for three individuals to have maintained a childhood bond for so many decades.  And best of all we haven't aged one bit.

When we do get together we do not spend our time in nostalgia, reflecting on those childhood years - indeed, over the dinner table there was banter and serious conversations about New Zealand's recent politics, the USA's ridiculous politics, today's dietary fads, the holidays had and holidays planned, best dining places and exquisite new foods and general light hearted conversations which would have been similar to the conversations of those at the tables around us.

But  ... every now and then some little gem would pop into the conversation, something to remind us of how glorious our childhood was.  We all acknowledge, we grew up in an era of blissful ignorance, blissful years of not worrying about anything except what was the next game we would play, blissfully long summers and not so blissful punishments our parents may have given out when we did something wrong.

Well, maybe that was just me, seems we all remember it was my parents who had the greatest belief in not sparing the rod and spoiling the child.

I have never been the best at memory recall, no matter how near or far back they are - my brain is one of the floppy disc variety;  it is small, there is only so much it can store, once it has reached capacity the earlier memories seem to fall off the other end - retaining and regaining great amounts of recall from storage is often seen with a blank stare.  Indeed, I have often said that all my memory storage has gone to the Cloud and I've lost the passwords to retrieve it back from there.  So whenever I am in the company of others from any of my past I eagerly rely on their memory recall to kindle my ability to slowly pull out the initial vagueness of the stories and on many occasions their instigation has the era and story flooding back in bulk download.  There is never a happier moment than when that occurs.

Linda, the other female of the trio, reminded me of the times our cycling adventures took us away from Netherton Street for almost entire days and saw us cycle as far as Point Chevalier beach or way over the other side of Mount Albert or Kingsland.  In those days it seemed like fifteen or twenty miles - in reality is was far, far less, but to our small eyes it seemed like the end of our world's existence.   We would have been ten years old.  Maybe less, maybe more.

I never owned a bike so used to use my brother's black one and ride it with one leg through the cross bars.  Unimaginable how I managed that, for so many miles.  The flexibility of kids is gobsmakingly impressive. 

Winters had their own fun.  Our street was on the side of a hill and from our homes on wet winter days we would see the Oakley Creek at the bottom of the hill slowly become a flooded torrent of waters, so we would rush to each other's homes and trot our way down to the flooded fields and walk knee high through the stream of rising waters until we thought it was probably about time our parents would be calling us in for dinner.

That same creek runs at about a six inch level nowadays and never floods due to storm water drainage having been constructed over the past decades.  Today's parents would freak out should their children be found paddling through that six inches.  Ours did not freak out.  We were not supposed to go down there but the parents knew we did.  I'd return home, knowing I'd probably get a hiding, but at the time that didn't matter, play and fun was the only things that mattered, consequences were merely the inevitable.

Two of us played tennis and each Saturday morning for many years Dene and I would set off from our home and walk to our tennis club in Blockhouse Bay.  It was probably only about three kilometres, but at 9, 10 or 12 years of age it seemed like scores of miles.  Our parents waved us goodbye as we set off about 8 in the morning to walk those kilometres to be there by 9 a.m. for a morning of organised tennis games then once tennis was finished we would walk those kilometres home.

Can't imagine any parent letting their child walk through the streets of Auckland for three kilometres now, and then to not know exactly what time they would be home, but know they would get there eventually.

If we did not get home until early afternoon, our parents would presume we must have dawdled our way back.  There was never any search party sent out or fretting parent freaking out because we were ten minutes late.  I presumed they breathed a sigh of relief for every minute we were not there!

We played tennis on the street after school and in the weekends, sometimes a car would come along, but not very often, so the games could be quite long.

We played until dark, or until we heard our mothers yell from our houses to come home for dinner.  As soon as dinner was over we would be back out playing again.

We were just little kids when Linda and I, and very often her younger siblings with us, would walk down Richardson Road to our local shops to pick up the tobacco packets, or Zig Zag papers for our mums or dads to roll their cigarettes.  Or in Linda's case, to pick up the weekly edition of The Truth that her parents had preordered from the local bookshop.  There was no home mail delivery of those papers or magazines in those days.  We would peruse that naughty paper and see what naughty pictures were in it. Those were the days of the Man magazine.  Seen as almost pornographic then, silly nonsense in these present days.

I didn't care who I played with, so long as someone, anyone would or was allowed to come out and play.  Linda's family lived next door, there was her mum and dad and her four brothers and sisters, so it was unusual if there wasn't any one of them allowed out to play.

I can see now I must have been a pain in the proverbial for their mother every time she heard a knock on the door it would be me asking for someone to come and play. I knew that then, but didn't care as play was the overall riding factor in my purpose in life, there was nothing else to be considered.

And if Linda or the other siblings couldn't play, I would head across the road to Dene's house to see if he was allowed to.  Used to love it there, he had four brothers and a sister and his parents interacted with their kids really well.  Today we'd think it natural, in those days it was unusual.  I was always very fond of Dene's parents, as a child it was not usual for grown ups to be nice and relate to children, it was a case of being seen and not heard, they did and made me feel good.  Their home was a well loved home.

Dene wasn't allowed out to play quite so much, his father had him fulfill his chores of mowing lawns and washing cars before he was allowed to play.  I was always ever so grateful I was born a girl and only had to do the dishes, even that was a trial I would attempt to avoid if that could be done.  I never made my bed, my mother always did.  As soon as I woke on Saturdays it was up and dressed for tennis and during school holidays it was out of bed as soon as I thought the kids next door may be allowed out to play.

As much as she does not like my reminding her now, it was Linda who always told the rest of us kids what games we would play.  I like to now call it 'bossy', just to tease her.  The other night she tried to explain her 'bossyness' as merely being the organised one, directing.  It was Linda who dictated if we were to play hide and seek, or bullrush, or cowboys and Indians.  And yes, we did play that.  The Lone Ranger and Tonto were favoured characters at the Saturday matinees at the Mayfair Theatre in Sandringham, as well as our playtime heros.  Our favourite all time game was me being cast as the cowboy Clint McCaid and Linda was inevitably the frail cowgirl who needed rescuing by Clint.  Linda reminded me over dinner that I always faithfully managed to rescue her from whatever pending disaster the baddy cowboys or Indians had in store for her.

We did ponder the other night as to who or where the character Clint McCaid, or McCain, came from.  We have no idea.  It matters not, in our memories he was a hero, I was told I was to play the hero part and Linda was to be the fair maiden to be rescued. 

She was bossy.

So it was that our Friday evening repast was nearly over, the Thai food was enjoyably appreciated over the talk of world politics, child poverty, cruise holidays, pet cats, dogs and childhood joys. 

We had run out of food, wine and knew it was time to part, be it with some reluctance  as in some ways departing means we do not know when we would meet again, we now live towns and cities apart; but depart we had to with each of us openly admitting that we had some personal sense of needing to get home to our fluffy cat or ambivalent Labrador, our pets who we deemed need us more than we need them.  And, it was, after all, a late Friday night for us, it was already ten minutes past nine in the evening.

Err ...  Yes ...  I guess we are old.

   

Movies are full of crap

Went to the movies on Friday night.  My first visit to the movie theatre in my new town.  The theatre is called The Starlight.  Nice little theatre.  I'm unsure how many actual viewing theatres are inside the complex, but the movie I went to was screened in a very small theatre. 

It is insignificant which movie I went to see (it was Hamstead) as this story has nothing to do with a movie review, this story is an audience review.

I'm a keen movie goer.  When Tony and I were both working we found going to a 6 p.m. movie on a Friday night was both a romantic date-night thing to do and a wonderful way to unwind at the end of our busy weeks.  He would come straight from his corporate job, and me from whatever work I was doing.  He'd be in his work suit, still thinking work thoughts so we would meet at the theatre, buy the tickets then have a pre-movie glass of wine.  The perfect way to begin unwinding from the week's busyness. 

All of this preamble is mere digression to my story, which I frequently do.

In the last year of Tony's life the movie visits became less and less often, to zero, and once he passed away the idea of heading to the movies by myself, without my darling man seemed unnatural, almost dishonorable. 

A year or so passed with me sitting in front of the television on Friday nights and mourning not having my mate and not spending the week looking forward to heading off with him to the movies. I eventually came to realise that if I did not get a bit of self motivation and take myself out, I'd become all the more morose about being alone, particularly on Friday nights.  So one Spring Friday evening I returned to our local theatre to watch a Friday movie, by myself. 

Initially it was disconcerting, almost perverse; but after a few weeks I became used to being the one solo movie goer in a theatre of people with their husbands, wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, family or friends.  Besides, I enjoyed the people watching as fellow patrons came to the foyers to purchase tickets, ice creams, wine and nibbles.  I did not purchase the glass of wine, it did not feel right to sip the juice of the grape without my mate alongside me.  I tried it once, but the wine tasted off.  I am sure it wasn't, it was just that the situation without Mr J was 'off'.  Perhaps I should have persevered, it could have made the people watching all the more interesting.

I then become a fairly regular Friday night movie attendee once more.  I was fortunate as living in Mt Albert meant we lived a short distance away from my three favourite movie theatres, the ones that screen 'adult movies'.  And by that I do not mean the 'adult' movie of the offensive, pornographic kind, but the movies that entertained adults with interesting, intriguing and often real, grown up stories;  stories that did not have monsters, aliens, creatures taking over the world, the returning of the dead, the killings, garrotting,  pillaging, raping and explosions and noise, noise, noise and nonsense.  The three theatres I frequented screened the grown up movies of the 'Spotlight',  'The King's Speech', 'Wild',  'Best Exotic Marigold Hotel', 'Philomena', 'The Queen', 'Being 17', 'The Innocents', 'Boyhood', 'The Theory of Everything'..... kind of movie;  you get my drift.  Movies where having an IQ made a difference.

Then I moved to Taupo.  One movie theatre in the whole town.  Guess that is better than no movie theatre.  In the initial two months I lived here those movies screening did not give me confidence that I could re-enact my Friday night movie habit in my new surroundings.  'The Lego Batman Movie', 'Stray Bullets', 'American Violence', 'War on Everything', 'Train Spotting 2'.   Nah.... not my style of movie entertainment.   I knew there would be some downsides of moving from a city to a town, so presumed the Friday night movie void would be one.

But I strolled past The Starlight Theatre a few weeks ago and ran my eyes over the advertising posters amateurishly cellotaped to the theatre's doors.  Imm, there were two movies being screened that could almost be considered 'adult' movies.  Perhaps this is the lull between the school holidays when they need the grownups to frequent the theatre to fill the seats.  Whatever the reasoning, there were movies I considered comparable to those which would be shown in my favourite Auckland theatres.

So last Friday, after a small meal at home,  I walked myself the fifteen minutes up to the theatre house.  Walking to and from the theatre in the early evening was rather gratifying, something I certainly could not, or would not, have been able to do in Auckland.  Purchased my ticket and declined the attendants suggestion of ice cream or sweets to take in with me, after all the movie was only 120 minutes long, I didn't consider I'd become famished in its duration.

The theatre was tiny.  Really tiny.  Only 10 seats.  3 in the front row.  4 in the middle row and 3 in the back row.  'This is cool,' thinks I.  Really quaint and intimate with cozy chairs. No wonder it has designated seating - mine was back row, far corner.  It was fifteen minutes to screening and I was the only patron in the theatre. That is, until four or five minutes to start time when the other nine seats began to fill.

A mother of around forty came in with her two teenage children - a girl aged about 15 and a boy aged about 17 - they sat in the front row of 3 seats.  I know it was mother and children as opposed to boyfriend and girlfriend as neither the girl or the boy wanted to sit next to one another and made that patently clear so mother sat in between them.  They all held enormous great ice creams and were licking lusciously at them.  One presumed they too would have had their evening meal and the ice creams were a treated desert.

As they settled into their seats two middle-to-well-past-middle-aged couples came in and sat in the row in front of me, all four of them also licking very large, luscious coned ice creams.  Immm... methinks .... the ticket man is scoring well on the side orders tonight.  My observation was that none of the four middle-to-well-past-middle-aged couples looked remotely like an athletic foursome, or even a mildly energetic foursome - but that was the perverse coach-come-once-upon-a-time-gym-bunny thoughts processing in the mind ...  not healthy ... my thoughts that is  ... at least in this politically correct era ... so I mentally slapped my hand and began to watch the pre-movie advertisements, whilst mildly envious of the seven, ice cream licking fellow patrons for their sweet treats. 

Those four people were soon followed by another middle-to-well-past-middle-aged couple (of greater BMI as those in front - stop it Verna!) who  sat in the last two seats next to me - and guess what?  They too were both clutching two ginormous luscious ice creams.   Husband sat closest to me, his wife beside him.

The theatre was very small and very intimate which meant the tongues swishings over the ice cream knobs did create an added sound effect to the theatre.  After all, there were nine people slurping on the sweet treats. 

I realised that of all ten people in the theatre there was only one person who had not come in without a giant ice cream in their hand.  And that was me.  They were all happy - by now I was the only patron that was wishing I had one too.  So who was the silly one...??     

The treats looked so divine that I briefly contemplated quickly zipping out to purchase one myself and return so that I was not the odd one out. But refrained.  I had had my evening meal, knew I was replete and I knew there was ample at home for me to enjoy if the yearning was still there later in the evening.

I was happy for them all and their ice cream consumption and ignored the muted noises of ice cream licking. 

The opening scenes of the movie begins - delightful views of Hamstead Common in London, serene-type scenes, pleasant orchestral music to accompany it,  then teenage son in the front row picks up a  large cellophane bag of potato chips, loudly rustles and crinkles it to get it open, thrusts his fit into the bag whilst making it crinkle all the more,  grabs a handful of the contents and begins to loudly crunch them in his gob.  Sister leans across, loudly and snottily demands the packet, to which is passed and her hand dives into the ten decibel cellophane bag and grabs out her handful of the crisps and crunches on them with the loudness of giant pines falling in a forest.

Simultaneously, husband and wife next to me were nearing the end of their large, very large, ice cream cones - the ice cream had been devoured  and they were now left to munch on the very crunchy, crispy cones to complete the total absorption of their treat.  The amount of loud cone crunching had me conclude those cones must have been the largest, longest cones in the world.

Ice creams finally finished by the couple next to me when she begins rattling around in her handbag of nick knacks and pulls out a tissue packet to wipe her sticky hands.  Pity the packet has not already been opened as then there was the crinkling of the plastic in her fiddling with it to tear it open.  The unzipping of the handbag, the rustling through its contents to find the tissues, the ripping of the tissue packet was now becoming hugely irritating - I felt like reaching into my pocket and pulling out my own soiled, snotty tissue and handing it to her in an attempt to let her know how annoying her antics were.  I restrained, barely.

Meanwhile, those potato crisp crunchers down in the front row were continuously passing their large bag of crisps between one another and enjoying their salty repast without remembering the golden rule when eating - close your mouth!

Irritation started to become agitation.

Then, yes then,  one of the ladies in the two well-past-middle-aged couples directly in front of me picked up her own cellephone bag of sweets and attempted to noisily open them. She couldn't so passed them to husband next to her who put the bag into his mouth and noisily ripped the bag open with his teeth.  This crinkly bag was then passed along to the end person of the four, who poured out a handful of whatever sweets they were, then handed it to the next person who did the same, and so on and so on.  Now we had the crunching of the three chip eaters in the front row, the sucking of the sweets by the four in the middle row ... and now ... Mrs Tissue-Wiper next to me picks up off the floor by her feet an ENORMOUS container of salted popcorn, grabs and handful and passes the said container to husband next to me.  He grabs his own hand full and both are now munching on crunchy popcorn.

I am now perplexed.  Have all these people come to the movie theatre to have their picnic and find that the actual movie is a side issue to their entire plan of coming out to eat crap for a couple of hours?!

I have the three potato-crisp-eating family in the front row, the four noisy sweet-sucking-and-constantly-passing-the-sweet-bag-people in the middle row, and now the two-cholesterol-high-did-not-need-it couple next to me devouring the largest container of pop corn the theatre had every sold.

All this went on for the next hour of the movie.

No other one among them seemed the slightest bit perturbed by the fact that there were times the movie dialogue was not able to be heard due to slurping, sucking, crunching, munching, licking noises.  Not only irritating and aggravating to this now jaw gnashing fellow patron but much of what continued was downright rude.  There was no apparent signs from any of the nine to attempt to quietly pass the packets or buckets to one another; on one occasion there was a loud and irritated request from one of the teenagers to the other for their shared chip packet yet no one else in the theatre seemed to mind, so absorbed were they in the guzzling of their own aperitifs.   

Aggravating, annoying, exasperating, disturbing  .... all of the adjectives that test my patience.

It made the pleasure of pleasurably relaxing and watching a gorgeous, mind releasing piece of quaint and soothing movie reel become a tortuous, endurance test of nerves, patience and mental fortitude, that only I could possibly possess.

Had these people starved themselves all day for this special 'Friday night treat'? 

Finally, finally, some hour into the movie all the consumable garbage had been devoured, there was a noticeable and enjoyable quiet from the seats and all the movie could be enjoyed without the added sound effects of the pre-starved populace in the theatre.

Then, she does it.  Well-past-middle-aged lady along from me picks her handbag back up off the floor, rummages around in it again and pulls something very small out.  With dexterous fingers she held a little something in the thumbs and forefingers of each hand and began to pull.  The cellophane wrapping of a sweet uncoiled with it's muffled crinkle, she extracts it's contents, pops it in her mouth then screws the small piece of cellophane up and delicately drops it to the floor. 

Has this woman got worms?!

                              

The movie eventually ended.  I cannot review the movie, I did not see it.  I was just very glad the personal torture was over.  I sat and watched the fulfilled ones file out of the theatre.  There were only nine of them so that did not take long. 

Heaving a great sigh, I collect my personal things and follow the last ones out, the man and woman who had sat next to me.

As I waddled out behind the waddling two in front of me she turned to him and said, "Shall we hit Pizza Hut or go Indian?" 

 

Dear Mr CEO of Auckland City Toyota,

Dear Mr CEO of Auckland City Toyota,

Small people matter too

I know cars, particularly second hand cars, more particularly Japanese imported second hand cars will always have the possibility of problems.  But having previously owned five Japanese imported second hand vehicles before I considered my purchasing one more would be as safe a purchase as any motor vehicle purchase can be.

So earlier this year I purchased a 2007 Japanese imported second-hand Toyota motor vehicle, not from an Auckland City Toyota yard but from a general, well known Auckland City car dealership.  A 2007 Toyota Mark 4 Zio.  A fairly standard 5 door sedan.

I chose to purchase a Toyota import as not only is the brand Toyota is seen as reliable and trustworthy but because I had owned 5 other Toyota vehicles over the past 20 years and never had a problem with them.  Choosing a reliable vehicle was critical as I am widowed, a pensioner and had recently moved from Auckland to Taupo and needed the mental reassurance that owning a good, standard and reliable car was imperative.

For a number of years I had utilised the Grey Lynn branch (Giltraps then) as my regular service provider for my Toyota vehicles and had was always totally happy and satisfied with all the workshop servicing over the years.

Was in Auckland on Saturday 5 August when dashboard warning lights in my Toyota flashed on, along with an audible warning beep. First thought was brake fluid as light looked similar to break warning lights I had seen on other vehicles. Checked brake fluid, it was fine. This concerned me greatly as not only was it one light, but 3 different light messages, some in Japanese script - and seemed to only occur when the vehicle was turn to the left or right.

I was due to return to Taupo the following day but did not wish to do so with these warning lights, so I did what I thought was a most sensible thing - immediately drove to your Grey Lynn branch.  The 'experts' in Toyota.

The service person, Janette, was friendly and professional and asked the Saturday mechanics to look at the vehicle.  The first thought the mechanic had was to check the brake fluid - told him I had but he rechecked to make sure it was fine.  It was. So he took it into the workshop to investigate further.

It took them some time to come to a conclusion as to what the problem was and had Janette inform me the warning lights and sound was the Vehicle Stability Control warning, which made sense as one of the lights was showing VSC; they did not have the manpower or resources to remedy the problem at the time and suggested I booked it in for an official repair during the week, and suggested it was not taken on any long drives until it was remedied. 

I was due to return to Taupo the next day but was certainly going to take the advice of the professionals so with much juggling among family members managed to organise another vehicle to use to return to my home in Taupo and booked my vehicle in for 9 a.m. the following Thursday.

At 5 a.m. that Thursday I left Taupo, drove to where I had left the Toyota then battled the Auckland peak hour traffic to have it at the mechanical shop at 9 a.m.

Janette informed me she would telephone me as soon as the job was completed.  I was on foot, had no alternative transport so relied on my feet to fill in the day until I was able to pick the vehicle up and return to Taupo that evening.

An hour later received a phone call from Janette - the mechanics would need it for 2 days to repair the problem.

I enquired, why for 2 days?  Was told the mechanics had not worked on this particular model before and need to source a manual to read up what was wrong.  I asked if they were waiting to download a manual from Toyota why would that take 2 days and, if it was going to take overnight to download this information why could I not use the car overnight while they did that.  I confess to being somewhat intrigued they would have to do this.  After all, whilst there are not many Toyota Mark 4 Zio around, it still seemed like a fairly standard Toyota.

Then I couldn't help but think, hang on, this is Toyota, dealers who sell new and second hand imported Japanese vehicles and have done for decades, yet it would take them overnight to source a manual, via a website?  For they brand of vehicle they specialise in? 

Another problem for me was that the vehicle is in Grey Lynn, my only Auckland accommodation was in Conifer Grove in Takanini, in South Auckland - mega miles away and I was on foot literally wandering the streets of Auckland to fill in time while the vehicle was repaired.  Walking to Conifer Grove was going to be one long walk. 

Janette's response was to go talk to the mechanics.  I kept walking around the city, for a few more hours, waiting, merely filling in the time.  Mid afternoon, I receive a call that the car was fixed and ready to collect, that the Vehicle Stability Control problem was all fixed.  Hurrah!

I walked the many kilometres back to the garage, paid the account, thanked Janette, got in car all reassured and headed onto the Southern Motorway in the peak hour traffic. 

Within minutes the warning light comes up.  Same light.  As does the same Japanese script.  Same audible beeps.  Get to my Takanini destination safely, but worried and had to wait until the next day to ring service office, again, to tell Janette the vehicle stability control light, the Japanese script and the audible beep still coming on.

I could not return the vehicle that day as had to return to Taupo.  As there now seemed no urgency regarding what was inferred to as a computer glitch, I booked the vehicle in for 2 weeks ahead, Thursday 31 August.  And the next day returned to my Taupo home, with the light still going, but the audible beep had stopped.

I returned to Auckland early on the 31st and took the vehicle back into the shop.  Then yet again walked the city all day whilst awaiting word for when I could return to pick it up. 

At 3 p.m. received a phone call - they have yet to fix the car as were waiting for a Japanese interpreter to come and decipher what the warning message is.

My first thought, again, was - you've had 2 weeks' notice this vehicle was coming back for the same problem, why could you have not done the research or 'Japanese interpreter' organising before today?

Then, you're a Japanese motor vehicle importing company.  Yet have no one in your company who can read Japanese?  Really?  

And it's now 3 p.m. and you are only ringing me now to let me know that you've just got onto it?

Next thought was - why do you need a Japanese interpreter to 'go in'?  Why could you not take a photo of the message and send to someone who reads Japanese?  Again, you are an importer of Japanese vehicles after all.  I bite the tongue.  I am hamstrung and vulnerable being in Auckland and on foot. I tell Janette I am on foot, filling in time waiting for the vehicle to be fixed. 

She says she will keep me updated. 15 minutes later get another phone call from Janette - the mechanics have fixed warning light problem but inform me that after all this time they learnt that the Japanese message says it needs oil. Really?  In all the many vehicles I have owned, mostly Japanese models, whenever there is a problem with oil the warning light shows up with a picture of an oil can.  This light had no oil can.  Was this particular model the only model Toyota make that does not have the basic oil can picture for the oil warning system?

And, you mean for the three times the vehicle had now been in the shop no one had checked something so basic as the oil? I hadn't checked it myself as it was newly serviced when purchased in January so never considered that oil would be the issue. Plus, there was no picture warning showing an oil can.

Janette's question, 'would I like them to oil service it .... ? .... for $260?

Did I have a choice? No I didn't.  I had driven up from Taupo twice to have this 'Vehicle Stability Control' problem fixed, now I am being told that it wasn't Vehicle Stability Control at all that I had paid to have fixed on the previous occasion;  that the warning was for low, or no oil.  I feel annoyed that I had driven it to Taupo and back when an oil warning was up. Yet no one had checked the oil.

Am now concerned, very concerned, re any possible long term damage of driving with little, or maybe no oil?

And, am being told to do an oil service it will cost $260 - but what about the Vehicle Stability problem?  Is that still a problem?  Was that merely a computer glitch, despite the light showing VSC?   Am I now expected to be charged to fix the vehicle stability light which they said they'd fixed before. Yet wasn't?  But was it? 

I'm stranded in Auckland, for the second time.  I have no one to seek further advice from.  I am hamstrung.  Of course I need oil.  Of course I realise I have to pay for the oil change?  But what happens now to the car if it has been driving oil-less due to no one knowing or understanding what the warning lights were, even though they were the 'experts' on Toyotas?  And as a motorist I had done the right thing as soon as the warning lights came on - took it to the experts.

There was some subdued, and natural frustration vented on my part.  Yes, please do the oil and let me know when I can walk the kilometres back to the dealership to pick up the vehicle. 

5 minutes later a mechanic calls me, and repeats the same story about the vehicle having no oil.  I inform him I have already been told this.  He apologises and gets off phone fairly quickly.

I walk back to the service centre at 5.30 p.m.  Your service manager then begins to educate me on the possible long term damage that running a car on no oil can cause.  I let him show me all the pictures and he explains it very well.  I did not need the explanation, I have owned and driven many cars in my 65 years - I used to own my own vehicle fleet for my own business of tour guiding business.  My deceased father was a mechanic.  I know what driving a car with no oil does. 

But he thought he was being helpful, I appreciated that.  When he had finished I asked the obvious questions.  "This is the third time this vehicle has been in the workshop for this warning light problem - I was told it was Vehicle Stability Control - I paid to have that fixed - and it apparently wasn't because the same warning lights came up - and now told it wasn't that after all but low or no oil; therefore during these visits why is it that no mechanic did the most basic thing and check the oil?"  Surely that would be one of the first things to check?  The mechanic originally checked for brake fluid but not for oil.

There was no answer to that.  He did offer for me to return the vehicle after a thousand kilometers and they would check it for me to see if there was any obvious damage.  I did ask him to explain how they would do that and what signs would they be looking for.  I needed to know myself.  It would mean having to call into the workshop on another visit to Auckland, which would be well over 1,000 kilometres.

I paid the account, got into my car somewhat flummoxed, irritated, annoyed and sadly disappointed.  Yes, every business has one customer a week whose job they've maybe not handled too well.  When one is a female, 65 years old one feels somewhat vulnerable and possibly 'taken for a ride'. 

I drive back to Taupo the next day.  Still somewhat disappointed and disgruntled after sharing the story with a number of friends who, as friends do, come up with wise words of post-event wisdom that really are of no help whatsoever.

All was fine with the vehicle on the drive back, no warning lights, no beeps, not engine seizure from running it on lack of oil.  Heart in mouth I arrived back without incident.  Once in Taupo I use the vehicle very little, but keep checking the oil level to make sure it is OK.  I had to return to Auckland three days ago.  All was fine until my return journey on Sunday when I was half way home - guess what? - the warning lights and audible beep comes on again.

Same lights.  With less beeps.  How come?  I was told by the experts those lights were for oil, yet I'd just spent $260 to have new oil put in - so was my engine finally seizing?  I stopped the vehicle at my earliest and safest pull off area and checked the oil again.  It was fine.  I had no option but to keep driving, and hoping, and praying that this really was just a computer glitch and there was nothing major going to happen to me.  I drove very modestly.  I arrive home safely.  Next morning start the car, no warning lights.  At all. 

So - what do I do now?  I like the car.  I cannot see I should get rid of it if the problem with the lights in merely a glitch.  But I need to know whether it is just a glitch or not.  For the 3 trips to the workshop I paid for what? 

If I had been told at the outset that no one can fathom what the problem was, I would have happily been patient and waited until someone actually did analyse correctly exactly what these warning signs were - rather than have the 'professionals' guess that it must be Vehicle Stability Control, then, when that didn't work, guess it must be no oil. 

What do I now do?

I write to the CEO - so that I have this lodged now - not as a complaint, but as a form of enlightenment of a problem so that if something major, or dangerous does occur, I know I have done the right thing and written a full report on what has happened;  thereby the onus is back on the workshop.