Life

Freezing your butt off in a tent, you warm to the idea that summer holidays should be in summer.

Bill Ralston

While the rest of the world tackles mundane issues such as coping with the wreckage created by the lunatic in the White House, New Zealand steps up to the plate on the really big concerns. Peter Dunne has started an online petition to Parliament, requesting that the summer holidays be shifted to coincide with summer.

Summer seems to have taken up residence in February, apart from in bloody Hawke’s Bay, which sweltered its way through December and January while the rest of the country shivered or nearly drowned in what felt like a wet early spring. The petition to shunt the school holidays forward is probably a better idea than moving the rest of us to Napier, Hastings and Havelock North, however attractive the climate, the vineyards, the restaurants and the beaches.

Okay, if I were a Hawke’s Bay farmer, I might not be enjoying the sight of parchment pastures, but at least they can work on a good suntan as they run around fretting about how to get water and fodder to their stock.

The idea of moving the holidays isn’t as silly as it sounds. The last school term of the year could have a one-week break between Christmas and New Year and then the little darlings could go back to school for a month or six weeks. NCEA students could use the Christmas week off to study, which, I know, sounds a little Grinch-like, but, stuff it, they get months of holidays during a school year: an extra week’s swot won’t hurt them.

Besides, the evidence shows New Zealand gets its maximum temperatures, sunshine and lowest rainfall in February, when most of us want to get outside and play in the good weather. Freezing your butt off in a tent at the beach during December and early January is a less attractive option.

Dunne makes the point that we have benefited enormously from the 2007 decision to extend daylight saving from the end of September to the beginning of April and there is no real reason that shifting our summer vacation wouldn’t also be a welcome move.

The other option is to leave the country. If we lived in the US, we could have a break for Thanksgiving in November, a week off between Christmas and New Year and cruise through to the middle of the year, when we could have a decent break in warm weather.

This plan, of course, depends on our ability to actually get into the US. If you are a Muslim New Zealander born in one of the countries on Donald Trump’s “not welcome” list and without a New Zealand passport, that is probably unlikely, and if you are just left-wing, I wouldn’t advise it, either. In fact, Kiwis of any kind should consider going elsewhere. Americans are in the grip of madness and are really best left to their own devices. They elected him; they should be left to clean up their own mess.

I haven’t been to the US for almost 10 years, simply because I loathe the demeaning process of entering the country: a machine peers into my eyes as my fingerprints are taken. To avoid feeling like a criminal, I fly to Europe via Asia.

But if we don’t move our holidays to match our summer weather, I’d definitely advise the Napier/Hastings airport to import some American Homeland Security guys. Maybe eye-scanners and fingerprint readers will deter the rest of sun-seeking New Zealand from swamping the place next December.

They elected him; they should be left to clean up their own mess.