Thirty years later, the marriage is long dead, my British-born brother has been back to England precisely once since he was three, my mother never got to go to her parents’ funerals, and my father now lives with his new wife on the Gold Coast, where he moans about Australia in general and the number of immigrants in particular. My rural credentials: ardent heterosexual chatting up the ladeez at the Ohinewai Primary School Calf Club 1993. His reasons were the same as all the others who’d emigrated over the years: it was warmer, jobs were plentiful, houses were bigger and cheaper, there was no class system, healthcare and education were better, and importantly for them my father’s family were a sprawling mass of potential babysitters just waiting to look after however many babies they felt like supplying. They moved first to the Midlands, but he soon got sick of the winters and convinced her to leave England, leave her family, friends and the BBC, to move to the other side of the world. It was true: Dad left school at 15 with no qualifications, but he demanded to be the breadwinner, so Mum gave up her job to have a baby. And you’ve got Maggie Thatcher in power it’s a lot easier to be poor in New Zealand.” Look, he’d said to his highly educated civil servant wife, at home in the West Kensington flat she’d bought on her own at 27, “We’re poor. About my Kiwi father who, in the mid 80s, convinced my quintessentially English mother that south Auckland was a viable option. The real trouble is, I’d already told him about my parents. Every time the politicians reminded us that Brexit “really means Brexit” I found myself darkly muttering that “I might just sod off home then”. All my liberal leftie friends gave up muttering about moving to the continent and resigned themselves to staying in London and listening to the racism pouring out of the hometowns they hated to visit. Europe made it clear they weren’t going to be playing ball with British demands for rights that were basically-EU-membership-without-paying-for-it. If the EU was soon to be shut off to the British should I make the most of my dual citizenship while I still could and decamp to Berlin now?īut it wasn’t to be. Lesson learned: never take a flat where the dehumidifier is the only furniture provided).īut as Brexit got worse (hate crimes ahoy!) and I actually found myself sad the day David ‘is that pig pleased to see me?’ Cameron resigned, I realised escape might be viable. Prices for mouldy flats in Kelburn circa 2007, however? I’m your man (it was $145 a week and we nearly froze to death.
I grew up in the Waikato and went to uni in Wellington so I have no idea how much rent should be in Auckland. I saw a two bed flat in Remuera for $350 a week. And once Brexit happened – and despite my initial vow that I’d stay and fight the good liberal fight – I started looking up TradeMe rental properties. The first time it ever snowed on my street in London. Cars are utes, beaches are uncrowded, winter is 15° – and anything below that is gross and should be banned. New Zealand had a prime minister who liked to tug on girl’s ponytails, and earthquakes, which are mostly meh but sometimes scary. The least racist of all my uncles, to be fair. Actually, I have an Uncle Doug and he’s lovely. Less alt-right and the KKK – more your drunk uncle Doug sounding off about “dole bludgers” at a barbecue. New Zealand has racism, I went on: less than in America as a whole, but more than that showcased in Glee. I’d met said friend and didn’t doubt it for a second. “Oh, my friend dropped out of uni to become a meth dealer when we were younger,” he said wistfully.
I was especially eager to persuade him we weren’t stuck in the 1950s: New Zealand has drugs, I told him. Still, I did my best to give him a working knowledge of my home country. Mostly because I’ve been assured that it’s a Godforsaken dump. I could hardly complain about this scant knowledge – after eight years in the UK I still haven’t even visited his hometown of Manchester. I’ll always be just a little bit Kiwi, and as such, I feel it’s my responsibility to educate my boyfriend about New Zealand.īefore we met, his understanding of New Zealand was limited to “Maoris” (pronounced incorrectly), and, he says, “I knew there were two islands and that a third of the population lived in one city.”
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