I’m starting to count down to the end of the university year, but I’m not a student. I just live under a herd of wilderbeests disguised as mild mannered uni students. One of them should take out a gold medal in Olympic stomping, and another who, though she is a wafer thin, short Asian girl, seems to be attempting to make holes in everything she walks on like she’s in a military parade. I’ve seen her walking down Aro Street using the same technique she uses on the floor inches above my head. Like a sledgehammer and woodpecker rolled into one highly irritating gait.
This is my first flat living under other people, and it can be stressful. I once lived in a flat above an old lady in Island Bay. The house didn’t get any sun until October and it seemed perpetually damp downstairs where she lived. I said hello to her the few times I saw her pegging out her parachute-sized underwear, but she only grimaced in my general direction. She was found dead sitting in her armchair one day, after a neighbour noticed she hadn’t opened her curtains in a few days. A friend of mine was her social worker – the old lady was schizophrenic – and my friend told me she would complain that the people living upstairs, that’s me and my partner, were trying to kill her.
When I hear that stomping starting to rev up in one of the bedrooms at the back of the house quickly approaching where my ceiling and their floor become the same piece of corrugated cardboard, I too think the people upstairs are trying to kill me. The pictures on the wall rattle, the little bottles of stuff on my dresser shake, and if I couldn’t actually hear the footsteps, I would think the big one was finally striking Wellington.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the girls upstairs. When I was sick with flu, they came down with a snickers bar, some roses and a paper doilie with get well wishes written on it. They’ve offered to feed the cat if I go away. One of the girls goes out of her way to chat when she sees me, and the Asian jackhammer is always really nice when she cames roaring past me on her way to uni in the mornings. When they had a party, they invited me up for dinner. I was going out, but when I got back, the party was in full swing with just-out-of-their-teens partygoers yelling random statements at each other from my front lawn. The dancefloor was right over my bed. I stayed at Matt and Nat's that night.
It just hasn’t occurred to them that having a mosh pit right over the small space where I sleep every night isn’t conducive to good neighbourly relations.
So I have made a decision. I’m going to drive them equally as mad. I’m to play Bad Guitar. I will practice really, really hard songs like some tricky Pavement or something, or maybe I’ll tackle Stairway to Heaven without tuning up first. I could borrow Martin’s amp and really give them a treat. Maybe I’ll sing along too. For hours at a time. It couldn’t hurt. It’s either that or one day they find my dead in my armchair with the curtains closed.
October 19, 2006
October 18, 2006
October 10, 2006
Letter to you, Sweeney
Dear Sweeney,
You saw Wellington for the first time in my arms. You were about fifteen minutes old, and I held you up to the window so you could see outside the overheated delivery room. It was a classic whitewash morning, June 26, 8.15am. You could barely open your eyes, but I couldn’t stop looking at you.
I adopted Wellington as my hometown, but you were born here. You’ll always have the wind at your back, in your face, tickling the hair on your neck. You’ll find stillness unnatural. You’ll loathe places that are flat, and think nothing of barrelling down Devon Street at 60kph. You’ll probably have a fluffy before you eat solids, and you’ll never have someone jeer at you because you don’t know the difference between a flat white and a latte.
Your mum and me, we’re from the Waikato. The Waikato has wide streets and driveways and garages and plenty of space. A double bedroom means you can get two of everything into it, and you never have to park your car on the street. Summer is hot and autumn has falling leaves and winter means frosts that layer the grass in ice like a snowfall. On cold days when breath comes puffing out of your mouth, you can see spider webs coated in ice, like jewels hanging from hedgerows and shrubs. In Wellington, the only ice is on the tip of your nose as you walk to school in a southerly or on the mountains in the South Island that you can see on a clear day. I went back to live in the Waikato for a year, and though I loved the grapefruit that came with summer and the bath-like water at Raglan, I missed Wellington. I missed the verticalness, the layers. The way we can’t park our cars near our houses.
So I packed up the cat, and headed back. One day, you’ll come hooning down Ngauranga Gorge, and it’ll spit you out and into a curve and there’s Wellington, the little city nestled into the hills. You’ll know how I felt driving into the city that day, the sense of relief that I was home. There was the wind turbine chopping away at the sky and the ferry snailing across the harbour and little lights on the houses lit up with that warm coming home feeling.
Every morning when I walk to work, down the hill a bit, under the pylon, down the steps past the house where plants grow out of an old bathtub, across the road and into Aro Street - every morning when I walk down there, I think about what a neat place this is. If the sun is shining, all the colours on the houses look like a circus, and the puddles on Aro Street glisten. If the cat follows me down the hill skit-skittering along the footpath, I’ll get one of the neighbours I pass to distract him and run down the hill away from him, laughing. As the trolley bus rattles past me, I’ll see the same faces I see every morning, people bobbing their heads to the music in their ears, absorbed by the newspaper, and little bubbles of happiness rise up in me like a glass of champagne.
One of the best bits though is when I pass the community centre and see the kids walking to school. There is the African family and the two boys with long eyelashes. There is the Chinese family and the little girl with her hair sticking out in pig tails like someone has put wire in them. There are the little boys with hoodies and scuffed sneakers and blue eyes and I wonder if you will look like them, will be like them, racing around on a scooter or a bmx bike.
You’re still small, but when you are bigger, there are so many places in Wellington we could go to and things we can do. We could spend hours finding creepy crawlies in the rocks on the south coast, or teasing the baboons at the zoo. We could pretend we are seagulls on Oriental Parade, just standing and squawking obstinately at each other. We could be very cosmopolitan and order coffee at the Chocolate Fish, or press all the buttons on all the exhibits at Te Papa. We could drop little bits of blu tac onto the heads of politicians from the gallery at Parliament. We could have a barbecue on a still January evening. In the winter, we could splash in puddles and let paper planes go in the wind. We could watch the washing go flying over the houses and down into Aro Valley. Best of all, we could sit on the grass, listening to the tui on the power lines and watching the moon come up. We could do anything you want, because we’re in Wellington.
You saw Wellington for the first time in my arms. You were about fifteen minutes old, and I held you up to the window so you could see outside the overheated delivery room. It was a classic whitewash morning, June 26, 8.15am. You could barely open your eyes, but I couldn’t stop looking at you.
I adopted Wellington as my hometown, but you were born here. You’ll always have the wind at your back, in your face, tickling the hair on your neck. You’ll find stillness unnatural. You’ll loathe places that are flat, and think nothing of barrelling down Devon Street at 60kph. You’ll probably have a fluffy before you eat solids, and you’ll never have someone jeer at you because you don’t know the difference between a flat white and a latte.
Your mum and me, we’re from the Waikato. The Waikato has wide streets and driveways and garages and plenty of space. A double bedroom means you can get two of everything into it, and you never have to park your car on the street. Summer is hot and autumn has falling leaves and winter means frosts that layer the grass in ice like a snowfall. On cold days when breath comes puffing out of your mouth, you can see spider webs coated in ice, like jewels hanging from hedgerows and shrubs. In Wellington, the only ice is on the tip of your nose as you walk to school in a southerly or on the mountains in the South Island that you can see on a clear day. I went back to live in the Waikato for a year, and though I loved the grapefruit that came with summer and the bath-like water at Raglan, I missed Wellington. I missed the verticalness, the layers. The way we can’t park our cars near our houses.
So I packed up the cat, and headed back. One day, you’ll come hooning down Ngauranga Gorge, and it’ll spit you out and into a curve and there’s Wellington, the little city nestled into the hills. You’ll know how I felt driving into the city that day, the sense of relief that I was home. There was the wind turbine chopping away at the sky and the ferry snailing across the harbour and little lights on the houses lit up with that warm coming home feeling.
Every morning when I walk to work, down the hill a bit, under the pylon, down the steps past the house where plants grow out of an old bathtub, across the road and into Aro Street - every morning when I walk down there, I think about what a neat place this is. If the sun is shining, all the colours on the houses look like a circus, and the puddles on Aro Street glisten. If the cat follows me down the hill skit-skittering along the footpath, I’ll get one of the neighbours I pass to distract him and run down the hill away from him, laughing. As the trolley bus rattles past me, I’ll see the same faces I see every morning, people bobbing their heads to the music in their ears, absorbed by the newspaper, and little bubbles of happiness rise up in me like a glass of champagne.
One of the best bits though is when I pass the community centre and see the kids walking to school. There is the African family and the two boys with long eyelashes. There is the Chinese family and the little girl with her hair sticking out in pig tails like someone has put wire in them. There are the little boys with hoodies and scuffed sneakers and blue eyes and I wonder if you will look like them, will be like them, racing around on a scooter or a bmx bike.
You’re still small, but when you are bigger, there are so many places in Wellington we could go to and things we can do. We could spend hours finding creepy crawlies in the rocks on the south coast, or teasing the baboons at the zoo. We could pretend we are seagulls on Oriental Parade, just standing and squawking obstinately at each other. We could be very cosmopolitan and order coffee at the Chocolate Fish, or press all the buttons on all the exhibits at Te Papa. We could drop little bits of blu tac onto the heads of politicians from the gallery at Parliament. We could have a barbecue on a still January evening. In the winter, we could splash in puddles and let paper planes go in the wind. We could watch the washing go flying over the houses and down into Aro Valley. Best of all, we could sit on the grass, listening to the tui on the power lines and watching the moon come up. We could do anything you want, because we’re in Wellington.
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