Eggs and psychic readings

OPINION: Between Otira and Kumara on the West Coast Road there's a handwritten sign, writes Joe Bennett this week.

EGGS, PSYCHIC READINGS, PUNGAS, SOAP, it says. I am not making this up.

When I saw the sign last week I was pressed for time and didn't stop. But I did spend the rest of the day wondering how things might have gone if I had. So I shall now start making this up.

The pathway narrowed as it plunged deeper into the gloom of the bush. Spent fronds of punga rasped against my cheek. Hens scratched in the undergrowth. The place smelt of forest rot and an acrid tang I couldn't identify. Then I caught on the air a distant murmur of incantation and something happened to my spine in the place where a dog has hackles. I felt an urge to retreat to the road and the safety of my car. But curiosity drew me on. I told myself I'd just buy a dozen eggs and get out of there. The incantation grew louder.

Rounding a bend in the path I entered a clearing. A woman stood hunched over a cauldron. Foul smoke swirled into the ceiling of foliage. "Fat of hog that's good and high," she chanted, reaching for a metal dish, like a surgeon's bowl. "Time to add a little eye."

She tipped the dish's contents into the brew and stirred. I shuddered. My armpits dripped cold. The incantation ceased. Without turning to face me the crone spoke.

"So you'd be after a dozen eggs, then," she said. I wanted to run. I couldn't run. The woman turned. She smiled in a manner I can only describe as terrifyingly ordinary. "A dozen eggs, then, am I right?"

"You read my mind," I gasped. A hen in the undergrowth cackled.

"You townies are all the same," the woman said. "You see the sign, think you'll come up here for a bit of a laugh but then you chicken out, if you'll excuse the pun, and ask for eggs." She turned back to the brew.

"Hubble bubble, toil and trouble," she muttered, and she peered into its turbid depths. "I see a tall dark strangler."

"Strangler?"

"Oh sorry, stranger. Haven't got me glasses on." She threw back her head and roared with demonic laughter. Then she stared at me.

"You're wondering about the incantation, I see."

Was there no limit to this woman's powers?

"I'm getting on. I forget things. So I put the recipe into a rhyme. But it's pretty simple, really. You just need some fat – I use pig fat – and a strong alkali for saponification. Most people use sodium hydroxide – caustic soda to you – but I always add a little lye. Gives the soap a nicer texture, I reckon."

"The soap," I exclaimed. "But what about the psychic readings?"

"Ever heard of marketing, darling?" she said. "Sucked you in, didn't it? Hey, great news from France, eh?"

"News from France?"

"Yeah, I don't always hold with the French myself, all that ooh-la-la baguettes-and-Gauloises stuff for the halfwit tourists, but you can't help admiring the way the French socked it to the Scientologists. You know the crowd I'm talking about? They worship the intergalactic tyrant Xenu and tell of his imminent return to Earth for the day of judgment. It's not exactly original. Differs only in detail from the bullcrap spouted by the Pope, the bearded archbishops, the even more bearded ayatollahs, the dingbat from Jonestown, Brian Tamaki and all the rest of them.

"But the French, bless their little mopeds, refused to recognise the Scientologists as a religious outfit, taxed them like any other money-making corporation and then socked them with a million-dollar fine for preying on the emotionally fragile. I laughed so hard I almost fell into the cauldron.

"Of course, I don't mind people falling for spiritual tripe if they want to, it's a free world, but what I don't see is why churches, all of them, should be subject to different rules from the rest of us. I mean, if some corporation started making claims about granting eternal life it would have to word things extremely carefully to avoid running foul of the Advertising Standards Authority. Your average corporation is no more honest than your average church, of course, but at least they have to pay some sort of attention to the law. Mind you, if they did change the rules, I'd probably have to change my sign and you lot would just drive on past. Still I reckon it would be worth it."

I turned to go.

"Here, are you planning to pay for those eggs or not, dearie? Cross my palm with eftpos."

I paid and left.

"Beware the tall dark strangler," she called after me, and with her demonic laughter cackling through the pungas, I went back down the forest path, a sadder and a wiser man.

» Joe Bennett is an English-born travel writer and columnist who lives in New Zealand with dogs. His columns are syndicated in newspapers throughout New Zealand.

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