Episode 10: Mantis on a Minirig

‘“The time has come”, the Walrus said, “to talk of many things. Of birds, and beers, and extended metaphors; of kayaking, and flings.”’ And Lewis Carroll was right. It’s time to conclude this chapter, which commenced on the 20-somethingth of January and now wraps up back in Auckland airport, as I board my Jetstar (pray for me) flight to Melbourne, then on to Bangkok. Friends, romans, countrymen; lend me your eyes one last time as I come to a thoughtful and measured conclusion on all that has come to pass on the other side of the planet, where there be monsters and where people walk upside down and talk funny. I’m going to reflect on the zeniths and nadirs of this voyage which I - and you, my vicarious readers - have lived through. And I’m going to evaluate whether I was right to come here and do this… or if I wasn’t.

I suppose the first order of business is to give you a synopsis of my last week. I return to House of Nicholls and am reintegrated into their carefree, liberal modus operandi. David’s friends - Flynn, Fletcher, Miro, Charlie, Perry, Isaac, Mary, Hector et al - become my friends, and I’m going to miss them. We attend a D&B gig, which if you’ve never experienced one yourself, is like inserting a jackhammer into your earhole and leaving it there. If you are even the slightest bit sober I cannot recommend. I meet up with one of Mr Richard Charkin esq.’s interesting friends, Graeme, to talk about interesting stuff. I get three days of work on a construction site, cladding walls using itchy insulation and artificial weatherboards. Dad says this is called “building.”

I am well compensated for my efforts, walking away with 500 bucks which I promptly blow some of on a night out with Eddie, a mate from rugby who is pursuing a similar, better funded agenda to mine. We meet a group of girls. One of them gets run over by a Lime scooter. I get booted out of their uni accommodation at 4am. I am forced to buy an extortionate Uber back to Devonport. All fun and games. I swap the remainder of my 500 bucks for Thai Baht. This involves standing in line behind a man embroiled in resolving Greece’s national debt by himself; I can only imagine it was that which could possibly take so long. I return to my true calling and do weeding in Jen’s garden. I meet up with Claire and David (Purchas), and go back to Orewa with Dave, Nicola, Tom and Stella. The wheel has come full circle.

Right then. You cannot set about testing a hypothesis without criteria to judge it against. Below are my sub-headings, to help me come to a conclusion on the last two-and-a-bit months.

Highlights:

Ah, where to begin? Sitting outside under the Southern Hemisphere stars with David, early on in the piece. Meeting Agnes and her chums. The Tongariro Crossing. Playing backgammon with Jim, Cyclone Gabrielle our background. The cricket, both in Tauranga and Wellington. Bumping into Dobell by accident. Wellington town centre, and looking over it at night from a high balcony. The first morning among the mountains on the South Island, and my afternoon spent canoeing. Those long evenings on Kathy and Mike’s picturesque Waiheke balcony. Classless nights out with David, and dinners with his fam. And many more besides. I’m not sure how useful this particular category is, because I’d have had myriad highlights wherever I’d gone, and probably for less money. Nonetheless, it’s worth recounting them. It’s been a blast.

Lowlights:

Ah, where to begin? You know what? I’m not going to bother. For the simple reasons that a) I’d have to trawl through my own blogs to remember them and b) the lowlights have made the best stories. They’ve taught me the most about myself, and most importantly, they’ve been the backbone of one of the highlights; this blog. If everything had been hunky dory from start to finish, I’d never have written this, and you’d certainly have never bothered to read it.

What did I come out here to achieve? 

The whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I had to leave home, and my parents, behind for a while. I reckon they were sick of me, and in any case, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Leaving was as much about forcing me to miss home, and home to miss me, as it was about “diScoVeRinG wHo I aM”. Well, I’ve been gone for nearly three months and I’m not home yet. So, tick. 

New Zealand is a serious destination. The views, spectacular. The country itself is safe and speaks English. The cities are nothing short of world class. But, this section is not without mitigation. If I had wanted to spend my gap yar looking at nice views, not being mugged, outside my folks’ jurisdiction and swanning around some incredible cities, I could have jetted off to South East Asia for two weeks and then spent the remaining 9 and a half months in London, or Toulouse. God knows I could have saved some money too. So why NZ?

Did I achieve it?

Here’s the rub. Yeah, NZ is an expensive place and plane tickets to or from are similarly ruinous. If you want to tick boxes, like Milford Sound and Queenstown and Rotorua, you’re looking at a venture more akin to my pal Eddie’s. However. There’s a very good reason I chose this country. The people. “People” is a strata that includes David and Nicola, Larry and Anne, Hancey and Richard, Jeni and Rob, Jim Bruty, Richard and Katherine Lennox, and others; ie, contacts I just asked for whilst still in England. Literally dozens of them. Perhaps even more significantly, it includes the hundreds of other people that I didn’t know before arriving here, but that I trusted would exist. Simply put, nice people. And I can assert that this is the most welcoming country I’ve ever been to, possibly in the world. The upshot is, then, that I’ve only spent approx. £2000* in the last 2.5 months, thanks entirely to the generosity of kiwi hospitality, a sum which includes international flight bookings, and several other domestic flights.

I’m not claiming I couldn’t have achieved a similar checklist somewhere closer and cheaper. But in an English-speaking country? I’d like to see myself try and crash on dozens of different sofas in America, or cover so much of Canada, or meet the same calibre of person in Austral - I mean, anywhere but NZ. I had worried for months whether there was simply no justification for travelling to the other side of the world for a country superficially similar to the UK. I worried that I had made an expensive error, and that I would have had a better time elsewhere.

But that’s hearsay and whataboutery. I had to make a call based on almost no evidence whatsoever, and it could have gone a hell of a lot worse. I’m happy. I don’t care if the love of my life was waiting for me in Buenos Aires. She (or he!) wasn’t in Wellington. That’s her problem. Not mine. This section gets another tick.

The C-word:

I am, of course, talking about the Comfort-Zone. Look, how many idioms do you want to whip out? If you only do what know you can do, you’ll never do anything. Failure is the greatest teacher. To play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable (that was Beethoven, apparently). Etc. I know what my old man would be saying; “I went Botswana because of bloke in pub to build school and no money and only one return ticket six months later and scary South Africa and scary unknown people and I met good people and I learned bout myself and brought only a wooden hippo back as present for parents”. Heard it all before Dad, and yes, I’ve spent my gap yar doing what I trusted myself to be able to do already.

Is that such a crime? Thailand and Vietnam are going to be very foreign, ay. Does that count as sufficiently chaotic? There’s only so far I can step out of my comfort zone before I’m on Mars, and that’s of no use to anyone except Elon. Whilst I’m talking about Dad, he admits that the benefits of travelling are often only realised some time after they are over. Christ on a bike, my pa gives me a lot of advice. At least mum just waved me out of the door and wished me luck (then gave my bedroom away immediately).** I won’t tick this section; not just yet. However, I may just do so after a stint in Asia. Speaking of, I’ve been deliberating whether or not to continue posting my ramblings once I’ve moved continent? If you’ve read this far, yours are the opinions that matter; what do you reckon? If the demand is there, I’ll keep up the supply.

An ay to the right? Or a nose to the left?

I’ve loved every minute, including the ones that were horrid. Not least because they made the best stories, but also because they usually turned out to not be that horrid after all. I don’t believe in fate. But being a Rider on the Storm, as long as you’re in NZ, is brilliant. It’s a yes from me.

Word of the Week is Thanks. I’d like to thank everyone who made my NZ travels; that is a spectrum that ranges from David and Nicola, there at the beginning and end, to Nurse Ratched, there at my lowest, and everyone in between. I’d like to thank friends and fam back at home who had my back the whole way (they assure me). Most of all, I’d like to thank you for reading. Truly, there was no experience bleak enough, no home-sickness nauseous enough, no dark tunnel long enough to make me feel distanced from you. You are my rock, whether I know you or not. It’s been a pleasure. I leave you with a Mantis, who has swapped his Cointreau for my Minirig.

*This doesn’t include the initial price of flying out to NZ, a number which was, in a word, unbelievable. Doesn’t fit my agenda in this episode though, so I’m not disclosing it. Wealthy middle-class family helped me pay for it anyway, so all groovy.

**Don’t listen to me. Only taking aim at you two again because I know you can take it. I miss you both very much.