The first time I ever came to Wellington was 1986, way back when I was dispatched from the Mount with strict orders to get a little culture. My uncle, a medical student at the time, was living in a place in Newtown and him and the flatmates put me up in a spare room for a week.
Of course, 'getting cultured' involved getting plastered at the Mt. Cook Café on cheap wine and brandy. I can only vaguely remember it, but I'm sure I poured by 15 year old heart out to howls of laughter from the uncle, and shocked looks from the uncle's significant other. Ah well, if you can't take the piss out of your nephews, who can you?
Besides the experiment in alcohol and the inevitable deathly hangover, the main thing I remember was Courtney Place, a grey, windswept haven for drunks and lunatics. There was something about Wellington then that was a fundamental shock to the system, considering my background under the azure skies and jade-green oceans of the Western Bay. Miles of concrete and a repressive, dreary climate to steadfastly crush the spirit.
Well, the climate hasn't changed, but China and India are working on it, following hard on the hells of the Europeans and Americans, so sweet as. Otherwise though, Wellington does have a very different 'vibe' to it. But, I wonder if that isn't just the old fulla of the future gradually pushing aside the child I was and making himself comfy, the way old fullas do.
By the time I had returned to the place to live here in the early 1990s I was of course a different person, having travelled a little and broadened my horizons with recreational substances. Then, a wander through Haitaitai under the influence of something the Beatles used to sing about was a trip into a hobbit village, and my companions a barbarian and a cavalier. Strange, strange days. Seated overlooking the city from the top of Mt. Victoria the towers of the CBD formed a chain of lights that made a castle wall, protecting the misty city from the boats in the harbour.
Kids, never, ever do crazy things that could permanently affect your mind. But if you have to, do them in tremendous moderation, and with friends you trust.
To be honest, the misty effect was mostly caused by mild short-sightedness and the cold humidity Wellington enjoys, but I wouldn't trade that memory for any amount of straight-laced conformity to mainstream values.
There's a danger my meandering into nostalgia is the consummate sort of middle-class retrospection about 'experimenting' with fun stuff and being 'bad' 'while I was at uni, wot', but I can state categorically it was a way of life. We lived and breathed counter-culture, but not of the 'protest against everything just because you can type', more the 'we're living in Babylon' type.
And Babylon it was. We were poor, undernourished, perpetually wasted, borderline paranoids, filtering down out of the Aro Valley in second-hand clothes and cardboard-soled shoes, working in crappy service jobs and living in damp dives.
We'd watch and laugh at the suits as they forever preened and groomed themselves, smug in their incomes and moving into OUR neighbourhood because it was a 'little more funky' than Thorndon. They'd push up the rents and complain about the noise, or they'd park their cars in our spots. They'd demand 'better' service from our friends and bitch when they were treated like outsiders.
Back then it was easy to see Babylon all around us. Them, the other bastard sons of the flower children, a revolution against the revolution our parents had fought to break the walls of conformity our grandparents brought with them down to their own families. An army of reformers breaking the consensus about what life could be like in a society that took care of its own.
And today I donned the mantle, a navy-blue suit, and joined the ranks.
I know I'm maybe ten years behind many of my friends from those days. Did you feel like you were selling out against the things we used to believe? I kind of didn't really hide for all that time, I was on a journey after all, and I'd like to think the old values are still guiding me, but there's still that nagging doubt.
Maybe the first paycheque, destined to be spent in the neon-lit Vegas of the New Courtney Place, will soothe the whispering.
We shall see.