Aside #2: Wellington Weather

A friend forwarded me the below, and it fondly reminds me of the aspects of Wellington I don't miss.

Don't get me wrong -- I love the place -- but no-one should have to live there.

By LINLEY BONIFACE
I was an ardent admirer of Wellington for 13 years. It is perhaps not a coincidence that these were the 13 years when I lived overseas. In the five years since I moved back here, I have waxed and waned on Wellington, but now, I'm afraid, I'm over it. Wellington, Schmellington. Get me out of here.

My disenchantment came to a head a couple of weeks ago, when I suffered an accident that could never have happened in any other city.

At the time, I was in my back garden, which, like so many Wellington gardens, is not a relaxing urban oasis but an Outward Bound-style obstacle course.

It consists of a small onionweed plantation, a steep bank leading to a dark and sinister grove of native bush, and a muddy waterway created by a stormwater drain.

We've only succeeded in hacking our way to the boundary fence three times. On the first occasion, my daughter had a low-level panic attack and began bellowing, "Take me home! I don't like it here!" "You ARE home!" we snapped, but she refused to stop crying till we forded the stormwater drain, manhandled her up the bank, dragged her through the onionweed and bundled her into the house, at which point a stray northerly gust made every door in the house slam shut with a monumental bang. It couldn't have got any creepier if I had sat down at my typewriter and begun bashing out the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" while my son scrawled "REDRUM" on the bathroom mirror in lipstick.

As a result of the garden's peculiar topography, the only way I can reach my washing line is by hovering precariously above it from the safety of a specially constructed deck.

On this occasion, I was leaning over the line with a wet sheet when another stray gust of wind made me lose my balance.

To avoid falling down the bank, I grabbed one of the wires and suddenly found myself suspended from the washing line, swinging out over the void below.

I shouted for help, but to no avail. In a Wellington southerly, no one can hear you scream. I remained like this for several minutes – the metal line cutting a bloody groove in my fingers, each gust swinging me first in one direction then in another, a pair of my husband's boxer shorts lashing me damply in the face – till the wind picked up, whirled me around and smashed me against the edge of the deck.

Losing my grip on the line, I fell down the bank and gashed my forehead on a rusty clothes peg. How, I pondered, could all this be satisfactorily explained to ACC?

This is not my first weather- related injury. I have a permanent dent in my spine from where the wind periodically seizes the door of the car boot with such force that it slams down on me as I attempt to put the children's schoolbags away.

I've lost count of the cuts and bruises I've accumulated from falling down steps and walking into walls when blinded by gales and driving rain.

And, while a haircut can hardly be described as an injury – though I've had a few that come close – it is the wind that eventually forced me to adopt the close- cut, aerodynamic hairstyle popularised by state-sector lesbians a decade ago.

Newcomers to Wellington soon learn that a bob is a near-lethal fashion choice: in gale-force winds, bob-wearers are savagely pistol- whipped by their own hair.

To survive Wellington, you need a good coat, a good handbrake and a good sense of humour.

The city's current polar temperatures, however, are something new. What the hell is happening? Is there someone we can ask for our money back?

A few days ago, my husband, an Englishman whom I lured to Wellington with false promises of a sun-soaked Pacific paradise, finally lost it.

"This summer is an OUTRAGE!" he ranted, as he pulled on a second fleece. "Why have we come to this godforsaken place? We must leave now! We must pack up our things and go!"

He has jungle fever; he has gone troppo. It is too much for him. And it is too much for me.

There is only one solution. If farmers can be offered recompense for flood damage, Wellingtonians should be given compensation for being deprived of the one season that makes it possible for us to tolerate staying here for the rest of the year.

I hereby promise my vote in the next general election to the first party that agrees to fund a fortnight in Fiji for anyone unlucky enough to live in Wellington.