When I was fifteen I discovered the joy of a free bar. All you had to do was say Bacardi and Coke, thanks to the guy in the white shirt and bow tie. I watched my cousin, all private school confidence, get the drinks in, and followed his lead. Another, thanks and another and another and soon I understood what the fuss about booze was all about. Just like that, in a wood-panelled room in Flock House in Bulls, the course of a lifetime was set.
It was a family reunion, for the descendants of the young man and woman who first met on the Petone foreshore, Thomas and Margaret. Nineteen of their children lived to adulthood and had families of their own. Sooner or later someone was bound to write a history and organise a reunion. There we were, the descendants of the McKenzies, cousins and second and third cousins in the hundreds. How famously we all got on, as I piled into the Bacardi and Cokes.
You grow up at the Sunday dinner table and afternoon teas hearing recurring surnames that decorate stories of no interest to you.
