403. Car park trauma

 Miss Organiser has got a new name: Miss Tour Operator. The weekend she’d organised and planned for us is almost over. We’ve all survived it and can finally put our feet up. She has gone to bed.

Her friend, the friend of her friend and myself were happy enough to go along with the plan. We could even get the screen shots of the itinerary and all the details and all the pins on Maps if we wished to because none of use were able to memorise all the sights’ names and that made Miss Organiser a little irate.

‘Arahurahu Marae!’ She’d say to us, a little too loud, a little too firmly. ‘It’s not like I haven’t told you a dozen times already!’

She sounded exasperated. I mean what kind of bunch was she in charge of that could not tell apart Rohotu from Arae and Arahurahu from Taharuu? Were we dim witted or something?

So we tried hard to please her, and also because we really thought we were dim witted and we did not like it and we wanted to do something about it. 

I remembered driving along the road in Wales with my husband and trying to give him directions and yet not being able to read the signs and letting guttural sounds come out of my mouth. There were just too many consonants in those names, well, here I have the same problem except this time it’s just vowels.

But when we got to the Marae at Arahurahu and I could see we were about to have a bad car parking moment I got my wits back in a flash.

‘Next stop the Marae.’ Miss Tour Operator announced. 

We kept quiet in the back, pretending we knew what a marae was and which one it was she was talking about. While of course we didn’t have a clue. We heard the indicator and soon enough we turned into a dirt track which made me think her parents’ wolf would be perfect here. 

‘I’ve never seen so many cars here! This is weird. Why would so many people suddenly want to visit this marae?

Of course we didn’t have a clue about this. I wanted to say that it wa the weekend, that the school holidays had started but then I would sound dim witted again so I kept quiet.

After much bumping along the terrible track we reach a kind of clearing with trees all around. And cars, lots of cars everywhere.

‘This is very strange.’ Admitted Miss Tour Operator.

There were so many cars, parked and wanting to park that there even was a car park attendant! This reminded me of these country fairs where you park in a field and attendants in yellow jackets tell you where to go. Our man here was wearing a yellow jacket and he was indeed directing cars. We stopped and wound the window down.

‘Right there, behind the grey car.’ He said, waving his arms towards the left.

We reached the grey car. There seemed to be a problem though. Miss Tour Operator could see that. It took us dim witted a little longer to spot the problem.

‘How’s the grey car going to pull out if I park here?’

We assessed the situation and had to admit Miss T.O. was right. The grey car was now surrounded by cars and could not get out. Meanwhile while we were slowly getting out of the car, unsure of what to do, more cars were directed to park here. When a red car parked right behind us - blocking our way out so evidently that even us dim witted started to look perplexed. Then a white car came along and parked right behind the red.

The people in the red came out of their car.

‘I’m sorry but if you park here then we cannot leave.’

‘What’s going on? How are people supposed to leave?’

I started to feel a wave of panic. This car park attendant was like a kid parking all these toy cars one next to the other in neat rows. A real life car depot. And us trapped in the middle. The woman who had come out of the red car said: 

‘There’s a show here today, a dance. But you need tickets.’

And she waved a couple of tickets towards us. 

‘We could go and see the dance.’ The friend said. 

And this is when I thought things were getting out of hand. We were going to have to buy tickets for a show we didn’t want to go to just because we were stuck in an improvised car factory depot and we were going to miss the big show we had bought tickets for and that was starting at 6pm and if I didn’t take things in my hand we could still be here in this car park at midnight tonight! A wave of panic, my tendency to being claustrophobic extending to being stuck in a car with cars all around me.

The teacher in me came out. I told the people of the grey car and the people of the red car to hold it right there for a second and I marched up to the car attendant.

‘I’m sorry but could you un-park the grey and the red please? Or we will be stuck here and not able to leave?’

‘You said you were here for the show!’ He just made that one up on the spot.

‘No, we do not want to see the show, just to visit the site. But now we want to leave.’

‘You cannot visit the site today. There’s a show.’ 

‘Well then we need to go. Can you help me get out please?’

Unfazed the car attendant directed the cars back out of their places, a little crowd had now gathered and watching this impromptu show of cars dancing in and out of places and Miss T.O. gave me the car keys.

‘I’m not reversing into that big mess.’ She said. 

I grabbed the keys and would do all the reversing that was necessary to get out of this highly stressful situation. The car park attendant directed the cars, one reversed after an other and the others stopped and waited and a group of twenty people at least was now directing me so I could reverse and be free again.

We got back on the main road, more cars coming the other way and I wondered what kind of traffic jam there was going to be after the show!

‘Just as well you said something mum!’

We drove a couple of miles to an other marae. I was still recovering from this narrow escape. Only three cars here. One badly parked with two women peering underneath their tiny hire car - not unlike ours - and asking each other if their heard the scratching noises and was the car scraped underneath? And a dad getting out of his car and telling his wife and two kids ‘we’re just going to take take a couple of pictures and we’re off’ and I wondered if he was, like me, suffering from Post Carpark Trauma Syndrome.