Fun, Fun, Fun

My friend Lisa organised a Fun Walk.

What this means is:

tents in a big muddy playing field, which ends where the water begins, plus palm trees, and billowing smoke from wood-fired barbeques, and a trickle of people in the early dawn, walking the seven kilometres out to the starting point so they can walk back in with a raffle ticket on their arm, and maybe a t-shirt, and lots of coloured t-shirts, in fact, which all say MILNE BAY FUN WALK (I have one), and a swarming mass at the registration tent, where I am standing on a chair and shouting: “Everybody take two biiiiiiiiig steps back!”, and everybody is laughing, and patient, and eating sausages, and people keep pressing bundles of small notes into my hand, donations, and Lisa and Pam are wearing silly hats, and there is a band, and then the children arrive, little ones with motor disabilities pushed in wheelbarrows covered in palm streamers, by firemen, and I am drinking barely diluted Tang, which tastes pretty good actually, and catching friends in the crowd, and it is harder than I thought to find the people I know because there are FOUR THOUSAND PEOPLE here, and Lisa is on the megaphone now, and she is exhausted but smiling, and the sun is so hot, and I am dreaming of a coconut, and then the tent just sort of vaporises into somebody’s helpful hands, and people wander away, and the air over the town is heavy, it ripples, you could cut it like a lime and squeeze out these two things: first, a rainstorm, and second, Joy.