They say you can’t go back...

Husband and wife comedians give their views on a shared subject.

Jeremy Elwood

‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’’ LP Hartley’s immortal first line of his 1953 novel The Go-Between could just as easily apply to the South Island, if my last couple of weeks are anything to go by. I’m obviously talking about the smaller places we’ve visited. Christchurch is a city, Queenstown is on its way to being one and Nelson lives in hope, but places like Hokitika, Reefton, Akaroa, and even Cromwell (watch this space) still exist in that purgatory area of small towns with one, or maybe two, reasons for their existence. And guess what? They’re doing fine.

This little road trip has done two things for me. It’s laid some demons to rest that, in all honesty, I didn’t even realise were still haunting me. The last time I visited spots like Pelorus Bridge, Tahunanui Beach and the West Coast were too many years ago, and the memories are both clear, and tainted. Wrong time, wrong people, wrong decisions.

So to even stop briefly at some of them, in the company of two of my best friends, has blown away a few cobwebs I never even knew were hanging there.

The second thing is to remind me just how wide the city/country divide in this country remains.

Don’t think for a second that I’m planning a retreat. I’m a city boy through and through, and although I have immensely enjoyed visiting some of our hidden treasures, I would last about a week living in one before I did something drastic.

However, it’s been fascinating to watch the response of my city friends to what we’ve been doing. Example: I posted a photo of whitebait pizza – yes, it’s a thing. A fabulous, ridiculous, delicious thing – from Fat Pipi Pizza in Hokitika. Yes, I took a picture of my food and put it online. Like I said: city boy.

The responses were fast, and eventually furious. The vast majority were along the lines of ‘‘OMG’’ and ‘‘How can I get one?’’ Answers: Correct, and visit Hokitika.

Then the city kids chimed in. ‘‘Some whitebait are an endangered species.’’ ‘‘That looks gross.’’ ‘‘You’re an idiot.’’

All of which are true.

But here’s the thing. Outside of your urban, woke, too-much-time-on-your-hands existence live a whole lot of people making a living from what they can produce for themselves. If you don’t think they’ve thought about quotas, fishing limits, and the sustainability of their existence, you’re a stuck-up fool.

I’m a city boy, but there are times I wish I wasn’t. The idea of kicking back in a small town with a whitebait pizza is pretty damned appealing.

Michele A’Court

Acousin (second, twice removed) is an enthusiastic genealogist and her latest unearthing of family mysteries suggests there might be a touch of Romani gypsy in the maternal line on my father’s side. This might explain why I love touring – waking up every morning to pack my suitcase and travel to the next town. Perhaps it’s wired into me, this love of stashing everything I need into something manageable, and moving on.

Except the moving on is only half of it. If I’m honest, I’m also looking for places to belong. At each of our shows, I include a mihi that acknowledges the traditional people of each place, and get a little wistful that I can’t easily name my particular place to stand. In our family, we settle somewhere for a generation or so, then move on.

But I’ve found some spots on this trip that have given me a sense of ‘‘returning’’.

My great-grandfather – the first Stephen A’Court whose name has carried down the generations – was a gold prospector who lived just a few miles north of Hokitika. On this trip, I found his house.

It’s where my grandfather John A’Court was born in 1898, and where my father (another John A’Court) visited his grandparents in 1933 when he was just 4 years old. It would have been a remarkable adventure for a small boy – the boat from Wellington to Lyttelton, then over the Southern Alps by train.

There was no-one home the day I dropped by, but I took the liberty of sitting on the porch for a bit. I imagined my grandfather and father – old men in my most recent memories of them – each as a small boy, playing on the lawn, running inside for dinner. We don’t get to witness our parents as children, but that house did. It was good to sit on its front step.

And I visited the Hokitika cemetery where my great-great-grandmother Florence was arrested in 1874, aged 15, for stealing a rose bush. Florence is the one who may have brought Roma genes into the family, though it’s hard to untangle – she used so many different names and dates of birth you begin to wonder if she was certain of those things herself.

The charge of theft of a rose bush was dismissed. I stole a wild rose from the Hokitika cemetery in Florence’s honour.

The day after, I swam in the Inangahua River and a close friend recognised my photo as the exact spot she always swam in on family holidays as a kid.

According to the

Greeks, a man can’t step in the same river twice, but I reckon two people can fall in love with the same river decades apart and feel a kind of belonging.