A small landmark in the obald lifespan with my leaving the realm of being a parent to teenagers. Youngest daughter is twenty today. I mention this merely as it gives a sort of lead in to Wellington as both my daughters live there. SWMBO and myself go down for the weekend as often as we can and I hate the place. This has nothing to do with the denizens of our capital but everything to do with the place itself. There is no marlin bearing water for hundreds of miles and that is just for starters. The weather is crap with a capital K and this is not just a rumour. The city is constructed on the side of innumerable hills and I'm sure that was fine when it was built and the motorised conveyances were all of one or two horsepower and had tails.
And this is my biggest beef about the place. It has to be the worst city in the solar system in which to own a proper car. The streets are too narrow, they are all on an incline and the garages. Have you seen them? Brick affairs with pitched roofs and wooden doors that have long ago tried the patience of their hinges to breaking point. I've often thought that the largest car you could get into any domestic garage in Wellington would be an A35 - not even room for a Morrie Minor.
But I was wrong. There is an absolutely marvellous picture on the back of the Herald this morning of a Smart car in a domestic garage in Kelburn. Smart cars are such an antithesis of what a car should be that I would almost consider buying one. Just for fun. I wouldn't actually do anything with it (because there is nothing you could usefully do with it) but would take it out of its matchbox at dinner parties as a conversation starter. But a bloke in Wellington has thought that he might get one so that he could actually sit in it and drive around and then put it in his apology for a garage when he got home. Well when he arrived back at his maison he finds he has had to cut notches in the door jambs of his garage to get the wing mirrors to fit through. This is for a car that you can park sideways in your average street parking spot.
Cofirmation that Wellington is a basket case. It was either designed for and by smurfs (and I have seen some walking down Courtney Place - but it was the Sevens weekend) or was not designed at all and this non design happened when the most advanced form of transport was a pair of stout boots. I have heard rumours that Wellington was designed in Britain as 'Colonial Large Town, Overseas for the use of, Mark2' and came out of the 'To be built on flat land' box. When they got the plan to Wellington and found there was the odd hill around and bits of the countryside were likely to fall into the harbour at the merest seismic hoccough they just said 'Sod it' and used the plan anyway.
Sounds very believable to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment