Nights Are Fair Drawin' In

For the second time in six months the nights are starting to draw in and the evenings have a cool edge. There's not exactly a whiff of Arctic snow in the air but it's a hint that Autumn is loading up its cart with rain clouds, sacks of leaves and morning mists and preparing to head this way. However today I'm looking out of my study window at dappled sunlight under the deck and bunches of grapes hanging from the burgeoning vine, starting to look edible. The days have averaged 21 degrees over the past four weeks and its hardly rained. The children are becoming accustomed to coming home from school, throwing on their bathing togs and heading down to the beach for a tumble in the waves before tea.

Familiar objects arrived this month in the stack of boxes we sent by ship; pictures, ornaments, toys, clothes. They were a reminder of what small and unexpected things can make us feel at home; I have a framed print by Elizabeth Morris of a man walking his dog in a beech forest, purchased at Broughton Gallery in my first year of teaching. There's a sense of continuity and endorsement in seeing it on the wall here. Similarly with my New Yorker cartoon of the dog standing at the gates of heaven asking "Is there any chance I could get my testicles back ?". Actually I thought about that cartoon when we paid off the mortgage for Edderston Road. Funny old world isn't it.

Carole and I continue to scratch around for work; she's working two days a week at a local Early Childhood centre and doing supply work in several others, and I'm teaching one day a week with a charitable trust that provides education for gifted children. I've also started my drama classes under the name StageDoor (website www.stagedoor.co.nz), with small numbers and potential for growth when the colder weather arrives.

"Gifted children ?"
Yes, I didn't think you'd let that one go by. Resisting the soap box, let me refer you to www.georgeparkyncentre.org for more info. I encountered a good number of gifted children in my time teaching in Scotland but I quickly discovered that 'giftedness' was a quality that dare not speak its name. You could be below average in a bewildering multitude of ways, but don't presume to be above it. It's different here. Discuss.

I've finally got our home computer network running (took six hours; don't get me started..) and we've had a couple of webcam chats with Carole's parents. It reminds me of the telephone calls I had with family here when I was first in the UK, where the line had an odd echo, like speaking into a big metal pipe, and the signal only went one way at a time. It meant adopting a two-way radio style of talking, avoiding speaking or making any sound whilst the other person was talking, lest you clip what they said. The web-chats have been similar, disappointingly, though perhaps we've been unlucky with bandwidth. Nevertheless I've love to try it out with other friends and family, so let me know if you have a webcam and a broadband connection, and we can look at ghostly images of each other saying 'say that again ?' etc.

Telephony is transformed nowadays from those early 'booked' calls, and talking across the world is not expensive. The next big thing in communications is voice-over-IP, where voice traffic is transmitted over the internet rather than via telephone providers' equipment. One such system is Skype (www.skype.com) which allows us to chat on the 'phone' for free via the internet. Check it out and let me know if you have it. (If you want to talk to me, that is)

Billy Connolly's World Tour of New Zealand has started showing here on a Sunday night; one of the few bright spots on the television viewing list. So far it's been a bit hit-and-miss with spectacular South Island scenery and some good jokes juxtaposed with toe-curling political correctness (why does he do it ?), but hopefully it'll improve. Other TV high points are an old series of Spooks which has started on Wednesday nights and that Trevor Eve series about the old murder cases. You know the one. Otherwise New Zealand TV is pretty dire despite the fabulous salaries paid to newsreaders. We're tempted to get Sky, but I'll have to get another job first (reading the news), and I sometimes find myself listening to Radio Four on the internet, though the twelve hour time difference makes this slightly bizarre.

The other day, driving through some western suburb of Auckland, I saw a front garden completely taken up with a satellite dish the same height as the house. Desperate measures to receive European porn channels, or a devotee of BBC2 ? Who knows. Someone without a life anyway. At least all this has weaned the children off the Cartoon Network, and given them more time for computer games...

Actually I saw Judy Baillie in the fruit and vegetable shop the other day. She was buying onions and corn on the cob. Thought you'd like to know.

We've been meeting some fellow new arrivals recently, mostly from UK and South Africa. It's interesting to compare notes on the experience of arrival and slow settlement, and the reasons people came. Many Brits are self-styled refugees from aspects of British life; some, like us, have a returning Kiwi to blame; and others are just adventurers looking for (and finding) a better lifestyle. Someone told me it takes six months for British immigrants to unclench their buttocks, so April could be a turning point for us, whereas South Africans seem to dive head-first into New Zealand's relaxed and open society.

Talking to another Kiwi-returnee yesterday (she was away 16 years) we discovered we both miss the depth of history that surrounds everyday life in Britain. New Zealand has a very shallow history of human settlement dating back about 900 years, and a recorded history of just 150 years. The first settlers were Maori people from East Polynesia, and they were joined later by European settlers, and more recently by many Asian settlers. An 'old' building here is one built before 1940, but almost certainly after 1900. There's no Hadrian's Wall or Edinburgh Castle to remind you of a deep human continuity, but neither are there stern ranks of stone buildings telling you it's always been this way and nothing can change.

There is no concept of 'ancient' human history here, and that has a profound effect on the prevailing culture. Arguments rage over whether being here earlier means you belong here more (sadly Northern Ireland and Kosovo show us where this thinking leads) and what ongoing immigration policy should be. What gives us our sense of roots ? Who belongs ? Who make the best citizens ? There are clenched buttocks all round on these questions in New Zealand; snarling armies of advocates, their heads full of certainties and mantras, circling each other in the darkness. Historical records and aspirational revisions merge to support claim and counter-claim. The din could keep you awake at night.

On the other hand New Zealanders are not generally bound by history or solid architecture to certain courses of events or ways of thinking. There is a fluidity and an openness to change and experiment that is refreshing after living in the Scottish Borders for fifteen years. I'm rediscovering and enjoying the optimism of this society, and the quiet pride there is in being a New Zealander.

Having said all that, I still miss the old buildings, the ruins, the detritus left by thousands of generations of people who lived on the same soil over millennia. Other things ? We all miss seeing and spending time with friends and family in the UK of course; the comfortability of our Peebles 'network' and the reassurance of shared habits and routines. But would I be anywhere else just now ?

No.