A letter from a client

AT 67, MY GRANDDAUGHTER FOUND MY OLD GUITAR UNDER THE SPARE BED. I HADN’T PLAYED IT SINCE 1979

Robyn McKenzie

Whitianga · October 2026

I’ve never written to a shop before, and my son says I’ll regret it. But last weekend a woman at the bakery in Waihi Beach asked me about my bag. Then her husband asked. Then the girl behind the counter asked if she could take a photo of it for her mum. By the time I got back to the car, my old friend Val said, you’ll have to write it down, Robyn, or we’ll be here all summer. So here it is.

 

It isn’t really about a bag. It starts with the spare room. My granddaughter Mia is coming to stay for the summer, and the spare room has been where things go to be forgotten for about twenty-five years. Mia came over to help me clear it, and while I was sorting the wardrobe, she got down on her knees to look under the bed. She slid out a battered brown guitar case, covered in dust, with a faded daisy sticker on the lid. 

She looked at it, then at me, and said, Nan. You play?

I gave her the answer I’d been giving myself for forty years. Oh, I haven’t played since I was twenty, love. That was a different girl.

by the front door now, next to the guitar. mia says it’s the most “me” corner of the house.

January 1979

Mia opened the case before I could stop her. Here’s what was inside.

 

My old acoustic guitar, with two strings missing. A ticket stub from Nambassa, the festival out on the farm at Waikino in January 1979, tucked in the little pocket under the neck. A school exercise book full of song lyrics and chords in my handwriting. And a photo of three girls sitting in the long grass with flowers in their hair, and me in the middle with that same guitar on my knee.

Me, Val and Sandra. We were twenty, we’d hitchhiked over from Thames with one tent and one guitar between us, and it rained for two days solid. At night we sat outside the tent and I played until my fingers hurt, and people we’d never met came and sat with us and sang along. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

 

Then life did what life does. A wedding, babies, a mortgage, thirty years doing the books at the timber yard. There was never quite the time to play, and then there was never quite the reason. The guitar went under the spare bed. Val moved to Hamilton, Sandra to Whangārei, and the three of us became the kind of friends who mean to ring. It was a good life, and I wouldn’t swap it. But somewhere in it, the girl with the guitar went quiet, and I didn’t notice her going.

val, sandra and me at nambassa, 1979. i’m the one with the guitar and the most mud.

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How it happens

Nobody decides to stop singing. It goes one sensible year at a time.

After a certain age, the world starts handing you grey. Grey cardigans, grey trousers, a grey suitcase on wheels that looks like it belongs to a man selling insurance. None of it is wrong. But fill a house with enough of it, and it starts telling you that the music part of your life is over.

And after you’ve said “that was a different girl” enough times, you start to believe it.

What I had wrong

I honestly thought she’d gone. That the girl playing guitar outside a tent at Nambassa was just a phase, like platform shoes, and I’d grown out of her.

But sitting on the spare room floor with that guitar on my lap, I realised she hadn’t gone anywhere. She’d been under the bed the whole time. I’d just never let her out. Not one thing in my house looked or sounded anything like her.

You don’t grow out of who you were. You just slide her under the spare bed.

The bag is called the Melodyvana

I found it about a week later, scrolling on my phone in bed when I should have been asleep. I sat up so fast I woke my husband.

It’s a quilted weekend bag in the shape of a little camper van, and the whole thing looks like a summer night at a festival. The top is a deep blue night sky, swirling with stars and a little golden crescent moon. Underneath it, waves of purple mountains roll along the sides, with pine trees at each end. Right across the middle is a big turquoise acoustic guitar, with sunflowers on either side. The wheels are four deep-pink roses, there’s a sunflower for a headlight, and cream bumpers front and back. Every bit of it is stitched and quilted, right down to the guitar strings.

It’s from Eleanor & James, a small boutique in Coromandel that makes cheerful things for women our age.

The day it came. I sat on the bed and just looked at the guitar for a while.

My first thought was, Robyn, you are sixty-seven years old. A guitar? Roses for wheels? But then I looked at the photo of three muddy girls in the grass, and at the grey suitcase on wheels in the hall cupboard, and I knew exactly which one that girl would have chosen. I ordered it before I could talk myself out of it.

It’s more practical than it looks. A change of clothes, a wash bag, a warm jersey, a book and my good sandals all go in without any clever folding. The quilting keeps its shape, so it stands up by itself instead of slumping in a heap. And the zip opens the whole top wide, so nothing gets lost at the bottom.

Up close. Even the guitar strings are stitched.

What happened when I rang Val

The next morning I took the guitar into the music shop in town and had it restrung. My fingers had forgotten everything, but by the end of the week, I could get through two songs from the exercise book without stopping. Mia filmed me and sent it to the family group chat. My son rang that evening to ask why nobody had ever told him his mother could play.

So that night I did something I’d been meaning to do for about fifteen years. I rang Val. She picked up and said, Robyn? Is someone dead? I said no, I’ve got the guitar out. There was a long silence, and then she said, which songs? Then she rang Sandra. By the end of the week, the three of us had booked a bach at Waihi Beach for a long weekend, our first together in forty-seven years.

I turned up with the bag over one arm and the guitar over the other. Val took one look at the bag and said, oh, that is exactly you. Sandra didn’t say anything. She just pointed at the guitar on the side and said, you’d better still know the words.

That night we sat out on the deck with a bottle of wine and the exercise book, and sang every song in it. Badly, I’ll admit. The neighbours didn’t complain. One of them came over and joined in.

At the bakery the next morning, a woman behind us in the queue asked where the bag was from. Her husband wanted to know if it came in other designs. The girl behind the counter took a photo for her mum. And a young man outside with a surfboard on his roof looked at the bag, looked at the guitar case in the car and said, are you lot a band?

Val said, we were, once. We’re getting back together.

 

Three old friends, one guitar, one bag. Forty-seven years late and right on time.

Three things I've learned since

One. Buy the size for the weekends you want to have, not the ones you’ve been having. The 40 cm one is perfect for a night away or as cabin luggage. The 46 cm one takes a few outfits and an extra pair of shoes for a proper long weekend. The boutique says most women end up happier with the bigger one. Mine is the bigger one, and they were right.

Two. Get something out from under the bed. The bag sits by my front door now, with the guitar leaning against the wall next to it. It’s the first thing anyone sees when they come in, and every time I walk past, I pick up the guitar for five minutes. It’s a funny thing to say about a bag, but it got the music back into the house.

Three. Nobody thinks you’re too old for it. That was entirely my own idea. Mia didn’t think so, the young man with the surfboard didn’t think so, and the neighbour who came over to sing certainly didn’t. Joyful isn’t childish. It’s just joyful.

ABOUT THE PRICE

I’ll be honest, because this was the part that made me hesitate.

The Melodyvana is $79,95 NZD in the 40 cm size and $84,95 NZD in the 46 cm. Both were $148 NZD.

 

With that much stitching, I assumed there had to be a catch. I haven’t found one. It’s a small boutique selling directly, so there’s no big department store taking a cut, and they’re running a spring sale to clear the season’s stock.

 

Before I ordered, I did what you're probably doing now and read the reviews. There are over three hundred of them, at 4.3 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman wrote: “I wanted a bag big enough for a few nights away without having to squeeze everything in. I’ve taken it on two weekend trips already, and it fits so much more than I expected. The colourful design is even prettier in person.” That was the one that convinced me to order it.

 

Val and Sandra have both ordered their own since, in different designs. Val says it’s for the tour.

Packed for the next weekend. The band’s back together.

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If You Were at My Kitchen Table

If we were sitting at my kitchen table with the jug on, this is what I’d say.

 

Think about the last time you said “that was a different girl” about something you used to love. Be honest about whether it was true, or whether it was just easier than missing her.

 

A bag won’t change your life. Of course it won’t. But having something by the door that looks like the girl you used to be makes it a lot easier to pick the old things back up. And I waited forty-seven years to do that.

 

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now and summer’s nearly here, so if a design catches your eye, that’s the one to grab. And listen to the boutique about the bigger size.

She wasn’t a different girl. She was just under the spare bed.

Robyn

MELODYVANA | QUILTED TRAVEL DUFFLE BAG

4.3/5 Based on 300+ reviews

$160

$79.95 NZD
  • Quilted weekend bag shaped like a little camper van
  • A starry night sky, purple mountains, sunflowers and a stitched acoustic guitar
  • Rose wheels, a sunflower headlight and cream bumpers
  • Zip opens the whole top wide, so nothing hides at the bottom
  • Quilting keeps its shape however it's packed
  • Two soft comfortable carry handles 
  • Two sizes: 40 cm and 46 cm
  • Free delivery with NZ Post

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Spring sale is ending tonight. Get yours while the sale lasts.

Robyn McKenzie is 67 and lives in Whitianga with a labrador. She is not a fashion writer.

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