So close, so close and yet so far

Here comes the sun! There goes the sun. Oh well, it’s still hotter than mid-summer Wellington.

Decided to be industrious and do some ironing before breakfast (oh have to tell you there’s this easy-iron spray stuff that supposedly makes ironing easier – I don’t care about that, it just makes your clothes smell so good. Cheapest perfume out).

So manage to make cup of filter coffee in the machine. Manage to turn iron on. Manage to turn TV on.

Next thing I’m up to channel 734, trying to find a non-Fox news channel … keep going … get into the Spanish TV section … up to channel 1,027. Probably broken the ‘channel’ button pushing it 1,027 times trying to get out of cable TV land and back to zero.

It’s funny, even though I’m in a country which is culturally similar to NZ I’ve often felt like a fish out of water just negotiating everyday things.

Working out how to use the coffee machine (remembering to stick the filter in!), avoiding accidentally racking up cable TV charges, working out how to set the iron to ‘cotton and linen’, paying for anything with scary eftpos-sign-name-on-screen machines. The list goes on.

Part of it is because I live a very simple life in Wellington. The fact I can use this iPad is worthy of an OBE. I haven’t owned a TV since the days they sat on cabinets and weighed more than your fridge. A microwave or dishwasher will never darken my doorstep.

I’m so used to doing things for myself without need for a car, machine, anything electronic, computerised or smarter than me.

So to find myself in the land where you can buy anything you ever imagined and are yet to imagine, full of things that think and act for you and anticipate your every move two days in advance, is at times overwhelming, fun, oh so tempting and downright scary. Have I broken it? Have I said/done the wrong thing? Have I offended someone?

Of course there’s only one solution to this. Practice makes perfect. So I need to move here.

If I could make a cake (if I could turn the oven on first) of:

• 2 cups of NZ’s work-life balance and welfare system
• 1/2 cup of southern sunshine
• 6 tonnes of biscuits, chicken fried steak and gumbo
• 3 cups of Chicago’s architecture, style and class
• 4 cups of southern hospitality
• 12 stones of a wealthy, absent bloke to pay for the whole thing, and do my tax returns.

Then I’ll be as happy as Larry. But not Larry King ‘cause look what happened to him.

We called into The Villages sales office. Where ‘office’ is defined as a palatial mansion with more Tiffany light shades, crystal bowls and unused rooms than I’ve ever seen in my life. Here I am in the parlour.

Tomorrow we’re going on a sales pitch tour round The Villages in an old tram. If you all chip in $80,000 (tax free!) I’ll buy you a pad here. Scrap among yourselves who gets to use it when. I’ll be down the road in a much flasher house, without my wealthy, absent husband.