Space monkeys with liquid mind probes

Quite apart from its credentials as The Most Impractical Car in the World, the MR2 has four worn tyres and an alarming ‘clonk’ noise emanating from what I hope is the suspension (as opposed to, say, the brakes). Whenever Andrew parks the car in The Outlaws’ driveway, it rolls forward to snuggle against Brett’s car. 

Three days after he bought it, the rest of the family was out when Andrew summoned me down to the garage. The MR2’s front wheels were resting on planks of wood leading to the top of two paint cans.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to do what I think you’re doing,” I said in disbelief. 

“Of course not!” said my beloved. “Don’t be silly. I’m just going to drive up these planks onto the cans and have a little look under the car. Can you tell me if I’m going straight?” 

“No, no, no, no, no. I don’t want any part of this-” 

“Part of what?” 

“Andrew-” 

“Sweetie! It’ll be fine. What’s the worst that can happen?” 

“The paint can might spring out under the intense pressure and hit me in the face fracturing my skull and rendering me in a coma for months until the doctors advise pulling the plug because even if I did wake up I’d be in a permanent vegetative state not to mention covered in permanent, gloss finish, wipe-clean paint in Deep-Fried Sage.” 

“Ah now come on, I don’t think that’s going to happen-” 

“You said the worst thing-” 

“Ok, are you going to help or stand around talking?” 

“If I have a choice, I’ll stand ar-” 

“Well while you’re at it, would you mind just telling me if I’m straight-” 

“Ok, wait – stop, stop, STOP! Those planks are not going to hold.” 

“Nonsense! This car is very light. It’s a very light car.” 

“HUMOUR ME!” 

Andrew got out of the car and grudgingly wedged another plank under the wheels. I can’t tell you how precarious the whole set-up looked, the tyres being about three times the width of the planks. 

“Alright!” shouted Andrew, back in the car. He put it in gear and gave the engine a couple of brisk revs. “I’m going up!” 

I clutched my head as he lurched onto the planks, which bowed alarmingly. But it was the paint cans that gave way both at once with a loud ‘CRACK!’  

Andrew’s head popped out the driver’s window. 

“What was that, then?” he said cheerfully. 

“Paint cans.” Andrew rolled back down and came out to inspect the cans. They were buckled to half their original height on one side, with plank-shaped dents in the top.  

“That didn’t work very well,” he said. Then he stashed the cans under the garage bench and forgot all about them.  

Two days later, Rosina entered the kitchen swinging the cans at her poor, innocent husband. ”BRIAN! Want to share what happened here?” 

Now, I’m not sure whether Father In Law was practicing evolutionary optimisation to protect his offspring, or genuinely thought he was responsible for the corrugated cans, but he took off on an elaborate story involving space monkeys taking over the garage with wedge-shaped helmets and liquid mind probes. 

“My husband might be able to explain,” I said, evilly. “ANDREEEW! Rosina wants to talk to you!” 

Andrew, freshly arrived in the doorway, spotted the paint cans and his eyeballs swivelled around identifying potential escape routes.  

“Ah-” he said.  

“Andrew?” I prompted.  

“Are- are those paint cans?” said Andrew, playing for time. I could almost hear him mentally rehearse a story involving space monkeys with wedge-shaped helmets and liquid mind-probes. “Ok, er, ah well. Oh yes! I meant to tell you about that . . .”

Right hand rule

I was getting quite adept at jump-starting the Mazda when Andrew stripped off his shirt and glistened manfully in the sunlight. Oh yes, and he also sorted out the starter, exorcised the hazard lights, and fixed the driver’s window. The button now works in reverse to the rest of the electronic windows, but ‘works’ is the word to focus on here. (That reminds me, I really should go and wipe the greasy handprints off the inside of the window.) 

We also got an air freshener. 

After all that, Andrew decided the Mazda didn’t suit his boy-racer image and talked me into buying a 1993 Toyota MR2. It’s a two-seater targer-top, which is quite possibly The Most Impractical Car in the World. (In the interests of fairness and full disclosure, I’d better point out that Andrew claims the Yukon is the current titleholder.) 

When we collected the MR2, we faced a dilemma. To date, I had fulfilled the role of Chief Navigator and, although I could give you the grid reference and corresponding map number of any street in the greater Auckland region, I am pretty rubbish at getting there without my eyes glued to the map and a spare digit following the route. Andrew often turns left or right on whim, which doesn’t help. 

So I drove the Mazda home with the A-Z propped against the steering wheel and Andrew following in the MR2. By the time I neared Mount Wellington, I was well stressed, what with reading the map while watching the road and fretting about taking a wrong turn because Andrew mightn’t love me any more (since I apply strict conditions to my love, I expect Andrew does the same).  

There is a bizarre right hand rule in New Zealand – or is it the left hand rule? – whereby – and look, you’re going to have to suspend disbelief a bit here. Is it suspended? How about now? Ok. Visualise this: you’re driving along a main road, on the left hand side if you want to avoid head-on collisions. You want to turn left, and the car coming against you wants to turn into the same road, ie their right. Well, YOU HAVE TO GIVE WAY TO THAT DRIVER.  

I suppose the NZ Transport Authority were kicking it around one day: 

“What about this? Everyone’s driving on the left BUT at roundabouts they go anti-clockwise. Aw yeh? Aw yeh?” 

“OR how about: everyone drives on the left except for Tuesdays and Wednesdays? We can tell them it’s to improve traffic flow. HA HA HA!” 

“No, I have it. Alright lads, listen up. How about IF someone’s turning right, yeh, yeh, wait- ok, so they’re turning right, and someone else is turning right, no, left, no- WHATEVER, then that guy has to let the other one go. Except if he’s at a stop sign- no wait, except if he’s not at a stop sign. Doesn’t really matter. More obscure the better.” 

“<awed silence>” 

“Oh god, that’s beautiful.”  

Now, I understand the left hand turn rule in theory, but in practice . . . I’ve examined it from any number of angles and maybe you can explain it to me, but it seems there’s just no way to make it work. Although I try. 

On this occasion, I was turning right and the car coming against me indicated into the same road. She was moving pretty fast and I made the mistake of pausing. She went to go, then stopped, so I nudged forward, but she whipped around the corner, leaving me stranded across the wrong lane with a line of cars squeezing past. 

“Did you see that COW?” I seethed to Andrew back at the house. “That was TOTALLY my right of way!” 

“Actually, not exactly,” said Andrew. You’ll be noticing that after nearly 10 years together, the man still lives on the edge when he’s not preoccupied dicing with death. “If the car is turning left but there’s traffic backed up behind it which wants to go straight ahead-” 

“Well how the <expletive deleted> am I supposed to know if they want to go straight when I can’t see their indicators?” I shouted. 

Andrew: “Yeah ok, it doesn’t make a lot of sense-” 

“YA THINK?” 

“Anyway, in that instance they have right of way-” 

“Ok look, you’re making this up-” I said, getting a bit teary. 

“No-” 

“You ARE! You’re just- just making it up as you go along! You expect me to drive around this <expletive deleted> country - uninsured - and drive and <expletive deleted> navigate and expect me to turn LEFT! And then you make up some rule - I have no idea why, except you obviously don’t want sex for the next six months – or maybe you’re just trying to wind me up – well, I’M <EXPLETIVE DELETED> WOUND UP!” 

I got my own back a week later, when I was driving the MR2 with Andrew providing last-minute instruction from the passenger seat. 

“Turn left here,” he said and, in my defence for what happened next, I was pre-occupied wondering whether I’d have to apply the handbrake to do so. 

“Give way to that car,” said Andrew. “Niamhie, the car turning right,” a note of panic creeping into his voice, “you need to give way-” 

Now, Andrew swears I floored the accelerator but he doesn’t have to swear because I admit it: I did, and thundered around the corner in oblivious violation of the Road Code, inches in front of the other car’s premature bumper. 

“What the- what the hell!” screamed Andrew. “Didn’t you HEAR me tell you to give way?” 

“Kind of, yes.” 

“But you ACCELERATED! . . . WHY?” 

“Because the rule doesn’t make sense! Not even a little bit! None! Admit it! And ah,” I admitted, “I forgot.” 

“Gah!” 

The next time we took both cars out at once, Andrew offered to lead. After a short distance, I realised Andrew’s method of navigation is according to whichever traffic light happens to be green at any given intersection. No idea where the fuck he’s going, bless him. (In case you were wondering, I still love him. Can’t explain it.)

Father In Law

Father In Law is doing really well and is obviously thrilled to have Andrew home. He is on some fairly wicked drugs (please note: no connection between the drugs and Brian’s joy at seeing his son again). Rosina calls him ‘Extreme Brian’ when he’s wacked out on the happy pills – he has been known to go out and feck rocks at the neighbours at 03:00 hrs.

After some false starts, his stem cells were harvested last week and the actual transplant operation/procedure should take place sometime next month

Give the man a pair of jandals

Our life still sports that surreal, Technicolor glow it adopted four months ago. Our first few weeks in New Zealand felt like a holiday but weren’t. Although I have not once regretted leaving Dubai, I still miss my friends awfully, and the routine: the shape of a day. Oh, and air conditioning: the weather here is sweltering. 

Andrew slipped right back into Kiwiland, addressing everything as ‘mate’ and snorting tinnies in his shorts. Give the man a pair of jandals and he will be native.

Me, I’m working it out more slowly. Subconsciously I expected everything to miraculously fall in place upon arrival in New Zealand – here’s the house, here’s the car, here’s the dog – and of course, it didn’t. There are times I feel overwhelmed and isolated by the whole adventure, despite Andrew’s family being hugely welcoming

Snot vapour

Shortly after we arrived, Andrew and I moved into a house belonging to Father In Law’s friend, who was on holiday with his family for a month. They had two cats that seemed to spend obscene amounts of time licking their arses. Andrew erupted in explosions of snot vapour as soon as he walked in the door, which meant the cats were particularly fond of him: one liked to serenade outside the bedroom door at 3am, and they left him dismembered gifts strewn around the living room floor. 

Since we were still eating at The Outlaws’ we were effectively living between two houses, which was quite unsettling. After a couple of weeks we moved back in with The Outlaws and 24/7 fridge access, and unpacked our bags.  

We were keen to find our own place, so embarked on an intense campaign of house hunting – despite the entire country being shut for Christmas holidays.  Father In Law donated a vintage Mazda redolent of wet dog, mould and rotten fabric. The windscreen wipers were rusted in place and the car hosted a colony of industrious pet spiders. The hazard warning lights were possessed and turned on randomly of their own accord. Andrew grew proficient at driving with his knees, while shoving the driver’s window back up with both hands. It also had a wide turning circle, as Andrew discovered when he did an illegal U-turn and took out someone’s dustbin.  

“Think I’ll miss that?” he asked, three milliseconds before booting it across the garden.  

Three days into its touring career, the car refused to start. It didn’t look great waving goodbye to prospective landlords as we pushed the car down the road.

Andrew took issue with my jump-starting: 

“Niamhie, you have to POP! the clutch. Just let it go. POP! Like that.” 

“Well, you know, maybe you need to PUSH! harder. PUSH! There you are.” 

Andrew had barely schooled me in the art of POP!ping when he intimidated me into attempting the reverse jump-start: 

“What are you complaining about? It’s easy. Just do the same thing, backwards.” 

I was so flustered by the POP!ing in reverse - and Andrew’s straining face in the windscreen – that I nearly backed into a parked car. 

It hasn’t taken long to become disillusioned with the rental market. The standard of property ranges from almost habitable to ‘hovel’. This was Andrew’s pronouncement on a couple of properties (I never knew he was that high maintenance; it came as quite a shock).  In a couple of places, the owner’s crap was stored on the premises. One had locked the door onto the back deck (Real Estate Agent: “Don’t worry: the landlord can come around the side of the house, he won’t bother you at all.”) and another had a garden studio/shed filled with rusty lawnmower rotors and teddy bears with one arm and computer monitors with the face kicked in.  

There are frequent disagreements between the budget and the wish list, never mind the frequent disagreements about what comprises the wish list. Auckland City has never much appealed to me, so I’m looking for something quiet and private outside the city.  

Andrew’s wish list is more . . . let’s call it spontaneously organic. He agrees with the private and quiet - but not countryside because there are no shops and it’s too exposed and damp in winter and cows give him the willies. He turned down a property on Huia Road, on the brand new basis that a three-car garage was a minimum requirement. After accompanying Father In Law on a business trip to Sydney, Andrew requested a beach-front location with direct access to the pounding surf.  

I assumed he was joking when he specified a helicopter pad. 

One morning, we went to see a privately owned property in Greenhithe on the North Shore. Although it was uncomfortably close to a main road, it was surrounded by bush and newly renovated. We were almost tempted. 

“I won’t lie,” said Andrew to the owner, “we’re very interested. But we have more properties to view, so we don’t want to commit just yet, you understand. We’ve got appointments with several Real Estate Agents today - stop POKING me Niamhie – they’ve been closed for the holidays, you know, so we’ve got several lined up. But this is a lovely house and thank you for your time and I’m sure we’ll be in touch.” 

“You know earlier, when you were going on about our action-packed property viewing schedule?” I shouted back through the open window as Andrew pushed the car down a hill. 

“<grunt!> Yes?”

 

“You know it’s Sunday?” 

 

“It is? Oh.”

Pretty Average Road

Auckland place names: Lovely Drive, Bland Place, Main Highway, Nice Road, Pleasant Road and Pretty Average Road (all right, so I made the last one up)

Tepukepuke

Maori place names are as much fun as ever, especially with Andrew’s increasing irritation with my insistence on pronouncing everything phonetically (because why wouldn’t you?), which results in a satisfying number of place names featuring bodily parts and/or fluids: Papatoetoe, Titirangi, Otahuhu, Pukekohe, Whakapapa, Waipipi, Tepukepuke. 

Andrew: “It’s not Tea-puke-puke. It’s Tay-pooki-pooki.” 

Me: “<snigger>” 

Andrew: “What?” 

Me: “You said ‘poo’. Hee hee hee.” 

I asked Brett about Andrew’s sense of humour malfunction:- 

“Why does he get so worked up about Tea-puke-puke?” 

“Because it’s culturally insensitive!” 

“Yes, I see. But isn’t it weird how typing ‘funny Maori place names’ in Google doesn’t turn up anything?” 

Drug dealer’s shoes

Suicide music

I notice things about the country that I completely missed during previous visits - for example, the fact that Kiwi men seem genetically incapable of keeping their clothes on. There appears to be some kind of repulsive force field around their upper torso. There are also abandoned shoes everywhere: on the side of the roads, under bushes, dangling by the laces over electricity lines (Brett says this denotes a drug dealer’s squat. Not entirely sure how/why he knows this).  

The radio stations seem inordinately fond of sixties music – or suicide music as I call it after half an hour of ‘Honey, I Miss You’, ‘Gotta Get A Message To You’ and ‘Do You Know The Way To San Jose’: 

‘One day when I was not at home
While she was there and all alone
The angels came-’

But how better off we’d all be if that comprised the first verse. 

‘One more hour and my life will be through, hold on, hold ooon-’

Why, why, WHY couldn’t the Bee Gees have written the song sixty minutes LATER? 

“Do you know the way to San JoseLa la lala la la lalala laaaa-’

That, my friend, has to be the most perfect wrist-slashing tempo of any song ever recorded