vic

I can tell you that Vic, being from the North Shore of Auckland, has a rather mild accent compared to most New Zealanders. It’s usually possible to distinguish his “bear” from his “beer,” and his “six” doesn’t tend to come out sounding like a dirty word. Perhaps it’s from having worked with children, and then foreign tourists for so long. Or perhaps it’s just a North Shore thing. Regardless of the reasons for his good diction, none of us had any trouble understanding our guide as he shepherded us outside the airport to where his twelve-seater Mercedes Sprinter was parked.

As he led us to the parking lot, I smiled, pleased to see that the past three years had failed to change him in the least. Vic looked the same as I remembered him. He was wearing a local rugby polo shirt and his signature bone Koru necklace – a spiraling Maori symbol carved like an unfurling fern to represent growth, strength, peace, and eternity – around a thick neck. He was plump and balding, but still walked with a spring in his step. Were he a bit younger (i.e. young enough to still have hair) and disinclined to sport footwear, he would be the epitome of Tolkien’s hobbit.

As it is, Vic lives up to quite a few of Tolkien’s key descriptors of hobbits, such as being round and short of stature, and having a beardless, “good-natured” face. Unlike a hobbit, however, Vic’s face, good-natured as it is, is set off by a slender, pointed nose and keen, dark eyes that always seem to harbor a hint of mischief in them. And, whereas Tolkien’s hobbits are averse to any sort of adventure or complex thinking, I think it’s safe to say that Vic is quite the opposite.