A snorkel-assisted cerebral cleansing

I knew I was losing her around commissioning versus contracting, but localities tipped the balance

I took a short break recently in more tropical climes. It was a blissful holiday, made even more so by the cessa­tion of the pre-holiday mania of preparing not to be at my desk for a week.

The minute I stepped through passport control I knew all that was behind me. The newspaper was in good hands. Dozing in a low-slung hammock beckoned, along with snorkelling, biking, sleeping, eating, more sleeping and more snorkelling. How I love snorkelling. There is always the promise of something unknown in the next little crevice – it kind of reminds me of digging around using official information requests.

On my island escape, I mostly found the classic yellow-and-black stripy fish but sometimes there were those with an iridescent green that I hadn’t seen before. The thrill of the unexpected.

The first two days were pretty much decompression. I was holidaying with a group of women whom I mostly had met only once before, in a pub three months earlier. They were all friends of a friend, and we were there for a birthday celebration, staying in a big house on the edge of a lagoon.

Sitting on the deck, chatting about this and that, a fellow journalist, knowing my association with matters medical, innocently enquired: “So what do you think about the health reforms?”

It was like a floodgate opened – I could feel my mouth on the move, words tumbling out and I could not close it.

On and on – this be good, this be awkward, this be a shambles, this be problematic, this be curious, this be interesting, this be tricky. The Māori names of the new central agencies, which have rapidly become part of our office vernacular, needed explaining along with what remained of the old system, what had changed with new and what was yet to come – health plan, health charter, iwi Māori partnership boards and, wait for it, localities.

Okay, so that was a step too far. I knew I was losing her around commissioning versus contracting, but localities tipped the balance. She was dazed and confused, and I was driven to reassure with a belated, “Ah, will it work? Well, you know, everyone agreed something had to change.”

Game of cards, anyone?

Aside from the guilt of possibly stealing an hour of someone else’s precious holiday, I felt the sort of cleansing you get at a fancy spa. It was like my brain was a big sponge that had been soaking in health-reform suds but now a suitably aesthetic, spa-approved tropical octopus had squeezed my cerebral matter, leaving it all light and spongy – ready for a top-up on my return.

And sure enough, I did return to the office, sit at my desk and wonder, “now exactly, what is it that I do?” As I write, that was just over a week ago. Not a lot happened on the reforms front in my absence and my brain still remains a little light, but give it time.

• Deflect questions about health reforms from innocent bystanders, for their sake.
• If you decide to test your iPhone’s water resistance by taking photos of fish, don’t submerge the charging port.
• As a general rule, refrain from buying a second-hand dinner set as a souvenir.