COLIN HOGG

EVEN WHEN YOU’RE DOWNSIZING, MOVING IS A HUGE UPHEAVAL

Ihad a feeling about what might happen if we put our house up for sale. It seemed to me there was a reasonable chance someone would actually buy it. And that’s just what happened – and so quickly it left me no space at all to think about what it’s going to mean. Apart from all the awful packing and moving and the unpacking, that is.

Because there’s the leaving to consider. I’m not all that good at leaving houses. In fact, as soon as I heard the unrefusable offer made on our house here in the bush-clad hills of Wellington, I wanted to change my mind and say the buyers couldn’t have it, no matter how deep their pockets. But good sense and the darling wife prevailed.

So, after a few false starts, this time it looks like we’re moving back to Auckland, despite the house prices, which have been terrifying until recently. Because, meanwhile, in Wellington, the prices have become terrifying too, which is good news when you’re selling. And, anyway, it doesn’t make you rich when you’re swapping equally-priced houses.

In other, more sensible countries, people buy houses and stay in them most of their lives. Here in New Zealand, we change nests like cuckoos. This next place will be the seventh house I’ve been involved in buying and I’m not sure it gets any easier with time. Except that now, hopefully, we not only know what we want, but know what we need.

We had the chance to try out an

Auckland apartment for six months a couple of years ago and we know we don’t want that, though it was very, as they say, convenient. Apartment blocks are sprouting like mushrooms in Auckland. It’s the way of the future, apparently, but I want a big back yard, an old grapefruit tree and a lawn to torture myself with.

But first we have to break the news to the cat and pack up and leave. Which, as I said, is the hardest part, though we’ve been rattling round like two walnuts in an oversized shell in this place of ours. So it’s downsize time, though not too much I hope. I don’t want to end up in one of those tiny houses everyone’s talking about.

I can’t imagine anything worse than being up to your knees in each other the whole time you’re home. Space has a key place in the survival of relationships. That’s one of the reasons apartments won’t work. Also, I’m not sure I can live without a garden – and I am sure Charlie the cat can’t live without one. She’s had the run of a valley full of trees where we are now. I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to her.

“You’ll like Auckland,” I’ll tell her. “It’s warmer, less windy. You’ll make new friends.”

I’m saying the same thing to myself. I’ve enjoyed Wellington much more than I ever expected. When I lived in Auckland before, I used to be a bit rude about Wellington, but I was wrong and I’m putting it on the record.

Yes, Auckland has a lot to live up to.