Two days ago I had the most perfect union between a book, a walk and the landscape. It was late afternoon I was walking the road to Hanalei town to search out a piece of jewellry for my sister and as is my sometime custom was reading slowly as I walked slowly along.

There’s no official pavement on that road so it required something of a navigation through patches of grass. When I glanced up I glanced ahead not behind where the danger of traffic was coming. Ahead of me the day was pre-commencing it’s close up. The sky was so blue, the trees so high up making their statements against said closer to closing than opening sky. I’d read a line from the early part of Alberto Moravia’s novel Boredom and digest it looking up into that sky surrounded by those beautiful hills and lush trees and return to the next line. It was a perfect union between words and gaze and movement somehow.

On my return I couldn’t continue this lovely union for long because the sky was having none of it and a sudden rainstorm began. Bare legged and book at risk I walked tentatively on, but then realized that the Hawaiian version of rain is short, but not to be reckoned with if you’re made of paper or half dressed.

I walked back and ran for shelter underneath the awning of the Catholic Church.  I began to read again. Then a bicycle arrived with a young man holding a cup of coffee (a feat biking, coffee and rain, no? bit like walkin and readin). We began to talk and had an interesting conversation about his homeland Mexico and he told me some sombre stories and some not so sombre ones. It was very cinematic with the church, bike, book, coffee and tumbling rain. The rain stopped and in a punctuating gesture he shook my hand warmly, told me his name, which was rather a lovely name and then said something I couldn’t quite catch about how we would talk again, jumped on his bike and disappeared. It was a satisfying conversation since we had solved quite a few of the world’s problems in the space of a short rainstorm.

I ran home to the place we were staying, where my boys informed me we were due for dinner at 6.30pm in the neighbouring town and it was now 6.25pm. We had a lovely dinner with our extended family that included catch of the day and other delights including a cocktail that made my knees wobble at the salad bar.