The Indian Uber driver and I disagreed. It was nothing to do with the journey. It was a political disagreement. Quite a few of the Uber drivers in Christchurch are from India and the majority of them seem to be from the Punjab. I’d visited Amritsar before covid so we would talk about that. I enjoy the discussions with all my Uber drivers, the ones that are prepared to talk that is, and most of them are. With the drivers who originated from India we often talk politics. It’s rather the same as when they discover I live in London. They ask what I think of Boris.

The disagreement was about the present Prime Minister of India, Mr Modi and the BJP. I’m basically not in favour. Nor are most of my Uber drivers. I think the Prime Minister and his party are divisive. So do most of my Uber drivers. But not this one. He was from Chennai and a strong supporter of Mr Modi and his government with facts and reasoned arguments to support his view. He left me needing to check my facts, which I’ve done thanks to google, and to clarify my assumptions.

But the main thing I discovered was that I learned far more from him, talking and listening to him and having my views challenged by him, than by the drivers who shared my views. The discussion with the Modi supporter hasn’t changed my opinion. It has increased my understanding. Clearly, if I want to learn more, I need to have more discussions with people with whom I disagree.

Saturday did not begin well. It began as a very dark day. The sun was shining and everything in the world was in its place. I had slept well. But there was that personal darkness which is difficult to confront let alone do something about. It has happened before, of course, and it happened in London during lockdown and more than once on a Saturday. I wonder if there’s something about Saturday, the last day of the week.

Anyway when last Saturday began it wasn’t great and it came with the timely reminder that being in a covid free country, on a fine autumn day, with no serious matters to worry about, does not mean, automatically, that everything in one’s garden is rosey.

My initial response was to go back to bed. To go back to sleep. To shut everything out and to ‘turn my face to the wall’. Sleep is often an attractive alternative to facing the darkness that’s there when awake. I totally understand why those in prison increase their sleeping time for as long as possible. That way you can avoid some of an unappealing awake time. But, of course, deep down you know it’s not a good idea to sleep this easy sleep for ever, as attractive as that may seem to be.

So, what else to do? I had forgotten how difficult it can be to make the effort and force oneself to do what one knows is the sensible, right, useful, good, and whatever else, thing to do. After a lot of avoidance tactics I managed to put a load of washing in the machine and turn it on. There were other things that needed to be done but I knew that I needed to walk to Jellie Park and to swim. The gym bag packed, I set out and passed an elderly woman walking slowly with a crutch. She had clearly had a stroke and was taking her required exercise. She gave me a very cheerful, ‘Good afternoon,’ to which I replied.

The pools were teeming with children. It was Saturday afternoon after all. They sometimes encroached on the slow lane which had one other occupant, a young man who couldn’t swim more than a few yards at a time. After I’d done two lengths he said to me, admiringly,
‘You can swim!’ I replied that I was very slow. He repeated,
‘But you can swim!’
I told him that I hadn’t always been able to swim and that my swimming teacher had told me to put my face in the water and blow bubbles and that I had started swimming doing dog paddle. He didn’t think that dog paddle was swimming and I said that I didn’t really know but that I thought dog paddle was swimming and that it was a perfectly good way to start. His sister came to see how he was getting on. She’d been to the gym, not swimming, and she agreed with me that dog paddle was swimming. He seemed encouraged and swam, dog paddle.

A number of children came to play in the slow lane and I said to one of the pool attendants that I really did like children however I would like them even more if they played in their own area and stopped playing in the slow lane. She agreed and sorted that out. One of the children gave me a speaking look and then grinned cheerfully. I’m rather afraid she may have been a relative of mine and that she recognised me though I didn’t recognise her. New Zealand is a village.

After the swim I went to the supermarket for bits and pieces then to visit a friend in a retirement village then on to a most enjoyable and relaxed dinner with more friends. Having had a day which started very badly it ended very well indeed. I must remember though, that, somewhere in the middle of the day it needed real effort to move, and, that it was worth the effort.

When I went to the hospital the other day, a follow up on the treatment for my eyes, I was allocated to the Professor. There were two young interns in on the consultation and the Professor began by asking why I lived in the United Kingdom and not in New Zealand. I gave my usual reply which is that I don’t really live in the United Kingdom but rather in London. And that I think some people are city people and some village people and that that is not a matter of right and wrong but is just the way people are. And that I am a city person. And that New Zealand is a Village.

The Professor asked the interns what they thought. It seemed they agreed. At some stage in this discussion I suggested that Christchurch was the only city in New Zealand where people asked you what school you had been to. Both the interns agreed with that. The Professor mentioned that he had been to school in Timaru, the city south of Christchurch. Our discussion continued and was wide ranging before we got onto the subject of my eyes. Then there was treatment of the eyes, some lasering and an injection with pauses in between. The pauses gave me time to think and to investigate a thought that had come to mind.

When I returned to the Professor’s room for my final consultation I asked him if his father lived in Timaru and he said that he did. I then said,
‘I think your father is engaged to be married to my brother-in-law’s sister.’
‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Yes. New Zealand is a Village.’

On Mothering Sunday the church was packed – standing room only. There were over four hundred people there for the main service of the Sunday. I was keeping the seat beside me for a friend who was coming to lunch after the service. An older woman came to sit next to me and I apologised to her and said that I was keeping the seat for someone. She began to move away until a person in the pew behind said that if everyone moved along there would be space for the woman and my friend, yet to arrive. We did. She sat. And she began a conversation with the person in the pew behind.

I took no notice of this, of course, until I heard the words, ‘Peel Forest’. It’s often the case, I find, that you overhear nothing of someone else’s conversation until a name or a place that you know is mentioned. Peel Forest is the village close to where I grew up and where I first went to school. The woman one seat away from me said to the person in the pew behind,
‘The only connection I have with Peel Forest is Simon Acland.’
‘You are sitting next to him,’ said the person in the pew behind.
The woman and I turned to face each other and she said to me,
‘My father was your Godfather.’
And indeed he was. We are meeting for lunch after church next Sunday.

STREET SIGNS

There are two street signs, previously unfamiliar to me, near where I am staying in Christchurch. One states ‘No Cruising’. I gather Christchurch has a problem with cruising which means ‘driving a vehicle repeatedly in the same direction, and over the same section of road, in a way that either draws attention to the power or sound of the engine, or that creates a convoy of vehicles that interferes with traffic flow’. Clearly there are parts of London, Knightsbridge for example, that could do with the same restriction. However I do wonder if therefore it’s ok to drive ‘in a way that either draws attention to the power etc’ where there are no, ‘No Cruising’ signs?

The other sign states ‘Kiss + go’. It is outside the Fendalton Open Air Primary School. I should have been able to work that out but it took me a little time. The sign indicates a maximum two minute waiting period for leaving children at the school gate. It’s an ‘Open Air’ Primary School because in 1924 the school, established in 1875, started Open Air classes. That was based on pilot programmes in England where it was found that plenty of fresh air and open spaced classrooms allowed children to recover more quickly from disease. The new classrooms had wide verandahs, large windows and faced the sun. They still do. And they still help children recover more quickly from disease. There’s a thought.

As well as this ‘Open Air’ school New Zealand has Normal Schools and Model Schools. The Normal Schools derive from the sixteenth century French Les Ecoles Normales and, like others world wide, is associated with teacher training. The Model schools are not for aspiring models but are also for training teachers. These were founded as training centres for teachers who would work in country schools. A model, in the city, for a country school. I continue to live and learn.

When I ask English friends what they are going to be doing for the weekend they say,
‘Going away.’
If I ask where, they reply,
‘To the country.’
If I persist and wonder where in the country, or, to whom, I might get, ‘Wiltshire’, and, ‘Friends’.
I will never get, ‘Mind your own business.’ That would be rude and not, in my experience, the English way.

Here in New Zealand if I ask what someone is doing for the weekend I get the full timetable, hour by hour, every name and address of where they will be and, who with, and even the names of some people they might encounter during the weekend or might not. Perhaps that’s an exaggeration, or perhaps not. Or, I could be told, ‘Mind your own business’. But that would be unusual. Usually it’s the full works. It’s the New Zealand way. Different countries, different cultures.

Walking back from the swimming pool the other day I said, ‘Good Morning,’ To a man working in his front garden. He replied,
‘Morning. Beautiful day. Been to Jellie Park?’
I said that I had and that I tried to go most days, for a swim. We then talked about the issues that come with age and the facilities at Jellie Park. We moved on to local politics, national politics, the state of the economy, and the world at large. We agreed that the situation in Myanmar Burma seemed terrible. He, having established that I lived in London and had served my time in isolation on arrival in New Zealand, he wanted to know what the Isolation Facility was like and how people were coping in the United Kingdom. He thought he still had cousins in the North of England but he wasn’t in touch with them and he had once been to London. He really wanted to know how things were. I answered as best I could.

This was not an isolated incident. On another day, at Jellie Park, when the weather had turned dull, I got into a conversation with one of the receptionists and two other people at the reception counter over whether or not it was ok to leave your washing on the line when it starts raining. Admittedly I had told the receptionist that I’d just hung out the washing and I didn’t want to walk home to take it in, ‘Just in case’. The consensus was that in New Zealand you can, leave the washing out that is, because the atmosphere is comparatively clean but that in London you can’t because it isn’t. And following on from that we got onto how people were coping with covid in the United Kingdom and how good the vaccination programme seemed to be.

New Zealanders talk. And, it seems to me, choose to have time to talk. I know I talk. Too much according to some of my family who tell me when they’ve had enough. That’s fair. But it’s not just me. I’m sure one of the reasons New Zealanders have a reputation around the world for being friendly is because of this readiness to talk. Generally, I think, we’re interested in other people and are prepared to listen as well as talk. I wonder if it’s partly because of our geographical isolation and our heritage. In the early days of the European settlement people longed for visitors and for news from outside. In 1900 the population was under one million and even now, New Zealand, approximately the same size as the United Kingdom, has a population of only five million.

And then I remembered back to 1963 when my mother came to London and stayed in my flat in Notting Hill. We were going to Oxford Circus on the London Underground and my mother knew perfectly well that you don’t speak to people on the Underground. Further down the platform was a tall African man in tribal robes and a feather headdress – not a common sight in those days. My mother asked me who he was and I told her that I thought he was Prince Monolulu and that he was a racing tipster.
‘What’s that?’ she asked me and when I said that I didn’t know she said,
‘I’m going to ask him.’
‘You can’t,’ I said. ‘You don’t speak to people on the Underground.’
‘We’re not on the Underground,’ she said. ‘We’re on the platform.’
She knew perfectly well that the same rules applied but then a train came in and we got on. So did Prince Monolulu. And into the same carriage.

I went down the other end of the carriage and my mother went up to Prince Monolulu who had found a seat. She said, ‘I’m Mrs Acland from New Zealand. My son, who’s there down the other end of the carriage, tells me that you are Prince Monolulu and that you’re a racing tipster. What is that?’
Prince Monolulu told the person sitting next to him to get up and to give my mother a seat. He did. My mother sat and Prince Monolulu began to tell her about being a racing tipster.’
‘Isn’t that fascinating!’ My mother said to a person sitting opposite. Someone else said that her sister had emigrated to New Zealand some years earlier and wondered whether my mother might have met her. By the time we reached Oxford Circus you would have thought everyone in that carriage was at a cocktail party only without the cocktails. When we got off the train people called out, ‘Enjoy london,’ and, ‘Have a good time.’ And we’d been on the London Underground where no one talks to anyone. But New Zealanders do talk.

POST SCRIPT MARCH 16th AN EDITORIAL DECISION

On March 16th a Service of Remembrance was held in Christchurch to mark the second anniversary of the terrorist shootings at the Christchurch Mosques in which 51 people were killed and 40 injured. The Prime Minister spoke as did Muslim leaders and survivors. Representatives from all political parties attended as well as local community leaders and the families of those killed, survivors, and members of the general public. On the television news that evening. The first item was a race, not the final, in the America’s Cup. The remembrance of the Christchurch shootings was the second item. An editorial decision.

There was an earthquake on Thursday night. Well really it was Friday morning at 2.27am to be precise. And I know that because when the house stopped shaking and the doors stopped banging and the lights stopped swinging I looked on my iPad to see what was going on. There had been a magnitude 7.3 earthquake off the coast of Gisborne not too far from where I was staying in Hawkes Bay and certainly close enough for the house to shake etc.

This was the first earthquake I’ve experienced since I was a child and I didn’t like it at all. I know it was nothing in comparison to what many New Zealanders have experienced in recent years. After this earthquake there were two more quakes near the Kermadec Islands to the North of New Zealand. They were later and were followed by tsunami warnings. People on the coast were evacuated to high ground.

I found it difficult to get back to sleep and, for the rest of the night and much of the day, I followed what was happening on the iPad and on the television news. There seemed to have been little damage to property. More than anything else I noticed how good humoured everyone who was shown on television appeared to be. They had been woken up by sirens warning of a possible tsunami. They were required to move out. A lot of people were interviewed and most seemed calm and rather philosophical. Some were nervous and a bit fearful. Most were smiling and relaxed. When the all clear was sounded they simply went home to continue whatever they’d been doing. Everyone seemed positive and understanding of the disruption to their lives.

On reflection I wonder as much about the television presentation as the events themselves. The television presentation on this occasion was very positive and calming. I’ve always known that when people are interviewed on the spot during an event like this there are far more people interviewed than the few we see and hear on the television. Some people are more articulate than others. Some pull funny faces or don’t get the drift of the questions. Selection is necessary and the selection of who we see and what we hear is made by the reporter or by the editor. There is the key to it all.

And I remember when I was a Cadet Reporter on the Christchurch Star newspaper, my first job on leaving school. I was sent to cover a meeting. Thank goodness I can’t remember what it was. It can’t have been too important or someone more senior would have been given the job. Another reporter was there from the Christchurch Press, the morning paper. The woman who was chairing the meeting made it quite clear to us that she did not like reporters, (in those days we were called reporters not journalists), and that we were there on sufferance.

In the course of the meeting she made seven or eight very sensible and quotable comments and one that made her appear rather stupid. After the meeting I went back to the office to write up the story – quite a short piece – and left it in the sub editors’ tray. For my shame I had included the woman’s one stupid comment and none of the sensible ones. Well, it was accurate reporting. She had said it. The Christchurch Press came out first. Their reporter had included the stupid comment in his account of the meeting as well. Not that that justified anything.

Last Saturday evening in Christchurch my mobile phone suddenly buzzed loudly. It wasn’t any of its usual ring sounds just a rather insistent buzz. When I looked at the phone I saw a Covid Alert message. It stated that Auckland was to be in Covid Level 3 from 6.00am the following morning and the rest of the country at Level 2. Level 3 basically means that everyone must stay at home. From what I could work out Level 2 means that there are some general restrictions such as gatherings of more than 100 people not allowed and restrictions on businesses, restaurants and bars. However I could fly to Hawkes Bay as planned.

During the week more details have been revealed both of the cause of the change in Levels and the results. It seems to me that the New Zealand government’s policy from the beginning of the Covid outbreak was to have one serious and strictly enforced general lockdown, which happened for six weeks last March, so that there would be no need for a ‘Stop, Start’ approach to dealing with the pandemic. Also that there would be different Levels of Lockdown enforced as and when needed. The comparative freedom that I am enjoying today is because of this approach. I am in Hawkes Bay, Level 2.

Not so for the people of Auckland nor for any of those who had organised or were taking part in events involving more than one hundred people. The Auckland Theatre Company has had to abandon its tour of ‘Two Ladies’, not to mention the America’s Cup postponed, a ‘Round the Bays’ run involving thousands cancelled, along with hundreds of events, a ‘Lantern Festival’ especially for the Chinese community in Auckland, a ‘Holi Festival’ for the Indian community and others in Christchurch, and so many other sports events, charity events, community celebrations throughout the country, all cancelled.

The ‘Horse of the Year 2021’, a major event involving not just months but years of planning has been cancelled. The event, due to take place in Hawkes Bay from March 9th to 14th, attracts over 45,000 spectators, 1900 horses and 1500 riders. But not this year.

And all this because of the actions of three people. A woman who had tested positive and was meant to be in self isolation went for a walk with a friend. That was a mistake. The friend, unwittingly of course, passed the virus to her son, an intelligent young man (well, he is in tertiary education), who did not wait in self isolation for the results of a covid test despite having minor symptoms. That was a mistake. Having had the test he went straight to the gym, his university and various other places. That was a big mistake. His Covid test result came back positive. I think that was the scenario. Certainly the mistakes made by these three people have caused the change in Levels. Now New Zealand waits for evidence of possible further transmission.

The government’s policy depends on the cooperation of the people and the Prime Minister has been very reluctant to lay blame for the occasional and contained outbreaks so far. This time however her frustration has showed. The danger is that if individuals are pilloried for their mistakes others will be less inclined to tell the truth about their contacts. Truthful cooperation is key in all of this.

Over recent years the calls for individual rights and freedoms to be recognised have increased. I have not detected a corresponding call for the recognition of individual responsibilities nor of the rights of the community. Events here this last week have shown the patience and forbearance of most New Zealanders, some greater awareness of just how much the actions of a few can affect the lives of many, and a degree of frustration.

Rarely, I suspect, can the words of John Donne’s Meditation 17, ‘No man is an island, entire of itself;’ have been so obviously realised.