Home Sweet Home

Although I've been a bit slack in terms of blogging recently, I'd hoped to be able to document the house-buying process as it unfolded, outlining the ups and downs, the excitement and disappointment etc etc etc. Unfortunately for the content of this blog, we've just bought one.

We've been going through open homes for a while now, traipsing through other peoples' houses several times a weekend, nosing through closets and tutting at wallpaper, diligently leaving our shoes at the door. Last weekend, we went to a few more, including one place in Point Chevalier which was a bit of a departure for us. Being naive foreigners (the Kiwi counts as a foreigner, having as much experience of housebuying in Auckland as I do), we'd been looking for one of the lovely old villas they have round here. Most of them have been done up to one standard or another, but in reality they're all 70+ years old and held together with plaster and old wallpaper paste in the main.

You can overlook all this to a degree, as most of them really are lovely houses. However, when you talk to someone who lives in one, words like draughty, cold, damp, money pit, mould and pleaseletmeliveinamodernhouse start to come out, so we thought we'd take a chance and look at a recently built place.

On Monday our offer was accepted:


It's a three-bedroomed free-standing place over two floors, with a little garden and a deck (just behind the fence on the left of the photo). The couple selling it are moving north of the harbour with their new baby, and have kept the place beautifully. Brilliantly, the HRV system they've installed keeps the house both warm and dry more or less all the time, something which I've come to see the value of during the cold, damp Auckland winter.

So there's one more stage of paperwork to get through, and with luck our offer will go unconditional on Monday. We'll be in by the end of September, having given the vendors a bit of time to find a new place of their own as we're in no desperate hurry to move. On that note, it's amazing to notice how much simpler and friendlier the New Zealand purchase process is than the English one. I say English advisedly, as I'm told that north of the border things are again simpler. There's no gazumping, no massive stress over completion and exchange dates. There are penalties levied if the agreed move-in date isn't kept to, and the party at fault is charged. The estate agent pretty much does the lot for you.

Your fiancée does a fair bit too, apparently. It's obviously hard work, as this (Saturday) morning she's looking very tired indeed and was quite incoherent when she got home this morning. Poor thing.

More on this as we get it. Today involves meeting a friend from the UK, who now lives in Melbourne, at the airport and pootling round Auckland for the rest of the day, which should be pleasant as it's beautifully sunny outside and the city will be sparkling and shining by the harbour. It might even be an opportunity to take the top down...

So how's it going?

So I've been blogging (rarely) about stuff that's going on here, but I'm not sure (and can't be bothered checking) that I've actually mentioned anything about how it's feeling. So I thought I should try. Now, a recent Myers-Briggs test showed that by quite a long shot, I'm 'Thinking' rather than 'Feeling', so this could be a bit of a challenge.

It's been just over six months since we arrived in New Zealand, and over seven since we left London. It really doesn't seem that long. In that time, we've moved all our possessions to the other side of the world, acquired cars, bank accounts, jobs, furniture, kitchen stuff, towels and stuff like that. We are now looking for a house to keep it all in.

Funnily enough, just when I think I'm getting round to be able to answer the question, people have stopped asking us if we've settled in ok. Settling in is a process, and I think we're definitely moving through it comfortably enough.

I rant a lot about things I don't like - this is just part of me. This means it can seem though, that I'm generally unhappy with my lot, but this isn't really the case. I could go on for hours about the superficial good things and not-so-good things about living here, but realistically they don't add up to more or less than anywhere else. Good pies / dodgy road rules. Positive working culture / stupidly expensive dairy produce. You know the sort of conversation - the sort of phatic communion* that forms 80% of human conversation. More, probably.

I am happy here. Happy-er than I was before we left, in many ways. I miss people very much, family, old friends, colleagues who've become close friends - lots of people. I miss meeting people on Sundays in the pub that you could get to without driving. But on the other hand, there's email, MSN, Skype, Twitter, Facebook - all helping those people seem a little less distant. The pub I can live without to an extent - and my bank balance thanks me for that.

I like having our own television. Watching it whilst sitting on our own sofa. Working with people who do what they say they'll do, and who're genuinely open to change. Leaving the office at a reasonable time and getting home to enjoy the rest of the day. I like that Auckland is such a beautiful city, and I like even more that no one here seems to realise that. I like that we have plans in place, that we know what we want out of our immediate lives and that we're taking steps to get there. That feels pretty good.

So yes - it's going well, on the whole. Very well.





* I've been looking for an opportunity to use this phrase for a while now. Score!

Vic Chesnutt, Kings Arms Tavern, 4 July 2009

Whilst working at Virgin Digital many years ago, my colleague Mark passed me an unmarked CD, and said 'play this - it's going to be massive'. The track started with a donk-donk-donk-donk that would become terribly familiar over the coming year as Gnarls Barkley's 'Crazy', a track which I still rather like despite having heard it over a gazillion times. It's a bit bittersweet actually, as I remember the conversation with our PR company the day after the track was released. Being the first digital-only single to be chart elegible (I think... something like that anyway) they were keen to make a big song and dance over our day one sales. Asked for the number, I said 'Thirty-two'. '32 thousand? Brilliant news, I'll get the release out'. 'No mate. Thirty-two.'

How depressing. The track went on to deliver about 31,000 digital sales in the UK that week, of which we did, um, about fifty.

Anyway, moving to the nub of this post, earlier this year, one half of Gnarls (Dangermouse) hooked up with Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, and David Lynch, on a project known as 'Dark Night of the Soul'. This was to be a bit of a masterpiece, with a 100-page booklet featuring Lynch's photography, numerous guest spots and Dangermouse's trademark unorthodox, brilliant production.

One dispute with the record label later, and the album was put out, minus the actual audio content. Contained within the box was a blank CD, with a bit of text exhorting the user to 'use the CD as they saw fit'. The subtext here, naturally, was that they'd leaked the content online and an enterprising fan could easily find it. I may have done. And it's a great album.

The final two tracks feature one Vic Chesnutt, about whom you can read more here, but suffice it to say that he's seen as a bit of a legend in some parts. As a songwriter he's intelligent, emotive and darkly humourous, as a performer that gallows humour comes across even more strongly. So when I noticed he was touring New Zealand and playing in Auckland this weekend I grabbed a pair of tickets.

So into the largely empty venue we walked at about quarter to nine. We got drinks, settled against a wall at the back (no seats in this place). A few more punters filtered in as the support cranked his way through a few fairly hackneyed tracks. A couple of people came in towards the end of his set - one in a wheelchair (Chesnutt is paraplegic, easy to spot...), one a short, older lady who looked a bit confused, wearing trademark 'crazy lady' clothes. She wandered around for a bit, conspicuous in the nearly-empty venue, and then got up on the stage. And picked up a guitar. And began some stretches.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Victoria Williams. A bit of a legend in her own right, apparently, and it's fair to say that for portions of her performance I was completely transfixed, and there was a definite musical brilliance going on there throughout. Shambolic, unselfconscious, at times fascinating, but her habit of stopping songs part-way through because she'd forgotten the rest, or constantly detuning and retuning, slipping the beat every few bars and forcing Vic (on drums) to stop and restart, got a bit much. 90 minutes of this though was a challenge, one which as it happens was too much for the Kiwi - she went home.

I'm still in two minds about this. I'd never heard of her prior to this gig, and I'm still not sure whether this was amazing or awful. I suspect it's a perfect mix of both. On the occasions where she found a bit of form and let rip, she was amazing. The initial shambling ineptitude was charming, but rapidly got tiresome.

After all this, Vic (with whom she's been friends for over 20 years, apparently) did his thing, getting an unbelievable sound out of his battered acoustic. He did play one of the Dangermouse tracks (Grim Augury, which stripped of its electronica was startlingly raw and bleak), and for the majority of the show played older stuff and audience requests. In such an intimate venue (which had filled a bit by now), his style came across fantastically; personal, human and warm whilst at the same time searingly emotional.

What really threw all this into perspective for me though was the car ride home. After nearly three hours of emotionally intelligent, personal, richly descriptive music performed in a variety of unique ways, the noise that vomited out of the car radio was just too much and had to be turned off. Overproduced, sterile, facile and sickeningly meaningless. Some genres make a virtue of this and that I applaud, but when it's glossy synthetics masquerading as indie pop I just can't take it.

So on reflection, I'm really glad I went. Challenging, yes. But so very, very good. Don't know if I could do it every week though. Fortunately in Auckland that's not much of a likelihood.

Kings of Leon, Vector Arena, 25 March 2009

A couple of disclosure points first. Last time KoL came to London, they played Wembley and I kept my distance. I hate stadium gigs with a white-hot burning passion, and much as I really enjoyed the album they were touring (Because of the Times), I couldn't bring myself to pay a fair amount of money to be made to be even more splenetic than usual. I hate the muppets who go to these gigs, hate the way they act like teenagers on a school trip, hate the endless trips to the overpriced bars, the dodgy sound and the fact that the stage is a mile away so you end up watching it on screens and so you'd be better off buying the DVD and watching it at home where the atmosphere is bound to be a million times better and the idiot count is a bit lower.

However, this is Auckland, and things like this don't come around every day. So late last year we bought tickets (on the pound, so they were actually pretty cheap) and went last night. The Vector Arena actually turned out to be a great venue, of reasonable size, acceptable bar prices and well toileted. The sound was superb too, unusual in cavernous places like this. The band played a more or less note-perfect set, just like they did on the records. They adhered to all the usual rock tropes - the limited interaction with the crowd, comments like 'you're the best audience we've had on this tour', and 'hello, we're the Kings of Leon' (uh, thanks for that).

The audience was utterly insane. Seated in great seats (4th row back, rear), we were surrounded by female Beatles fans circa 1967, screaming All The Way Through The Performance. The sort of scream that's literally a heartbeat away from pure hysteria, that rips through the eardrums like a burglar alarm and will not shut up. They really did like the Kings of Leon, clearly.

So on the whole, they did very well indeed. A nice long set with a four-track encore, great sound, great lights etc. They knew exactly what their audience wanted and delivered no more, no less.

Coming away from it though, I couldn't put my finger on quite why I was left feeling so underwhelmed. Compared, say, with Elbow at the Roundhouse, or TV On The Radio at ULU. Different styles of band, admittedly, but what makes the difference between 'good' and 'exhilarating'? You couldn't fault the band in either case, nor the venue. I think it has to come down to the crowd. When every soul in that room is there for one reason and one reason only - to watch the band and drink in every nuance of their performance - that shared focus seems to make the whole experience so much better. When it's more about getting hammered and jumping around and yelling and generally becomes about each individual, it kind of leaves me cold. More than that, it brings uncharactaristically violent urges to the surface.

I wondered for a while if this was an age thing, but to be honest I think I've always felt like this, every since Dinosaur Jnr at the Manchester Academy (my first gig on my own). Loved every minute of that.

So I dunno. I'll probably still go to the odd stadium gig, the odd mainstream band and so on, but I'll probably go on finding it pleasant enough, but a bit disappointing all the same.

On running in Auckland

By my nature I'm a pretty lazy sort of person, like water I always try to choose the path of least resistance. My running habits are fairly well aligned with this trait, as I run purely to combat the damage I do to my body with fat and alcohol, and try to make it as easy as possible in the process.

Auckland has challenged this somewhat. A typical run might go a bit like this:

Decide to run a bit further today, so plot a 10k route that avoids all known hills. Turn left out of the flat and immediately encounter a hill, tell myself that it's only a short one and charge up it into a headwind. Canter another kilometer or so, turn a corner and am faced with what can only be described as a wall with cars going up it. I can just about see the top, so set a determined pace and chug up it, trying to keep a decent cadence. Get to the top, decide to reward myself with 50m of walking (it's either this or a seizure).

Spotted by someone running on the other side of the road, so start running again out of shame, into a headwind. Get to the end of this bit of road and see the sea (the eastern end of the harbour), start feeling all worthy and windswept. Head along the coast a little to a quaint little Cornish-style bay, the pleasure of seeing which is diminished slightly by the hill rising vertically in front of me. Can't see the top of this one, so adopt a slightly cautious pace and pant up it into a headwind. Woman pushing baby buggy passes me halfway up. At least it wasn't twins, I suppose.

Feel a tiny spot of rain, followed instantaneously by torrential, vertical, drenching downpour. Soaked through in seconds, at which point it stops, sun comes out, pavement and clothes bone dry again. Time elapsed, 20-30 seconds. Reach a turn-off point which thankfully isn't quite the summit, but it'll do. Turn off into a park, get lost. Find a road, predictably (by now) a hill leading upwards. Run up it, starting to lose sense of humour somewhat.

Begin looking for necessary turning off this road. Find to my dismay that few of the roads are actually signposted. A few minutes of searching at each one eventually turns up the right one, which is amazingly a hill leading downwards! Surely homeward bound?

Scramble down hill, avoiding cars parked on the pavement, half out of driveways, half on the road, in the road, across the road. Notice that the road appears to turn upwards relatively soon, note also that it doesn't seem that much of an incline. Sprint up small incline into a headwind, realise too late that behind this tiny lump lurks a chasm, a volcanic valley leading straight down, and straight back up again. Limp down the hill like a lamb to the slaughter.

Halfway up the other side, receive a tiny respite as I cross a road, which is mercifully flat. Unfortunately, this means the next 10m is considerably steeper to compensate. Three-quarters of the way up, I'm whispering encouragement under my breath. Seven-eights of the way up I'm murmuring abuse at myself. At the top I look back down and almost believe it was worth it, the view to the city on one side and the suburbs punctuated by the volcanic cones of Mount Eden, Mount Albert, One Tree Hill spread out on the other. Realise with horror that I'm still one valley away from the home straight.

Another downwards stumble, across the motorway into a headwind that leaves ripple effects across my face. Haul myself up the other side, turn 90 degrees into a headwind and note with a sinking feeling that the home straight is in fact a deceptive incline. Attempt to pass cafes, bars and restaurants on this stretch looking like it's all a bit of a breeze and secretly cursing these people for spending all day in cafes and bars and restaurants and still looking in reasonable shape.

Arrive home, wondering how a circular running route can contain more up than down, and how it can be all into a headwind. What a bizarre place.

Is it really late February already?

Time is seeming very elastic at the moment, stretching out like caramelised sugar and constantly wrong-footing me. This morning I was inspecting a pot outside where I'd planted some chillies, and decided glumly that they weren't sprouting and so were probably dead, when I noticed on the label that I'd only put them in three days ago. It seemed like over a week.

On the other hand, it seems ridiculous that our second rent payment is due next week. It only feels like we've been in here a week or so, but in reality it's been quite a while. We're pretty much settled in now, with all the absolutely necessary furniture installed and most of our stuff unpacked. Still in boxes are most of the books, CDs and DVDs, which are waiting patiently in the spare room for us to buy a bookcase. This is one of those purchases that we've relegated to the 'when we have jobs' list, along with a thing to put the TV on (entertainment cabinet? I'm sure they have a name), a barbeque, an olive pitter and some decent cheese for a change. Our warped sense of priority means we bought an ice-cream machine this week - it was on a 50% off deal though, in fairness. So far I've made an orange & grapefruit sorbet and some plum ice-cream, both of which pretty good. It's taken a bit of getting used to but I think I have the hang of it now.

Actually, that said I think we're going to relent and get a barbeque anyway. The main reason for this, apart from the social stigma of living in New Zealand and not having one, is that our smoke alarm is so sensitive that showering with the bathroom door open can set the upstairs one off, so the indoor grilling of any meat at all involves all the windows being open, the Kiwi racing round the house flapping things, and me occasionally holding the grill pan outside the kitchen window. Yesterday evening I was grilling some chicken, and poked the sizzling, smoking pan out of the window just as a neighbour walked past - fortunately missing his suit by a whisker. So I think it's a worthwhile purchase. The smoke alarms, you see, are linked to the fire system in the building, which in turn is linked to both the fire service and the sprinklers, neither of which I want going off. We get charged for every fire truck that turns up, and they usually send several.

No news on the job front, although the Kiwi seems to have found some more tame recruiters, which if I've not heard anything by the end of this week I might be pimping myself to as well. The thing that's really getting me worried is the boredom and lack of stimulus - despite trying to follow all the online media and industry buzz I used to, I can feel my brain drying up and grinding to a halt, and the temptation to retreat from the world into a comfortable cocoon of Mario Kart, Simpsons, Quake Live and the odd glass of wine is getting harder to resist.

Hilariously, in the context of all this media nonsense about social media atrophying the brains of our young, Twitter and Facebook are about the only things keeping me sane at the moment.