We are having an unusually erratic spring this year at Wellington. Unseasonal rains, hail and the famous “Southerlies” — icy winds straight from the Antarctic — have delayed the arrival of summer by weeks.

It was at the end of such a spell that the winds stopped, the sun came out miraculously, and Wellington suddenly became the most beautiful place in the world.

The past week had been bad for me, not simply because of the weather. Too much work, too many deadlines, too much mindless cooking. I was losing sleep; getting up in the morning was a challenge.

On my way to work that Monday morning, I decided I’d deal with the urgent things and take the rest of the day off. Accordingly, I left my office about an hour later, all set to return home and sleep. In the bus on the way home, I lost my head.

I went straight to the railway station. A train — blue and tiny, with only two carriages — was waiting on a platform. It was going to Upper Hutt, a suburb of Wellington. I boarded the train and sat down by the window. The sun had come out after a week, I was alone, and I loved it.

The next hour was magic. The train went past the gentle sea and little townships, rippling streams and hills alight with yellow gorse. My eyes were keen not to miss even the tiniest detail — groves of trees that had shed all their leaves, brown branches tinged with orange etched against the deep blue of the sky; a woman in a flowered skirt walking her Dalmatian by the train tracks; sheets fluttering on the clothesline outside a red brick house.

When I reached Upper Hutt, I walked aimlessly along the main street, looked into shop windows, tried on shoes, and finally found a McDonald’s. I sat down on a green bench in a sunny square with my takeaway lunch. No one stared at me, a woman sitting by herself in a public place.

Later, I took the train back to the city, picked up my son from school and returned home. I was sure my husband and son wouldn’t grudge me my day out, but I didn’t tell them.

The only person I wanted to share it with was my mother — separated now from me by the seven seas.

My mother had never really had her day out. She had commuted in local trains five hours every day for most of her working life. She had run the household and looked after us. Now, after retirement from work, she looks after her invalid brother and 99-year-old mother.

She could never afford to take off like I had done, to sit on her own in a square and enjoy the sun. There was always some duty to be done; there were always too many people around who would never let a woman sit alone.

I know many women like my mother — who deserved their spot in the sun but never got it. As I dropped off to sleep that night I thought about all of them, and wished they were with me, filling the tiny carriages of the train, watching the sun-soaked countryside flying by.

The writer, a former university teacher in Calcutta, lives in Wellington, New Zealand