Posts Tagged ‘Out & About’

Just like in the movies

Saturday, November 4th, 2006

Click on image for larger versions

An unusual event interrupted my pottering about in the garden yesterday. I was in the middle of cat proofing my ‘square foot gardening‘ vegetable patches, surrounded by chicken wire, tools and the odd sprog, when I heard a sound one normally only hears in films.

Buuuur-bup-bup-bup … buuuur-bup-bup-bup … phut-phut-bup…

I looked up and saw a small jump plane tracking low across the clouds and blue sky above the township and seemingly trailing smoke from one engine. It was making the kind of noise that came from Ginger’s Spitfire shortly before he ‘pranged his kite’ in those ‘how the RAF won the war’ black and white movies of my childhood. A few seconds later, four skydivers exited the plane in close order, opening their canopies almost instantaneously while the plane lazily turned west. Shouting for the sprogs to come and see and grabbing the camera from the kitchen counter, I returned to snap a few shots, rationalising that I had obviously got it wrong and the smoke was simply vapour trail (unlikely at that low altitude in this warm weather) or a skydiver’s cannister that had malfunctioned in the plane (very unlikely but still possible). As I clicked away, I was aware of the noise again.

Buuuur-bup-bup-bup … phut-phut-bup…[silence]

Abrupt silence – never a good thing when flying I suspect, except in gliders maybe. As the skydivers slipped from view and into the paddock behind the local pub, I wondered whether I should dial 111. I didn’t. Well, for one, I wasn’t sure of what I had just seen – was it a plane in trouble or simply throttling back to reduce the prop wash for the skydivers? Did jump plane pilots have parachutes? There’d be a loud explosion if the plane had crashed, surely?

Later, at the school firework display, which the whole township attends, the jungle telegraph was in overdrive – the skydivers were rehearsing for a pre-display jump when the plane got into trouble. The pilot managed to walk away from a landing that left his plane upside down amongst the vines in a local vineyard. Not one to miss a trick, the head teacher raffled some of that vineyard’s latest output as ‘plane crash vintage, never to be tasted again as ten rows of the vines have been totalled by the plane!’

A write up and video report of TVNZ’s version of what they’re inevitably calling ‘The Grape Escape’ can be seen here.

Picture: TVNZ

Joy and pain

Monday, October 30th, 2006
Cruising on the Harbour Bridge
On the limit at the finish

Two hours, seventeen minutes & fifty-two seconds

Sunday, October 29th, 2006
I ran over here today

The 21.09kms mix of rolling hills, flat dockside and Harbour Bridge of this morning’s Auckland Half Marathon took me 2:17 to complete. To put this in context, my new personal best time for the half marathon is a full thirteen minutes slower that it took the Kenyan Paul Tergat to run twice that distance when setting the world marathon record in 2003.

Having risen for breakfast at 3 a.m. and previously only run 10k events, the extra 11kms were new territory for me and a challenge, despite twelve week’s training. A solitary instep blister was the only ‘injury’ I experienced during training so I was surprised and annoyed when, at just the 8km mark, I picked up a nagging pain in my right knee. My post-race masseur offered the opinion that this might be associated with the iliotibial band, a common problem for runners.

After driving home gingerly, taking anti-inflammatories, soaking in a bath and icing my knee, I had a quick lunch and a long but fitful nap. Suitably refreshed and revived, I have just enjoyed one of SWMBO’s superb roast chicken dinners and am now enjoying a chilled light beer.

picture: beautifulnewzealand.com

An after dinner walk

Saturday, January 7th, 2006

This picture, taken a few hours back, exemplifies why we came to New Zealand. Halfway through supper, we simply decided to go for a walk on the beach instead of doing chores or watching the television. Thirty minutes later, we were wandering barefoot on the black volcanic sand, watching the sun slide from the sky whilst the Tasman washed around our ankles.

Bliss.

Run, forest, run

Monday, January 2nd, 2006

This track and the forest beyond has become a regular haunt for me over the last week or so.

Whilst I was running regularly back in London, I have lapsed severely since leaving the UK and have managed just one run each in Los Angeles, Rarotonga and Foxton. As we are now more settled and I’m no longer tearing around chasing interviews, I have started to get back into the groove. Thanks to the endless takeaways and a little too much beer and wine in this land of plenty, I guess that I am about about 5kg heavier than I was when I was in London. Add to this the usual Christmas and New Year festivities and you’ll appreciate that it is proving to be something of a hard slog. However, I am now able to run amongst the tall firs of the local forests, swapping the pavements, car horns and fumes of London’s East End for the birdsong, chirruping cicadas and pine scent of Riverhead. The difference is incredible, allowing me to enjoy the experience and focus on my running rather than watching traffic or teenage gangs out to hassle the unwary.

All this is just as well because, somehow in amongst all the frantic activity of starting my new job, I have managed to sign up for at least one leg of the Great Lake Relay 06. The thought of driving down country in six week’s time with a bunch of colleagues to spend the night running 160kms round the country’s biggest lake has had a certain sobering effect, I can tell you.

Frequent flying

Monday, November 7th, 2005

A while back, one of our brood managed to lose a large set of keys to
our house and car. This must have, in some way, been working on the
subconscious of my beloved earlier this morning because, in the depth
of the night and half asleep herself, SWMBO shook me violently and,
in a rasping whisper not unlike Golum’s, insisted that she ‘could
hear Keith Chegwin outside!’ Being woken at three in the morning to
be told that the moon-faced darling of 1970’s BBC children’s
television is creeping around our garden is not my preferred way to
prepare for a early morning interview. Incredulity turned to
comprehension when upon replaying the phrase in my head, my befuddled
brain realised that she had actually said that she ‘could hear keys
jangling outside’. The need for sleep notwithstanding, paternal duty
and a certain amount of nervous male pride ensured that I spent the
next 5 minutes creeping from window to window, scanning the section
for intruders, famous or otherwise, whilst trying not to recall
details of brutal ‘home invasions’ from recent local news reports.
Having relayed that fact that the jangling was coming from the collar
bell of one of SWMBO’s four cats, I returned to bed to prepare for my
interview with a few hours of restless tossing and turning, now
accompanied by persistent unbidden recollections of Keith Chegwin’s
incessant nasal chirping.

It is two months exactly since we boarded an Air New Zealand Boeing
747 left the UK. In the morning, along with other bleary-eyed
business folk, I will climb aboard a much smaller aircraft for my
third day trip to Auckland in as many weeks. However, tomorrow’s
flight will be different from my previous excursions up country in
that, this time, the cost of the flight will be covered by a
prospective employer, rather than our slowly diminishing family
budget. Whilst there is no business class champagne and caviar
breakfast option available on the thirty seat turboprop crop-duster
I’ll be flying, I might just chance my arm and ask Kevin or Kerry,
the regular cabin crew on this route, for an extra packet of
Macadamia nut cookies to go with my stewed tea.

Whilst I am certainly no jet set executive, I have been lucky enough
to travel to a variety of places on business over the years.
Business travel can be an absolute grind, especially when the
itinerary is tight or the schedules mean long flights with bad
connections. With this in mind, I try to find something new to
offset the drawbacks and provide me with a new perspective to enjoy.
On the outbound flight of my last Auckland trip, I was seated in
front of an Un Min, the airline industry’s contraction for an
unaccompanied minor. From the tone of the conversations he struck up
with both myself and another chap behind him, this small boy, no
older than ten, was already the veteran of many an internal flight
around New Zealand and Australia. From what I could gather, the lad
lived on a remote farm station and any journey to visit far-flung
family or distant friends involved, at the very least, a four wheel
drive and a small light aircraft and that was before he had left the
family property. Yet this seasoned flyer, whose trip home would
involve progressively smaller and smaller aircraft, was not too
seasoned to relish being given the job of handing round the sweets to
the other passengers, whom he proceeded to charm with a winning
combination of healthy outback complexion, cheeky smile and endless
barrage of questions.

With both my bicycles locked inside a bonded container somewhere in
the Port of Wellington, the majority of my terrestrial travel thus
far has been by car or train. Topography, geology and seismology
have all played a part in making road transport the main choice for
moving people and things up and down these long and varied islands,
with ships and boats fulfilling the crucial role of bridging the gap
in the middle and providing alternatives along the sides. I use the
all-encompassing phrase ‘road transport’ as we have seen all manner
of vehicles on the roads here and have become used to rounding a
corner to be confronted by some new form of wheeled vehicle the like
of which we have never seen. Even at the dinner table a week or so
back, I looked up and out of the window to see a London Route Master
double decker bus (No.18 route for those that want to know) driving
past the end of our road and down to the beach. This, we suspect,
was the ‘English Rose’, a bus used for tours and corporate events we
later saw plying it’s trade in Wellington.

As someone who, at one time or another, has piloted bicycles,
minibuses, vans, minicabs and trucks around the busy streets of
London and around the UK, it has taken me a while to adapt to better
suit the more relaxed, though arguably more dangerous, style of
driving here. Although I would describe myself as an average driver,
my spouse has maintained for years that I am prone to certain traits
that are to be found in the sub genus Homo Automobilus. These, I am
reliably informed, include resetting the trip odometer to ‘0’ before
each journey but never checking the final mileage, passing toilet
stops and rest areas to avoid being overtaken by those I have just
passed and demanding what other drivers are doing ‘on my road’. It
goes without saying that I utterly refute such allegations but am
happy to repeat them here in the interests of balanced reporting.
That said, in the early weeks here, I did notice that I was
constantly passing people on the roads. Over the weeks, it has
dawned on me that this ‘must pass’ mentality was a hang over from
driving on British roads where every mile might be your last before
becoming trapped in a 20 mile Bank holiday tail-back. Of late, I am
more than happy, when the conditions allow, to edge up to just shy of
the prevailing speed limit, set the cruise control to keep me legal
and let the car take the strain, knowing that we’ll get there soon
enough.

The vast majority of Kiwi drivers are perfectly sensible and
courteous but the tiny remainder fall into two distinct camps – the
dreamers and the boy racers. The former are those who make use of
the full width of the road, including the opposite lane and both
shoulders, as though driving was like one of those early video
driving games, which simply required one to steer down the black
ribbon between two sets of green pixelated markers. These folks mean
no harm but simply seem incapable of steering a vehicle within the
confines of a designated lane and clearly have less of a grasp
concerning New Zealand’s particular ‘give way to the right’ rules
than I do. The latter, allowed to drive from the age of 15, feature
daily in the newspapers here, where graphic tales of speed freak
antics and lurid reports on road deaths share the same pages as
details of the latest safety campaigns and editorials exploring the
causal factors involved. Shock tactic television adverts feature
tearful actors as bereaved relatives or families in magically
suspended cars suddenly dropped to earth to simulate a head accident
but the thrill, kudos and machismo associated with customised cars,
ear-shattering sound-offs and street racing by New Zealand’s youth
ensures the tolls continues to rise.

As with road deaths the world over, there are no easy answers and few
governments will risk their majority by taking on the road transport
lobby head to head. The inevitable corollary to this is that the
drive for such change invariably falls to volunteer campaigners and
pressure groups. Having been involved in a small way with the London
Cycle Campaign and Tower Hamlets Wheelers’ Bike Buddy scheme, two
stories in Wellington’s Dominion Post caught my attention this
morning which illustrate how the efforts of such groups can make all
the difference. The first concerned a novice cyclist who died whilst
out training for an upcoming charity ride. After carrying the bike
in a car, it seems that both the rider and their friend neglected to
reattach the quick-release brake cables after refitting the wheels.
Any but the shortest journey in Wellington will involve at least one
steep hill, so the consequence of this oversight was the cyclist
careered downhill, through a junction and into a pickup truck, with
fatal consequences. As “not a confident bike rider” who disliked
“riding in the city”, perhaps this rider might have benefited from
having an experienced bike buddy who, as well as helping them ride
confidently along the safest route possible, might just have advised
them to check the reassembled bike before heading down a steep
slope. In the second story, prompted by a coroner’s report,
Wellington City Council is considering lowering the speed limit in
the city centre from 50 to 30 kph in order to reduce deaths and
accidents involving vulnerable road users such as pedestrians and
cyclists. However, the union representing the bus and tram drivers
here claim that, because pedestrians stepping into the street leave
their members “nowhere to go”, the pavements should be lined with
chains or railings except at designated crossing points. This is all
well and good unless, as has been found in London, you are a cyclist,
when these railings are potential killers that prevent riders falling
away from the traffic and leave them more vulnerable to being
crushed. Without a unified and comprehensive approach, the city runs
the risk of reducing casualty statistics in one user group only to
cause them to rise in another. Who knows, I may just add my voice to
the debate.

Talking of casualties, we had our first opportunity to experience New
Zealand’s healthcare system when daughter two managed to over-extend
daughter three’s ankle joint in a bout of playground rough and
tumble. Despite the lack of visible symptoms, an increase in the
pain after a few hours raised concerns enough to indicate a swift
drive to the emergency room forty kilometres away was in order.
Despite some concerns over the extent of the reciprocal healthcare
agreement between the UK and NZ, we were dealt with pleasantly and
efficiently in a clean and welcoming environment, a welcome change
from the madhouse atmosphere and cast of social outcasts that made up
London’s busiest ER, which was nearest to our old UK home. After a
couple of hours waiting punctuated by a visit from a triage nurse and
a trip to x-ray, we were ushered into a consulting room to see the
doctor. Seemingly almost as young, blonde and smiley as her patient,
the lovely Dr Williams spoke with a soft lilting voice that could
only originate in the valleys of South Wales. The telltale signs of
junior doctor tiredness receded a little as she talked of home and
checked the ankle for damage. Having ascertained that the damage was
minimal, we said our goodbyes and left the good doctor to her work.
Whilst she professed to be enjoying her work experience and social
life abroad very much, I detected more than a hint of homesickness in
her tone and suspect that, on completion of her rotation, she’ll be
heading back to the UK. Come tomorrow morning, I’m interviewing for
a job that may just mean that, when March rolls around, we can avoid
having to do the same.

Turbulence

Sunday, October 9th, 2005

“Oh…Dear…Lord…”

My neighbour, whose fingers were clamped deeply and firmly into the headrest in front of him, was clearly not enjoying the flight and spent a good deal of it in the ‘brace’ position recommended on the card in the pocket in front of him. To be fair, a small propeller-driven commuter aircraft flying up New Zealand’s west coast is not necessarily where one would choose to be when springtime Westerlies are blowing in across the Tasman from Australia. Riveting though the in-flight magazine was, it was no match for the drama unfolding in the cabin during the one hour flight from Palmerston North to Auckland. After complimentary coffee and tea had decorated enough laps and the hostess had fallen over twice, the cabin crew gave up serving the in-flight breakfast snack and passed amongst the passengers with rosaries, lucky heather and next-of-kin forms. Massive air pockets sent the plane lurching earthwards, leaving me an inch above the seat straining against my belt, until our descent was arrested by vigourous updrafts that pushed me down into the padding like a large invisible hand. Combined with the gale howling the other side of the small Plexiglass window, these roller-coaster moments made for an interesting trip and the relief of being back on the ground was evident on the faces of my fellow passengers as we filed across the apron to the terminal building.

I had flown to Auckland for an interview with the deputy HR director of a large national organisation. The interview had come about as a result of a ‘float’ by one of the recruiters I am using. A float, I discovered, is recruiter jargon for pitching a candidate to a prospective employer without a particular role in mind. Whilst this might sound a bit hit and miss, New Zealand’s present economic climate, low rate of unemployment – most employable people are gainfully employed – and static population mean that even the best of positions might only receive two or three applications. This being the case, employers are keen to meet with a promising candidate in the hope that they can match them to existing or upcoming roles in their organisations. In this case, the float was a good one, not only from from my point of view but that of the HR director and operations manager I interviewed with as well. The organisation seems to offer what I’m looking for and, I’m reliably informed, their feedback regarding me was unusually positive, with a specific commitment to try and find a role within the organisation that I could formally apply for.

Suitably cheered by the positive response, I returned from Auckland only to find that I shall have to fly back again next week, for a pre-interview with another recruiter concerning a position with a utility company. Should this gives the impression that job hunting in NZ is simply a matter of jetting about meeting people, then let me set the record straight. Far away from our old lives and networks, I have found it hard to establish an effective daily job hunting routine and securing two interviews in two weeks belies the routine slog that brought them about. Given that we have no landline telephone and therefore no fixed internet access at the beach house, establishing some sort of routine has become essential to making any progress in my job hunting. Usually, this routine involves checking the career sections in the New Zealand Herald and the Dominion Post (Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays), highlighting suitable roles and creating a tracking file for each role or recruiter. In these files, I record all the ad details, emails, phone conversations and meetings regarding each role. Given that, as of today, I am actively working with seven recruiters on six separate applications, not to mention other agencies I am registered with or jobs I’m applying for direct, I need to be comfortable with my system and confident I am on top of all that I need to do each day. As someone used to having at least 2Mb broadband access, fixed line telephone and a home office space to work with, trying to work without such things has been more of a challenge than I had bargained for.

My iBook and my new Nokia 6680 are both Bluetooth-capable and this means, in theory at least, that I can get online and work anywhere I can get a decent phone signal and faster 3G access in the major cities. In practise, things are a little more difficult and this has proven to be the most frustrating aspect of life here for me so far. GPRS, that is to say a fast data connection via my cellphone, is pretty costly here and means a pre-pay phone like the one SWMBO is using is out of the question, so I chose the 3G phone hoping to benefit from a faster service on a cheaper account tariff. Without an established credit history, signing up for a mobile account without a credit limit has been a trial and, whilst I have applied for an open account cleared by direct debit each month, I have yet to hear whether or not this has been approved. In the meantime, I have discovered that there is nothing more infuriating than preparing a bunch of emails and attachments, only to have the connection drop halfway through sending your mails because you have reached your credit limit. I have four other options available; using the internet terminals at the local township library 5 kms away or the main library 20 kms away or driving 40kms to Palmerston North to use an internet cafe or the pay-as-you-go wifi access at one of the coffee houses. Of these, the wifi option is preferable as I can access all my own documents on the iBook without the hassle of having to transferring them.

This uncertain state of affairs has driven me to distraction and, to my shame, have caused more than a few periods of turbulence and dark clouds around the house. Difficulties and frustrations are magnified by the fact that, as a family, we are removed from familiar surroundings, estranged from friends and colleagues and in each other’s company twenty four hours a day. The kids have relished their time away from school and, in the absence of their usual TV programmes, have played together a lot more. The simple fact that they can now occupy three bedrooms, as opposed to the solitary room they shared in the UK, has helped to reduce sibling rivalries and tensions significantly but their noisy and boisterous games don’t make for the conducive work-like atmosphere. Likewise, having a boring Dad who is always asking for quiet and moaning about the noise can cramp the style of four energetic youngsters. The lack of a desk or office space means that I must either perch on the end of the dining room table or retire to an easy chair in the corner of the living room to work, using my iPod to blot out the mayhem and chaos that goes on around me. Occasionally, I retreat to the bedroom downstairs to concentrate or make a call, in the fervent hope that the person I’m calling can’t hear the fratricidal goings-on upstairs. Unused to spending so much time in each other’s company, spousal relations have been strained too. Be it a disagreement about whether we should get a second car (without a car, you’re pretty well stranded in rural NZ) or a misunderstanding about something that was said back in the UK, every conversation is a potential flash point. Without the routines and support structures we are used to, both of us are aware and afraid of getting into arguments that we can’t resolve easily, fearful of long silences at the dinner table and, despite the very necessary electric blankets, cold shoulders at bedtime. After the storm has passed, tentative peace talks usually identify the causal factor of any dispute fairly quickly and, with both parties agreeing a mutually acceptable solution, hostilities dissolve and the house takes on a cordial atmosphere once again.

Storms of the meteorological kind have also played a significant part in our lives over the last two weeks. The view from our living room window is made up of just three elements; sand dunes, sky and sea. Like coast dwellers since time began, we often find ourselves transfixed by the view. Here, a world away from the crowded view of our London flat, we marvel at the cloud formations that announce the arrival of another weather front and crashing breakers that deposit the Tasman Sea at our back door. Just today, I found myself struck by the fact that, at an elemental level, there is no physical barrier between the cold angry water that foams over the dark volcanic sand here and the warm, reef-protected lagoon off Rarotonga where we snorkelled amongst pipe fish and coral just a few weeks back. That said, as Captains Cook and Tasman and the other pakeha who explored and mapped New Zealand discovered, the coastal water here are influenced by the winds and waves of the Pacific and Tasman, not to mention the frigid waters of the Antartic and, as such, are prone to impressive storms around each equinox.

Conscious that the preceding paragraphs read like the moans of a ‘whinging Pom’ (see joke below), let me reassure you that we love being here and are thoroughly enjoying ourselves. How can one complain about a country where one can buy five double-scoop ice cream cones for $5 (£1.97) or a five minute errand takes an hour and a half because every one wants to chat and find out why you’re here? In our admittedly limited experience so far, we have found almost all Kiwis to be generous with both their time and resources. For instance, the local pastor, having learned of my lack of connectivity when the family attended church last weekend, immediately tracked me down and offered me the use of his Airport Extreme wireless broadband connection any time I needed it. This has meant that, in the last week, I have been able to work from his dining room table or, when I have just needed to send the odd mail, simply pull up outside his house, log onto his home network and hit the ‘send’ button in my mail application. We have received solid house buying advice from a waitress that tallied with similar advice from friends and a chance word in a $2 shop led to the loan of a cat basket when we needed to collect the cats from the cattery.

Despite our uncertain immigration status, the principals of both the local primary school and the local college have both been happy to enrol the three eldest girls, citing the need for them to get settled and make new friends as being more important than funding and paper work, at least for the time being. Both schools are made up of bright, airy single storey buildings laid out across large spacious campuses. Here, large playing fields with an abundance of climbing frames, play equipment and open air swimming pools with sun canopies are the norm even for the smallest schools. The classrooms are filled with artwork and project material that draws equally from both the Maori and Pakeha (European settler) cultures, alongside a multitude of All Blacks posters, which stand as testament to the strong national pride here as well as the fierce opposition the local teams dealt the British Lions in June. The general ethos in the schools seems to be one of work hard, play hard but have fun doing both. Come tomorrow morning, we will see if this is borne out as the eldest girls will start their New Zealand school careers, a little nervous of what to expect but excited too. Although the littlest has been attending an Early Years Unit at a London primary school since she was three, children here do not attend school until their fifth birthday so we’re hoping to sign her up at the local kindergarten in the meantime, so she can make friends and SWMBO can have a few hours to herself each weekday.

The landscape here is simply wonderful and we are truly lucky to be able to view the vast expanse of the ocean from one side of the house and the low mountains of the Tararua State Forest Park from the other. Any car journey affords great views of the hills across the rolling farms, wide flood plains and thick swathes of fir. The wide views and distant horizons have enabled us to see the complete arc of the most vivid rainbows we have ever seen. At night, without the light pollution that blights so many places these days, the sky is crammed with stars and, just over a week ago, we saw a shooting star streak across the sky, mirrored in the ocean below. The southern spring is slowly giving way to summer and the fields are filled with young lambs, calves and foals, all grazing on the rich grass of riverine meadows of Horowhenua, the region where we currently live.

Our nearest large town is Levin and it looks like many others here, based as it is around a main street that sits astride a State Highway. On each side, the highway is bounded by covered walkways and canopies outside the shops and stores. Interspersed with these are entrance to small shopping malls that run perpendicular to the road and often lead to large parking lots at the rear. More often than not, these are surrounded by the larger chain stores and supermarkets. The fact that these large stores are away from the main street helps to preserve not only the feel of an older high street but means that the smaller independent store have more than a fighting chance in grabbing their share of passing trade. At either end of the main street, the shops gradually give way to the larger commercial premises of car dealerships, builders merchants and other service industry outlets. The town boasts a great adventure park where the kids went wild yesterday until rain stopped play, a small aquatic centre where we swam today and a thriving cinema that shows world cinema releases alongside blockbusters.

Closer to home, Foxton is a small town built around a Main Street that is one block back from but parallel to State Highway 1. As the first settlement of the Manawatu, Foxton had aspirations to become the regional hub but, unlike most towns in the region, was not founded on a farming community. Founded by a Presbyterian missionary in 1848, the town only began to thrive when a flax mill was opened twenty years later, processing flax harvested from the surrounding swamps. The town eventually grew to support fifty mills and a thriving river port but Foxton’s growth was also it’s undoing. A wooden tramway (later railway) was built to connect it to the new settlement of Palmerston North, which lay 40kms inland. However, a depressed economy and the diversion of the railways to serve business interests elsewhere sealed Foxton’s fate, with it’s gradual decline ironically balanced by Palmerston North’s growth into a thriving university city. Today, a carpet factory, providing local jobs but itself under threat, is all that remains of this manufacturing heritage and the town is now reliant on tourism and crafts for it’s main incomes.

To the seaward side of Foxton lies Foxton Beach, where we are living in a house kindly lent to us by friends. The township is comprised mostly of homes belonging to retirees and beach houses (‘baches’), interwoven with the odd holiday motel and motor camp (caravan park). Intriguingly, I was told in conspiratorial tones by a local that a lot of single parents on low incomes move here, though quite what I was to make of that I am not sure. This little community sits in the mouth of the Manawatu estuary with a sailing club and slipway nestled alongside a bird sanctuary. Apart from the usual dairy (corner shop) and petrol station, commerce in the township also includes a second hand store that is never open, Mr Grumpy’s fish and chip shop and a small bar and eatery called Simply Balmy. All this is overseen and protected by a volunteer fire service who are summoned by what sounds like a nuclear attack siren, an enormous lifeguard station on the beach and a police station that is smaller than our living room. Whilst it is highly unlikely that I will find work locally or that we will settle here long term, it is a delightful area full of wonderful little towns and lovely people. Our time here so far has proven to be a marvellous antidote of to our many years of city living and a superb introduction to the country we hope to make our home.

Kiwi joke: How can you tell if an aeroplane at the airport is carrying Poms? The whining carries on after the engines are turned off!

Dislocated

Monday, September 26th, 2005

Six people, twenty two pieces of luggage, three international flights over twelve thousand miles, seven hotel and resort rooms, four yellow cabs, one Hollywood premier and a swim in a waterfall – the last three weeks have been like no other in my life. Whilst I set out with the intention of posting my thoughts, impressions and feeling as we travelled, the simple practicalities of taking notes whilst in transit, finding time to write them up and securing decent internet access have conspired to extinguish the little incentive I had left at the end of each day. Moreover, I was conscious that I wanted my emigration experience to be a participative, family one, not that of a stand-alone observer watching from the outside, dutifully taking notes. So, rather than a day-by-day account of the ‘what I did on my holidays’ genre, which would undoubtedly turn out to be the written equivalent of viewing someone else’s holiday slides, what you have below is a collection of notes typed at various points along the way.

Staring at my own reflection in the toilet of a Air New Zealand 747, thousands of feet high over Hudson Bay, it still hasn’t sunk in. The redundancy has happened, our home and car are sold and our belongings together with our pets have been shipped to the other side of the world. The tearful goodbyes and leaving parties must surely count for something, as must the swapping of email addresses and promises to keep in touch, but I feel strangely hollow right now. The ever-increasing whirlwind that we have been through seems to have numbed me to a point where I cant quite put my finger on what I am meant to be feeling right now. I feel tired but that can be put down to the cumulative effects of recent weeks activities – the last days of commuting, the packing and re-packing, the phone calls and the visits, the arguments and the funny moments. I feel restless after too many nights when my mind wouldnt stop churning things which then gave way to last few nights of fitful rest on a friends floor until, with the arrival of this morning, there are, as the youngest would say, no more ‘sleeps’ to be slept. Most of all I feel impatient, no make that keen; keen for us to be done with all the planning, all the preparations and be on our way.

After two days in Los Angeles, we’re finally at gate 27 at LAX waiting to be called for our flight to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. The blinkered and zenophobic attitudes that are now part and parcel of airport transits in the US are enough to leave a bad taste in the mouth of any ‘alien’. Such Homeland Security hoop-jumping would be enough on it’s own but the local check-in agent here was keen not to be outdone. Despite Air New Zeland allowing us to check 12 bags and a child’s car seat in London, ‘Hello, My name is Raoul, how can I screw up your day?’ had other ideas. He of the name badge, nylon blazer and Supa-Size attitude insisted that we may only check 12 with his airline, regardless of any previous arrangement in London, for ‘security reasons’. Quite how a Mothercare fabric and polystyrene car seat poses a threat to the Free World is unclear but Raoul was unmoved by our logic. Unmoved that is, until we removed the smallest case, reducing the pile to the required twelve pieces, stating that we’d take it as carry-on luggage instead. With his frozen smile changing to a death mask, Raoul insisted on measuring it in the hope that it will be too big or over-weight but eventually. We tried not to smile as he begrudgingly accepted the cases & car seat to tag and send on their way.

Or so we thought. With the grinding inevitability that follows all Pyhric victories, Raoul has the last laugh. We arrive in Rarotonga in the early hours of the morning to find that we are short one piece of luggage – the car seat. Of course, it turns up later, after a day or so, just long enough to make sure we know who is really in charge. I should have known better than to piss Raoul off. I knew a military logistics guy who, upon being abused by a condescending officer heading for UK from the Falkland Islands, redirected the officer’s personal effects to a camp in Canada where they were snowed in until the spring thaw the following year.

I like many things about America and have a good few friends across the US but, make no mistake, there has been a definite increase in their very special brand of self-assured, swaggering arrogance and cosy insularity since 9/11. In recent months, when mentioning to a US-based colleague that we were emigrating from the UK, they would invariably ask ‘Which state are you heading for?’, as if the United States was the only option worthy of consideration. Strangely, there are a fair number of superficial similarities between the US and New Zealand: the grid-based street layouts; the canopied shopping strips of the small towns along the State Highways; the dollar sign and old Chevrolet pickup trucks are all reminiscent of small town America. However, within minutes of our landing in New Zealand, our progress through the arrivals hall at Auckland airport only served to highlight the difference in attitude towards visitors and the cultural mindset in general. Where immigration at LAX offered one queue for non-US passport holders and 8 channels for returning citizens, Auckland offered an equal number of channels and, for those like us with young children, a separate fast-track channel. Even with six passports and visas to be reviewed, scanned, processed and stamped, we were politely dealt with and on our way inside 15 mins. In a world that is increasingly wary of those who seek to leave their birth nation to seek a new life in another country, it speaks volumes that the NZ immigration officer actually smiled and wished me good luck in finding the job I need to secure the longer-term visas we need to remain in New Zealand.

There have been surprisingly few tears and tantrums thus far. We have had the usual arguments and moods but, as yet, no major explosions of emotions over leaving the UK for the unknown of our present life in New Zealand. Climbing wearily onto the plane for the middle of the three legs, the youngest was heard to say that she wanted to ‘go home’. Having been awake for the 12 hours preceding a 12 hour flight, it seemed that her idea of home was wherever she could lay down and sleep, which she promptly did for most of the flight.

With the snickety-snick of the hire car’s handbrake, we finally stopped travelling five days ago. For now, our home is a friend’s beach house, set at the end of a road amongst the wind blown sand dunes of New Zealand’s Kapiti Coast. From the windows and the deck outside, we can watch large grey rolling waves, driven by the Westerlies crossing the Tasman Sea from Australia, break on the wide and wild expanse of sand that stretches for miles in each direction. The small township in which we are staying boasts a small bar, a smaller police hut, a fish and chip shop, a diary (corner shop), a service station, two schools, two churches, two bible camps, several hotels and camp sites, a sailing club and collections of small individual homes strung along quiet streets. Backtracking five kilometres back east brings us to the nearest small town which is pretty much the same but only larger by dint of the fact that it sits astride the State Highway, itself a simple two lane road with occasional passing places. Once the home to a thriving flax industry that is now reduced to one carpet factory, Foxton proclaims itself to be ‘Hometown, NZ’ on its sign and quite rightly, for it appears to be the quintessential small town with just enough of the necessary infrastructure intact to function and serve local folks immediate needs. Twenty kilometres south, Levin is a good example of the best of both worlds, the old fashioned canopied stores lining the main street and adjacent side streets interspersed with small malls and arcades of shops. Car lots and service industry outlets cluster at either end of the main street, just before the points where the speed limit signs allow the through traveller to accelerate back onto the rural highway. Tucked away behind the facades of the main street and down the side turnings, the chain supermarkets jostle with the small office buildings of the local professionals. This seems to be the pattern across a significant proportion of NZ with folks seemingly prize local services and streets fronted by family-owned stores, ahead of chain stores and out-of-town retail parks. Quite how long this state of affairs will last I’m not sure. With the weekend paper carrying a big feature story about the techniques supermarkets use to part shoppers from their cash, it would seem that the Kiwis may soon be subjected to the rampant all-conquering commercialism of the 24/7 megastore culture so prevalent in the Northern Hemisphere.

It has only taken a few days to drive home (pun intended) the fact that New Zealand is a car-driving, road transport-orientated country. We are covering distances that we’d rarely need to in the UK just to get to the places we need to be in order to get our new lives set up. The nearest internet access, for we have no phone line at the house, is 20kms away in a public library but limited to simple read/write activities. For the high speed, high bandwidth access I need for sending CVs, downloading tax documents and handling any volume of email, it’s a 2 hour, 100km trip to the nearest wifi hotspot (in a Starbucks coffee shop of course) in Palmerston North. Already our London-raised kids are becoming hardened to the fact that if you want anything more than the local store offers, it means at least a twenty minute car ride. Given that the location of our first proper home in NZ will be pretty much dictated by where I can secure employment, I suspect that there are a few prayers being said for Dad getting a job in the heart of one of the cities and a home in the suburbs. Having said that, none of us have really begun to adjust yet. That we are here for the foreseeable future and not heading home after a holiday is slowly becoming clear and I am sure that each of us will have moments when we might wish otherwise. I came close today when the umpteenth attempt to get a rudimentary dail-up connection via my cellphone at the beach house failed, the lack of my familiar broadband connection to the rest of the world only emphasising the enormity of the decision we made in coming here. A couple of hours and a few words of prayer by SWMBO later, I managed to get connected, albeit at an excrutiatingly slow speed and the dark moment passed. Tomorrow sees that beginning of another week and the continuing tasks of setting up home and getting employment, though if the first week is anything to go by, we’re in for more cultural adjustments and frustrations mixed with new acquaintances and humourous goings-on.

The supermodel in my bed

Sunday, March 20th, 2005

In the week since I have returned home, I have woken in the night more than a few times, bidden by my bodyclock to be doing something other than sleep. The first few seconds of wakefulness have been typified by uncomprehending confusion for, no matter how familiar the surroundings of my bedroom might appear in the minutes that follow, my first thought is a conviction that I am in an airport hotel somewhere in New Zealand. My next thoughts are that I don’t know where the toilet is and, more worryingly, I’m in bed with a woman. In the agonising seconds that follow, one half of my befuddled brain tries to work out where the toilet is whilst the other half desperately ponders on how I am going to explain the woman in bed to SWMBO. After what can be no more than ten or more seconds, there comes the slow and blessed realisation that I am actually in my own bedroom and the sleeping form next to me is in fact the wife and not some Kiwi supermodel who would stop at nothing to prevent my return to the UK.

Having never travelled to the other side of the world and back before, I have no idea whether this sort of behaviour is normal after long haul flights or in fact I’m undergoing some sort of forty-something mental meltdown. After a week, I am seemingly back to normal and confident that the three-in-a-bed activities of the last week are behind me. That said, the disturbed sleep and disorientation has served to emphasise two things to me; just how far away New Zealand is and, somewhat surprisingly, how quickly my consciousness adapted to the solitary existence of such a road trip. Although the phrase is a little over-worn, ‘alone not lonely’ would be a fair way of describing my time in New Zealand for, whilst there were periods of lonliness in which I missed SWMBO and the kids, I was very fortunate to meet some wonderful people. These people ranged from bus drivers and waiters to the siblings and parents of folks I know and, without exception, each and everyone of them enhanced my trip. So, in the fervent hope that I will avoid gushing like a starlet at the Oscars, I would like to mention a few of those who helped make my visit the experience it was.

Linda, Gideon, Susie, David and Amy for their hospitality, friendship and good humour. There are not many busy families who will alter their plans in minutes to welcome a jetlagged semi-stranger so warmly – and then invite him back twice more. If ever there were a family who embody what we envisage for ourselves, we need look no further.

Rita and Steve for their generosity of time and advice. Steve gave up a whole day to give me a whirlwind tour of Auckland’s suburbs and amenities, introducing me to the culinary delights of pies and fresh Kiwi produce then fitting in a quick swim in the Pacific before joining Rita for a wonderful dinner and an evening of great conversation.

Di and Paul for taking me to my first English theme pub to watch my first Super 12 game…and then taking me to an Irish theme pub after Ireland beat England in the Six Nations.

Rae and Peter who made the diversion to Palmerston North so worthwhile, offering me the biggest lunch of the trip and a marvellous drive through the Manawatu-Wanganui countryside – not to mention Rae’s waist-expanding cream tea picnic!

Brenda (to whom I can now put a face after years of swapping emails on a mailing list), who knows a great place for organic coffee and muffins and kindly invited me for Friday afternoon drinks with the open source geeks at Catalyst, with whom I talked computing, politics and semantics whilst playing table tennis with a bat in one hand and a beer in the other before joining Brenda for a late supper with her partner Callum.

Tammy and Mike who took a few hours away from launching their Move2NZ migrant website to show me the delights of Christchurch, Governor’s Bay and Rapaki and provide me with a wealth of advice that only experienced migrants would know.

I spoke to a great many people who, in their professional capacities, provided me with advice concerning immigration, employment and relocation. Although it is my intention to write on the more practical aspects of our emigration experience elsewhere, I would like to especially mention Isobel, Gwenda and the team at SearchWorks who, being great folks to deal with, even lent me a desk and phone when Princes Charles’ visit threatened to make me homeless in Wellington. Honourable mentions are also due to Phil at Candle, Nathalie at Momentum, Shelley at OCG, Brenda at WestPac, Gillian at Drake, James at Comspek and Bruce, Sara, Tracey and Patrick at Duncan & Ryan.

In closing, I would like to point out that the supermodel featured at the beginning of this piece is, of course, an attention-grabbing literary device and nothing else. Really.

my lo-fi ears are listening to Broken Stones/Paul Weller