When the boat comes in

The phrases 'it's on the boat' and 'when the boat arrives' have become commonplace here in recent weeks.

Before leaving Peebles we packed up a whole heap of items we just couldn't do without (Lego, poetry books, food mixer, Beanies, you know the kind of thing) into tea chests* and despatched them through our removal company to be 'shipped' to our new home.

'Shipping' has always been mysterious to me; one of those slightly romantic sounding activities that other, richer, people did with their goods and chattles (chattels ?) and which involved horses and groups of men at docksides and wooden crates stuffed with straw. (Wait til you Freudians get to work on that last sentence). There's much more common knowledge about it over here because just about everything except people arrives in New Zealand by ship. Sit on Takapuna Beach for a couple of hours and you see two or three of the things sail past into Auckland Harbour, all laden with containers full of cars, electrical goods, food, raw materials and tea chests* of people's junk.

Well, on the 14th of January our boat finally came in and with it all those precious items we've done without all these months. It will be like Christmas all over again once the agriculture ministry have finished checking it for foreign muck, though goodness knows where we'll put it all.

* Yes, yes, you're wondering what a tea chest is aren't you. When the shipping company mentioned tea chests I pictured sturdy plywood crates framed in teak or mahogany and smelling of Lapsang Souchong, and the cardboard boxes they delivered were a deep disappointment. I blame reading too many Tintin books as a child.

It's now nearly Burns Night (tut tut, that time already, nights fair drawin' in etc etc) and we've been away on a Tiki Tour of the North Island for the past two weeks. Tiki Touring involves travelling about New Zealand from tourist destination to tourist destination, getting an overview of the country. It's not exactly 'Doing Europe' but you get the idea. Nowadays there's a more refined version of tiki touring called Rings Touring wherein you travel around the different locations used in the Lord Of The Rings films. We didn't do this, opting instead for the high profile and time-tested attractions.

New Zealand is a country of natural wonders, and we've visited limestone caverns, boiling mud pools, volcanoes, wild west coast beaches with black sand piled high with driftwood, native bush, and taken a paddle steamer trip up a river where lumps of pumice stone float downstream from the central plateau. I grew up with this stuff, but it never ceases to amaze.

Driving around New Zealand is a pleasure after the roads of Britain. Although there are no motorways except around the approaches to Wellington and Auckland, the traffic is light and the scenery wonderful. Having said that, the roads must often come second to the landscape and so they twist and turn around the mountains and squeeze through ravines, changing suddenly from wide and flat to steep and unpredictable. Our air-conditioned Honda Odyssey is nice to travel in but it's not in a hurry on these precipitous hills, so we meandered from place to place, stopping frequently to look at the view and take the air. The maximum speed on New Zealand roads is 100kph, but the average is more like 80kph so it takes time to get around. We got as far as Wellington this time, visiting the extraordinary Te Papa Museum (the Museum of New Zealand) on the harbourside and catching up with family on both sides.

Now back in Auckland we have resumed the serious business of finding useful employment and getting the kids ready for the new school year which begins on February 1st. Bureaucracy and petty officialdom continue to hamper our respective searches for work in the education sector here, despite the widespread view that New Zealand has a serious labour shortage and a dearth of teachers. Don't get me started on petty officials with a little power....

I'm also working on getting my first drama sessions up and running, and this looks promising. Theatre is a big thing in New Zealand, with a wide diversity of people and material about. There are several areas where I think my brand of theatre work fits in, and that feels optimistic.

'But what about the supermarkets ?' I hear you cry. I know, I know. I promised to tell you about them didn't I. Our local supermarket on Hauraki Corner is the New World, one of a national chain of similar size and range to the Co-op stores. Once inside there's little to distinguish it from a store in the UK (except Co-op stores always seem to have milk on the floor somewhere - have you noticed that ?) but for the bigger range of fruit and veges (kiwifruit by the bucket, sweet kumara, puha, plus tamarillos and feijoas in season.) and initially unfamiliar brand names. Food's cheaper than the UK too, as are most things. At the checkout your bags are always packed for you, and on the couple of occasions I've forgotten this I've had a puzzled and slightly offended look from the packer.

Going further afield we find bigger stores such as Food Town, Countdown, Pak'n'Save and Woolworths (this latter seems to have no connection in kind to the UK version, though in the end they're probably all owned by Walmart or Virgin or something. The UK Woolworths is one of those stores you can't define except by listing what it sells, but here it's like Tesco). It seems a lot of supermarket chains for a population only two-thirds that of Scotland until you start looking more closely. Food Town's own brand is called Signature, but a recent whizz round Countdown in Birkenhead for milk and bread (and $100 of other stuff that just fell into the trolley) revealed Signature brand goods there too. Huh ? The answer to this most perplexing mystery is that there are only two supermarket companies but multiple shopfronts. You can visit Food Town and pay higher prices to walk on lino floors and choose from a wider range, or go to Pak'n'Save where the floors are polished concrete, the stuff's stacked high in the original bulk boxes but you pay less for the same goods. It puts the Peebles Somerfield/Safeway divide in perspective, though it doesn't divide the populus into Us and Them quite so distinctly.

What does divide the populus distinctly is the choice of daily newspaper, but here it's about geography rather than politics. Each regional centre (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin) has its own newspaper. They are, respectively, The New Zealand Herald, The Dominion Post, The Press and the Otago Daily Times. Like the supermarkets they serve the same basic fodder in different wrappers, but New Zealand is fiercely regional and local news features big on the front pages. It's a whole country of the Press And Journal or the PN and every day one paper's big lead story is the other papers' North East Man Lost At Sea. Woe betide he who openly carries the Dom Post in downtown Auckland, or the Herald in Wellington.

Arriving at a petrol station outside Wellington last week I filled the car and went in to pay, picking up a paper as I walked to the counter. The surly proprietor totted up the petrol and the paper on his till, then looked again at the paper.
"Oh" he said, stopping, and I wondered what new disaster was chronicled on the front page. He looked up at me.
"This is the Herald" he said, concerned.
I looked back. "Yes."
A pause. Dust settled.
"Is that the one you want ?"
"Yes"
Silence. A long look.
"Most people buy the Post"
"Oh" I said.
Time passed. He continued to look at me with an expectant air.
"That's fifty-six twenty." he said eventually
I paid and returned to the car, the man's eyes watching me all the way, and he was still looking out the window as we drove back on to the main highway and away down the road to Wellington. Several days later, returning North I avoided looking at the garage as we passed, lest he was still there, perhaps waiting for me.

To get a feel of New Zealand's news scene have a look at www.stuff.co.nz It's a pretty good digest of what's happening here.

It's Saturday night and we've just returned from a stroll along the beach. I can hear the kids upstairs having supper and a glass of wine awaits. I heard on the BBC World Service the other night that someone's worked out that January 24th is the most depressing day of the year in the UK. Apparently this is a mathematical calculation involving hours of sunlight, temperature, average bank balances, distances from holidays and so on. Sounds like a good reason for the whole country to take up the Burns Night tradition. So my thoughts are with you all as you approach the nadir of the annual cycle over there; wrap up warm, turn all the lights on and raise a glass. Here's tae us !