2DO Before I Die

That's it from me...

Well, you people don’t want me going on forever, so this is my last post. Wellington continues to grow on me. We’ve managed to find, after just over a week of searching, a lovely permanent apartment, complete with terrace overlooking the sea, in Oriental Bay (apparently the posh part of the city, which is nice).

I’ve settled into a full-time writing routine and my first novel is in the process of being spewed, half formed and bloody, onto my ancient laptop. It’s great to be back at (albeit unpaid) work, better to be my own boss. My coffee cup often runneth over.

It’s not all roses and cream. We’re making friends gradually, but the inability to visit family members occasionally weighs on us. Renting the property in the UK is a constant source of concern; we’ve already had to replace a shower, who knows what else may happen? And getting used to not earning, living off a dwindling stash of cash, has caused me some sleepless nights. Christmas is going to be very, very weird.

Overall, would I recommend what I’ve done? Hell, yes. Do I worry about the possible negative implications of what I’m doing? Hell, yes. Has it shaken me up, caused me to learn and grow, made my life more exciting? For the third and final time, a big hell, yes.

That’s it from me. I can only hope that you’ve enjoyed my little story as much as my grandchildren will when I repeat it to them, as I will do many times, in a tremulous voice, with deaf-aid turned up and teeth firmly in place.

Windy Welli

What a sweet, compact little city Wellington is. From the huge window of our temporary ‘holiday flat’ I can see the whole cityscape, the multi-coloured buildings sitting together like up-ended battenburg cakes. If I stretch my legs, I can walk the city centre from end to end in about half an hour. There is a beautifully renovated dockside, the magnificent structure of the Te Papa museum, a thriving local arts scene and (as I have been told about a hundred times) more bars per Capita than anywhere else in New Zealand. The entertainment district is filled with suitably alternative characters; the business district is properly smart and efficient. Crime here seems to be, relatively speaking, extremely low. People smile at each other and move politely out of the way on busy streets, something almost unseen in present day London. It’s hilly, the weather is currently best described as ‘changeable’ and it’s very, very windy, but I don’t mind any of that. Being able to start running again on the wide avenue of the gorgeous bay is invigorating, thought provoking. I can feel my brain being scrubbed clean of the London smog as I prepare to begin writing in earnest. Wellington is quaintly parochial in outlook and Wellingtonians clearly take a huge pride in their capital city, the centre of government. There is a general disdain for Auckland, which is increasing as the larger city gradually sucks people and jobs from the capital like an eager housewife with a vacuum cleaner. Criticism of Auckland is almost a local sport in these parts, so much so that I have seen a poster advertising a news debate entitled ‘Auckland Bashing: Is it Justified?’ I am fascinated by these social issues. Michelle has immediately been offered two jobs and is in the process of accepting one of them. The worst case commuting scenario is a twenty minute walk, contrasting sharply from our one and three-quarter hour journey in the UK. Our next big task is to find permanent accommodation – for which we have two weeks, or it’s into a hotel. I’m going to stick my neck out and say that things are going well.

NZ Arrival

We had a great time in Sydney, but I looked forward with relish to arriving in Auckland. After an in-flight drama involving Michelle’s lost passport, the whole cabin crew and a lady twenty rows ahead of us who found it as we landed, we emerged relieved and raring to go.

I was immediately struck by the friendliness of…well, pretty much every Kiwi I came across. Even customs officials, not usually noted for joviality, seemed extremely pleased to see us. I was also struck by what (to me) seemed a strange order of priority. Want to enter the country on a year long work permit? Fine – just give me a crumpled, easily forgeable piece of paper and I’ll stamp your passport, no questions asked. Want to bring in a pair of boots that have touched English soil in the past ninety days? Hang on, we need to send you through the yellow door marked ‘biohazard security’ and subject you to a small lecture whilst hosing the offending articles down. Remarkable, but of course I could see why they did it.

We’ve been in Auckland a week now and I have to say it is very hard to love. The city sprawls and despite the efforts of the dockside, it has no definable heart. It is very cosmopolitan; I had read that this had caused problems in Auckland and once I got there I could sense it. Although the Kiwis we actually spoke to were universally nice, I felt a brittle underlying edge to the place as I walked the streets. It was like the tension you might feel if you brought a bottle of whisky into an AA meeting.

I’m sure there is more to Auckland than I’ve been able to discover, but right now we’re both happy that we made the decision to try and make Wellington, not Auckland, our base. We are about to travel the 500-ish miles in a two-day mini road trip.

Jetlag Heaven

Well, we’ve almost made it. I am writing to you now from a friend’s flat in the beautiful city of Sydney, our stop-off en route to New Zealand.

It’s been a fun journey. After exhaustive cleaning and packing up of the house, we got to Gatwick airport full of excitement. The joy of checking in was to follow – and goodness me, what a joy. At first attempt, we were told we needed a visa to get into Australia – yes, even if we want to be there for ten days only. In my excitement, I had failed to check. I had arrogantly assumed that as a UK citizen I would have non-visa temporary visiting rights as a matter of course. Not so. Very luckily, the airline was able to sell us the Australian visas on the spot. If it hadn’t, we would not have been able to fly.

The second attempt involved over-weight bags. Under new health and safety rules, no check in bags can weigh more than 32Kg. I was a couple of kilos over, but Michelle’s bag weighed a whopping 45Kg. We retired to the middle of the departures hall and began unpacking. As Michelle debated over which of her seventy-nine pairs of shoes to ditch, a small crowd gathered, possibly expecting us to start a show or set up a stall. Bickering quietly, we managed to re-pack, hand a pile of stuff to Michelle’s brother for safe-keeping, and make our way to the weighing scales. Whilst waiting for a friendly, excited and brightly dressed African family of twenty-seven people to organise and weigh every one of their huge bags, I surveyed the increasing check-in queue with mounting frustration. But it was a case of third time lucky. As the bags disappeared, a weight, literally and metaphorically, was lifted. The airline, bless them (Emirates – highly recommended) even gave us an upgrade for the first part of the trip by way of sympathy for our struggles.

I’m sure I don’t have to explain the pleasures of a twenty-four hour flight to you, so I won’t. Suffice to say, we emerged into the Sydney sunshine tired, rubbing various stiff pieces of our anatomies (if I can put it like that), but very, very happy to have arrived.

Words of Advice

So what are the practicalities? An obvious hurdle is the visa. We have simple ‘working holiday’ visas, which allow us a 12 month stay and the ability to work on a temporary contract basis. In conversations with potential employers we’ve determined that, if we decide to stay longer, companies are able to help with full working visas once we’re actually there. Obtaining these visas took 24 hours over the internet. This option is for the first timer. It avoids the expense of immigration lawyers when we’re not even sure how long we want to stay. It allows us to experience NZ life, sample the working environment, and then make a decision about the future when we’re ready. http://www.immigration.govt.nz/ is the excellent government website.

Words of caution. This route is good for us, but may not be for others. The working holiday scheme is strong for UK citizens, but those of other nationalities may have a different experience. It helps to have direct job-contacts who can be spoken to in advance. It’s essential to have enough funds so that employment is not an immediate necessity. The primary purpose of the visa is ‘holiday’, and whilst we’re not backpacking, we do not plan to work full time (in fact I plan to do as little work as possible).

What else? Opening an NZ bank account – recommended before, rather than on, arrival. Letting our house, which was complex and issue-filled – leave as much time as possible for this. Selling large items like cars (don’t even go there…) Dealing with the Inland Revenue. Organising storage, shipping. Altering/buying all kinds of insurance policies. Informing terminally bored call centre staff in utility, ISP, governmental companies of our plans.

I like balanced advice. One book springs to mind: ‘Live and Work in Australia and New Zealand’, by Deborah Penrith and Susan Kelly, published by Vacation Work (www.vacationwork.co.uk).

This has proved an invaluable ‘one-stop’ resource and has helped with all of the above.

What am I leaving behind? Pt 2

Things I’ll be glad to see the back of…

Last time, I was wallowing in a bath of nostalgic tears as I thought about what I’m going to miss about dear old Great Britain. Now for the fun bit – what can I do without? Again, in no particular order:

-- Sixty million people crammed into the geographical equivalent of a postage stamp
-- Council tax
-- Unsympathetic and/or incompetent utilities companies
-- Trains, in any shape or form
-- Commuting

-- The inexorable rise of the chav (for those of you reading this from a country outside the UK, this will help explain)
-- Tony Blair and Two-Jags (again, a very British tag. For the uninitiated ‘Two Jags’ is a pet name for the UK's esteemed Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott)
-- The fact that the death of ‘our angel’ (hold on while I clear up a small but sudden outflow of vomit) Princess Diana still regularly makes the front pages of the Daily Express
-- The ever-loosening definition of the word ‘celebrity’
-- The ever-increasing power of ‘celebrity’ in British society

Hold on…let my swing my leg over…Right, I’ve successfully dismounted from my high horse. It certainly felt good to get that off my chest though. I’m sure that I’ll find many more things to miss once I’m actually living in my new home, and maybe some bits of the second list may lose some sting. I’ll keep you posted.

What am I leaving behind? Pt 1

Things I’m going to miss…
I’ve been thinking today about Britain. Well, it can’t all be about New Zealand, can it? There are many facets of life in our little island that I’m going to miss. Some examples, in no particular order:

-- Country pubs and good beer
-- The Yorkshire Dales
-- A generally high standard of televisual entertainment
-- The way that British people treat a sunny day (i.e. as if it’s going to be their last)
-- The sense of history apparent in the smallest hamlet and the biggest city

-- The desperate desire in every true-born British-person, for the ‘White Christmas’ that never actually happens
-- Humorously anachronistic institutions like the House of Lords
-- Irony
-- The great British sense of humour (see ‘Irony’)
-- My friends and family
-- My home

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t leave after all? Only joking! But in the interest of impartiality, and at no extra charge to you, I’m going to go away now and think about what happens when I remove the rose-tinted spectacles. Stay tuned…

The 'Day' draws nearer

I write to you following a moment of great excitement. My move to New Zealand – the beginning of my dream to live abroad – is growing ever closer to reality.

What I’m trying to convey is that as The Day draws nearer, these ‘mini-high’ moments – a rush of butterflies followed by a swoon-inducing vision of how fantastic life is going to be for the next year or so – are gradually getting more common. As I had a computer handy when this last one occurred, I thought I’d communicate my thoughts for your entertainment.

My sudden mood-swings can be caused by all sorts of things. The picture of Wellington on my screensaver (left); films with a New Zealand theme (Once Were Warriors is a famous example, although not for the faint-hearted); finding an article about New Zealand on the news (rare, but they do occur if you look out for them); eating lamb. Even the sound of a Kiwi voice on the street can set me off into a little joyous reverie.

Of course, I’m aware that it’s going to be very hard. The culture shock, even in an English-speaking country with strong links to Britain, will be intense. The simplest transactions will become difficult. The more complex negotiations needed to rent a house, buy a car, get a credit rating or get hooked up to the national grid will suddenly constitute major challenges. But whilst I previously had a high level of trepidation, it was almost abstract in its nature – in other words, when I had months to go, nothing seemed very real. This has now changed, which (thankfully) seems to be reducing my anxiety and fuelling my excitement and desire to get at it.

That’s it from me for now. I’m off to eat some lamb and look at my Wellington picture again in the hope that I can induce another mini-high – they really are very pleasant and what’s more, they’re legal and free. What more can I ask for?

Getting there...

I ended the last post on a slightly whinging note, for which I apologise. The moan was about the toughness of my ‘road to recovery’.

I haven’t cried once since ‘the incident’. I’ve also tried to refrain from expressing anger, knowing it to be pointless. It happened, get on with it. But I have to admit that when the doctor told me that I would not be able to fly to New Zealand in June as planned, I came close to both tears and tantrum. After the months of planning, it felt like the salt of insult was being rubbed, with quiet deliberation, into the open cut of injury.

It was hard. My foot was severely broken, meaning that I had to spend a week in hospital and a further six in plaster. Just before I got out of plaster in mid-June, my egotistical instinct of ‘now I’m recovered’ led me to confidently assert that I would be able to complete the London to Brighton bike ride the following Sunday. The reality was that I was limping for weeks more, and when I tried to run I resembled a lame, possibly constipated, donkey. It got better, but slowly.

But, of course, others have it a lot worse. I’ve had great support, personally and professionally, that’s enabled me, with Michelle, to re-arrange the plans. My insurance company paid promptly, averting financial catastrophe.

And now we fly in two weeks. I’m counting down the hours until take off. I feel that, after what I’ve been through to get to this stage, I’ve really earned this opportunity. What happens next – well, it’s in the future isn’t it, so I’m not sure...

An Unexpected Setback

Having made the decision to move to New Zealand, everything began to go very quickly. We settled on NZ as our destination for a variety of reasons. Peaceful, beautiful, lots of outdoors pursuits, fantastic cultural heritage, relatively friendly inhabitants, the strength of the UK pound, the ease with which we could obtain visas, the shortage of media agency people in the job market. So we resigned on February 1st and with a three month notice period to serve, this put us on track for a triumphant exit in June.

Fast forward again to this past May. I finish working, things are falling into place, and travel and accommodation are booked. A timetable of things to do, including a writing schedule, is posted on my study wall. In the evening, I attempt to sell my car (pictured left) to a young man that I eventually discover to be of dubious character. He insists in a violently intemperate way that he does not wish to financially compensate me for the vehicle. He instead proposes a plan whereby he drives into and over me, with bonnet up and doors open, and disappears wildly into the night. I didn’t feel I could refuse, and so found myself welcomed into the arms, via a dizzying ambulance ride, of Maidstone General Hospital. My poor timetable sits in my office, suddenly unused and unfulfilled.

I count myself as being lucky. No-one else was hurt. Other than bruised ribs and slight psychological trauma, my only injury was a severely mashed left foot, from which I will eventually make a full recovery. I spent a week in hospital, during which time I received treatment, medication, and visitors bearing copious quantities of Lucozade. I made small-talk with the more attractive nurses, commandeered the only television in the room for my own viewing purposes, called the office and re-obtained my job for a few more months. The whole experience had made me more determined than ever to continue with my plans as soon as I was able. This was going to be a bit of a tough road...