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Published: April 5th 2006
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Prohibition
But Monday to Wednesday as pissed as you like! Well NZ, life but not as we know it. The countryside is undeniably beautiful, and there is so much of it, just loads, trees/lakes/beaches and so few people. honestly Nigel can you imagine David here? He’d go stir crazy! not even a whiff of a braziilan. You might appreciate that most of the homes look like park homes, and there’s quite a few caravan parks.(they also have million dollar architect homes on beaches) Well stir crazy is what seems to happen here - 1 in 5 new zealanders apparently suffer some form of mental disorder, which explains the bizarre extreme ‘sports?’ like zorbing - going down a hill in a ball that can be filled with water, apparently if you stay upright you get a t-shirt (god knows what the slogan says - nutter probably). This is the country that gave us bungy as well - can just imagine that being dreamt up by someone with bi-poplar in manic (or maybe in depressed) mode, whilst in the pub with the hard drinking core.
Too much space and so few people, sounds like it should work, but some of the characteristics makes you wonder how close people are. Was served by
a female assistant who made Sarah Jessica Parker look like a pudding face, I swear her face was at least another face and a half over sjp. I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder never reckoned on sjp being pretty - but she sure is now.
There is far more nature than people, really feels like people are the caretakers, and somewhere there is a committee of trees/ferns/geysers sighing when they see another church/sign (see photo)/pile of rubbish/pollution/logging - man will just never learn, this is a beautiful country, but the cracks are there. Not sure why I don’t really get NZ, (or maybe it’s just the bit we’re in) think it really comes down to not being a country girl! more into people, infact have just meet a sweet kid (under 15 - know this ‘cos he told me he was in the under 15 basketball team) we got on so well we ended up having a race down the corridor. Did he win? bollocks this old girl can still shift! Off to seasidey bit tommorrow then onto the south island. Having said all the above am enjoying myself, and not unhappy to be here,
Tree fern
Beautiful especially as jb now fully understands how distraught I was when I left London, and how I still long for city life! Still, had a lovely last night in hotel had pool & spa’s to myself, as I was swimming could hear the melodic maori voices coming from the theater which is adjacent to the pool .They also have a hangi which is deep steaming hole used for cooking some of the food - not sure which bits, know that Robbie tells me they have a similar thing in Texas, only they use oil at a ridiculously high temperature.
I’m beginning to understand now how B felt when we moved to Gloucestershire. Getting dressed up, it just don’t happen. You’d think I’d be comfortable with that, after all I’m not much of a dressing up guy myself, but here getting dressed to go out for the night seems to consist of putting on a pair of unmuddied jeans and a clean (probably unpressed) shirt. And that’s the girls. No really, I can see why there are so many young Kiwis in the UK. There seems to be some sort of whiff of nostalgia about the place.
Example: there is
Logging
or devastation a big TV ad campaign at the moment for a touring show called ‘War Birds’. It’s a musical extravaganza to evoke memories of the songs of Vera Lynn et al. For fuck’s sake it was SIXTY YEARS AGO. There are heaps of campervans on the roads. Not good old VW combis stuffed with hippies, but Winnebago type things, driven by people who I suspect have to go to their doctor every year to get their licence renewed. They probably like to stay in campervans so that they don’t have to make conversation with people who they haven’t known for the last thirty years. This place feels old, conservative, with lots of retired people going on about how much it’s like the UK used to be in the ‘good old days’. Although many of the houses look as though they’ve been built to last the next five years, almost all the gardens are manicured within an inch of their lives. Before we left Australia I was chatting to a Kiwi woman of a certain age who told me that we would find the NZ people much more reserved than the Aussies. She was right. However some of the natural beauty is truly breathtaking. Actually I think what unnerves me so much about this place is that it truly is like the UK was 40 years ago.
On a topic not unique to NZ, again today we were witness to a cabaret that we have seen repeated in just about every hotel dining room we’ve been in so far. A man of about 40 engages in conversation with one or more women (have occasionally seen it same sex) about having once been at the top of his trade (frequently hairdressing/music) but gave it up because it was ultimately unsatisfying, so has become some sort of wandering artist/musician/storyteller/deal broker, but if pressed has no example of their craft/trade to hand. Or a business card. They do however have their gift of the gab and use it to good effect by doing their best to ensure conversation is one-way (after all it IS all about me). It does seem to produce some results. Oh well, serves us right for eavesdropping.
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