“Free to those that can afford it, very expensive to those that can’t.” Withnail and I, 1987

I found myself coming on holiday by mistake. Not because we had lifted a key from Uncle Monty[1] but because a work event moved dates when I had already booked tickets and arranged dog care. So, I found myself setting off for 4 nights in Otago with one night in Berhampore beforehand to settle the dog down and spend some time with mum.

And so on an unseasonably brisk Thursday in October I find myself , and Rubes being driven to town by mum over the new transmission gully road. Mum is nervous , change unsettles her. The new route between Waikanae and Wellington is a minor trauma , a vector of stress. She only has the use of one eye after a stroke ended her working life 15 or so years ago. She drives well but it dents her confidence. I don’t drive at all having taken after my late father, neither does my brother. We can’t lift this responsibility from her. It’s a failing.
Mum , feeling the cold a lot more than me has the heating set to ‘Saharan Extreme’ , Rubes shuffles between the back seat and my lap trying to get comfortable, she pants with a wild look in her eye. The hot dry air pulls the moisture from my eyes and leaves my mouth and throat dry and dusty. Just when I think it’s too much and I will have to ask mum to turn down the heat we hit Wellington , free from the oppression of the motorway I can lower the window and both the dog and myself bask in the cool air rushing in.

Berhampore is a relic of empire. It’s name comes from the city Berhampore in Bengal , the suburb having been laid out by civil engineers and administrators who escaped the heat of colonial India to weather the gales of Cook Strait . Well, we say civil engineers and administrators but solders is probably a more accurate description. Civil Engineering and administration casts an image of British bureaucratic order. Stuffy Victorians with heavy set spectacles making sure the streets followed the contours of the land. As a pakeha or ‘European New Zealander’ it’s tempting to imagine our origins on this land as being order and civil construction. The reality was I suspect more about force.  

Berhampore has streets of Edwardian villas and semidetached cottages that were once shiny and modern, then reviled run down and cheap, and are now expensive and controversial. Most importantly for me Berhampore was, is, and always shall be home.
I now live an hour’s drive to the north on the Kapiti Coast. It is nice and I have many things there I would not have in the city including my business but at my core I am a South Wellington boy. I was reared in the southerly whipping off Cook Strait and it won’t come back out of me easily.

My parents came here in the late 70’s. Having dated since their teens mum had then set off alone for blighty on her O.E. She travelled England, had Christmas dinner in an empty swimming pool in Oxfordshire, worked in a gin factory, drank pints of ale in wonderfully dusty dark old pubs. Dad wanted her back. She wanted a baby. A deal was struck. Mum returned to NZ. They lived in a flat in Glenmore Street by the Botanical Gardens in town for a while, then in 1977 the opportunity to buy a villar in Emerson St Berhampore reared up. The previous owner had come undone financially. The rumour of his liquidity had turned to evidence of insolvency. My parents took on the debt, they paid off the house in two years. They had to. In 1979 dad fulfilled his part of the bargain and I was born.   

Ruby is staying with my friend Shannon , dog walker by week , dog lover this weekend. She has a one room wide workers cottage down the hill from my family home where mum still resides. We unload the crate and bean bag I have packed to make Rubes feel at home, I load in my luggage which seems as always far too much for such a small trip. I drink a beer while mum goes to park the car at home. I feel good . I’m Home.

We spend the night at the local pub, now a Sprig and Fern chain pub after being many things through the years. In my childhood it was our local post office . I remember the NZ Coat of Arms on the door, the plush red velvet stanchion ropes that set out the queues . The smell of the salami factory smokers across the road. Neoliberlism came along and our post office had to go. We organised , we wore ‘Save our post office!’ badges , we lost. It’s now a pub.

Mum and I eat pizza and curly fries, drink beer and talk about everything. Rubes sits below the leaner , two ladies come and heap attention on her, they tell us about their dog that in it’s 18th year still used to visit the pub but in a push chair. It’s a good evening. We walk mum home past my primary school. When I was there , there was a derelict villa, formerly the principal’s residence or perhaps the caretaker’s house, it sat on what is now a playground. We used to go into “the haunted house” despite it being strictly out of bounds. We never found ghosts, just pornography.

Kissing Mum goodnight I wander down to Shannon’s past the house whose garage used to be our greengrocer, a man named George and his Chinese assistant used to sell us fruit and vegetables from the suburban garage, the Chinese man was flanked everywhere he went by two large Alsatian dogs. One night George died in his sleep, and after that we got our vegetables from the supermarket.
I walk on past the house of the girl whose body I first explored , past the bowling club now a golf club , down a raised footpath reinforced against gravity by 120 year old concrete and to bed. I sleep surrounded by the ghosts of a million memories.

---

[1] Uncle Monty is the gloriously over dramatic camp character played by Richard Griffiths in the wonderful 1987 film Withnail and I, watch it if you haven’t already.