More like New Jersey

My parents are safely back, and happy. I downloaded their photos for them – the weather was uniformly good from Portugal to Ireland to Maryland! They even took photos of the house we used to live in in Bethesda in the ’70s.

I spent a happy afternoon updating software and trying to tune into Freeview on my Mac – until Elgato update their EyeTV software (to account for the fact that NZ digital TV doesn’t have the same settings as Australia) or I think of something clever, I can get TV1 & 2 in digital quality… but with no sound!

I feel as though I’m suffering from deep shock, although nothing’s happened. It’s just how I feel. Everything is still much harder than it should be. I haven’t unpacked much. My room is fine, despite the torrential rain. I’ll put it back together when I feel like it. I haven’t seen much of my flatmates. You can tell I haven’t been around, because the bathroom is truly in a state, and not one of the nicer states like Maryland.

At least the deck got painted

Everything’s packed, the house is clean. I’m leaving tomorrow with mixed feelings. I liked the fact that everything was so quiet, but I didn’t enjoy being too ill to get any work done. Claire pointed out that not much could be expected because it wasn’t my own space. Another month gone… at least I painted my aunt’s deck.

One thing I’m not going to miss about the suburbs…

Concrete laying at 8am. Not pleasant. Just as there’s no-one awake after 11, there’s no-one asleep after 7. That’s not how empires get built.

I was walking past the floral displays at the cenotaph this morning. Anzac Day is a militarised observance – luckily the emphasis is on lives lost instead of nationalist pride (for example, the 4th of July). It’s also an economic observance – they gave their lives so that we could pursue our current selfish standard of living, so that we could accumulate useless objects and gorge ourselves and chase money. I started thinking about how many other memorials we could have in New Zealand to wasted potential – for example, something commemorating the 29,000 who flee the country each year. Every creative mind who ends up working for advertising. Every person who gave up their dreams because someone else disapproved. Every idea that never made it because it would’ve involved Change, every innovation squashed by a committee, every hour spent watching TV, every compromise made to ensure maximum audience and minimum challenge.

I also passed a few people on Lambton Quay I haven’t seen since I was at Victoria with them. Holy God, how is it possible to cram that much weight onto your frame? I realised that I knew them at their skinniest, the build they have in ancient photos their children will dig out and shriek with laughter at.

Divorced from reality

I’ve had three people stay in the past four days. I fear I may be all entertained out. I’m going to strategically scrub parts of my flat tomorrow and then sit around reading Flashman novels until my parents get back.

My friend Claire was urging me yesterday to write a sequel to FB:L4G. I certainly have enough material, but I’d only consider it if it looked as though FB:L4G was going to be restaged. Just because it’s critically successful and makes everyone a lot of money doesn’t mean it has a future, although if I’d hustled harder it might’ve been revived. I’m not sure if that’s the job of the writer.

State of the nation

Three cats in one day, how lucky am I? Even if I don’t know who two of them are.

I really wish that Capital Times had printed that Jitterati – there was a similar theme in Jane Clifton’s ‘Politics’ column in the Listener, and it looks as though I cribbed it from there!

It’s been interesting following the newspapers so closely for the past few weeks. I can’t work out whether or not the current mood of dissatisfaction is truly national, or just amongst the people who read newspapers (i.e. no-one under twenty). The poor can’t afford to eat, the rich can’t sell their houses for as much as they’d like, and everyone else is struggling to pay their mortgage and is thinking of moving to Australia. When does ordinary Kiwi grumbling turn into a valid concern for the future? Everyday life was never meant to be easy… parts of the nineties were pretty grim, but we survived (with massive sacrifice, especially in small towns). It seems as though we’re waking from some sort of dream to find that there’s no future in this country – for anyone. And yet things could get so much more incredibly bad. Are we just whiners, or is it finally time to do something about all the broken social contracts we’ve been tolerating for years?* I suppose the biggest problem is that there’s nothing an individual can do about petrol prices, interest rates and food prices. I think it’s fairly safe to say that Labour is stuffed, despite National’s total lack of talent.

This post was made much harder by Sky sitting on the keyboard and batting at my mouse.

*Examples of this would be Bunnings Warehouse employees paid markedly less here than in Australia for the same jobs, primitive broadband, archaic public transport, expensive dairy, the general half-assedness of everyday New Zealand life.

Son of the soil

Who is that grass-and-paint coated son of the soil, surveying his handiwork while dashing good, honest Kiwi sweat from his brow? C’est moi. Today I painted my aunt’s deck and hand-mowed my parent’s lawn. It’s not exactly the same as wading through blood and filth in the Dardenelles, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t be on a tasteless sepia stamp as well.

The two cats Charlie and Sky turned up at the same time. It was like running the UN – I had to keep a constant eye on them to make sure Sky (who is smaller) didn’t try to beat up Charlie (who is friendlier).

What is Johnsonville?

I was toying with the idea of walking to Johnsonville today. Johnsonville, for those of you who don’t live in Wellington, is a large Northern suburb filled with bluff, hearty white people, the sort of solid citizens who inspire plays like ‘Foreskins Lament’. Twenty years ago it was something of an industrial base – it had a Tip Top factory and a record plant, both exciting places for small children to visit. Then China was invented and the harsh thumb of modern New Zealand economics declared the concept of actually making things in this country silly and wrong. Now Johnsonville consists of two large supermarkets and a mall. And a very small Warehouse, and one of the best bakeries in Wellington. So there’s something for everyone. It takes an hour to get there from ‘Rofton Downs, although I haven’t been since I was writing the songs for FB:L4G, many of which I composed by walking up the Ngauranga Gorge, singing lustily.

But I didn’t go, which renders this anecdote redundant.

I had another friend stay because I am a dirty manwhore with a comfortable house.

The Cause of Entertaining Grant

This is the TV transmission tower on Mt Kaukau. If you watch TV with an aerial in Wellington, this tower is your God. It also makes for a pleasant pilgrima- er, hike.

Oh noes! Capital Times accidentally re-ran a Jitterati from the start of the year. I thought I might’ve goofed when I e-mailed it on Monday, but it looks like they just forgot to update it on their template. This week’s one is on the website. According to Aaron, the prolific letter-writer H. Westfold has decided that I’m a ’smartarse’. This should surprise nobody.

A visitor of mine went the extra distance last night by turning up in a taxi and then actually staying. Casual visitors with less commitment to the Cause of Entertaining Grant, take note. I now need to get more icecream and ginger wine.

Has everyone in Wellington slept with a heavily-closeted international celebrity, or is it just everyone but me?

The following scenario will never, ever happen

The return of decent weather heralds the return of the cats. I spent this morning being sat on by one of them, and this afternoon being sat on by the other. Intelligent design boosts the human ego by assuming that everyone exists for a purpose. My purpose is to be sat on by cats. Their purpose is to stand on my liver and shed.

My entire immediate family called from America. When Skype malfunctions, it sounds like a Joy Division album.

The TV Week supplement in the DomPost has soldiers on the cover. Time Magazine has soldiers on the cover. The Listener has Hitler on the cover. Anyone would think there was a war on.

The following scenario will never, ever happen:

REPORTER: Senator Clinton, is it true that in an interview with Newsweek you referred to Helen Clark as the former Prime Minister of New Zealand?
HILLARY CLINTON: Well, I-
REPORTER: Are you aware that Helen Clark is actually the current Prime Minister of New Zealand?
HILLARY CLINTON: Uh… that was just a misstatement.
REPORTER: Senator Clinton, how can you expect to lead the American people if you can’t even get the names of our allies straight? Surely this betrays your ignorance of current events, and cavalier attitude towards international diplomacy?
HILLARY CLINTON: I… I…
REPORTER: Yes, Senator Clinton?
HILLARY CLINTON: Look, it was the fucking Prime Minister of New Zealand! No one gives a fuck about that fucking country! If you fuckers think I fucking care who the fucking Prime Minister is of some fuckawful fuck of a fuckhole, you’ve got another! Fucking! Thought! Coming!

(Silence from the press pool. A cricket chirps.)

HILLARY CLINTON: I’ll get my coat.

Vignettes

Overheard in Central Library, a certain famous NZ musician lovingly introduces his tiny child to the CD section: “And this is David Bowie”.

I was also amused to see that an opera singer I know now drives a very swish convertible with the plate ‘MADIVA’.

A lone red balloon was bouncing through rush-hour traffic on Molesworth St, like some hokey American Beauty reference (or, indeed, The Red Balloon). I stopped for a few seconds to watch it as it bounced off a motorcyclist and dodged and hovered along the median strip like a fat floating bullfighter. Suddenly it shot 10 metres straight into the air, as though thinking “Sod it!”, and floated safely away.

Tourists are fascinated by the Majestic Centre. It’s the one Wellington building that would look at home in Singapore. It still has its Christmas bulbs on. Perhaps Student Job Search refuses to send them any more students until they explain what happened to the others.

Never wear pink as an outer layer unless you’re under 10 and a girl. It makes grown women look like iced cupcakes.

My absence is visible at my flat. The bathroom and kitchen are positively murky, and there’s a note pinned up saying “Please stop leaving out food for the mouse!”. Mouse? That had better be dealt with by the time I get back. Also our bath is still relying on a temporary cork to prevent the taps from leaking. After more than a month.

Vladimir and Estragon stand in the bathroom, staring at the dripping tap. Vladimir fidgets with his hat.
VLADIMIR: But he must’ve been here! There’s the cork!
(Approximately 40 years pass.)
ESTRAGON: I don’t think he’s coming back.

Salient has finally started receiving copies of Massey’s Chaff. It’s the only student newspaper that looks as though it was fun to be there when it was put together, like picking up Capital Times and seeing a normally polite social page where everyone is caned and farting.

Apparently some of the reported details are wrong, but it sounds just like students to render a motel unfit for human habitation* and then demand their money back when they get evicted.

Vignette Soundtrack:
Useless Trinkets ~Eels
Soundboy Rock ~Groove Armada
A Guide to Love, Loss & Desperation ~The Wombats

*Like Chernobyl, but with more bacteria. Like something a skunk from Ancient Rome would turn up its nose at. Or Hunter S. Thompson if he drank Tui instead of Wild Turkey.