What a week!
A week in which everything changed before our eyes! We’re all scrambling to adjust — it’s a rare moment of collective experience. On the plus side, it gives us something to say to strangers if we’re briefly brought together in a queue, or perhaps in a lift. “What a weird week,” we might murmur to them, and they might say, “You’re not wrong.” Then the doors would glide open, and we’d step out into the odd light of a new world.
First of all, where has Boris Johnson gone? The one whose outline and features we recognised? Even to us in the distant Pacific he represented a significant constituency, a thick plank of British power and culture; the others being Nigel Farage and Liam Gallagher.
We knew him as the ultimate Etonian old boy — gouty-looking, inflated with self-regard and flushed by the rich dinners they serve in London members’ clubs. He was Dickensian, really, and baffling proof that colonial-style establishment charm, if played correctly, could still overcome one’s personal shortcomings (a face like raw dough; the conscience of a sea sponge) and attract any number of high appointments and intimate relationships, many conducted at the same time.
But now he’s on the jab, stopped shaving, and looks like he plays bass for Genesis.
Let’s forgive him those shark print shorts for a minute (though not the Downing Street lockdown parties). I hate to say this, but he looks better in swimming togs than I do, even though he was alive for the moon landings and I wasn’t.
For fuck’s sake.
The centre of the internet collapsed even earlier this week with the news of Taylor' Swift’s engagement to that big lug from the Kansas City Chiefs. Even those of us not directly affected (that would be the entire planet, excepting Swift’s management and whoever styled the announcement flowers) felt our teacups rattle. We asked ourselves what it would mean culturally, for women, for American soft power, and the NFL.
Personally, I hoped it meant they’d take her off heavy rotation at my local supermarket. Nobody wants to hear about teenage heartbreak in the bleachers when it’s sung by a happily married woman in her thirties. It just doesn’t land the same and would throw me off when I’m browsing for dog worming tablets and laundry soak.
I don’t have a strong view on Taylor Swift’s music or a parasocial relationship with her, so it’s not my place to pronounce on her engagement. Instead, I’ve been imagining her army of lawyers, holed up in one of those godawful American boardrooms and fuelled by protein shakes and Diet Coke, finally signing off on the entertainment industry’s most paginated pre-nup. That thing will be soldered into a lead box and held under armed guard, along with her entire music catalogue and pin-pricked dollies of Joe Jonas and Kanye West.
Truly, that’s her happily ever after.
This week the world turns from winter into spring. The evidence is everywhere. Early cherries already in flower; daffodils in the cemetery, kōwhai bells in the trees. My dashboard told me it was fourteen degrees as I drove to George’s school in the mid-afternoon. I was hot, too hot for a blazer. But the playground was cool, and I wish I’d left it on.
In Wellington, early spring means moments of bright and warming sunshine mixed with savage winds and the last of the cold snaps. Winter’s angry to be leaving us; the polar blasts are brutal when they come.
This week flights were turned away from the city’s airport; recycling bins overturned, and strips of paper danced down the streets. A white page billowed in front of my windscreen as I drove along Karori Road and then swooped away, pulled free by the slipstream. If I’d caught it, I wouldn’t have been surprised to read the message Surely some revelation is at hand?
The birds are taking over, thanks to enthusiastic trappers patrolling the hinterlands, parks and gardens, and wiping out rodents. Indignant Kākā fly low over homes and cars now, the sun shining orange through their open wings. Tūī tumble together in mating displays. More kiwi are sighted in the tops above Karori — one caught on a ring camera at Burrows Avenue, of all places. Kiwi claw marks are found up on the bike trails, their three prominent front toes making ancient patterns in the mud.
Keep your dogs on a lead in the hills, we’re told, unless you want to end up on the news as the most hated owner in New Zealand.
Spring means growth but also, truth. We must unclothe ourselves. This means booking a tree-trimming service to cut back the tangle of bushes and hedging that’s kept your home muffled from the street and its traffic. You’ll shiver and feel naked when the growth is gone, but for the health of your plants and your neighbourly relationships, your section needs a haircut. Short back and sides, exposing the neck.
Your coats and heavy jerseys will need retiring too. Not yet — you can’t truly relax in a Wellington spring until it’s December — but soon you won’t need to stand blankly in your bedroom on a given cold morning, de-bobbling your jumper with a fabric shaver.
There’s a kind of sorrow in knowing this is coming to an end, because there’s peace and pleasure in doing it. Sometimes, shaving your woollies is the best part of your day.
I think there should have been a warning at the top of this newsletter: ‘contains images of Bojo in togs’ (thank the gods he wasn’t in budgie smugglers). Otherwise, perfection.
Wonderful, and I speak as one who's just spent far too long with one of those shavers and various jerseys.