Travel writer Sarah Pollok and her partner Jono Croucher. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Travel writer Sarah Pollok and her partner Jono Croucher. Photo / Dean Purcell.
Sarah Pollok is a multi-media journalist for NZME who works mainly in Travel. Jono Croucher is a project manager for an advertising agency and plays cello and guitar for folk band Mountain Boy. The couple met in 2016. They live a short distance away from each other in Auckland.
Sarah says... He’s really romantic and a very good pursuer.
We met through friends. I was finishing my first year of university, and I was about to do an exchange in my second year. Jono said, “do you want to date?” and I said, “I’d love to. But I’m leaving in eight months on an exchange, and I’m going single”.
We had this amazing summer. It was so romantic and so much fun. Then it came time for me to leave. And I was like, “well, this has been real. I’ve loved this so much”. And Jono said, “what? We can make it work, right?” And I said, “no, no, you know I’m going”.
I was going to Oxford for a semester. We briefly caught up in France at the very beginning of the trip because Jono happened to be in the UK visiting family. We had a wonderful time in France as friends. We didn’t book a place to stay in Paris because we just thought we’d stay up all night, but it was freezing cold. We went knocking on hotel doors asking for a room.
We left things open, and I had it in my head we were possibly the right people at the wrong time.
I did my exchange and came back, and Jono asked if I wanted to catch up for coffee. We started chatting about what we’d been up to and he said he had some news – he was moving to London, and he wanted us to give it another try. I said, “you’ve just told me you’re moving to London”. It felt a bit like we were ships in the night.
Life went on and I finished my final year at university and dated someone else. In 2019 I did a post-grad year in Melbourne. All this time, Jono was in London and we didn’t talk at all. He thought it would be too hard to be friends and when you’re at different ends of the world it does feel a bit “out of sight, out of mind”.
Until January 2020. I’d gone over to the UK to spend Christmas with my extended family and had two days in London before flying home to Auckland. On the first day, I got a message from Jono asking if I was in the city and if I ‘fancy seeing an old friend for a drink?’ So, the next night we went to a wine bar in Shoreditch and afterwards we just walked around the city for hours, just walking and talking. I think I caught the very last bus home that night and boarded a plane the next morning.
We messaged a little bit back and forth over January and February but things naturally tapered off.
I got a job and after my first day in March my best friend said, “let’s get a drink”. We’re chatting away and having a few drinks and she says, “oh, have you heard about Jono? I heard he ended things with the person he was dating, but I’m not 100 per cent sure.” Well, as soon as I got home I messaged him saying “Jonathan, I’ve heard some things. And I just need to check the things that I’ve heard have actually happened.”
Because of the time difference, I went to sleep but woke up to a voice message saying he was single and still had feelings for me.
Then, the world basically shut down, and we went into lockdown. I was at home, and he was in a flat on his own in Notting Hill as all his flatmates had left. We kept messaging and talked about anything and everything.
"We did all the classic Zoom things like watching a movie at the same time," Sarah says. Photo / Supplied.
Every day, we would call and do a Code Cracker together online. We joked our relationship was sustained through Code Cracker because it gave us a reason to call every single day, even if it was just for five minutes.
Jono came back to New Zealand and got out of isolation on November 1, 2020, and we’ve been together ever since. He mellows me out – it’s good. I love Jono’s positivity. He’s unshakeably optimistic. I loved that about him when we first started dating and it hasn’t changed.
Jono says... Sarah had a conversation with our mutual friend, Mitch and he gave me a call afterwards. Mitch works in sales, and I was in sales at the time. He calls me and says, “Jono, I’ve got a warm lead”. Mitch is a stirrer, but we kind of needed the stirring.
A friend was housesitting in Mt Eden and there was a dinner there. I saw Sarah, we met, and I thought “yeah, she’s good”. [Good because of] the excitement she has for life and conversations, the way she engages you when she speaks to you.
I like the way she doesn’t do things by halves – she’s either all in or not interested at all.
Our first date was at a cafe called Holm, on K Rd. Sarah sat down and said, “let’s jump to it”. She pulled out the New York Times list of “The 36 Questions that Lead to Love”. It was a lot, but why muck around? And that is so characteristic of who she is as a person. The dial was turned right up to 10. [We both had an] interest in understanding each other as people and being willing to dive a bit deeper.
"I like the way she doesn’t do things by halves – she’s either all in or not interested at all," says Jono. Photo / Dean Purcell.
When I saw Sarah in Shoreditch, I was seeing a girl who wanted to move back to Wales, so it was already a bit on the rocks. When Sarah and I caught up the intention was really, really pure. I just wanted to see an old friend and maybe get some closure but then Sarah went and derailed that [laughs].
I ended up splitting up with the girl at the end of that week after I realised how excited I felt when I was with someone like Sarah.
[Being around Sarah] Things feel conquerable and achievable. Whatever idea you have tossing around, she enables it, gives you excitement and does everything she can to enable that vision.
