Wyn Drabble: There's no place like home

New Zealand drivers are not the best in the world, especially when it comes to indicating, says Wyn Drabble. Photo / File

I have just finished reading an article about the feelings of Kiwi expats returning to their homeland for Covid-19 safety reasons. It expands on the reality that you see home through different glasses after you have been away a while.

I can attest to this, based on my first return after two years away and again later after 18 years away. I wanted to know, without having to do any proper research, whether young people feel the same way today as I felt all those years ago.

It seems very little has changed. The writer felt, as indeed did I, the sense of space and green and clean air. As I travelled by airport bus from Auckland airport in 1976, I wondered where the people were. And why there were farm animals and corrugated roofs and No 8 wire fences on the route to the city.

And I soon realised why bus fares were far higher than they had been in London. From one stop in Auckland to the next, the bus might pass 10 households from which to draw potential passengers.

In London, the equivalent bus would pass a potential customer base of, say, 7000 people – I told you I wasn't going to get bogged down in pesky research – coming from terrace houses, high-rise apartment blocks, medium-rise apartment blocks and low-rise apartment blocks.

No wonder the fare was 3 pence and the bus was full. No wonder the Auckland fare was a dollar and there were five people on the bus.

It seems the shock of hearing your own accent again hasn't changed either. My shock first came in 1976 when I boarded my last-leg flight (Singapore to Auckland) home. Suddenly I was sitting in an Air New Zealand metal tube and the overwhelming sound was of nasal voices emitting pinched vowels.

And the letter L seemed to have disappeared from words. "Wool" was suddenly "woow" and "balcony" was "bowcony". Where the 'ell had the Ls gone?

Yes, in 2019 an important international travel publication declared the Noo Zild accent to be the sexiest on the planet but the writer of the article I have just read was just as shocked as I was on hearing it again.

Wyn Drabble

We also agreed on the matter of cold houses. Only after being away do we seem to understand that other countries as cold as ours have centrally-heated dwellings. For some reason, we seem to grow up accepting the cold.

Both of us also agree on how bad New Zealand drivers are compared with other First World countries. Indicating is seen by many as optional and the number of drivers who haven't grasped the roundabout rules is almost as large as the number who talk on their phones or, worse still, text while driving.

Of course, many of us, then and now, have experienced driving in places such as Cairo or Casablanca, where the only road rule appears to be that you should honk your horn. A lot.

And carrying wild livestock astride the petrol tank of your motor scooter is considered normal behaviour. Young children ride as pillion passengers on the same scooter. Those still don't prepare us for the more "civilised" atrocities of our Kiwi drivers.

Perhaps the only point we differed on was food. When I first returned in the 1970s it was definitely a retrograde step after experiencing Europe. My first visit to Paris took me to foodie heaven just cruising the streets reading the menus (I couldn't afford to enter and eat).

Now, that's not the case and we can be proud of the food and coffee on offer, so, to all you Covid-19 returnees, tuck in and enjoy it. You're home!

Haere mai.

Wyn Drabble is a teacher of English, a writer, musician and public speaker.