The Good Life
What could be more decent, or more country, than chasing children with bloodhounds?
Michele Hewitson
Ican’t think why so many people are so exercised about New Zealand First’s “Respecting New Zealand Values” idea. I not only think it is an excellent idea, but that the idea of chucking people out of the country should they not adhere to New Zealand values ought to be taken further.
We country folk – me and the sheep and the chickens – reckon that people wanting to move to paradise should have to sign up to country values, because what are
New Zealand values but country values?
Here in the country, we don’t require any of your fancy city muck – such as chia seeds. A city person sent me a bag of chia seeds. I don’t know what chia seeds are, exactly, or why they are. I do know that not only would the chickens not eat them, neither would the sparrows. Actually, I know what they are: fancy foreign muck. We don’t want chia seed-eating folk here. Send ‘em back to where they came from.
We know what good old New Zealand values are here in the Wairarapa. To find out what these values are, peruse, on any given day, a copy of the local paper. There was a big wingding here the other night: the inaugural “Wairarapa Awards”, described in said paper as “A Glittering Occasion”. The master of ceremonies was my old colleague, the journalist Paddy Gower, who has gone on to glittering heights, apparently. Anyone contemplating coming to the country should be made to study the photographs of the occasion in which decent country folk are pictured celebrating. There are ladies and gents with glasses of bubbly but also geezers with beer – in bottles, which is the way blokes who respect New Zealand values drink beer.
In the same edition is a fantastic headline: “Gladstone to Host Family Hunting”. I hoped this was a revival of Nancy Mitford’s mad Uncle Matthew’s liking for training his bloodhounds by having them chase his children. Alas, it is not quite – it is a hunting competition involving families, which might, I suppose, amount to the same thing. Anyway, what could be more decent, or more country? Chasing children with bloodhounds would be the perfect way to teach them the good New Zealand value of running away from slathering beasts instead of going jogging with mother cows in city parks.
We all know that we are the country of the inventor. We can invent anything as long as it involves the use of No 8 wire. I don’t know whether any wire was involved, but the Wairarapa is home to the 1970s invention that is the “non-refrigerable” dog roll, “a revolutionary invention that still lives on” named “the Chunky”. The last of three decent jokers who invented the Chunky died recently. His name was David Topp and he sounded a thoroughly nice chap. He was the uncle of the Topp Twins, who know a thing or two about respecting New Zealand values. If you don’t know who the Topp Twins are, you should go back to where you came from, pronto.
Iam reading a lovely, funny little book, Elizabeth and Her German Garden, by Elizabeth von Arnim (who was a cousin of Katherine Mansfield). It was first published in 1898 and is a memoir of her life in a wild and remote garden. She is regarded as an eccentric by the tut-tutting German matrons who believe that her beast of a husband – “the Man of Wrath” – must be responsible for locking her away from decent “town” society. She prefers the company of her flowers and the owls in her garden, who she thinks gossip about her, rather like the matrons, but: “I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of owls.”
In spring, her cherry trees are “so wreathed … with white blossom and tenderest green that the garden looks like a wedding”. I read this the day our old pear orchard, which has a gothic charm in the winter – all twisted limbs and fallen trunks – sprang into blossom. It does look just like a wedding. Or the perfect place for a spot of good, old-fashioned family hunting.
We don’t want chia seed-eating folk here. Send ‘em back to where they came from.