A Whole New World...The Start of a New Zealand Road Trip

It seems funny to think that this most epic of road trips began with some donburi and teriyaki bento in a little suburb outside Glen Eden, West Auckland. We were hangry and a little hungover and had already argued a little about map-reading techniques within the first ten minutes of the journey, but that's how it began.

We had spent most of the previous Saturday (this was Monday) drinking on a mini wine tour, then beers in the Hallertau brewery, followed by a couple of cans of Woodstock (a sickly sweet bourbon and coke mixture from A's adolescence), finishing off the night with a mix of different drinks - more beers, wine, and finally - ouch -whisky sours. The Woodstocks, I was told, had to be drunk outside, on the beach at Muriwai, and it was explained that this was West Auckland tradition: you couldn't have grown up as a "Westie" without having done that, so I chugged down the sweet alcopoppy thing, whilst realising I was on one of the most incredibly beautiful beaches I'd ever had the pleasure of watching a sunset upon. We started out full of chatter and laughter, but as the bright sun waned and we watched a million colours in the sky illuminated in the many rockpools on the ground, it seemed to quieten us, as if we had to pay reverent heed to what we were witnessing.

Actually, that was the second impressive beach I'd seen already in my first week in New Zealand. We had taken one of our first drives out a few days prior to Piha, a spectacular surfing beach on the Tasman Sea, with a permanent town population of 600. It's incredibly rugged, famous for a giant formation known as Lion Rock and the first ever NZ board-riding competition in 1958, and is surrounded by subtropical forest and various impressive hills and rock formations. It's one of the beaches where The Piano was filmed, and it lends itself well to melancholy art: a song, a poem, a piece of prose, a painting all might suggest themselves to someone so inclined, were they to have visited on a day like we did; overcast, windy, and brooding.

Driving through the countryside towards our first stop in Rotorua, I was reminded of Scotland's green peaks and burns shimmering in the low sunlight, but also of the great American landscapes I have only seen in films: the flat, wide roads, the tall pine forests, and the seemingly endless shapes of mountains forming on the horizon. We started out listening to Maori radio, and I felt inspired by the newness of this place, moved by its exoticness, its duality, its storytelling in two languages.

It was the same feeling I'd felt the evening before, as we had walked out of the house for the first time that hungover day just in time to see the sunset. We had walked to A's old primary school up the road, set on the side of a hill with a huge Macrocarpa tree, and looked out to views of the Waitekere ranges and prehistoric-looking forest. We noticed a Sunday church service taking place in the small school chapel, and the attendees were Pacific islanders, either Tongan or Samoans, speaking in a language we could not understand. Soon, however, as we started ascending the small footpath, we heard the strains of a haunting song sung by a choir of strong voices. It hung around us like the scent of flowers at dusk, and clung to us, silencing our chatter as we reached a magical little waterfall above the path, itself enclosed in a hushed cathedral of green.

I've spent much of the last three weeks feeling awed like that. Maybe the photos below will help to begin to explain it.

Morning Mass

I worship at your 7am mass
We are missionaries, 
Whispering prayers to one another’s backs
Feeling the morning’s light 
Caress us in its urgency

Violets, Books and Old Friends

A new way of friends keeping in touch, meaningfully and off facebook: http://fiveviolets.tumblr.com/

This is a lovely idea.

It’s going to be a novel way to start a conversation, keep it going, hear news and updates, and through a friend’s eyes, see a film, read a new book, or try out a recipe, and connect in a different way – a more meaningful way - than email or facebook. It means we can see the world through one another’s eyes every now and again. We can dip in or out; reading about friends’ lives in London, or on the road, wherever they happen to be. I am glad that we thought of it together, in an East London café on a sunny Sunday in early April of 2013.  I’m especially glad for the chance to stay connected in a new way, because soon the luxury of hopping on the tube and meeting up with friends for coffee and cake will be absent from my life.

That’s because this June, in my 31st year, I’m finally taking the leap of faith that I have wanted to since I was 17, and moving to Barcelona with my partner, E – a city I fell in love with even before we met; strangely enough, a city that my girlfriends took me to when I was getting over the breakup of the relationship that ended before E and I got together.

He has always loved Spain, and starting learning Spanish long before I did. On subsequent visits together, we did what everyone does in a city like Barcelona - we immediately imagined ourselves in a top-floor flat in the Barrio Gotico, looking out over the city’s pink rooftops, the sea air ruffling our hair. We could see ourselves eating tapas, suntanned and relaxed, shopping in the Mercat Santa Caterina, feeling plump tomatoes and sampling juicy olives. We stayed with some friends of friends who were sub-letting studio apartments to tourists using airbnb, a site we had no prior experience with, but have since grown to love and become passionate advocates of. We asked them how they enjoyed living there, and how their business was going. They told us that it had been the best decision of their lives. They had 95% occupancy in their 3 apartments year-round. They were doing well. And they said they thought anyone could do the same.

And like that, over a couple of bottles of Estrella Damm in the sunshine in August, it was decided. We were going to give it a go. Work-wise, we had to try to sort out other sources of income, because we know we’re not cut out to run a small empire of sublet apartments (it’s highly illegal, by the way). But then we thought: fuck it. Why not have at least a room that guests can stay in? Barcelona is a city that captivates all who visit her. It should be a good way to cover our costs and meet an assortment of interesting visitors. We’ve decided to try it out now because it feels like the right time for adventure, before we are tied to a city with a mortgage, or kids, or both. Right now, we can still choose.

The concept is to try out a few new things; namely, being self-employed, growing a new business, adapting to a different city and learning how to exist in a place other than London, and most crucially, moving towards some semblance of fluency in another language. It’s either going to be the best thing we ever do, or the most stupid. It means giving up full-time jobs, despite my mother’s worries and continual questions about how we’ll survive, given the current state of the Spanish economy. It means packing up our belongings, items that we have accumulated over the past four years; saved up for, even, and putting some up for sale, putting some in parents’ lofts, and throwing many away. It means we’ve been saving up and trying to live frugally, which in London is night-on impossible, but we’ve certainly been making a concerted effort to make packed lunches everyday, and deny ourselves the usual fripperies – coffees, magazines, takeaways; that expensive showergel has been used up; the Lovefilm subscription cancelled.

And it’s been good. It feels like we’re streamlining, picking away layers of needless expenditure, making things count more, last more, last longer. I’m actually enjoying eating up old tins of things in our food cupboard. Even if it does look like only quinoa, lentils, and risotto will be on the menu for the final few weeks. Actually – and this is a dark secret - I’ve always had a hankering to try to get my possessions down to a suitcase and a potted plant, à la Jean Reno in Léon. This is sadly impossible in reality as I struggle daily with a bona-fide addiction to buying shoes, and have a pathological aversion to throwing away old magazines and newspapers from momentous events - I still have a Newsweek from Obama’s first election victory. 

It’s the same with books.

As we packed up our possessions last week, I realised that between us we have a shitload of them. We must have had at least 300 or 400 of the little buggers in our small flat.  It’s been a busy few months and I’ve been reading less than I ought to, so in the last few weeks I’ve been playing catch-up, reading things that have been on the ‘to read’ shelf for years and I have been meaning to get around to opening. This is a crucial activity, as I need to know whether they will come with me on the journey.

Books that I love are like old friends to me and can never be thrown away. They sit on shelves gathering dust, occasionally opened to flirt with a favourite chapter, or passage, sometimes re-read on holiday, when they are usually left open and face-down, spine cracked, splashed with water from the pool or gathering fine grains of sand in between the pages. The best ones, the most loved ones, have faded in the sunlight and if you hold them in your hand, they open slowly to reveal the most well-thumbed pages. They smell reassuringly, comfortingly old. They are the ones that will never leave my bookshelves.

I just finished the last book on the ‘to read’ shelf.  It’s called Almost French and tells the story of an Australian writer coming to live with a Frenchman in Paris. She struggles with the move, to fit in, and to understand French society. The story itself is nothing special; it won’t make the cut and won’t join the beloved pile of faded, faithful old friends. But the final sentence in it struck a chord. It made me hopeful, and excited, and strengthened my resolve to keep searching for adventure.

I am happy I finally found an excuse to work my way through that shelf of unread books. Let no stone remained unturned, I say. I’ll just keep reading.

This post was originally written for Five Violets, re-posted here for your reading pleasure!

The Cautionary Tale of the Fat Grey Seal

I've been quiet for the last month, but that's a good thing, because any posts would have been fantastically dull. I spent much of March applying for a new job (I didn't get it, sadly), working my arse off and earning myself a holiday.

The holiday part is quite good, though. We went to the beautiful West Highlands of Scotland, bathed in sunshine upon our arrival and with temperatures in the high teens (on the first day, anyway). I wore waterproofs and hiking-type shoes almost nonstop, and actually enjoyed it, despite looking frightful in all our holiday snaps.

We walked. A lot. We sailed (well, someone else drove and parked the boat. I know I'm using the wrong words, and I don't care - I know nothing of boats). We watched birds! We saw enormous grey seals! They looked ridiculous! I wouldn't mess with them, though. Those blubbery blighters. Look at that one there, giving us stinkeye. He knew. We would have been happier on his turf. No wonder it was being guarded so carefully.

What?

There was a lot of whisky and cullen skink and Lorne sausages. There was no TV aerial in the flat where we stayed and so we watched some Hitchcock films and - fittingly - the DVD extras on Braveheart. There was also no phone reception to speak of, so it was pretty darned relaxing. I managed to read a lot and the days seemed longer, something I often long for in a normal working week.

It made me think very hard about city living. Without exception, every local we met in the sleepy little Argyll village we stayed in seemed to pity us for living in London. Some had lived and worked here themselves, and had great stories to tell, but none missed it. One couple in their sixties had come back for a holiday and enjoyed themselves, but for the most part the men hated cities and the women got their cultural fixes in Glasgow or from holidays in other places.

I don't think I'm quite ready to live in a place where no shops are open past 6pm (or indeed on Sundays) but it did make me consider what one really needs from the place they live. Something I seem to do regularly each time I leave the city, whether for a couple of days or a couple of weeks. I keep hearing that little voice beckoning me away. And I do wonder if I'd be more productive; maybe writing more, maybe spending more time talking to friends, less time exhausted on the sofa, less time travelling, less time worrying about money.

I know, I know. It's been two years of this love/hate shit with London. Even I'm bored of it now. I'm like a woman scorned who keeps telling her friends he'll change. 


So, definitely time for a new record. This is the last time I say this. Promise.