Drowning, not Waving

Go anywhere nice for your holidays? I spent mine contemplating the ocean floor off Purakanui, with a brief interlude in Wanaka. “Isn’t it lovely?” asked my sister-in-law as we bobbed in the lake. At least I think that’s what she said. I couldn’t actually hear her over the noise of jet boats and jet skis. In Wanaka you get good at lip reading: there’s so much traffic and everyone’s silently mouthing house prices − when their pedigree cats aren’t dispatching rabbits in a style that makes Watership Down look like a feel-good romp. As they say in Waverly-with-mountains, “Take that, Gareth Morgan.”

Back in Dunedin, upside down and backwards underwater, collecting more bruises on my knees than a half-price hooker and being menaced by seals (“just like big chocolate Labs,” said the economist but he’s a liar), it was a bit of a worry to make it to land (passing a group of Japanese tourists paddling in the rip) only to hear of yet another drowning. Canoeing on lakes, swimming in the ocean, gathering shellfish on rocks, crossing rivers: not even a month into the new year and 17 people have drowned, 7 more than at the same time last year, summer 2016 seeing a sudden epidemic of what was once called, ‘the New Zealand disease.’

Unlike the early settlers, I can swim; having grown up in the era of school lessons and government funding for community pools. But even my fabulous lop-sided crawl couldn’t save me from my own foolishness were I to venture into conditions beyond my abilities. 14 of those who died were men. I checked with some men and they admitted to a suicidal stupidity when it came to showing off in front of their mates. “It’s called ‘giving it a nudge,’” explained the economist. Also, not that it necessarily has anything to do with recklessness, but more than 90% of people who die recreational boating are men. I’m pretty sure this is because men like boats while women think they are loud and boring, like Americans in a bar.

Some beaches aren’t the safest. Piha, for example, is an idiot’s idea of a proper beach and St Clair has eroded to an impossible prospect for swimmers and surfers alike, unless Jeff Patton is standing by with a rope to pull you out and I’m sure he has better things to do. Worse, a worryingly high proportion of New Zealanders cannot swim at all (“Not to save my life” said one friend proudly, which is like admitting you can’t read and don’t see the point of it), nothing short of insane when you live on an island and your favourite pastime is going to the beach. And it’s the laconic, ‘no worries,’ alcohol and jeans-as-togs way we go about it that is the reason so many of us die. Believing we have our own pet tiger in the beautiful and ferocious corrugated-coated waters chomping our coast − you don’t need to be Siegfried and Roy to know what happens when you turn your back on a tiger.

The reason why I haven’t drowned while learning to surf the very short paddleboard that my boyfriend bought me for Christmas is fear. Terror keeps me alert. Uneasy at what’s beneath my feet, I imagine a grey triangle breaking the surface, start at my own shadow, freak myself out. And when I finally do catch a wave, hurtling towards shore thinking, ‘Well, this is awesome,’ then comes a new fear… ‘Um … how am I going to stop!?’

Repeatedly clonked and smashed and flattened, I’ve not just been thrill-seeking but living by the tolling of a new clock, a final countdown worthy of hair-rockers Europe, a ticking more urgent than biological-baby-making. Try it yourself. Simply subtract your current age from your life expectancy (around 89 on average for a woman) x 365 days x 16 hours daily awake = the number of hours you have left to live. Scary, yet in the same breath, strangely liberating. With only 251,120 hours left, there are naturally some things I do not have any more time for:

·        boring, pointless meetings

·        drama − unless directed by Patrick Davies for the Fortune Theatre

·        senselessness around water

For God’s sake learn to swim, people, and grow some respect for the country’s rivers, lakes and beaches. They’re not resort pools sans sun loungers, or placid bodies of water that owe you a good time. Be afraid and live, because it’s better than being stupid and dead.

Nature Schmature

Now is the season for taking in some Nature, the time of year when resolutions to be more active are made, the weather is warmer and thoughts turn to the great outdoors and pursuits beyond the inbox such as tenting, hiking, swimming and sun-lounging. And ‘mindfulness’ − although I’m not entirely sure what that is. I think it means lying around reading a book and tuning out the annoying noises made by your loved ones, in which case I do it all the time. Feels nice.

By far the most popular form of nature appreciation in this country is camping. Just about everyone in New Zealand will have a faded Kodak snapshot of themselves standing skinny-kneed beside a caravan or beneath an awning, holding sharpened sticks or Swingball bats, wearing orange clothing and third degree sunburn. Nearby, drinking beer from a flagon and charcoaling something on the BBQ: your dad, clad in Stubbies that would be illegal now.

Idyllic as this sounds, despite its fashion crimes, there are some who simply do not like camping. People for whom it is not a holiday, but practise for the zombie apocalypse, a lot of hard work housing and feeding yourself in inclement conditions. This sort order their groceries online, fantasise about minibreaks at resorts featuring drinks with umbrellas. Clean sheets. Staff.

The economist sneers at this sort. He grew up with hard-core camping parents, on holidays that had much in common with multisport endurance events like the Coast to Coast (if they were catered by Bear Grylls), and child abuse. Comforts were considered sissy, pillows beyond the pale, and the family motto was ‘never go back the way you came’ − something he’s planning to include in his mother’s eulogy. “It’s the nothingness,” he says, Stockholm syndrome disguised as fond reminiscence, “it’s getting back to nature as God intended, leaving things behind. Camping’s a tradition in my family.” Well, duh, it was a tradition in everyone’s family, until they invented the house.

When we first started dating, the economist used camping as a Girlfriend Suitability Test. Thus I spent many a rainy night sleeping in the back of the station wagon, accidentally peeing on my foot in total darkness, eating cold food from a can (!), parked at various surfing spots the length and breadth of the East Coast. I passed with flying colours, of course, which just goes to show how handsome I thought he was.

However, times have changed, I no longer possess the rubbery spine of younger years and Maslow’s hierarchy must include, as well as self-actualisation, a Posturepedic mattress, hot showers and real coffee. Having suffered twigs in my hair, furry teeth and smoky clothing, I’ve decided being in the middle of nowhere is no good time. Want to escape reality for a few days? That’s what Netflix is for. Tents are harder to put up than self-assembly shelving units, it’s dirty and there are bugs. Know who doesn’t have face-eating spiders the size of your hand? The Langham.

Cooking on those little gas stoves is awful and something vital always falls in the sand/grass/pebbles, meaning you have to eat Nature, too. The woods might be lovely dark and deep but there’s always miles to go before you sleep − on the cold, hard, uncomfortable earth. Insult is added to injury by the dawn, which is extra dawn-y and so full of bird song you can’t sleep in. Worse, hipsters are always looking for places not yet spoilt by mainstream culture, so they’re all over nature with their novelty moustaches and man buns, collecting unwanted old plastic washing up bowls and making them fashionable. Sadly nature proves fatal to many: unable to check Google maps in the wilderness, they are found weeks later, clutching a modified electric typewriter, having fallen off their unicycle.

And this why women invented glamping. Glamping is camping feminine style; good food eaten under the stars, a bottle of wine and the prospect of a fabulous night’s sleep, why wouldn’t the idea catch on? Stolen by luxury tourism operators, its essential methodology remains: less stinkiness, more nice. Nature with vital amenities such as candles and pillows. “Pillows!” yells the economist, his PTSD kicking in.

“Look deep into nature,” said Albert Einstein, “and then you will understand everything better.” So it is that I have found the ultimate in nature appreciation. Glamping at its zenith. Windows, walls and doors, ready-stocked with a dart board and a stack of National Geographic’s from 1964, it is a place to watch nature from behind glass on wet days and pour wine into actual glasses. Rented, begged, bought or borrowed, I call it, ‘The Bach,’ − and it is here you will find me. I’ll be the one who doesn’t smell.

Killing Him Softly

Men are legendarily hard to get to see a doctor. They fear strangers fiddling with their bits, worry they might like it. Some, like economist, won’t take their pants off in front of another human without a marriage licence and a non-disclosure agreement. I had to nag him for weeks before he would respond to the letter asking him to call in for a blood test and general health check-up. Eventually, I had no choice but to play dirty; reminding him of the many invasive and uncomfortable life-saving routines regularly required of women. “So, and this is the interesting thing about having a smear, first they take the speculum, a big chrome device that looks like a garlic press…” He was off like a rabbit shot up the bum.

Alas, the news wasn’t good. It wasn’t exactly bad either, in many respects he’s spot on: still got all his hair and most of his facilities, but his cholesterol is too high and his chance of a heart attack is one in 20. It should be one in 100. Worse, it seems I might be to blame.

Like my mother before me and her mother before her, I am a feeder. A high level of pet obesity runs in our family. Felines tend to be larger than the average cat door. Unable to jump much. Exhausted and surly, like Marlon Brando. I didn’t know this over-treating could extend to people.

Yes, if I love you, I will make you food. But the truth is I’ve never really been much of a cook. One teaspoon of my tahini-less hummus, one slice of baking powder-free flan − burnt on the base and raw in the middle, oozing across the cake stand − was usually enough. Boyfriends, generally skinny for this reason, have always erred on the side of caution when it comes to fare prepared with my own two hands.  “Why don’t we just go out for dinner!?” they rushed to say, when it looked as if I might be donning an apron.

Not only boyfriends. Friends, my daughter, elderly relatives, mere acquaintances … don’t think I didn’t notice, “Did Lisa make this?” being secretly mouthed above the supper table at events where the invitation had read, ‘Ladies, a plate.’ Dogs being fed my pikelets and then hiding under the bed, lest it happen again.

However, as time goes by, even the biggest dullard can get the hang of cooking. It is, after all, just applying heat to food. Plus, television these days is chock-full of chefing shows and you can easily follow a recipe on your iPad and thus not forget an ingredient (although it might still turn out rubbish). Anybody can cook. Even I have improved beyond the indigested imaginations of lovers past. Some of the things I make are frankly delicious. At least, that’s what the economist says. Which is why I usually give him a double helping and a kiss on the head.

‘You can’t fatten a thoroughbred,’ they say. But you can. I have. I might even be killing him with kindness. He tried to explain it to the nurse taking his blood. “She likes the fuller-figured gentleman,” he told her, “she’s shaped me into what she prefers.” As if he were Playdoh, or a baby bird with its eyes shut and mouth open. The nurse had seen it all before. Women larding up their menfolk was nothing new.

Actually I have seen it before too, although in a much more insidious manner. If Agatha Christie had been there, she would have written a book called Murder by the Spoonful. Five years ago, in Sharjah, I witnessed what can only be described as an assassination in slow motion: a young Asian bride, an elderly and increasingly obese European husband. Hand-fed until he looked near-exploding, it wouldn’t be long before the inevitable occurred. “He loves his food!” twittered the tiny murderess, as her victim belched a cry for help. I would like to state, for the record, that this did not give me any ideas whatsoever and any similarly dead husbands are a complete coincidence.

“If I were to pop off, I’ve got a bit of money stashed away,” said the economist, like all Presbyterians, convinced he can somehow take it with him.

“Have you left it to a cat’s home?” I asked.

“Only you, my darling.”

“Another pork chop?”

Making the Best of An Albatrocity

“You look cute in that sweatshirt,” I said.

“I hope I don’t look as cute as an albatross chick, or I’ll end up with a whole lot of pre-digested squid shoved down my gullet.”

“I thought you weren’t going to Google it.”

“I didn’t. Everyone knows what baby albatrosses eat.”

Maybe. But if ‘everyone’ includes Dunedinites, not many have actually clapped eyes on one: locals make up just 5% of visitors to the Royal Albatross Centre at Taiaroa Head (or Pukekura). Living in this lickable little city since I was seven, I’d never. Neither had the economist. “I always hoped to see one for free.” During his captaincy of a storm-driven ship, perhaps. While up the mast covered in salty rime, berated by a ghost crew and doomed to forever repeat himself.

“Forever what?”

“Repeat himself.”

Sorry, Coleridge, you didn’t deserve that.

Isn’t it funny how we’re never quite as interested in the treasures found in our own backyard? How many times have you driven past the railway station and laughed at the tourists taking photos? Probably not as many as me, but I’m a wee cow. “One day,” we say, assuming plenty of time remains for the things we needn’t board a plane to − not realising how special they are, or how much of our own story they represent.

It was robbery and vandalism that got me thinking about the contempt bred by familiarity. Somebody broke into the Royal Albatross Centre, stole money, trashed computer screens, destroyed mobility scooters, raided the restaurant freezer and threw any food they didn’t eat down the back wall.

“An albatrocity,” said the economist. And it really was, because if you were looking for an example of a harmless and happy existence, an albatross’s is a good one. They mate for life yet sensibly spend two years at a time apart (contemplating their navels and thinking up new jokes), only coming together again to make beautiful babies. Serenely meditating on a higher purpose, they accept what’s beneath them (the ocean, a substitute egg) as would the Dalai Lama. Spending 85% of their lives at sea, their very first flight is their first flight away; all the way to the coast of Chile − 9,500ks without stopping to eat or sleep. It takes 9 days and they do it before they’re even a year old. While human babies are still screaming and soiling themselves, in other words.

Right now the males are arriving, folding their massive wings up and back like DeLorean doors and lurching around drunkenly (takes them a while to find land legs), looking for a good site for a nest. If it’s substandard (and it generally is, an albatross nest is more a suggestion in grass than a robust construction), the female, fashionably late and laughing like a drain, will kick it down the cliff and build one for herself.

Exposed to the Roaring Forties, these steep and rough-hewn rocks, thrust up by volcanic agitation and pummelled by hurricane winds and pitiless ocean are nevertheless home to the ‘tireless traveller of the wild watery wastes,’ as the fabulous ornithologist Lancelot Richdale described the weirdest, most ungainly, and yet somehow noble birds you’ve ever seen. His efforts saw the first chick fledge from here in 1938 and the subsequent colony protected. As well as albatross, penguins nest under the cliffs, shags and sooty shearwater on and in them. Sheep graze a firebreak and try to reason with the red gulls. A huge blue container ship trundles out to the Aramoana Spit like an oversized toddler; a pair of tugs diminutive, encouraging grandmothers at its side.

Watching my first albatross from the vantage of the Armstrong Disappearing Gun emplacement, I realise the reason this place is so attractive is because it’s a fusion of settlement, militarism, conservation and maritime endeavour. A condensed history of Dunedin, a sacred site for Maori, a taonga for everyone. “My ancestors would have sailed past here on the Blundell,” said the economist, a bit teary with it. Mine didn’t. They were probably kicked out of Ireland for eating all the potatoes.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t put Taiaroa Head on your bucket list, bucket lists are for the dying. Just go − see an albatross, they really are otherworldly creatures, deserving of poems. Go, experience a place that belongs to us, a place where our story resides. Take a Sunday drive, see home before you leave the country. Go, even if it’s just so you know what the tourists are raving about.

The Otago Peninsula Trust needs help paying the excess on their insurance after being robbed and having their stuff wrecked and has set up a give a little page: https://givealittle.co.nz/org/otagopeninsulatrust

Keep it in Your Trousers

By now you will have had the talk. I know we have. “Of course I'm not on Ashley Madison!” said the economist. “Think about it for a moment. It costs $350 (for an 'affair guaranteed' membership).” Well OK, then. If only cheapness was a barrier to infidelity for other men. Life is short so they're going to have an affair, dammit. And quite possibly shorten their lives even more, should their wives find out. With the whole 'list of cheaters' thing making a lie of the oft-quoted adage 'nobody knows what goes on inside a relationship but the people in it', women everywhere suddenly find themselves (instead of bored rigid by the very idea) wondering exactly what their men get up to when they're supposed to be down the club/pub/shrubbery. Because they aren't just watching each others' beards grow.

Yes, there were women on the adultery website, but women don't need to go on the internet to find someone to have sex with – they were probably just having a laugh. And yes, women lead covert lives, of course, with a cloak-and-dagger, gated-community mentality around the private business of beauty and fighting off the seven signs of aging. The problem is, we've been so busy buying butt-lifting trousers and waxing to prevent Edwardian handlebar mustachios that men, unchecked, have been running amok, conducting secret man business all over the show.

Men cheat. I once caught a chef boyfriend al dente with two waitresses. “Its not what it looks like,” he had the audacity to say. But it was exactly what it looked like – and not a game of naked Twister gone horribly awry. I've never cheated, although there has sometimes been a certain fluidity between the end of one relationship and the beginning of another, akin to stabilizing water levels in a lock so your boat doesn't scrape its bottom. This is natural, and not, as the economist relishes in describing it, “like a little monkey swinging from one branch to another.”

Anyway, this isn't about me. This is about men not being able to keep it in their pants. “Its an involuntary thing, darling,” said the economist. “No-one's doing it deliberately. Its Nature's way, we can't help it.” This smacked of a 'tripped on the rug with my trousers round my ankles,' Carry On … Up the Khyber sort of excuse. “Try again,” I said, agitating my coffee cup.

“Its not cheating, its furthering the species. I don't think in those terms though, do I? I suppose I would if I wasn't so lazy. Men are pervs. We're looking at pornography, we're looking at your bum. You can't blame a dog for barking. Men are hunters, and what do you think we're hunting? The only reason we are here is to breed.” It had suddenly gone all prehistoric in the kitchen. Deciding to come back when it was less dangerous, I went to the movies with Tall Gorgeous Blonde.

Not that it had anything to do with anything, but the movie was Amy Schumer's Trainwreck. I love Amy Schumer but her script seemed to have been seriously derailed by a Hollywood executive who loved basketball. However, there was one bit that jangled my interest long enough to stop me tossing popcorn: teaching his daughters to chant 'Monogamy isn't realistic,' Amy's dad likened marriage to having to play with one doll for the rest of your life when there are so many other interesting dolls (stewardess doll, slightly-overweight waitress doll) who want to play with you.

I went home to my favourite doll, thinking about Sigmund Freud, who said anatomy is destiny. If my anatomy included a certain appendage, would I be destined to cut a Byronesque swathe? “If you had a penis, you'd probably be in prison,” said the economist. Harsh, and untrue: I've already been in prison once this year without one. Seriously, humans might not be much more than shag-happy animals with nice caves but we also have free will. Some of us just don't have any self-control, a cheating man like an incontinent dog that has to wee on every lamppost it meets. And maybe monogamy just comes down to too much to lose. Or, as the economist put it, “I would, every man would, but I wouldn't because the costs are too high. I'd lose you and I'd feel wretched, so I don't.”

That's true love, that is.

A Salute to Ladies Who Boldly Went From One who Didnt

America-bound until visa problems saw me jailed by Homeland Security – a fabulous weight-loss initiative, in case you're wondering, and four days of not washing your hair really brings out its essential oils – in lieu of actual travel I decided to read On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The Bible of the Beat Generation, parts of it are lyrically, almost spiritually, beautiful. Parts are utter crap. But it was written over the course of just three weeks in a sleepless frenzy of coffee and Benzedrine - which makes the good bits even more astonishing: forget Benzedrine, if I stay awake for as much as 48 hours it doesn't produce much more than hysterical crying and prison guards pleased to see the back of me.

The book was rejected and rejected and rejected as publisher after publisher worried about indecency charges due to its risqué content (people who aren't married have sex) but finally launched to great acclaim, the New York Times calling it 'the clearest and most important utterance of the generation.'

OK, and well done Jack. Small problem – the book's hero Dean Moriarty is a complete bastard. I would have pushed him out of a moving car after half an hour of his misogynistic drivel. The deadest of deadbeat dads, off his head most of the time and a raving loony the rest, Dean leaves debts, wives, and unsupported children scattered from San Francisco to New Orleans. Sal Paradise, our narrator, isn't much better and the only female character of any note is Mary Lou, a vacant blonde who sometimes travels naked (probably due to a lack of clean clothes). All of which started me thinking: who are the great traveling women of fiction, the literary ladies inspiring the packing of suitcases? For a moment, I worried there mightn't be any. Luckily, there's heaps. Here are some:

The Wife of Bath from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. On the road when it wasn't even a footpath, the Wife of Bath practically invented rambling - during a group walk from Winchester to the shrine of Thomas Beckett. Saucy, sexually exhausting (her first three elderly husbands died catering to her appetites) and rich, the widow Allison is in need of a younger man, but more than that, equality in marriage and 'sovereyntee' over her own property – a pretty radical concept in 1387.

Alice. Bored and looking for an adventure, Alice falls down a rabbit hole (difficult) into the undiscovered continent of Wonderland, where she studies the local flora and fauna by eating it and encounters it's people; some of whom are mad, others bloodthirsty. Denouncing animal cruelty (playing croquet with flamingos) and chronic one dimensionality (cards who think they're soldiers), she returns home. Dr. Livingstone's got nothing on her.

Wendy Darling. Flies over London at nighttime on her way to Neverland. As a girl who is beginning to 'grow up' she stands in stark contrast to Peter Pan, who refuses to do so. Gets caught up in a messy love triangle involving a fairy and plays house with some lost boys, until, fed up with the drudgery, she leaves for adulthood and servants of her own. Peter continues a mildly pathetic relationship with Wendy's children and grandchildren – the uncle who never grew up – teaching them to fly and filling them up with rubbish.

Dorothy Gale. Caught up with her dog Toto in a cyclone that deposits her into munchkin county in the land of Oz, Dorothy finds her house has landed on and killed the wicked witch of the East. Stealing the corpses' shoes, she then meets three men lacking, variously: courage, heart and brains (the bad boyfriend club). Finally, At the behest of a local warlord, Dorothy knocks off the wicked witch of the West. A bit of an operator, really. But traveling sometimes brings out the worst in people.

Miss Lucy Honeychurch. Wants a room with a view. Gets one.

Aunt Augusta in Graham Greene's Travels with my Aunt. A septuagenarian eccentric with flaming red hair, for whom love has been the defining feature of her life, Augusta draws her 'nephew' into a globe-trotting world of excitement, danger and fluid legality.

Lieutenant Ahura. Boldly goes where no communication officer has gone before: space, the final frontier. Has fabulous taste in earrings.

Thelma and Louise. A road trip that goes a bit pear-shaped. Yes, they dove off a cliff at the end, but so did Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Saving the best for last, Dora the Explorer. This animated Latin vagabond, monkey sidekick Boots the Sancho Panza to her Don Quixote, is the most awesome of girl adventurers. With Dora as example, young ladies learn to make a friend of their backpack and beware of swipers. Combine that with living for love and wonder, investing in great jewelery and avoiding the edges of cliffs, and I can think of no better travel advice. Apart from: always make sure you have the right visa.

Cruising for a Bruising

Absence makes the heart grow fonder, according to the relationship experts. Taking time apart from your significant other gives you a chance to decompress, rediscover the real you. “Be apart to stay together,” says Laurie Puhn of the Huffington Post. But I don't think she means, “go on a luxury cruise and come back insufferable.”

 "Are all my TV dinners in the freezer? Who's going to look after me? When do you get back? What time exactly, so I can clean up?" Two days beforehand, it was finally sinking in. I was going away, leaving the economist to his own devices for a whole week. I could practically see him devolving in front of my eyes. In just a week, all the good work I'd performed would be undone – he'd be back to cold baked beans eaten straight out of the tin, weird hours and an Internet search history you couldn't take home to mother.

"It's just an old tramp steamer," he said. You'll be up the river like Kurtz. White slaved. Pink slaved, at the very least." I knew my Aesop. Fox and the grapes, anyone?
Although the economist was completely right to be jealous. I was off to explore the remote Yasawa islands on the boutique Fiji Princess (finally, a perk to being a writer that wasn't mad people gurning and giving you their manuscripts). No wonder the economist thought it was a con, I could barely believe it myself. Invited to Denarau to join Blue Lagoon Cruises, they had me at 'Fiji,' but I played it cool: “Let me check my diary (cue shrieks at dog-hearing pitch) ... yes, those dates will be acceptable.”

"You'll be just fine without me," said the economist, a la Eeyore contemplating his burst balloon. "You've always been to the manor born. I can see people holding umbrellas for you and opening doors and stuff.” Naturally the economist prefers the budget end of the travel spectrum. Going anywhere with him usually involves amoebic dysentery and leaping from moving trains. Luxury is conspicuous by its absence. A man once pleasured himself against my leg on a bus in India.

The first sign things were going to be remarkably different was my luggage: 9kgs of it, the most I've taken anywhere in 14 years. Resort wear, Darling. Then (and did you know this?) at the pointy end of the plane, the drinks service is first and you don't have to walk all the way to the back to ask for another. In the light of all this fancy I felt bouncy, like Tigger. Instead of the cheapest, dirtiest, least reliable looking taxi (one we hailed in Egypt lost a wheel while crossing eight lanes of traffic) hired out of thrift and pity, a shuttle picked up we lucky few. Pre-cruise accommodation was the Sofitel Fiji Resort and Spa. It's very posh, look it up. Not a decrepit hovel run by a stinky misanthrope, rooms festering with malarial mosquitoes, in other words.

When your economist boyfriend's not with you, you tend to approach the buffet with more visible greed, forget/disdain to suck in and wantonly take things from the minibar. I sent him pictures. It was an effort to lift my finger and hit 'enter'. “You are being spoiled, dammit,” he replied. I was. 'These people don't know I'm not rich,' I thought, as, boarding the Fiji Princess, they plied me with champagne. My cabin was gorgeous. The sea I swam in was crystal clear and teeming with fish. The food was plentiful, delicious and served every two hours. Everyone on board was older so I felt young and vivacious; the handsome staff bought out my inner cougar. All the drinks in my minibar were complimentary. 'You look fabulous,' they said.

Returning home was a terrible struggle. And not just for the economist, who picked me up from the airport looking hollow-eyed and demented (he'd spent five hours cleaning the house and missed me so much he turned up with flowers). The whole first week back I constantly craned my neck for the handsome Fijian man supposed to be bringing me a cocktail. I refused to cook and dropped stuff all over the place in anticipation of staff who didn't exist. Worse, the minibar didn't seem to be getting replenished and nobody was making my bed. It was horrible. “You haven't been the same since,” said the economist. Oh well. The cruise ship giveth and the cruise ship taketh away.

The Wild Things are in my Pants

Winter is coming. Don't you just love saying that phrase, the motto of House Stark? So full of menace. So sexy. But winter is coming and not just in a Game of Thrones way, although something creepy is definitely lurking behind the wall(s of your own house). Its you, darling. And with your tan long gone, you do look a bit like a White Walker.

There's no denying winter has some lovely seasonal side benefits. With the tyranny of summer eating over, carbohydrates are a viable diet option again. No longer must we eat salad at every meal and check BBQ'd chicken for pinkness – now we can dine like civilized people, or hibernating bears with home delivery, on meat and potatoes, slabs of bread and butter; indoors, under a duvet, while drinking red wine and watching a boxed set.

There will be ice, if not right outside your front door waiting for you to fall over then somewhere, up a mountain, and this is an excellent excuse to guzzle large quantities of hot chocolate, for its anti-frostbite properties. Children will get insanely excited about the first proper snowfall and everyone will get a day off – except mothers – and snowmen (or large-scale models of genitalia, if you live in my street) will be things of wonder, until they all go slushy and resemble the aforementioned. As the nights close in, our primitive brains signal the need for dinner parties and candlelight to ward off the goblins of depression scratching at the window. The weather at our backs, we are more expansive, and expanding, until the first daffodil drives us into the arms of the latest celebrity diet in a fit of self-loathing.

Other nice things about winter: it isn't summer, when men who shouldn't wear shorts do and flying in the face of common decency take their tops off, parading wonky, badly-spelled tattoos naming the ones that got away. The air is crisper. Chestnuts roast on an open fire. Jack Frost nips at your nose. Hang on, I think I've drifted into a Nat King Cole song … anyway, to begin with at least, thanks to Daylight Saving, you're up in time to see the sunrise, usually only the purview of bakers and strippers. Also, slimming black opaque tights are de rigueur, hot tubs stop being sleazy and the hand-knitting of jerseys gives grandmothers everywhere a reason to go on.

Sounds fabulous, and it is. However, if you are a lady, winter is also time to take a much-needed break from personal grooming, relax the cruel constant vigilance that being gorgeous entails and temporarily scale-down the endless round of appointments with strange women who do embarrassingly intimate things to your body. Winter is the season of letting it all hang out, preferably under an oversized jumper with a reindeer on the front.

'To hell with it,' we think, 'Who's going to know?' Cleanse, tone, moisturize? Arrgh, cold water might dribble down the neck of my Onesie. And there's no point in doing your roots if a wooly beanie is going to cover them. Waxing grinds to a halt, and beauticians start to appear on the streets, looking desperate and toting cardboard signs saying 'will Brazilian for food'. Ditto pedicures (wearing Timberland socks with your dressing gown, its easy to “Meh”), and forget about attending to your fingernails – just wear gloves instead. Some women stop shaving for months, hairs growing long and lush from underarms and legs, not in a display of revolutionary feminism or furry pride, mind, more sheer feral laziness – with the unintended consequence of a winter coat you didn't have to spend two weeks salary on.

“It's just Nature's way,” says the economist, as I turn Eleanor Rigby, leaving my face in a jar by the door, and start to resemble Tzippy from Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are about the nethers – but men are always more sympathetic in a second marriage, and he's just pleased I'm not using his beard trimmer for something else.

Unfortunately, having let your guard down, chucked out the self tanner and gone pale and interesting, before you know it, things are a shambles and you've got an ankle fringe peeping out from under your jeans, like my friend Sharon. “Chewbacca in trousers,” is how she describes it. Surveying the wreckage of a once-proud woman, in the endless dark while hail pelts washing that's been on the line for two weeks, can make you feel sad. But cheer up, Hairy Maclary, and sharpen your razors: it'll be spring before you know it.

The Ungrateful Poor

It was coming up for Easter and there he was, long-haired and bearded – my own personal Jesus, thumbing a ride outside the stadium. Which could be interpreted as heavenly condemnation, but with Terry Davies doing such a brilliant job, probably more like a blessing. Now, I always make a point of picking up hitchhikers, having been one so many times myself (only one bad experience, a little Nazi on his way to WINZ, and that was more socially awkward than dangerous); Jesus was going to Purakanui, so was I.

“Hop in,” I said.

As the car climbed up the hill, the port fell away below us and with it the white oblong glow of a cruise ship. Chickens basked in the Scott memorial's sun, and my passenger began a tale of woe. His electricity had been cut off (having walked past the house he rents, this explained the sudden absence of trees), due to a misunderstanding with the provider – I couldn't grasp the gist of it, the story skidded off the road of comprehension several times, something to do with not paying the bills – so he relied on candles and an old gas cooker. Food was mostly foraged and fished-for. He was thinking of putting solar panels in. He was all set for solar, good to go, in fact, it was just the cost. Hands swooping like bombers on a coastal run, he described the trajectory of bad luck and trouble. Things had gone wrong, life had happened and the authorities were unkind, conspiring against a simple man just trying to make his way in the world.

“Sounds like you're really living off the grid,” I said, trying to make that sound cool. I had started to feel terrible. Like a rich person. Do the rich feel terrible? I'm not sure, maybe its one of those unanswerable questions like why don't the elderly pull over if they want to drive so slow and where do boyfriends go when there's dishes. Anyway, I did.

Here I was, off to my second house (no toilet, but still, real estate) a box of groceries in the back and not a worry in the world beyond the staggeringly trivial ... meanwhile, judging from the whiff, the man next to me hadn't had access to soap and hot water for a good while and was daily experiencing the sort of existence I usually only suffer while on holiday with the economist. Nevertheless, in the face of these privations, he maintained a kind of manic stoicism. “I'm not complaining,” he said, several times. Out of the corner of my eye, his chipper smile was beginning to seem a little grim, his constant everything-will-be-alright a form of self-hypnotism. In quick succession I saw (in my mind's eye, not on the road in front of me, that would be weird) John Campbell, desks without school lunches on them, recently redundant mussel workers crying with their hairnets on. Here was the very real face of New Zealand poverty, inches away from mine. I had to do something.

“There's some groceries in the back,” I said, stopping just up the road from where he lived, “Why don't you have them?”

“Do you mean you want me to get out now?” he asked.

“Sorry,” I said, taken aback for a moment. “Of course, I'll take you to your door.” Just because you're poor doesn't mean you have to be grateful, I thought. Far be it for me to impose some sort of code of conduct on the disadvantaged. We said goodbye, and there was no denying things had changed between us, or maybe it was just me. Nevertheless, driving back up the hill (after a twelve-point turn), my heart bumped with a wonderful, wholesome feeling. Like nuns must get.

Upon arrival, I gave the economist a full account of my charitable splendiferous-ness. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to warm the cockles of his heart.

“ALL the groceries?” he asked. “Even the orange juice?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I gave them to somebody much worse off.”

“So there's no orange juice, is that what you're saying?”

I had time to think, Lord only knows what will happen when he finds out about the cheese, before he gasped, “NOT the family block!?” Suffice it to say, Clare Boothe Luce was right, no good deed goes unpunished.

Bad Husband Hoodoo

At a magazine awards function in Auckland last year, I was introduced to a wildly popular female columnist who writes for one of the same publications. After first agreeing we got terribly sick of the sound of our own (authorial) voices and that having to constantly come up with new stuff could occasionally be a bit of a struggle, she hit me with: “You know, I hope you don't mind, but sometimes I don't like the economist very much.”

Of course I didn't mind, almost squeaking with pleasure, standing in the glow of her considerable fame. It was afterward, when all (accidental or otherwise) mean comments always start to really sting, delayed-reaction style, that I had time to think about it and be just a teensy bit offended. The economist is, as you will know if you've been keeping up, a character who often appears in my work, bumbling around in an old-school manner and seeing the world through a filter of 1984 prices – but he is also my boyfriend. And nobody, I mean nobody, wants to think others might not feel the same way about the person they have singled out for special cuddles.

What's that? You're shocked to hear there's someone out there who doesn't completely adore the economist? Tell me about it.

Unfortunately, this not-liking happens more often than Mills and Boon would prefer. A crime against the female mafia and as secretly secret as chin hair and your actual weight, the awful truth is one woman's muscle-bound hunk is another woman's fat thicko. The love of your life might well be your girlfriends' idea of a boring pain in the ass. Don't believe me? Here's some history: Sylvia Path's friends didn't think much of Ted Hughes, Frida Kahlo could have done a lot better than Diego Rivera and while everyone in New Zealand worshiped Aunty Helen, few took to Peter Davis.

All of which started me thinking recently, as I dug this idea up, brushed the dirt off it and began rolling it around on the floor under my desk, about just what to do if you really really don't like your friend's boyfriend or worse (and slightly more permanent), her husband. Because, believe me, its going to happen. It happened to me.

I didn't like him from the start: smile too wide, hair too perfect. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something wolfish about him, as if the minute your back was turned he might sneak up and sink his teeth into your leg. They dated, it seemed a weird combination, but I said nothing (well, hardly anything). They got married, and she disappeared from sight. I still said nothing, but thought plenty.

And it turns out I was right, he WAS a dick. A thug, a bully, a bad husband. Behind the scenes everything was so utterly textbook, so movie of the week I want to kick myself, but why a smart, successful woman would let herself be belittled and shrunk down to a shadow of her former self is a question for another day. Only now they have parted do I feel able to say, not 'I told you so' (because I never did) but 'thank goodness.' Extricating herself while walking on the broken glass that is shared parenting, its easy to see my friend let the wrong one in. So ... maybe we should say what we think of our friend's partners? Perhaps voice our concerns when we feel they're not good enough, or ick? Although, when is anyone ever good enough for someone you're close to? Probably never. And who listens when they're in love? No-one.

So, I don't know, and anyway, the whole idea is ludicrous. My daughter would be single her whole life if I were left to my own devices, and the economist would never have made it to 14 years with me if other people's opinions' mattered a jot. Nobody knows what happens in a relationship apart from the people in it. Love is strange. It sneaks up and clobbers you when you least expect it and takes a form unexpected. And its a good thing indeed we aren't often attracted to our friend's love-interests, because that never ends very well.

When it comes to hearts and hopes, all we can do is wish up a safety net of happiness and stand by, arms out to catch them, if that happiness proves threadbare.

I Told You I was Sick!

My mother has always lived on her nerves. A modern-day version of Pride and Prejudice's egocentric hypochondriac, Mrs Bennett, reality startles her and vague maladies are forever threatening to carry her off. In anticipation of this, and in the absence of a wedding (mine), she loves to discuss plans for her wake: “No tea, whiskey. The good stuff.” Rather than bleakly morbid, this funereal conversation is a great pleasure to those of Irish descent, but your own family's quirks always do appear a little weird to outsiders.

Mother would be delighted to hear she's in illustrious company. Charles Darwin was a bit of an adorable neurotic himself, keeping meticulous records of his flatulence. Little Mermaid author Hans Christian Anderson had a fear of being buried alive and traveled with a note that read, “I only seem dead.” Florence Nightingale, whose name is synonymous with nursing the sick and tending the wounds of soldiers in the Crimean War was actually a complete flake who spent the majority of her life convinced the Grim Reaper was coming for her. Bedridden for 57 years, she finally got his attention at the ripe old age of 90.

Hypochondriacs have been around since at least 1673, when Moliere staged a play called The Hypochondriac, during which he passed out, dying a few days later.

Harmless, if a little wet and wafty (like Linton in Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, forever ailing and peevish), the truth is we're all hypochondriacs to a certain extent these days, thanks to the internet and the pandemic paranoia movie Contagion. Googling symptoms, enjoying the thrill of diagnosing ourselves with disorders with dramatic Latin names such as Toxoplasma Gondil (a parasite found in cat poo), its not G&T number five giving you that headache, its a pineapple-sized neoplasm pressing on your optic nerve. But no matter how special your ailments might be; in the face of galloping thrombosis and hot buttered ovaries – I guarantee you my mother is sicker, and funnier with it.

“I think I've had a stroke,” she said the other day. “I can't say the word, you know, for being in the army and marching.”

“Infantry?”

“Can't say it no matter how hard I try. Infant-ory. See? I'm a goner.”

It wasn't a stroke, thank goodness, but mother is lucky to be alive, what with the number of near-death experiences she's had (I'm sorry. If I have a fault, its a regrettable tendency toward flippancy). Heart attacks that turned out to be curry-related indigestion, hysterical blindness caused by sunglasses worn indoors. Reading a book by the heater one night, rising to make a cup of Chardonnay, she discovered her right leg wasn't working. “Brain, tell Leg to move!” she mentally pleaded, fearing a separation of her cogitative faculties, lights out upstairs. Not so. Her slippers had melted to the carpet.

Combine this with my capacity for breaking bones by falling over (I did my elbow in slipping in cat sick – bloody cats – and I broke my leg rollerskating home from a party wearing a too-tight cheongsam), we're on a first-name basis with the receptionist at A&E and a lady policeman who's convinced someone is hurting us in the home.

While a sense of your own mortality definitely develops with age, amplified by having to grab something to get up and the fact that bits that didn't used to have started creaking, most of us don't see a pale rider approaching with every twinge. For my mother, even housework has fatal consequences. Cleaning windows in the bathroom last week, standing on the sides of the toilet to reach the high spots, she slipped and both feet became wedged in the bowl. “I thought, 'this is the end for Lois.'” she said, picturing herself starving upright, undiscovered for days. Laugh? I nearly called a psychiatrist.

My Mother-in-Law is the polar opposite of a hypochondriac, a Presbyterian stoic. They'd have to be nailing down the lid, wolves eating her shins, before she'd admit things had come to a necessary conclusion. However, despite her utter rejection of life's temporary nature, she is, ironically, the kiss of death for sick friends. Visiting them in hospital, averring, “You'll be fine,” promising a full recovery – its usually the last thing they hear.

There has to be a happy medium. A middle ground between doom and denial. What they both need is a good talking to. And I will, I just need a wee lie down first, I'm not feeling very well.

Youth fleeting, a Landline Forever

A comedy of errors this week. I wish it had been a comedy of Eros, but there you go. The world is moving fast, they say, technology moving even faster. Which might even be true, and you'd bloody well hope so, given the way Chorus are digging up the streets – but I'll tell you something for nothing, cutting off a landline is harder than getting divorced. And while there are definitely more painful things (accidental Brazilians and doing Pecha Kucha being two of them), nothing can be as senselessly aggravating and drawn-out as divesting oneself of a home phone line.

With two cellphones and three computers in our possession, the only time our home phone ever rings these days its either someone with an unintelligible Indian accent or the economist's friend Dave, who lives on the Gold Coast and can't figure out the time difference. Also sometimes unintelligible. It had got to the point where Le Corbusier's dictate: 'have nothing in your home that isn't useful or beautiful' chimed the death knell for this antique.

“I don't know why I'm still here,” said the economist, bleakly.

There were obvious arguments for cutting it off. At more than $40 a month, in the course of a year that comes to almost $500 (or 47 bottles of not very expensive wine) making it an unnecessary cost and money better spent. We should just ditch it, right? The cons being, that while the economist and I have fancy new smartphones, both our mothers use the landline as their primary form of communication ... sorry, where was I? Ah yes, the cons: we've had the same number forever so everyone knows it and landlines are generally more reliable in large scale disasters, when cellular networks tend to get overloaded and crash.

Mothers-in-law, earthquakes; neither seemed a pressing reason to keep outdated technology and canceling it would be a simple matter of a phone call, I thought. Folks must be doing this all the time.

A recording asked me what I wanted: “Discon ..” “Press 2,” it interrupted. “Disconnection!” I shouted, between a menu of instructions narrated in tones of the profoundly depressed. Dave Dobbyn reminded me to be Loyal ('patient' would have been more apposite) while the economist looked at online videos of Siamese cats. Being on hold for an hour seemed a particularly un-fabulous way to spend one's 45th birthday, but I also happened to be writing an advertorial for a skin care company about what youth meant to me, so the day was already ruined.

The economist had moved on to tidal bores by the time I managed to speak to a real person. Was I sure I wanted to cut off the landline? She asked. Really sure? Really, really sure? It reminded me of Facebook's exit-whining or swimming in a flume with rubber bands around your ankles. Let's make a deal, she tried. How about they gave me some toll call credits and I just kept the phone on? I pointed out that my $16 a month cellphone let me make as many as I wanted.

Would I reconsider? She asked, amazingly unfazed by reality.

“No,” I said. “Please cut off the landline and leave the internet.”

Oh well, if you insist, she said.

I insisted. And I had to go, I was late for the hairdressers.

Fine then.

Fine.

When I got back home, fantastic hair did nothing to allay my rage at discovering the internet had been cut off.

I rang the number again, spoke to the robot, twiddled my thumbs and ground my teeth, feeling my newly advanced age with every hit of the hold music. “I Just Want The Internet,” I said in capitals, “no phone.” In a remarkable co-incidence the only plan available was exactly the same price as internet + phone. What are the chances?

Didn't I want to keep my home phone? Thoroughly worn out, I'd started to feel vaguely menaced, as if I was being made offers I couldn't refuse. A bit like Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby, trying to rid myself of the Devil's handset. Finally, I succeeded, cutting off my landline to spite my face. The weirdest thing about all of this is that 4776046 is still my phone number, you just can't ring me on it. Youth might be fleeting, but a landline is forever, apparently. Mine a ghost only the dead can dial, and Dave, who doesn't know the phone is cut off yet.

Food Fighting at A. Rock. Concert.

As you read this, the economist and I will be winging our way to Auckland to attend his first ever rock concert. “Yes,” he says, speaking slowly to display reluctance, “A. Rock. Concert. The Food Fighters, have you heard of them?” He is not looking forward to it in the extreme, hating in equal measures large groups of people and loudness. “The things you do for love,” he sighs. A birthday is the occasion for this enforced musical appreciation, a pugnacious lawyer friend turning 50 has bought 80 tickets to the gig at Mt Smart Stadium. “I actually hate you a little right now,” said daughter Sophia when I told her. Ah, the envy of your children. Is there anything sweeter?

Obviously a man of grand gestures, and mule-stubborn, our benefactor once painted his Dunedin chambers a non-heritage-specific blue (first re-naming the building after himself), telling the council to get knotted when they tried to make him change it. “You think I'll stop?” he said of the ensuing and protracted legal wrangle. “I'll never stop. I love this.” You guessed it, the building is still non-regulation blue. Its quite nice.

However, let us leave architecture, shall we? And turn to music.

In an almost scientific example of opposites attracting, as well as pillows and candles, the economist has long loathed my preferred listening pleasures, declaring my favorite rockers the sort of sounds, “favored by people who kick each others' heads in at three o'clock in the morning.” Tsking, as he does, every time he gets in the Camry and finds the station changed from Radio New Zealand National (“How will we know what the drachma's doing?!”) I thought it best to acclimatise him – rather the way divers gradually get accustomed to deeper and deeper water, thus avoiding the bends – by playing nothing but non-stop rock at home over the last two months.

“Is this the Food Fighters?” he asked.

“Foo Fighters. No, its Rage Against the Machine.”

“He's a rather angry chap,” he said, of Queens of the
Stone Age front man Josh Homme. “And I can't hear or understand the lyrics. Would it kill these people to enunciate?”

The Foo Fighters proper left him cold. “WHY doesn't he want to be your monkey wrench?” Horse to water and all that, I wasn't getting anywhere. Plus, the economist has severe personal space issues (unusual for man who takes up so much of it). “I hope its not too noisy and I can find a little area where I'm not squished up against strangers,” he said. “The foyer, maybe.”

Because I am a serious journalist with impeccable credentials, I naturally contacted Foo Fighters' management, SAM, or Silva Artist Management of California, in the hopes of organizing an interview while we were in the land of Sky City overspends and million-dollar state houses. Nothing. Undaunted, I emailed New Zealand's preeminent musicologist, Grant Smithies, asked for tips, and followed them religiously. Zip.

I called Frontier Touring. Friendly as she was, there was a wary note in the voice of their marketing manger. Perhaps she sensed a lusty undercurrent? An air of impropriety? I'll be honest, I am a completely in love with Dave Grohl. I almost wasn't after watching the documentary about the making of their latest album, Sonic Highways, where he comes across as a bit of a mild-mannered librarian. Still, if he would just stick to drumming and playing guitar and screaming into a microphone, I would marry him in a heartbeat, provided the economist died suddenly and tragically (and hopefully painlessly).

My interview dreams transparently an excuse to get up and close with the only man in history to make leather wrist bands sexy, just so, my untrammeled imaginary wedlock must have oozed down the phone line. “Sorry,” said the tour promoter.

I promised not to lick him.

No dice.

Oh well, it takes the pressure off, leaving me to enjoy the economist's loss of innocence. “Rock. Concert.” he repeats, at intervals, like one stunned, as our departure date draws closer. Picture him, if you will, wincing at the mayhem, the sole Hawaiian shirt in a sea of black, holding his phone's assisted light aloft and pretending to know the words to Everlong. “Rock. Concert.”

House Envy

Like Lorde, I'm not proud of my address – mind you, these days she could simply choose a new one. Here, in Dunedin's crime triangle, there are many feral cats. People collect washing machines, tractors, and bits of corrugated iron and use these to decorate reeking yards that look like something out of Britain's Worst Hoarders. They don't have lawns.

Once upon a time living here was fun, even a little dangerous (literally: the Mongrel Mob were just down the road. “Wanna buy some marijuana?” They'd ask. “Got any Botox?” I'd reply). The economist and I divined a certain cache from inhabiting a street so insalubrious. Look at us, we said, refusing to surrender to our middle class roots, down with the hood. Living in a gangster's paradise. Did you lock the back door? But I can't stand it anymore. I AM middle class. Or some kind of class, anyway, and this street doesn't have any.

Our friends don't live like this, washing cat pee off their outside furniture, side-stepping torn rubbish bags and broken bottles to get to the mailbox. They live in nice, manicured suburbs where the neighbours burrow a cup of sugar, not all your stuff.

These feelings of extreme dissatisfaction came to a head last weekend, when my friend Tall Gorgeous Blonde had the most fabulous birthday party. It was SO good, noise control turned up. Sure, the volume at which Prince was being played was the result of the aging participants' collective deafness, but it was a win for coolness. TGB is a marvelous hostess, her house striking envy and fleeting feelings of hatred and despair into the hearts of all who enter it, but you wouldn't want to mess with her. Think Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2, Judgment Day. There's a pull bar fixed to the hallway lintel (for chin-ups) and her thighs are so strong, she could kick you through a wall. If someone trimmed TGB's hedge without asking, she would punch him in the face. Me, I just whinge about it.

On this particular evening, TGB's beautifully-appointed kitchen was filled with hot single women, I mean seriously hot. “Extremely hot, extremely flexible women,” said the economist. True. Bikram yoga aficionados, most were taking part in a challenge that would see them do 30 classes in 30 days. “Yoga, yoga, yoga,” they said, and “kale.” While the rest of us danced like the electrocuted, the yoga ladies drank coconut water and left early. They had a class in the morning. Not for a second did I envy them their lithe figures and zealous dedication to things healthy. Frankly, I thought they were all a little insane (there was a reason why they were single).

No, I coveted the house.

Henvy, or House Envy, might not be an actual disorder, but its the reason why television shows such as The Block and Grand Designs, magazines with 'Home' in their title do so well. Symptoms include the feeling one's living conditions are mean and squalid. Desperation dawns with the realisation there are no giant words in your kitchen reminding you to EAT, and the absence of a recessed fire pit fills you with an untrammeled rage, usually taken out on nearest and dearest.

“We're moving,” I said to the economist.

“But its great here,” he said, ever blind to reality.

Unfortunately, its not as easy as circling likely candidates in the Property Press and then just choosing one. House hunting is horrible. If I hear one more place described as a 'handyman's dream', I'll scream. I have never met bigger liars than real estate agents – and I used to work in the theatre. Private sales though, are quite possibly even worse, one couple surely New Zealand's Fred and Rosemary West. She smelt like crazy and I could see him cheerfully burying the economist and I under the patio. Seriously frightened, we trembled while they talked for hours about the second coming. Fleeing, “My hands are still shaking,” said the economist, trying to get the key in the ignition. I kept expecting one of them to smash up against the car window, horror-movie style.

Also, houses are unbelievably expensive. Not just in Auckland, where prices have reached ludicrous levels, but here in the provinces too. Sell your soul to the Devil, win Millionaire Hot Seat, you'd still need a stonkily huge mortgage.

“And so the moral of the story is you decided to stay right where you were, happy with your loving boyfriend.”

“No.” I said, seething with thwarted realty.

“You need to relax,” said the economist. “Maybe you should take up yoga?”

Secret Man Business Thwarts Nancy Drew

Its a sad fact of life that, as you get older and wiser, you also get hairier. As well as growing enough springy chest and back hair to knit a scratchy jumper, rampant tufts sprouting out of nose and ear cavities like hungry tarantulas, men get balder and wider (and more likely to criticize your driving) as they age. Despite this, if they are wealthy enough, these same walking Brillo pads can marry youthful brides who do not laugh at them in public.

Women have it much worse. We get hairier too, just not in places you could hang a gold medallion. Aging's a natural process, apparently, and “better than the alternative” as people always say in that smug 'I ate kale and it was delicious' tone. But just how natural is it for a perfectly normal woman to suddenly start to go Chewbacca about the face? Left unattended, these lady locks will unite and spread, until you resemble a moustachioed cyclist wearing bike pants made of hemp. Not a look planned for iD this year, by the way. Nor is the latest fad: letting your armpit hairs grow long and dying them pink or purple. As a feminist stance communicating intelligent empowerment, this is about as effective as burning your bra while you are wearing it.

If you, like me, don't wish to frighten children at the swimming pool (“Mummy! That lady has a monkey in her pants!) one's life becomes all maintenance, the calendar marked with endless engagements involving women you do not really know ripping the foliage from your most intimate parts while chatting about the weather. Having said this, I quite enjoy a visit to the beauty parlour. Not the waxing, mind (although there are people who enjoy this, but there are also people who read dinosaur erotica – the world is full of perverts), rather the cheerful, powder room-type conversation. And I should probably make the most of it. One day, I hear, time will resolve this whole issue and the hair on my body will stop growing and start to fall out instead. One day, according to my mum, I'll have so few hairs, I'll name those remaining. When will this be, exactly? Tell me so I can cancel an appointment and save some money.

Sometimes, I arrive early. Most of the time, to be honest. I am one of those sad types who is always chronically early, spending hours of my life in departure lounges, turning up at a dinner party to find the hostess still in her dressing gown.

While I'm waiting, I can't help but notice the tumult of activity at the barber shop next door. A constant stream of men funneling past the red, white and blue stripey pole only to exit not long after, looking exactly the same. They don't even seem to have wet hair, or comb marks. One gentleman emerged with the same beard he was wearing when he arrived, carrying a brown paper bag and looking furtive. What the blimmin' heck is going on over there? Just what kind of arcane filthy rituals, what kind of secret man business is hidden behind that innocuous window display of pipes and lighters?

“Something for the weekend?” asked my stepfather, nonsensically, when I pondered this mystery aloud at dinner. Thinking themselves unobserved, the economist and he exchanged glances over my head. Something was up, alright, and like any nosy person worth their salt, I was determined to discover it, drag it out into the light and give it a good mauling.

With this in mind, the last time I left the beauty parlour, limping slightly, I lurked by the barbershop door, trying to look unobtrusive in a Nancy Drew manner (not easy when your face is bright red from recent and extreme pain). I could smell aftershave, hear the laughter of hirsute men. It seemed vaguely mocking. None the wiser, but certainly poorer and plucked-over, I was eventually forced to move off by a man in an apron and muttonchops who said, “Help you?” with an expression that suggested the opposite. Thus thwarted, I simply cannot tell you what goes on inside. I simply cannot. It is driving me crazy.

Wardrobe Hoardrobe

In the course of a little spring cleaning, it has come to my attention that there are two types of people in this world. People who regularly cull their wardrobes, gleaning items that no longer fit or haven't been worn for a while, and those who hold onto everything, come hell or high fashion. Knee-deep in swag, closets bulging at the seams, squishing more and more into already limited space, sometimes resorting shamefully to double hanging (2-3 items on one hanger) – these people, my friends, are clothes hoarders.

Now, depending on how famous they become, a clothes hoarder may be viewed through the lens of time, not as a saddo with too much stuff, but a Wallace Simpson: outfits a snapshot of a life lived in style, from flapper dresses and pearls to mod shifts, someone who ends up leaving their belongings to a museum. This largely comes down to the quality of their collection. Balenciaga gowns, vintage Halston, “Yes, please” says the V&A. 150 Hawaiian shirts, all pretty much the same, and you'll probably get, “No, thank you. Security will escort you to the exit.”

You can guess where I'm going with this. Yes, the economist is a clothes hoarder. Borer Towers is filled to the rafters with everything from Dr Martins' brothel creepers to acid-house flares. Worse, like a doomsdayer anticipating the fall of civilization, he has secret caches all over town: 20 jackets hang on the back of his office door, fifteen jandals (none of them matching) litter the backseat of our car, multiple jerseys make a woolly nest at the bach – shoring up supplies in readiness for a clothing apocalypse leaving him sartorially unmanned. Plus, he doesn't want anyone (except for me) to see him in exactly the same outfit twice, in case he be thought boring. Its like living with a really hairy Princess Diana.

I don't want you to think badly of my Snugglebumpkins. There are no flattened cats buried under piles of rubbish in our house. People need not fear a tower of newspaper collapsing on them should they visit. But the economist does have enough clothing to dress 300 people (replacement value: $12.50), if they were all 6ft tall, 100kgs and colour blind. This clothes hoarding is not without reason, stemming as it does from a pre-Rogernomics adolescence (young persons, I'll spare you the dull fiscal history, trust me when I say there was once a time when you could only buy boardshorts in Australia and there was no such thing as the Warehouse). Luckily, for him, the poor man has a sickness.

According to British researchers Ashley Nordsletten and Mataix-Cols, 2-5% of the adult population would meet the criteria for a diagnosis of hoarding: persistent difficulty discarding or parting with personal possessions regardless of actual value, strong urges to save items and/or distress associated with discarding them, leading to extreme cluttering of the home. However, I think Nordsletten and Cols might be batting a bit low; according to an uber-scientific Facebook poll of my own, that percentage could be much, much higher.

“If you keep it long enough, it comes back into fashion, said Robyn, who identifies as a hoarder. “Keeping the same body you had the last time you wore it is a little more challenging...”

“I'm more hoper than hoarder,” said Sandra, “hoping one day I'll fit them again.”

Michelle confessed, "we shifted house last year - and found boxes never unpacked from 13 years ago - with clothes I couldn't bear to throw away.”

"My name is Jo and I am a clothes hoarder,” said Jo. “I have clothes going back to when I was at school. When I go through them to throw them away, I remember all the brilliant times I had wearing them, where I bought them and who I was with and I decide to keep them again.”

How sweet. I am the opposite. I discard often and mercilessly, as water retention and the fashionable-ness of orange dictate. Perhaps it is symptomatic of a ruthlessly unsentimental personality, but it gives me a reason to shop.

“Its not hoarding,” protests the economist. “Its contingency clothing curation.” Whatever. Don't tell him, but I have started giving items away. Come to our house at the moment and you might just leave with something from the 2015 Boyfriend Isn't Home Collection. This does give rise to complications. A certain attire overlap.

“That's a nice jersey,” said the economist at a party recently. “I've got one just like it.”

Oh no he doesn't.

Pop in, Pop up, Pop Off?

Summer is the time of year when the number of unexpected and uninvited guests increases. People are in an expansive mood and may decide to go on visiting rounds. If you are like me, this can cause anxiety. Borer Towers is never ready for surprise visitors. The magic that makes people love our house requires five hours of sparkling conversation and thirteen bottles of wine (any kind).

Over the holidays, it becomes blindingly obvious there are two types of people in this world: those who like to pop in, and those who prefer to arrange their visit in advance. Before we go any further, let me make a confession. I live a double life. To the outside world I am polished, organised, groomed and refined. However, at home, I like to relax. A lot. I am sometimes so relaxed, it is a state closely resembling coma.

But back to popping in. The economist thinks its pretentious to schedule a visit, “as the Queen might,” plus, he loves the pop in because the person he feels compelled to visit might not actually be there. “I'm all about the gesture,” he says. Personally, I enjoy the arranged visit. Unlike an arranged marriage, both of you know what you're getting, and when. Participants have got their game faces on and, more important, their knickers.

These variant visiting behaviors say much about a person. The pop-inner is prepared to leave things to chance, to risk disappointment and an unsettling glimpse of friends at their worst. “Its exciting,” claims the economist. “As you put hand to knocker, you wonder, will it be answered, and by whom? Its the Russian roulette of social intercourse.” An arranger or book-ahead-er, on the other hand, takes no chances, isn't prepared to see people au natural ‏– enjoys life staged, curated, pristine. Life with its buttons done up. Arrangers can't handle the truth.

Short of moving and not telling people your new address, there is no way to avoid uninvited and unannounced visitors. They are a fact of life and a reason to buy biscuits. And the truth is many New Zealanders were raised in areas where spontaneous descent with kids in tow is quite the norm, towns where boasts are frequently made of doors always being open (there is nothing wrong with this. It is lovely – proof you are not dangerous). However, because of this, they know the etiquette of the pop in: there is no obligation to entertain and no hurt feelings if you are genuinely busy or just not in the mood for company. With this in mind, it is best to think of these rat-a-tat-tatting randoms as roaming herds of tea-and-conversation-seeking buffalo. Placid, aimless, ultimately harmless.

Dropping in frequency depends a lot on a persons' age. As you get older, life gets more complicated and quiet time-out from myriad commitments increasingly rare, so rates of popping in decrease. Because I work from home and am most industrious in the mornings, my friends and family know not to visit before 2pm, or face a blank stare and confused lack of recognition during a prolonged and irritable return to focus.

So it was that, having long been a fan of planning and set receiving hours, it was strange to last week discover the arranged visit is not without its health complications. A fine Dunedin summer's day, the economist and I were out at the bach. Himself, surging with testosterone, was busy fixing things while I did nothing (actually, I was trying to get through The Bone Clocks and having a Luminaries moment of implied imbecility). Out of the corner of my eye, a man who looked a lot like my boyfriend trotted past, stripped to the waist, carrying a wood splitter. I read the same line four times before a meaty thud roused me from my divan in time to witness the economist trudging back up the path, sporting a finger closely resembling a squashed tomato.

“Its broken,” I said. “You'll have to go to the hospital.”

“No its not,” he said, gritting his teeth with Presbyterian stoicism and fear of stitches. “And anyway, we've got guests coming for a BBQ. We can't just leave.”

Two days later, finger now papal purple, the waiting room of the urgent doctors was filled with staff from the School of Business, illustrating just how dangerous holidays can be for academics. No appointment was necessary.

Bridget Jones was an Idiot

For the first time in 13 years, I found myself single again. But before desperate chaps, horsewhipped by life and unable to hide their tics, start lining up outside my door with a bunch of service station flowers and a bottle of Jacob's Creek – it was only temporary. The economist was in Mountain View, working as a contractor at Google headquarters. Don't ask me what he was doing there, I'm sworn to secrecy. Oh, alright. He was eating all the free food: the Googleplex has 33 restaurants and everything is gratis (“Couldn't find a pub, though”), riding around a campus the size of Mosgiel and meeting Googlenaires. Did you know new Google staff are called Nooglers?

Neither did I.

“Shall we just rock up at the gate on Monday morning and ask for you?” he inquired of his host. Not so fast my little country bumpkin, there would be a two hour orientation, complete with laptop gifting and password conferring. “What about 'Big Boy?'” joked the economist. “Oh, suuuure,” said the security geek, only to look up from his terminal a moment later, gobsmacked: “Actually, Big Boy's still available.” “Big Boy's still available?!” marveled the tech beside him. Cue disbelief all round. Never underestimate the economist's power to surprise.

“I'm going to watch ALL the movies!” he'd boasted as I dropped him off for his 17-hour flight. I was going to watch all the movies too, starting with a boxed set of Vikings, featuring Australian ex-model Travis Fimmel before moving on to Mad Men and a little Don Draper (more clothes, just as much nooky, less bloodshed). Its not perving if its historical.

“Nice shoes,” said a San Franciscan, of the economist's bright red sneakers. “Thanks! I bought them specially for this trip. $10 at the Warehouse.”

“Nice shoes,” said my mum. “Thanks! Kathryn Wilson, only $299. Felt like a bit of a splurge.”

“The idea of being single again can have you feeling lost and overwhelmed,” writes clinical psychologist Jennifer Kromberg in Psychology Today. Hmmm. Not really, although I did seem to have lost the remote. Ha! In my dressing gown pocket all along. “For a healthy adjustment, its important to take time for yourself.” Jenny needn't have worried, I was killing 'time for yourself.' If it ever became an Olympic sport, I'd be getting a gold.

Things I learnt from 11 days of enforced singleness:

• There is no need to cook. A bottle of red wine and a packet of chips count as nutrition.

• One might not be the loneliest number. I know some twos who really hate each other.

• Being up-to-date with current affairs is hugely overrated. With no one around to complain, you may feel free to change the radio station from Radio New Zealand National to The Rock. Ah, Queens of the Stone Age. That Josh Homme is very spunky for a redhead. Maybe he has a bit of Viking in him.

• Sleeping in is an oft-forgotten pleasure. As is silence in the mornings (the economist wakes with the birds, full of the joys of the world and ready to talk about them – its intensely annoying). In his absence, I've never had so much sleep. “Yeah, I got a lot of sleep. For 7 years,” said the Tamster, of her own single lady time.

• I was already doing everything, anyway.

• There ARE plenty of fish in the sea, but there's something wrong with them.

• It is much easier to get things done if you don't need to negotiate about paint colours/light fittings/or whether we need yet more furniture. “Nice sideboard,” said mum. “Where are you going to put it?”

• The economist is really really messy. Although, as much as a series of rooms in a state of insane neatness calms my raging OCD, really, there is nothing sadder than a tidy house. Still, you could have held an Open Home without shame.

“Prepare for the tempest of my return,” emailed my Norse adventurer. Twelve time zones, half an hour's drive back from Momona and twenty minutes later (arriving before he left), the house was covered in a scruff of pens, bubble wrap, Wikipedia printouts about Alcatraz and balled-up Googleplex restaurant napkins. A honey knife was glued to the bench, the bed was all rumpled. Home was the hunter, home from the sea.

“Why's there a FOR SALE sign out the front?” he asked, bleary eyed.

Poor man. Jet lag's a terrible thing.

Baby got Back

How are you, really? Things haven't been so great with me. I've struggled to keep a smile on my dial ever since the economist read Kindness and Lies in the bath and picked out all the mistakes. “Every one I find is a gift for you,” he said, “page 147!” but they didn't feel like presents. They felt like an invitation to hold him down until the bubbles stopped. “Academics are trained to find fault,” said my friend Stu. “I blame the publisher,” said Tania. I don't. A book contract generally includes an unspoken agreement the writer knows what to do with apostrophes. Before the S? After the S? Wear 'em on your head like a fascinator for all I care. Mine is a very raw talent.

Worse, much worse, any kind of brush with literature makes the economist come over all Poet Laureate. Yesterday he described a paddock full of sheep as looking “like maggots on a green blanket.” Which is actually very good. Still. I'll do the similes, Mate.

Having got so many things wrong lately, there's some comfort in knowing one thing about me is on trend: my bottom. I wouldn't call it humungous, however, neither is it small. And, let's face it, its very hard to see your bum without indulging in some weird calisthenics, so I'm really just guessing. More than a handful, anyway.

Luckily, round and peachy/pear-shaped/applish (pick your fruit) is very 'in' right now, 2014 being all about the bass: witness Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea's feminist anthem Booty (“big big booty, you got a big booty”) praising the more ample derriere. Anaconda, Nicky Minaj's remix of Sir-Mix-a-lot's Baby Got Back, is very clear the protagonist “don't want none unless you've got buns, hon.” A strangely culinary image which always make me hungry, perhaps explaining why we are officially in the era of the big booty. As the Huffington Post's Nancy Redd points out, the rear is fast becoming the erogenous zone of choice, vying for eminence with abs, breasts, legs, or for those of us who came of age in the early '90s, Linda Hamilton's sinewy arms in Terminator 2.

Even that traditional home of skinny b*tches, Vogue magazine, had an about face recently, editor Patrica Garcia asserting, “it would appear that the big booty has officially become ubiquitous. In music videos, Instagram photos and on today's most popular celebrities, the measure of sex appeal is inextricably linked to the prominence of a woman's behind.” Filmmaker Kurt Williams, whose documentary Bottoms Up explores the phenomenal demand for gawk-worthy curves (dangerously supplied by aesthetic surgery), says this is simply a case of fashion crossing over what has always been a fetishistic favourite of black culture.

Although, maybe its not such a successful cross over. Pirate booty and Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls aside, big cheeks don't transition to white chicks. Round, firm and brown, yes. Large, wobbly and white? Um, no. Like blonde Rastas and Vanilla Ice, the sad truth is if you lack melanin, are pasty and freckled, I don't think anybody's ready for that jelly.

Bringing us to the other end of the spectrum – the tail end of marketing, if you will, late night infomercials – where insomniac Caucasian ladies with an overabundance of junk in the trunk are sold Hot Pants. Yes, while black girls are getting the message their ba dong da dong dongs should close cupboard doors on the other side of kitchen when they pop something in the toaster, white girls are being told to 'minimise their problem areas.'

The economist is fascinated by Hot Pants, shorts made of neoprene (a bit like wearing a diving suit from the waist down) designed to help you 'Sweat, sweat, sweat!' your way to smaller nethers. “Its just one of those ads I can't get enough of,” he says, but enough about the economist staying up watching ladies perspire. Too big? Too small? Its easy to feel left behind. Shame, because its all absolute rubbish. Booties come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. There's no right or wrong, no reason to feel bum. As Megan Trainor sings, “Every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top.” Even if your spelling is crap.

Champagne Dreams and Caviar Wishes

“If I became seriously wealthy overnight, there really isn't anything I'd want,” said the economist.

“Nothing?! You sure?” I asked, not a little flabbergasted. Everyone wants something. I want a new face.

“Yes, nothing. Well ... I'd like two Siamese cats. Or maybe, if I was really pushing the boat out, three.”

I think the economist might be losing his mind. Just yesterday I caught him in the kitchen, heavily-bearded, hunched over a can of cold baked beans wearing only his boxers. He mumbled something about “antidote to all this fancy muck” but it looked like something out of The Road. As for cats, 'pedigree feline breeder' has long been on his retirement bucket list. Whatever his state of mental decline, one thing's for sure, cat pee looms large in our old age.

“What can I say? I like cats.”

Sighing like a consumptive heroine, I retreated into one of my favourite fantasies: Hot Widow – all the possessions with none of the mess.

Truth is I often inhabit a fantasy world, drifting away from the harsher realities of a life in Maitland Street surrounded by the toothless poor, into dreams of winning Lotto (the odds of this happening would dramatically increase if I ever bought a ticket) or somehow coming into untold riches – a freak inheritance from a forgotten relative, perhaps. Not terribly likely. My family are Irish Catholics. They never have any money left to leave, having spent their feckless lives wasting every penny in a riot of fun. The economist (Scots Presbyterian, a people not convinced 'can't take it with you' is factually correct) is careful with money, but at the same time a bit shambolic. This is a man who, in the midst of getting divorced, spent a whole day rushing round various banks, asking if he had accounts with them. “I had an idea it was red.”

Blow him down, he did. “Completely forgot about it.” I could NEVER forget my bank. They keep sending me nasty letters.

Quite frankly, money is wasted on the moneyed, usually men, who invariably use it to buy sports cars, bimbos and hairplugs. Give moi some limitless cash-in-hand, I'd show 'em. To quote the immortal words of Swedish philosophers, Abba: “Aaaaahhhhaaaahhha. All the things I could do, if I had a little money.”

Lets say for instance, that my new book Kindness and Lies (RRP$29.99, available everywhere good books are sold) becomes an international bestseller and I go all JK Rowling. Fall into a sickening amount of loot, enough that I no longer need to work again. Ever. Waking tomorrow one of what American sports columnist Bill Simmons calls the 'pajama rich' (so loaded they could go to a 5-star restaurant in their PJs and nobody would raise an eyebrow), there's no doubt my entire philosophy of money would change. Go from 'got none, need some' to a blithe disregard for the folding stuff. “Never mind the Renoir,” I'd say to the devastated parents of sticky-fingered children. “Always get another.”

If I went totally Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – as opposed to poor and dangerous – complete with a luxury yacht and Robin Leach voice-over, I'd never cook again. My cooking sucks. I'd never paint the house again either, do the weeding, or clean hair out of the shower drain. I'd have staff. Spend my days fanned with a brick, lounging on a chaise eating grapes, while being painted by Gustav Klimt. Strangely, a striking number of billionaires get totally depressed. Sunk in the doldrums of sudden success, as therapist Manfred Kets de Vries put it in an interview with The Telegraph, “The victim sinks into a kind of inertia.” Victim? Go ahead, victimize me, money. Make my day.

What I wouldn't do: take champagne baths (sounds revoltingly sticky), wear ridiculously expensive yet hideously unflattering designer clothes, buy a sports team or tell people what to do with their cats (even though I'd quite like to). Instead, I'd take a leaf out of the book of the coolest overnight millionaire ever, Elvis Presley, who celebrated his meteoric rags to riches rise by buying random strangers Cadillacs. This isn't sustainable in today's green economy. Me, I'd give people quality footwear.

Money can't buy you happiness, apparently. But it can buy a hell of a lot of Kathryn Wilson shoes. Shoes for everybody! Obviously I'm not planning on being rich for very long.