Open Writing

Setting off was not quite as fraught as last time. We weren’t prepared to stump up three months’ worth of airport car-parking fees, and had planned to catch a train to the airport from Huddersfield. Our friends, who live over the street, had offered to ferry us and our baggage to the train station, but at as near as dammit the last minute decided that they weren’t going to do that. Fortunately, this was because they were very kindly insisting on taxi-ing us all the way to the airport terminal! That’s the sort of hiccough with which we can cope, no sweat.

Manchester airport is surprisingly civilised – we found a smoking area that was defined by nothing more than a few signs and some fiendishly cunning ventilation arrangements (i.e. concentrating the extractor fans in the ceiling over this designated area – real rocket-science that seems to have eluded the best brains in the rest of the known universe). The next bit of good fortune was that we were able to book our luggage right the way through to Auckland, in spite of changing airlines at Heathrow –a much more expectedly uncivilised dump in which to have to kick our heels for about four hours.

I swear, I will never get used to the air hostesses on Malaysian Airlines. They are the sort of phenomenally beautiful women that a red-blooded male should encounter only when seated, as it saves the embarrassment of buckling at the knees and crumpling untidily onto the floor. Hell, even the "air hosts" are quite pretty, though it goes without saying that they have absolutely no impact whatsoever on my knee-joints (I can’t vouch for Pam’s).

We had our statutory weirdo just across the aisle. As soon as the plane started taxi-ing, he grabbed the sick-bag and got it ready. The moment the "unfasten seat-belts" light went out, he shot off to the toilet, came back, and started preparing a second sick-bag. Then he put away a dinner, including a pile of raw fish – just looking at his made me feel gippy. Then, off he went and filled the second bag. He spent the rest of the journey stuffing himself with all the food and drink he could get his hands on. Pam buried herself in a book, and I buried myself in my MD player, on this trip ennobled by the presence of my majestic Sony CD1700 headphones, and listened to Stravinsky ballets, Brian’s "Gothic" Symphony, a pile of Rimsky-Korsakov’s orchestral music, and lots of Debussy piano music. Yes, that’s right, on the in-flight entertainment system there were fifteen films from which to choose, and not a single one that held the least interest for either Pam or myself!

Kuala Lumpur (or "KL", as everybody seems to call it) is starting to look like the "in" place to get your duty-free baccy – it worked out at well under one quarter of the UK price. I used up Pam’s duty-free allowance as well as my own – that should save a fortune, as pipe baccy in NZ is phenomenally expensive (but, I’ve bored you with my complaints about that already, haven’t I?). Since last January KL airport has acquired an official "smoking room". We went in – and pretty well came straight back out (I paused long enough to greet a huge bloke of Samoan or some-such extraction. Well, we were the only two people in the entire place who were smoking pipes). The place was bloody awful: try to imagine a cross between the inside of a stainless steel microwave oven, a locker room and a public toilet. Oh, very tasteful wooden ceiling, alright, but the walls – ye gods, which raving madman dreamt up this gruesome confection of dull green-grey glass-like panels? Judging by the state of the floor, this room was strictly off-limits to the cleaning staff - other than, that is, those who were in there having a fag and contributing to the mess.
Post-haste, we took ourselves off, praying to gods all and sundry that the bar we had found last January had not been abolished. It had survived! Festooned to the gunwhales and beyond with a kaleidoscopic array of exotic, albeit plastic vegetation, humming with Sixties pop music (Beach Boys, Billy J Kramer & the Dakotas, Gerry and the Pacemakers et cetera) and populated by all manner of strange-looking people with strange-sounding accents (including us, I suppose!), it’s just like something out of one of those Berthold Brecht/Kurt Weill songs. We soon got chatting to a young woman from Dublin, who was on her way to NZ for a whole "year out". Beats working for a living, I thought to myself, and then remembered an important and not entirely irrelevant fact.

On the KL to Auckland leg, we had a young Swiss maid for company. We were on the "window" side of a row of three seats, and she occupied the aisle seat. First thing we knew, she was crying her eyes out! Naturally, and blithely assuming that it had nothing to do with the poor lass having to sit next to me, we asked her whatever was the matter? It turned out that she was terrified, not of flying per se, but of the little bits at either end, where (a) the aircraft’s wheels let go the tarmac and (b) the aircraft’s wheels caught hold of the tarmac. Poor lass – she was in a right lather, having taken a tablet to settle her nerves, and timed it wrong. We ended up holding her hands during the critical manoeuvres – she might have been only a slip of a lass, but she nearly crushed Pam’s hand, she was that scared! Now I’m wondering: have I overlooked something I should be nervous about?

Again, it took an eternity to get through immigration at Auckland, partly because of the sheer numbers of people, partly because of the vast range of checks ("Have you any live cows, sheep or goats in your luggage?"), but mostly because the staff are so interested in where you’re from and what you’re going to be doing in NZ. Finally, we got our luggage, and lugged it over to the internal check-in. The cheery bloke was just about to tell us how to get across to the terminal when we chorused, "Yeah – we follow the blue-and-white line!" Straight off, he spotted that we’d been this way before. Right on the ball, these Kiwis.

A fairly thick layer of cumulus prevented any aerobatic sight-seeing on the flight up to Whangarei, which may or may not have been a good thing. To our immense relief, this time the pilot distributed the application of his brakes over rather more than the last 10% of the runway. And there they all were again! The whole family – Hazel, Mike, Jake and Kian – had turned up to greet us. Hazel’s workmate, Nicole, had loaned her car, and Hazel’s boss had given her the afternoon off (and she took some leave for the rest of the week). Jake had been given official leave of absence from school to come and see us in. Kian still regarded us with some suspicion. Of course, now he’s talking (he never stops, in fact), he understood in principle who we were, but it took him a few days to finally slot us back into his ken. At first, he was calling Pam "Grandy" and me – much to Mike’s amusement – "Mavis". Don’t ask, I haven’t the faintest idea.
After an evening settling in for our short stay chez Oiseaux (Hazel and Mike Bird, get it?), we were up and off into town on Wednesday morning (1 December) to find a car. First though, we had to go to State Insurance, where Hazel works. I think it was one of the conditions for getting a bit of time off that she took us in – they were curious to see for themselves what proper Yorkshire folk were like!! Damned shame that I’d forgotten to bring my flat cap with me. Then down to business: we went round to the local car auction, but there wasn’t much going so Mike took us round to a nearby dealer who did a few second-hands. We looked one over, but decided against it when we saw the state of the bodywork (and anyway $3500 was way out of our price bracket). The bloke suggested we try another place over the road, and the chap there listened to our "specifications", then wheeled us around the back and showed us a 15-year old Nissan Bluebird. He knocked off a couple of hundred bucks to get it into our price range, and the ‘bird was ours – or rather, Hazel’s, because we put it in her name to simplify her selling it on after we’ve done with it.

It’s white with a very fetching (or should that be "retching"?) mid-brown upholstery. OK, so the white has a few – alright, quite a lot of - chips out of it, and the brown is a bit worn, but all considered it’s in really good nick, and for our $2500 we got a 2-litre automatic with overdrive, central locking, PAS, electrically-adjustable door mirrors, electric windows on all four doors, fully adjustable driver’s seat, air-con., et cetera - and it came complete with owner’s operating manual. The main minus is that this last is entirely in Japanese. But, what the heck? It does all the things it’s supposed to, it’s comfy and clean (once we’d ejected a couple of stray chewing-gum wrappers), is pretty rust-free, has an array of friendly squeaks and chitters, and thus far it doesn’t seem too greedy on the juice – just as well, seeing as petrol now costs about $1.18 (48p. or so) a litre. The bloke even threw in a full 6 months "reggo" (= tax disc) and a "warranty" (like an MoT). Another good bit is that we got the insurance through where Hazel works. One year’s fully comprehensive, any driver for $280 (around £112), of which we should get three-quarters back when we depart. Another convenience: we popped into the local "AA" office and got our free temporary membership cards – NZ has a reciprocal agreement with the UK AA.

On Thursday morning (2 December), we had an appointment with the real-estate agent, to sign up and collect the key for the furnished let that they’d found for us. This has turned out to be another stroke of good fortune, because Hazel and the agent weren’t having much luck, until one day a lady went in to see about renting out her "bach" (pronounced "batch", this is the Kiwi term for a beach house. Nobody seems to know the derivation of this word). She just happened to mention the "little" unit that was at the back of her home, and the agent’s internal connectives started ding-a-linging. This "unit" had been used previously as a residence, but was presently devoid of furnishings etc. The owners kitted it out only after they knew they had some tenants, i.e. us. Thursday afternoon was devoted to supermarket shopping, ready for moving in on Friday. Exciting stuff, eh?

Our "house" is over in Onerahi, on the eastern side of town, about twenty minutes’ drive from Hazel and Mike’s. Hazel had told us that Carol (the said "lady") was very nice and would do anything for us, but that didn’t prepare us for what we found on Friday morning when we rolled up. Apparently Carol baby-sits on Fridays, so wasn’t at home when we got there. The first thing we spotted on letting ourselves in was a vase of flowers on the coffee-table, with a greeting-card saying, "Welcome to your ‘home’ away from home. Clive and I hope you will feel relaxed and comfortable here for the next 3 months". On the dining table was a bowl of variegated rose blooms. The fridge and food cupboard were stocked with some staples, all sorts of little touches – heck, there was even a small stock of loo-paper and a can of aerosol pong-blaster. Not exactly what you expect of a landlord?

It is absolutely perfect for our needs. You enter through a patio door ("ranch slider") into a spacious lounge. The back half, with a beamed ceiling, is furnished with two settees, an armchair, a coffee table, a TV atop a chest of drawers, and a neat little stereo on a freestanding shelf unit. The near half goes up the full height of the building, and is basically a big, open space, to the right of which a wooden staircase goes up to the bedrooms (which are over the beamed ceiling). From behind the stairs you walk through to the dining room from where, doubling back into the front half of the house, you go to the kitchen. Off the kitchen is the bathroom, which thus occupies a "tunnel" between the kitchen and lounge, so that from the stairs you can look over the bathroom ceiling down into the kitchen! The bedrooms are effectively in the "loft space". Only the main bedroom is furnished – a fabulously comfy bed, bedside cabinet at one side and a small table at the other (both with lamps), a big chest of drawers with a little TV, a floor-standing fan and a walk-in wardrobe in the corner.

From the window you get a lovely view over the harbour (that’s the natural formation, not the man-made structure), just as from the dining room, where I sit typing this, you can see through the palms and gum-trees of Carol’s lovely garden to the wooded hills across the valley. Being set about 100m. down a grit path from Pah Road, which is a cul-de-sac that meets a through road a good few hundred metres over the brow of a hill, we find ourselves in a very peaceful neighbourhood.

Anyway, back to the action! After the young ‘uns left us to our own devices, we trotted off into town to buy a mobile ‘phone, basically in case we get stuck anywhere when we’re out and about (see "AA" above!). We found a dinky little Panasonic job, on Vodaphone pre-paid with $15 on the clock, for just $150. Calls cost $0.49 (about 20p.) a minute (anytime) and it isn’t locked. When we get back to the UK we can just insert the SIM card from my clunky old pocket-ripper – so at least it’ll save on repairs to torn pockets!

Next came the important mission, to boldly go and seek out the Kamo liquor store that sells Tetley’s "draught"! The "Enterprise" emerged victorious"! I got a 24-can pack for a quite reasonable outlay - and a day or so later, we even managed to get a couple of proper "dimply" pint glasses, so I’m well set up! We went back to Hazel and Mike’s for tea. Well, actually, it was Mike’s birthday, and he was doing a barbecue! Later, because my 24-pack was already down to 22, Pam had to drive us "home". At one point we were tootling along the fairly narrow road in a 50 kph zone, with an impatient motorist right up our backsides. As soon as the road widened a bit, he put his clog down and roared past. No more than three seconds later, we heard a "nee-naw" and a police car shot past us in hot pursuit. That was a most pleasurable experience!

We had taken Jake (plus a sleeping-bag) back with us, as on Saturday everyone was going over to Dargaville, where the local volunteer fire service was putting on a Christmas party for the kids. However, Jake had a cricket match in the morning, and his paper round mid-afternoon, so we were going along later. Saturday dawned – windy, wet, and cold. Cricket, naturally, was cancelled, which was a pity because Jake is apparently doing really well – a week or so before he had gobsmacked his mum with a display of batting ("He was whacking it all over the bloody place!").

The party was a really good "do": Joy and George, as well as Paula and Manny and their three young ’uns, were there, so it was a full family complement. There was a Santa with a real white beard, lots of goodies to eat, and the kids all got a ride round in one of the fire engines. There was also a really neat game which involved one of the firemen dangling a fairly robust, home-made "aeroplane" from the end of a wooden pole. The little kids took it in turns to knock seven bells out of it with another wooden pole. The game ended when the ‘plane burst open, scattering huge quantities of lollies (i.e. sweets) all over the floor, the cue for the kids to lunge forward like a pack of crazy hounds, scrambling over one another in pursuit of their prey! Hilarious? I nearly laughed!!

Driving the 40-odd miles home after dark was no joke, though. It had never really stopped raining all day, but as we drove along it got worse and worse, until it was absolutely lashing down, and the roads looked more like rivers. By gum, but it can certainly come down in NZ when it has a mind to! I was ready for a beer when we finally crawled home! On Sunday, Hazel and Co. came round for lunch: surloin steaks all round – Pam still can’t believe how cheap the meat is over here! It was here that Kian finally "twigged" who I was, jumping on me for a growling contest and a bit of a wrestle!!

So far, that’s about it. We’re slowly finding our way around, and enjoying the leisurely pace and the friendly faces. For example, whilst Pam was having her hair cut, I popped into a lighting store to check what was available on the halogen hobby-lamp front, just in case Pam needed one for her cross-stitching. The lady showed me the options and prices in two minutes flat, but she kept me chatting for a further quarter of an hour, keen as mustard to hear about who we were and what we were doing. On Monday evening, we were outside having a coffee when Carol came across to find out if we were warm enough (apparently, Saturday was exceptionally cold for the time of year), and settled herself down for a long chin-wag. When Clive got back from work, he did the same, and plenty of cud – about an hour and a half’s worth! - was well and truly chewed. Then, this morning (Tuesday 7th.) Pam was outside, basking with a coffee, when the neighbour came to the fence and introduced himself. As I shook hands, Alf (for he it was!) opened the gate and said, "Come on over and have a coffee". So over we went, and his wife Doris made us a nice cuppa, and set out plates of biscuits and cake for us, and we had a really nice chat, comparing notes and what-have-you - they’ve been pensioners rather longer than we have!

One thing we are having trouble getting used to is such as stepping into a shop and hearing Christmas music playing, when outside the weather is more like August – or rather, like how we’d prefer August to be! Yet, daft as it sounds, all the cards and wrapping paper and such-like are illustrated with snow-scenes, snow-flakes and glistering frost, sleighs and reindeer - just like in England. I say "Christmas music"! This year, it seems to be the fashion to set all the traditional songs to a thumping disco-beat. To my ears – and Pam’s - hammering out "I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas", "The Holly and the Ivy" et al. to that relentless, mechanical beat completely wrecks the magic. It’s bloody criminal.