Will Johnston: Great mates dig in

Ahhhh, the joys of home ownership! Turns out when you have a house in Whangarei that has a garage that leaks from underneath when it rains really heavily, it's not amazing!

The '80s weren't a great time for building regulations and waterproofing a garage and rumpus room. It's technically not a living area, so they technically didn't give a rats about building it properly. That's my take on it anyway!

So we spent four days over Auckland Anniversary weekend (don't get me started on how ridiculous it is to call the holiday that), digging a trench down to a foot below floor level round the outside of our house.

The house is built in to a hill. Not fun. Seven-and-a-half trailer-loads of dirt. My hands have 11 blisters on them from digging. Did I mention the bottom two feet are hard clay?

These hands are townie hands. They were meant for turning a mic on and off and using a computer and iPhone. At least I've accepted that, right?! Ha.

We would've been stuffed if it wasn't for our mates up there. Small-town New Zealand is so good because of the people that inhabit it! I'm including Tauranga in that, mainly because we have all the conveniences of a city, but all the kindness, generosity and giving-a-crap about thy neighbour of a small town. Whangarei only has the latter!

We stayed with great mates -- they helped us dig for four days straight. We felt so guilty about it. I mean, they were thanking us for coming up to stay and spending time with them, as they were digging on our property?!

If that's not enough to send the guilt in to overdrive, the Sunday was their first wedding anniversary! They chose (despite our vehement protesting) to spend that digging with us! Wow. Friends of the year! Calling it early.

We had lots of other mates help, with trailers and half-days of digging. While it was happening I was thinking about the times I lived in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch and how much differently our weekend would have gone.

I'm not saying mates wouldn't have helped, I'm saying they wouldn't have offered so readily and been stoked to be doing it.

My mates in Whangarei seemed to see it as an opportunity to all catch up, whilst actually being productive.

Under our back deck with only 1-metre clearance was one particularly nasty area to dig, so I was complaining about my blisters to anyone who would listen, while they were digging.

An electrician mate who was helping us dig said, "We used to have an apprentice called Blister  It was because he showed up after all my hard work! " Message received.

I feel like a pretty good definition of a great mate is one that would help you dig.

Think of all your mates now, hopefully you have some diggers in there, you never know when you'll need them!

Will Johnston is host of The Hits 95FM Day Show. Live and local from 9am-3pm, every weekday in the Bay of Plenty.