How a paddock can become outstanding

What would you call an acre of steep land covered in waist-high grass, gorse and broom and walled on two sides by massive pines that groan in the wind? Well, I’d call it my back paddock, and so would you if you saw it, but neither you nor I are a city council.

The council sent me a letter. It kindly wished to tell me about its new district plan because it affected my property directly. And if I wanted to know how, I had only to hop onto the jolly old website.

You can imagine the zest with which I leapt to the keyboard and typed proposeddistrictplan@ccc.govt.nz into the little box, then paused to quell a premonitory rise of the gorge. When I pressed enter I would learn the fate of my wee bit of the world, my turangawaewae.

Perhaps you can also imagine the zest with which I emailed the council two hours later to apologise for the twentieth-century marshmallow I use in lieu of a brain and to ask whether someone could explain in words of one syllable how to make the jolly old website work. I was concerned, I said, about my turangawaewae.

The man in the planning department could not have been more helpful. It transpired that making the website work was merely a matter of hovering a cursor over the land use tab headings and right clicking for notational overlay. I followed the simple instructions and within less than an afternoon I discovered that my grass, gorse, broom and pines had become, or were about to become, and I quote, ‘‘an outstanding natural landscape’’.

Barely another hour later I had learned this meant my back paddock retained ‘‘a high level of natural features, patterns and processes and associative, sensory or biophysical values’’.

Naturally my first reaction was pride. I swelled like a sheep with bloat to know that my scrap of territory, formerly home to two goats and still home to the bones of Baz the Lab and Jess the Mutt – may heaven be crammed with slow rabbits – had been recognised for its associative, sensory or biophysical values. Now I could look down my nose at anyone zoned merely residential. But my second reaction was fear. An outstanding natural landscape had to come with strings attached. How thick were those strings, and how binding? Would felling a pine be a sensory offence? Would I need a biophysics permit to bury another dog?

The young woman in the landscape department could not have been more helpful. When I thanked her for the rezoning of my land but said that on reflection I’d prefer to remain as I was, she advised me to make a submission.

When I asked if she could make the submission on my behalf she said she wasn’t allowed to, but it was terribly easy to do.

All I had to do was to hop on the jolly old website and follow the instructions.

You can imagine the zest with which I returned to the website where I soon learned that in order to make a submission I first had to register to make a submission.

This was a straightforward matter of choosing a password I would forget and then supplying my name, address, telephone number, sexual preference and maternal grandmother’s inside leg measurement (which is also my sexual preference).

I then had to answer a few simple yes/no questions. Here is the second of the simple yes/no questions: Was I or was I not, ‘‘directly affected by an effect of the subject matter of the submission that:

a. adversely affects the environment, and

My second reaction was fear. An outstanding natural landscape had to come with strings attached. How thick were those strings, and how binding? Would felling a pine be a sensory offence? Would I need a biophysics permit to bury another dog?

b. does not relate to the trade competition or the effects of trade competition.’?

Until I had answered that question one way or the other I could not make a submission.

The trouble with a twentieth-century marshmallow is that it expects words and sentences to have meanings. And it cannot grasp what it means to be ‘‘affected by the effect of a subject matter’’.

The young woman in landscapes was all sympathy. No, she wasn’t entirely sure what the question meant either, but she promised to bring it to the attention of someone in comms. ‘‘In what?’’ I said. ‘‘Comms,’’ she said. ‘‘The communications department. They’ll have written this.’’

As I say, the young woman could not have been more helpful or sympathetic, but it was at this point that I gave up. Life is quite simply too short. Let my back paddock become an outstanding natural landscape if it must. Dogs can always be buried at night.