No parallel universe, it's just us

Chris Northover PHOTO/FILE

Imagine my astonishment, as a bloke new to Aramoho ...

I was driving along Somme Parade when the row of cars ahead of me - for no apparent reason - slowed and pulled off the road. Six or so cars, in formation, pulled over and parked.

No surprise that there were six carparks in a row on Somme Parade (eat your heart out, Auckland!) but why would they all pull over at once? Then it dawned on me - out of the mist, like a scene from The Darling Buds of May, headlights blazing, came one of our geriatric hearses followed by a line of mourners' cars.

When the hearse had passed by, the cars all pulled out in unison and carried on their way.

I sat pondering for a while. Was I in some parallel universe? No, the boy racer who had pulled out and blasted past all of us slow old wrinklies disavowed me of that thought.

I realised with delight that I had travelled back in time to present-day Wanganui. We just do things differently here. We respect each other, and what better time to show respect than when someone else is paying their respects to their loved ones.

The driver of the hearse will always give a friendly wave - it takes not 15 seconds of our day - and we all feel good about it.

Of course, it can lead to complications. Those with a good sense of the ridiculous will appreciate my dilemma when one day I was cutting the grass verge on my ride-on mower when a funeral passed by. I stopped the mower but I had to keep fighting the urge to leap off the mower and stand at attention with cap across my chest, head hung in a respectful pose.

If I forget to take out my rubbish bin, the blokes in the rubbish truck will still empty it even if it is on the other side of the road, THEN drop it back at my gate. In Wellington it must be the regulation 200 millimetres from the kerb or forget it.

Of course, in Aramoho I am less likely to forget rubbish day anyway - our neighbour will text me if he doesn't notice our bin on the footpath.

My favourite mechanic in our local garage tells me that if he doesn't have the right tool for a job one of his competitors will happily lend it to him. We believe in "paying it forward". Sales people in town will most likely be friends with the sales people from other competing companies - sharing a drink and a joke after work, not a sharpened fingernail in sight.

This mindset exists in nearly every part of society here. We have respect and are nice to each other. Don't expect this in most other places ... you might suffer some offensive language.

But there is a catch. We are so nice that we are often misunderstood by strangers or people new to here. They may believe that our "niceness" means that we are weak or stupid - they could compare us to the lowly in the places they come from and treat us all like lesser beings.

These poor souls need to be gently reminded and coached about life at our place, with neither tugging of forelocks nor drawing of blood.

So if you are from Portsmouth or Palmy, Hamburg or Jo'burg, or any other big-smoke burg, remember we are neither naive, weak nor stupid - we simply enjoy the pace of life here and see no reason to rush for a place in your rat race.

Chris Northover is a Wanganui-based former corporate lawyer who has worked in the fields of aviation, tourism, health and the environment - as well as designing electric cars and importing photo-voltaic panels.