The world is full of happy idiots. I should know. I’m one of them. Maybe you’ve known this but were too polite to say. Thank you for sparing my feelings.

I got off the train, guitar in one hand, rucksack in the other. No I didn’t feel like Paul Simon on Warrington station about to write Homeward Bound. 200 or so tourists milled round the carriage where our luggage was stowed. I was hating being pushed and pawed. I needed to go. Now. Mine came off early, and I shoved my way through (sharp ends of guitar cases have multiple uses), found a shuttle taxi and along with a couple from Aberystwyth and another from Coventry (all had lived here for over 10 years), we hotfooted it away in the evening heat.

Ax from Fiji drove us, and after we’d dropped the others off, he told me his life story while we climbed away from downtown Wellington up Mount Victoria. He has slicked back hair, mirror shades and a neatly pressed shirt. He doesn’t do this, he’s really a Finance Director of an international courier company; he just does this for his folks back home. He has two houses, no mortgages, four cars, a beautiful wife and two beautiful children. But there are no photos on the dash. There’s a pack of the sandwiches wrapped in shabby paper on the seat next to him. Everyone can dream, methinks…

I open the door, look around the pad, grab a beer left generously in the fridge and go sit on the deck high up, looking south east across the bay to the airport, and the mountains beyond. This is bliss.

An hour later it’s time to unpack. Guitar first (always), now my suitcase. Oh holy crap. It’s mine, but it’s not. It’s the same size, the same colour, the same make. But my name is not Nakayama. Time for a bit of mild panic. Breathe. What’s in mine? All my clothes, my passport, my driving licence, my chargers (quick! Post the blog I wrote on the train!). And S and H are haranguing me on Whatsapp about how many days we should spend at the Cambridge Folk Festival in blinking August. And my pills, my toothbrush, my equanimity. All lost.

27% left on the phone. Uber. Now. Wait in the failing light, and for some reason Ax is just driving away. (What’s he been doing for an hour? Eating sandwiches? Afraid to go home?). Uber arrives, I get downtown. The station’s deserted apart from the Operations Manager, who says ‘So let me get this right. You stole a suitcase, but now you’ve seen the error of your ways?’ This was not going to go well. 23% left on the phone. My suitcase is nowhere to be seen. It’s not in the office, it’s not on the train in the yard where it’s gone for cleaning. ‘Maybe she took yours too’. I rolled my eyes. Let’s just think about this. Ms Nakayama can’t find hers, there’s mine left, the last one, she thinks ‘oh well, that’ll do’ and runs off. I don’t think so.

I imagine Ms Nakayama in her hotel room, either crying distraught, or laughing at my Spurs shirt and taste in holiday reading. Or maybe she’s an international drugs courier and she’s going to plant stuff on me, or simply steal my passport (I’m sure we look alike). Nah, she’s crying.

I leave her case with the Ops Manager, though I’m not sure I trust him. 17% left. Note to self: get rid of this 6 year old non-iPhone. No battery for Uber. Get cash out the ATM. Taxi!

This guy’s a maniac or new here. He doesn’t know the address. He doesn’t have satnav. He phones a friend and they yell at each other in Arabic. He’s tearing round the shorefront in vaguely the right direction, and then decides to veer off to what must be the darkest, saddest street in Wellington. He’s still shouting. I lose it. ‘Stop right here! You don’t know where you are, you don’t know where you’re going, I’ve been here for three hours and I know better than you. Let me out now!’ He stops. ‘What about my money?’. Dear reader, I will not report verbatim what I said. He opens his door to get out too. He’s bigger than imagined. I give him his $20. I don’t need this.

13%. Uber. 3 minutes. Good. He arrives. He has an iPhone and a charger. By the time I’m back home I have 14%. Tomorrow will be fun. The embassy? Do DVLA do copies while you’re on holiday? What about my pills – do they dispense? And what are Aviva Insurance gonna make of this? They’re already being sickly Bolshie to my beloved Non-TC… oh I do miss her now!

Sleep. Or not. I’m going to use up a percent seeing when the train goes back to Auckland. The staff must know what happened. Leaves at 7.55. I set the alarm for 6. I needn’t have bothered. Awake at 4.30 pacing the floor. Do I walk to the station to save a few percent ? Nah, I crack. 5.30 and it’s Uber again. But I’m back down to 7%. What if the suitcase isn’t there, and the Ops guy was right?

I run into the station, and the train is there again, looking fresh and clean. I see staff and I’m running down the platform. I’m greeted by a fine woman I recognise from yesterday. ‘Ah, you must be the idiot’ she says sternly. ‘I had a very upset young Japanese woman here last night. She was crying.’

Have you ever felt so small, that crawling into a hole would be too good for you? Then F smiled and said, ‘It happens every day. I have yours in my special cupboard. Come on’.

So I give the most Japanese of apologies to F to pass on on to Ms Nakayama, and I head out the front of the station, walking on air. There’s the taxi rank but I’m not doing that again. Uber, defo.

1% left.