Another life saved by the Jordan family yesterday, but this time it was my daughter and a friend saving a man from drowning. They were hanging with a bunch of mates, part of the crowds at Island Bay beach yesterday afternoon, enjoying a typical Wellington summers day – well, actually, no – it was hot and sunny – when they heard a man in the water crying out. At first they thought he was saying there was a shark in the water, but when they looked more closely, he seemed to be having trouble swimming. There were no life savers about (not sure why? There’s a surf life saving club right there – were they all hungover? had they just washed their hair and didn’t want to get it wet? or maybe it was too hot and they didn’t want to get sunburnt?), so the two girls swam out to him. By this stage he was thrashing about, and had turned a nasty purple colour, so they started pulling him towards shore. He was a big man, and quite distressed, so it was a struggle. Lots of people were watching but no one else came out to help. Then my daughter saw the young actor from “The Hunt for the Wilderpeople” stand up from where he was lying on the beach, and she thought “Hurray! Someone is coming to help us at last!” But no, he just wandered away. I wonder what all these onlookers thought was going on? That it was some sort of elaborate ploy to make them all look stupid? Anyway, they finally got the man to the beach, and he was very wobbly and collapsed onto the sand. When he’d had a chance to recover, he was very grateful to the girls, and said they’d saved his life. He’d got anxious and disoriented in the water, not realising how far out he was. I must say, my memories of the water on the South Coast is that it comes welling up from the Cook Straight depths, direct from the Antarctic – so they’d probably got to him just in time. It’s lucky they managed to get him out, because my daughter’s back up plan had been to ring for an ambulance on 911.
Where were you guys?
Which reminds me of the time my Mum’s house was on fire many years ago, caused by a grandson and some chums playing with matches behind the shed. My sister was staying with Mum at the time and was then in her thirties, and it was several decades since we’d left the UK in the mid-seventies, when she was five. She was in a panic and wanted to call the fire brigade – so she rang 999. Luckily there was an automated message saying “the emergency number in NZ is 111 – hang up and ring 111 you plonker*”. She duly rang it, the firemen arrived in all their splendour, with a bright red fire truck making wee woo noises, and all was saved – apart from the shed. It was generally believed (by the boys parents, at least) that it was a blessing in disguise, as there was a lot of old stuff in the shed and now Mum was saved the bother of ever having to sort through it. Strangely, that’s not how Mum viewed the situation, but there you go – you can’t make everyone happy all the time. The boys got a stern talking to from the fire brigade, anyway, and never set fire to anyone else’s house ever again – as far as I know – so all’s well that ends well.
*Not certain about that last part