Grant was fed up with Wellington and he was leaving. He just hadn’t figured out where to yet. Maybe Sydney because a mate of his had a sofa that he could borrow for a couple of weeks or perhaps Melbourne because he heard that the climate there was a lot like home.
He wanted to get to London eventually to lose himself in the Kiwi Diaspora on Earls Court Road and to drink Steinlager every Friday night in Soho’s Downunder Bar. He wasn’t great on specifics but he knew he wanted out. He had just quit his job in ANZ that afternoon and I stumbled drunkenly into his leaving party.
It was in the Malthouse on Wellington’s desperately trying to be trendy Courtney Place. My sister and I had gone there because the beers were exotic but more importantly because the pub shared it’s name with our Dad’s local back in Ireland. And when you are many miles from home, little moments of serendipity like that can heal the torment of an exile’s soul.
Grant seemed to be leaving a damned good job, but was also turning his back on the country that I long considered to be paradise on earth. What followed was a strange conversation. He, the young Kiwi, slagging off his country as a land of babies and old men and me the occasional visitor, extolling it’s virtues like some sad presenter on a TV Travel show.
“But you live in paradise” I pleaded as I desperately clung to validation of my life long obsession with the land of the long white cloud. “It has peeks as glorious as the Alps, raging torrents that thunder into the sea and all the beauty of the world crammed into one small country like God’s show room.
“And over here we have our new range of Fjords. Also available in Norwegian Blue.”
I ranted on for twenty minutes or so until I found myself remembering an Uncle from Boston. He visited Ireland every couple of years in the 70’s and 80’s and never tired of telling us what a wonderful country we lived in, with it’s thatched cottages and slow burning green melting down to the sea. As a ten year old I always thought he was describing somewhere else. My world was grey streets coated with a daily downpour and jam sandwiches for tea every night for years.
I wondered why he didn’t move back to Ireland if he thought it was so wonderful. I soon realised that he was only interested in a holiday destination. A childlike bolt hole that he could disappear to every couple of years when the rat race of American life became too much for him. He wanted Ireland to be frozen in time, so that like Narnia, he could step through a wardrobe and find himself back in his childhood. But in the end, he would always go back to the real world.
In the 1990’s Ireland embraced the Celtic Tiger, as we silently signed up to be the 51st State of the USA. The thatched cottages disappeared, to be replaced by drive thru McDonalds and Krispy Kreme donut stores. My uncle no longer visited. Narnia no longer existed.
I wandered if I was becoming like my uncle and New Zealand was becoming my Narnia. Great to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live there. So I wanted to hear Grant’s story.
“It’s a great place to grow up” he said. “You’ve got all this nature around you and it doesn’t bite you and burn you like some places do.” Kiwis can’t resist a dig at Australia every chance they get. “We have a Scottish Presbyterian work ethic mixed with a South Pacific joy of life, which means we work hard at getting what we want but when we do, we know how to enjoy it. The problems come when you get older. Maps of the world don’t help. They show New Zealand in the bottom right hand corner like the runt of the litter desperately chasing its mother’s tit. We feel cut off and isolated from the party the rest of the world seems to be having.
People seem to forget that our grandfathers were brave explorers who fearlessly set out to discover the other side of the world. Why should people be surprised when we feel the same?
And if you’re ambitious at work, you have to do a stint overseas. It’s like being an apprentice. I’m jacked off with going for promotions at work, only to lose out to some guy who did ten years in London but wants to move home so that he can send his kids to a Kiwi school.”
“So what’s your solution?” I said. “You can’t have a country with nobody between the age of twenty and thirty. That’s the decade of adventure and romance”.
“We could sell ourselves to the global market, use our time zone advantage to offer global financial services. We could offer tax incentives to create a world beating pharmaceutical industry and target high value electronic goods. We’re an English speaking, well educated country with easy access to the Asian Markets.
We need to open up to migration and increase our population to six million to create a viable internal market.”
I thought of my uncle and his biannual search for Narnia and how I see New Zealand as that perfect unspoilt paradise. I felt guilty that I wanted to keep it that way, even if it meant that the likes of Grant had to do a ten year sabbatical in a foreign country.
But I’m a Catholic and guilt is something I learned to ignore years ago.
“Go to London” I said. “You’ll have a great time and come back a better person. I can even let you know about a pub in Earls Court that Irish nurses go to every Friday night.” His eyes lit up and he said he’d give it a try for a few years anyway. I relaxed and ordered another round of Monteiths. My Narnia was safe, for another few chapters at least.
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