Cold snap

In which I invite Wellington weather to go fuck itself

How? How? How am I supposed to be a glass half-full person in 2025, taking cold swims, refusing refined sugar, getting up at five to do face yoga, turning off the family Wi-Fi in favour of board games, and intermittently fasting, when the summer’s so monumentally SHITE?

Nobody can improve themselves under such conditions. I’m not even exaggerating, though that’s my brand. Wellington’s weather is so bad it’s been leading the news. Radio New Zealand has a live blog on it, for godsakes. Interisland ferry sailings cancelled, thanks to vicious winds and lumpy seas! A backlog of passengers, forlorn on the seafront, their holiday plans in tatters! A nine-metre wave recorded in the Cook Strait! And three hours north of here, snow reported on the Desert Road.

It doesn’t help one’s mood when a weather service issues one of those infantilizing maps of the country made up of emojis, and you can see at a glance what fun everyone else is having. They’re bathed in full sun emojis, brainless and giggling, while Wellington is marked by a raining emoji.

Incidentally, the day Te Tiriti is translated into emojis (musket emoji! disease emoji!), or perhaps the Bible (wine and fish emojis!), is the day I dig myself a bunker on the West Coast.

Speaking of the west coast…

Trust me, the ‘cool’ filter on this photo actually warms it up

The irony of being this close to the ocean during an unseasonal cold snap (twelve degrees! Thirteen degrees! Thunder and possible hail expected!) does not go unnoticed by me. Until now I’ve cheerfully blamed Karori for all my problems. In the week leading to Christmas, we sat squarely in the inversion layer, everyone in the valley trapped inside an unmoving band of humidity. It was weird, infuriating and un-Christmassy.

But no problem! Soon we’d be up the coast where the skies are huge, the weather reliably kind, and the evenings last forever! We dropped the car seats and stuffed in the bikes, boogie boards, summer clothes, no warm hats, two fleeces and maybe one raincoat. Thank God I packed a pair of ski socks because without them I’d have Raynaud’s disease. We added the dog, dropped him off to be fed, walked, brushed and civilized by my mother (he’s not allowed at this holiday rental, which was an unintentional stroke of genius by my husband). We drove northwest, leaving the capital behind us for glories unknown, and killed the engines 45 minutes later. (We are staycationing this year.)

At Raumati we basked in a day and a half of miraculous, generous sunshine. It was so beautiful that first evening that I just nestled back and watched the breaking surf, its dirty lace turning pink, then yellow and blue, as the sun went down. I felt wonder, mixed with gratitude for all my blessings - the way you’re supposed to feel at the beginning of a new year, your head stuffed with resolutions (starting the Mediterranean diet, blocking your own access to Mail Online, that kind of thing). I walked into the ocean and swam in it. At some point I recorded an unhinged voice-memo.

I was going to jog the beach in the early mornings, swim in the daytime, watch the foraging birds, freewheel along the cycle-paths with my family (we’ve never biked as a foursome before) and walk the beach every night at twilight. I’d be balanced, beatific. I would not scroll the news nor listen obsessively to political podcasts. I would plait my daughter’s hair. I would read to my son. I would Ask My Husband What He Is Thinking. I would become a person who pays attention.

I didn’t realize all these self-improvements depended on the undependable: the weather.

Reader, I don’t remember what sun feels like. We’ve had to find the winter blankets and turn on the gas fire. The sky is gunmetal, the sea boils. I’ve tried to swim, gaily, just in front of the bach, and waded into a sea so cold I had to swallow my gag reflex. Somehow my kids can handle it and so can my husband (in a wetsuit, mind you). I got as far in as my bum crack but when I felt the freezing fingers of Mother Nature all up in my swim-shorts, I shot out of that ocean like a cannon.

I ‘ve walked the beach with my chin down against the wind, spotted by spiteful rain. I’ve been blown home to the bach under an oncoming mass of black cloud. I’ve unpegged the beach towels from the line more than once and chucked them in the drier. I’ve turned the lights on in the early evenings. I’ve weighted things down with bricks.

In the dark, the sea roars and at high tide it reaches perilously close to the front gate. You try not to think, tsunami. In a crosswind late at night, something fine and sharp batters the bedroom window (sand? splinters of driftwood?). The coastal plants shiver all day, and probably at night as well. So close to the beach, you’re not entirely in control of your destiny. A local will tell you, with gentle simplicity, “Oh, we’ll lose it all one day. We’re on sand; we weren’t really supposed to be here.”

These southerly winds, these whorls of rain, feel too much like the rest of the year. How can this be an alchemical summer, a summer of vows and self-improvement? I can’t work on myself under these conditions. My self-talk is as grumbling and small-minded as ever. If I’m a lizard, I can’t seem to shed my skin. I’m stuck with the wizened, cold-eyed, mottled, skinky version of me!

So where does that leave things? Well, you’ll be pleased to know I’m now halfway through an 800-page Victorian novel. I’ve been smashed by both children at Guess Who? and had to mortgage my only set of Monopoly properties. I dug out a thousand-piece jigsaw, a panorama of Tudor life, and spent last night trying to find flaming faggots so I could finish the martyr being burned at the stake. His expression (crestfallen - realizing that this was the end for him) looks a little like my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

At night, rain smacks the southern side of the bach, which is one of those eighties Lockwoods that feels flimsy but somehow withstands the years of pummelling by sand and salt. Inside it’s all panelled wood, like a Swiss log cabin or a Swedish summer house. The bathroom fittings are pleasingly dated (an avocado-coloured tub and sink). I like their kitchenware, their choice of clothes peg, their bookshelf (Marian Keyes; Readers’ Digest, Tom Clancy - utterly unimpeachable). But Lockwoods aren’t for everyone.

The planks absorb all the daylight and then contract noisily at night. If you get up for a glass of water, each of your footsteps will crack like gunshots. Do not worry about this, the owners write in the visitor compendium. It is entirely normal for this style of house. They don’t mention you’ll be woken up nightly by the cracking and snapping, the house as furious as you are about such a dud summer.

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