Well, my blow-dry lasted thirty seconds. I stepped outside the salon with a sleek head, and was instantly smacked by what felt like half a bucket of rain.
Adding insult to injury, I was caught in the crosswinds as I walked to the car and pelted by an icy, mean-spirited downpour. By the time I got home I had big tufts at each ear, like wings, and my ends were as curly as wood shavings.
The dog looked better than I did, and he knew it, too. This is because he went to a groomer on Tuesday, is still soft, and smells vaguely of baking.
My gloom was immediate. Why bother to groom oneself in Wellington? Why even comb one’s hair before walking along a wind tunnel like Brandon Street, let alone pay for a professional style? What a waste! I could’ve spent that money on something whose good looks would last, like peel-and-stick kitchen subway tiles.
Dreary, endless rain! Four solid days of it, with no end in sight! The buckets are out again at Karori Mall, catching the leaks and adding to the general feeling of squelch. Frothy water charges along the gutters outside the house, and everywhere you turn there are tipped-over wheelie bins.
I’ve laid rubber matting across our lawn in a diagonal pathway from the gate to the front door. The grass has long gone, churned by builders’ boots into a long and sticky tongue of mud. But even the mats are sinking into it now. It’s filthy and hopeless.
It feels futile, resisting this weather. Karori’s very hills seem to be sliding lower, with corners of hillsides chunking off and dissolving on the roads. Little plaits of water run across the streets, and the mist never lifts off the valley.
I don’t deny that people in Wellington can be happy but in weather like this, there’s a limit to how happy we can be. Winter has bitten us, as they say, in the arse; this year’s influenza is utterly brutal. A friend of mine was hospitalized with pneumonia; I know an entire family flattened by tonsilitis. In our house we’ve had two with chest infections, and night coughs that never go away. We’ve gone through a lot of Vicks, Panadol, and throat syrup, and our green bin is piled with ginger-beer bottles.
(Can I tell you how much pleasure I get checking whose kerbside bin holds the most wine bottles every Wednesday? Not in a judgmental way. It just tells me which households are having more fun than mine. As well as the neighbourhood swiggers, there are the gourmands (whose bins feature grapeseed oil, and little jars of capers), the plain-speaking, plain-living ones (peanut butter, brown beer) and those who remember the day Kennedy was shot (cream sherry). On rubbish day, making observations and reaching conclusions, I feel like Margaret Mead.
I cleaned out the pantry not long ago, emptying a load of goods bought in the first lockdown that had reached the four-year mark; there was a danger of weevils, or that tins might explode. Our bins that week brimmed with empty pull-cans of instant pudding and flavoured fish, and the cans of coffee granules that come with milk powder mixed in. It made us look like the sort of people who shouldn’t really be the ones to survive disaster and then re-seed society: the ones with terrible taste).
There’s natural drama in a cold front, sweeping Wellington from the Antarctic; but living under the iron dome of a dull sky quickly becomes intolerable, even with our pretty harbour, dinky red cable car, our kākā, our tūī.
You begin to yearn for somewhere that sees more than a lick of pale sunlight once or twice a week. A place where it’s not bold to leave the house without a sweater ten months of the year. Where you wouldn’t need a $100 umbrella, engineered with a unique strut mechanism to promote outward tension, to repel routine 80-120kph winds. Where you could begin your day with Good Hair and expect your parting to stay exactly where you combed it in the bathroom that morning. Where you could peg out your bra and undies with confidence, knowing there’s little risk they might be blown next door onto Steve’s barbecue or Richard’s lawn. The freedom would be intoxicating.
If the sun doesn’t come out soon, you might begin to wonder if this city actually makes your life easier and more joyful, or in fact makes it harder and almost relentless. You might begin to feel for Wellington the emotion most undermining of any relationship, even after twenty amiable years together.
Contempt.
One way I’ve been trying to absorb sunlight is by watching Netflix shows set in sunnier places. This is how I came to discover the real estate reality series Selling Sunset, based in sunbaked Los Angeles - city of sweltering heat, relentless materialism and weapons-grade self-involvement. It’s a long-running show that has spawned many lookalikes, but I’m always late to everything, and it was definitely new to me.
Los Angeles is so gloriously sunny, everybody wears midriff tops and mini-dresses. The men often wear pedal pushers with loafers. Everyone carries a Louis Vuitton micro-backpack. They suck from large cups with straws in the middle. They swing and suck their hair, and everyone hugs a lot. It’s like they’re twelve-year-olds in thirty-five-year-olds’ bodies. I’d regress too if I could wear short sleeves in the evenings, or a pair of backless heels. Fewer clothes, in my experience, usually means fewer syllables.
Everyone is impressed by how much things cost and talk of nothing but money and square footage. Every property shown (few of which actually sell, which makes you wonder if any of them are truly for sale or if any of the cast actually has a real estate licence) is identical. They are all multi-million-dollar glass boxes with masculine fittings and modular furniture, bolted awkwardly into the rocks in the Hollywood Hills, and one mudslide away from oblivion.
All that money, and nobody has taste. Or rather, everyone has the same taste - black marble bathrooms, black marble kitchens, double showers, plunge pools. There’s much talk about TV screens (indoor, outdoor, the kind that rise up from a slot in the floor) but not of painting, music, or reading. Someone gestures towards what he calls ‘the library’ but there are only shelves in the room, and no books.
There are half a dozen all-female so-called brokers at The Oppenheim Group, the luxury property agency at the centre of the show. The drama is supposedly about their working lives, if you can see past their bleached hair, fake teeth, inflatable tits, heels, handbags and chihuahuas. Really, though, it’s not about their property listings but their catty girl fights, all of which are manufactured to offer a semblance of plot.
I hate everyone in the show. I hate the damned show. I hate the show’s music, which feels like it was composed and sung by AI, with hyperactive girl-boss lyrics like I LOVE MY MONEY AND MY MONEY LOVES ME. I watched all seven seasons in the space of two weeks and still, it wasn’t enough to satisfy my dislike.
Let me tell you, I was a jelly-like sac when watching Selling Sunset. I lost all posture and possibly, I drooled. I was probably in shock. I couldn’t quite believe how terrible humanity is. The last time I remember being this shaken by television was that David Attenborough episode where a male hippo in some muddy African waterhole charges a baby hippo, and underwater cameras capture all of it. I’ll never forget the way that baby tumbled and tumbled in the muddy water, utterly brutalized, until its tubby carcass drifted lifelessly out of shot. That’s basically Selling Sunset, but with Porsches.
The most ghastly of all of the agents is Christine. She’s a six-foot-something ice blonde with long hair in a fat plait, like something from a Viking opera. Her role, and she performs it admirably, is to consume cocktails, backstab her colleagues, gaslight her bosses, throw parties, marry a billionaire in a Gothic winter wonderland-themed wedding, and demand impossible things of her planner. Here are some items she tells the planner she wants:
The specific zebra from that Britney Spears video. You know the one, right?
A sloth. Like, why not?
A white cake with black icing which bleeds strawberries when you cut it. Like, BLOOD
White swans
Black swans
A coach and black horses
The soft pink tongue of a newborn baby
Okay, maybe not the last one. But she gets everything else. The planner asks what her budget is and Christine simpers, “Love.” (Later I’ll Google to see if the marriage was real and it turns out it was, but her husband was recently photographed being escorted from their mansion in handcuffs. They are getting a divorce.)
The most venal scene of all is the moment Christine walks up the aisle to become married. I can’t stand Christine, but watching a bride walk towards her lover is, for most people, an emotional highlight of the ceremony. As she advances, a light mist of foam snowflakes descends on everyone present. It starts to fall a little too fast and a little too thickly (“This is kind of aggressive,” says one blonde). By the time Christine gets the altar, literally nobody but the swans are watching. All her colleagues are too busy grabbing capes to protect their wigs and clothes from a literal blizzard of detergent. “THIS IS DRY CLEAN ONLY,” somebody yowls. Everyone is getting the punishment they deserve, but it doesn’t feel satisfying. Nobody will learn from this and tomorrow, LA will continue to be LA.
And this is why I forgive Wellington. Wellingtonians COMMIT for the ones we love. You can tell this from my own wedding photos - everyone blue with cold down by the harbour, smiling bravely into a southerly in the first week of January, hair flattened across everyone’s scalps, whatever being said being taken by the wind, and the bride not being able to feel any of her fingers, let alone the one with the ring on it.
These changing conditions are immaterial - mere air pressure, mere vapour. It’s the people, stupid, that bind us to a place. It’s the people, it’s the people, it’s the people. And soon it will be spring again.
Last week in the park I met a dog owner whose spoodle, Cookie, had a lovely time running in circles with Dotty Tots (one of the many variations I use for Otto. See also Spotty Dots, Grotty Bots, and Clotty Knots).
We were talking about how fouled Karori’s pavements have been lately, mainly with the leavings of larger breeds. Poodle poop is almost cute, and invariably left neatly - often under a bush. Maybe because it looks like fingers, there’s nothing more revolting than the plump crap of a Labrador or Golden Retriever. Except maybe that of a Tibetan Mastiff which, if stepped in, would probably come up to one’s knees.
“Yeah,” said Cookie’s owner, gazing out at the most distant point of the valley. “I don’t mind picking up my own shit, but there’s something I can’t handle about other people’s.”
I knew he meant Cookie’s shit. These things don’t need explaining.
Consider migrating to the sunny uplands of Te Motu Kairangi. We have famous film makers and footballers, beautiful beaches and its foodie heaven. Leave dreary, misty and damp Karori for the balmy climes of Miramar or Seatoun. We have designer doggies galore with owners who never stoop to pick up their mess (ah, perhaps not a selling point). True there are occasional gusts of wind but we are closer to perfection, and the airport than Karori, although you are nearer to the cemetery. Also bear in mind the added frisson of first to see the tsunami. Finally, a good selection of heavily rated housing is available.
Love your work Leah.
Quote of the week for me..."I lost all posture and possibly, I drooled." 🤣
There's a NY equivalent of Selling Sunset - don't ask me what it's called but my 22 year old son is obsessed and made us watch episodes when he was home recently. Addictive, but you just know that's time lost for ever.