Posts by Jackie Clark
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Jo Eggers,
Wellington is fantastic, isn't it, Jo? I went there to boarding school for 4 years (Marsden by the way, in the days when it wasn't quite as elite as it is now) and I spent all my exeats at the homes of family friends or my own friends. I loved it so much. I loved the hills, and the sea. I loved the wind, and the wildness of the weather. I loved the tram bus, and that once in town, you could walk and walk, and the shops were so interesting. I loved going shopping at James Smiths, and I loved going to Ceramco's outpost office in The Terrace, where they spoiled me and fed me choccie biscuits. I loved Cuba Mall, and I loved Paekakariki. I always felt at home there, I have to say. A very lovely place, and I really enjoy going back. Which I don't do enough of.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Danielle,
I was going to say.....
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Danielle,
It may be something to do with always having had the option of living somewhere else, but I fucking love this place and I am a big sloppy dork about it. That is all.
Yessity yes yes yes. And I'm a bit judgeypants about people who don't.
Actually, I may as well confess, while we're at it, that when people are having a big old whinge about NZ in general, I am one of those dreadful priggy bastards who thinks (I used to say it, but age mellows the tongue etc) "Well fuck off somewhere else, then". And when people lament about the brain drain and angst about infrastructure, and the costs of living in such a small country etc? I don't care. If you don't want to live here, no-one can stop you going away. You may never come back, you may come back briefly. But whatever. That's up to you. We'll survive. -
Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to webweaver,
Beautiful, just beautiful. Thankyou. I would add comment about one thing I have noticed. For those who choose to live in NZ, it takes a great deal of compromise to live in this small land at the bottom of the populated world, whether you were born here or not. I gladly make those compromises every day because this is my home, my heart, my all. I am, above everything else born of, and from, this land. It is me, and I am it. But to live here, you really, really have to want to be here. That’s for sure.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
5th generation, here, Glenn
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
New parents at work often ask if I'm from "here" - here being NZ. And most of them are amazed I drive "all the way" from Mt Eden to Mangere every day - all, at most, 20 mins drive away!
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It’s not so much “home is where the heart is” as
home is where you know where you are & you are at ease (and have not only family history but also “dead in the ground” and knowledge of most things around, whether they be bush, birds, fungi or sea-sound.)I like that definition, Islander. And I also liked what Robyn said about being right where where you want to be. So important, in fact for one's overall heath, I suspect it is the most important thing to be.
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Christchurch’s flatness means you orient yourself to the Port Hills and to the Alps, both much bigger than the volcanic cones on the Isthmus.
I find the opposite. I have always viewed Christchurch’s flatness as discomfiting, if not downright discombulating. Driving a car round the city a few months ago, I found it extremely hard to orient myself. I am so used to looking for Maungawhau (Mt Eden) or other volcanic cones on the very rare occasion I don’t know where I’m going. One of the reasons I find South Auckland also disorienting for finding my way around mapless – the only hills are the Bombay ones way off in the distance, and the only cone is Mangere. And if they aren’t visible, and I don’t know where I’m going? Not good. Oh, and East Auckland I find extremely difficult. At least on the North Shore, I know roughly to head for the sea to find the road that meanders round the Bays.
So yes, I am parochial beyond belief it seems! -
Emma, I love this question. I love asking it, and I love talking about it. Mainly because the answers are so variable, and so are the reasons for giving those answers. For tangata whenua, the question is always "Where do you stay?" to define where you live, and where you live, of course, is very much less important than where your people are from. I have always - apart from being at boarding school in Wellington, and spending a sparse 4 years in the UK and Switzerland - been from Auckland, and my family has always been, well at least for the last 160 years, from Auckland. So nowhere has ever been home except here. I, too, Raymond, see home as being about
how much you have invested in it, not money but things like time, family history and landscape
Auckland is my land, my whenua, my turangawaewae. All of it. I will never be from anywhere else. (Houses, as you say, Emma, are a different matter altogether. The house I am most attached to is in Takapuna - it's where I was raised, but I haven't lived there for 30 years, and my parents sold it over 27 years ago. I have great envy of people whose parents still live in the "family home". )
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Rex, I'm with Islander on this one. I have always voted Labour but must admit that I very much liked when MMP was introduced because it meant that I could not only vote Labour but I could vote for the best ELECTORATE MP. Who, believe it or not, when we were in the Mt Eden electorate, was Christine Fletcher. She was, at one time, a great local MP. Anyway, that's all in the past. I have never seen any reason to change my voting alliance. But then for me, it really is a bit of a tribal loyalty too. Historically, we have always been a Labour voting family. Well, my mother was, my father wasn't - most of the time. And I have carried on that tradition in my own household. Coincidental? Sometimes, I wonder!