You are only as young as the person you buy booze for...

It's a funny old world. Everywhere I go people consistently judge me to be mid twenties. Which is pretty good going for a 30 something, slightly rotund man with receding auburn hair. Perhaps it is the lifestyle, the motorbike, the carefree, wind-in-the-face aplomb with which I carry myself. Perhaps not. (Have you seen me in my cowboy hat and pinstripe jacket...?)

Today, I got asked for ID in a supermarket in order to buy a bottle of red wine. No, it wasn't a chat up line. The 17yr old English lad who was serving, in line with store policy, called over a supervisor to authenticate the sale. She pressed a button on the console and looked up expectantly as if I knew what she wanted. For a second I was genuinely confused. Then as I realised that she was asking for ID, I experienced an odd feeling of indignation. Flaring, fuming indignation.
"Excuse me? You cannot be serious?"
"Yes"
"What age is it for alcohol? 18 surely? Are you seriously suggesting I look 18?"
Why my indignation? I am quite secure in the fact that my driver's license is 1. real and 2. accurate and therefore I would pass the inquisition. The indignation may have been expected had I been a 17 year old who couldn't produce the information and hence could not get what he wanted (and would instead receive the ridicule of his friends as well as the barman of, say, the Kings Arms on Blackboy Hill in 1992). I feigned that I might not have the necessary ID, I wanted to push the system, see if the ludicrous request would be withdrawn. Some diplomatic right not to have to identify myself seemed to be exerting itself in my brain. "Do you know who I am, woman? I'm British, don't you know?" Not to mention 32. For all she knew I could have kids at home, a big job and a mortgage. (But I have none of these things which probably leaves me fresher faced). I should have refused to purchase, that would have scuppered their prohibition inquisition. I asked (half seriously) if someone could take a photo of this. I mean, how paranoid must she have been that I was underage but had upgraded the usual disguise of a fluffy Barry Macguigan moustache by deviously eating too many pies, shaving my hairline and attaching some prosthetic wrinkles in order to purchase from under her nose a bottle of Banrock Station?

I quipped to the ex-pat check-out boy that I must be using the right facial moisturiser and left, still rehearsing in my head the altercation I might have had if I had declined to purchase and taken my business elsewhere. I should have told her it wasn't for me, I was buying it for the group of 14yr old girls in the car park. I can be a belligerent old git at times can't I?

It turns out in this case that I don't actually still look 18. The new store policy is to check people who appear to be under 30, after a sting operation by NZ police and a pending prosecution for selling to minors. I chuckled to myself at the thought of them sending in minors with beards and tattoos. The store supervisors now suspect everyone. As I was packing my provisions into the bike, I could see the supervisor through the window checking the old boy with the zimmer frame and the colostomy bag who could quite easily have nipped out of the playground at break time for plastic surgery and Oscar winning prosthetics in order to buy a mini bottle of Jack Daniels to share with the rest of Form 3. It is, after all, a funny old world.



[PHOTOS of Takaka and Abel Tasman National Park to follow...]