Cake Tin Sevens

Among several other things, the rules say no nudity or near-nudity, no devices resembling, or which can be used as, a weapon, and, of course, no alcohol. There’s an ocean of bottled beer to buy inside, but don’t try to bring your own because you won’t get it in, a regulation which, I would say, is more strictly enforced than some of the others.
Yes, it has come and gone for the tenth or eleventh year in succession, the International Rugby Sevens weekend in Wellington, when the streets are roamed, the pubs raucously filled to overflowing and the ‘Cake Tin’ as it is popularly known, long since sold out to outlandishly fancy-dressed, overwhelmingly older-teenage and young adult throngs, some with an occasional eye for the rugby, most responding far more enthusiastically, with arms waving, a dark bottle clutched in one hand, hips swaying to the disco music resounding around the stadium at every opportunity, which means very often.
The police were quite happy with the outcome at the end of the first day. Only twenty-eight arrests, mostly for fighting and similar ‘minor offences’ (!), while eighty-two people were ejected from the stadium. Figures for the second day were a little higher, while sixty-to-seventy arrests were made during the all-night street party in town, a result with which the officers of the law were well content.
Afterwards it was congratulations all round. Wellington had done it again. All agree that this weekend is like no other on the International Sevens circuit, which includes Hong Kong and, believe it or not, Las Vegas. The great party had been held once more, with only one dissenting voice to be heard in the correspondence columns of the capital city’s morning newspaper, from a Kiwi resident abroad but who timed his visit home to coincide with the great event. Never again would he subject himself to such a beer-swilling masquerade that used the pretext of the rugby for a rave.
Now most New Zealanders take their rugby very seriously and one can safely assume that other true lovers of the game stay well away, though doubtless following events on the pitch in front of their television sets, where one can assume there is considerably less disturbance. So their voices are not heard in the great chorus of self-congratulations. But wait a moment. Something soon happened to disturb the party-goers and all those who support them - the weekend is worth millions of dollars to the city.
Wellington’s application to hold the New Zealand leg of the Sevens circuit permanently was turned down by the New Zealand Rugby Union Board. The bidding will be open to others after next year’s event, and Auckland and Dunedin have already expressed an interest. This caused great consternation in the capital city, tempered eventually by the confident assertion that no one else could possibly put on such a show.
Auckland and Dunedin evidently can’t rave as well - indeed, their ravers come to Wellington for the weekend and seem happy to continue doing so.

A cup of green tea

A cup of green tea cost four New Zealand dollars. I handed over a twenty-dollar note and waited for the change.
The plane from San Francisco is due in Auckland at ten minutes past five in the morning, but was half-an-hour early. So here I was in town having deposited my luggage, but with a lot of time to kill. This coffee bar was one of the few that were open so early.
The man behind the counter put a ten-dollar note in my hand, plus a one-dollar coin. I stared at the money through overtired eyes, then at him. “Four dollars,” I said.
He looked at me uncomprehendingly for a moment. “Oh,” he said suddenly, as though just remembering something, and produced another five dollars from the till. There was no apology.
It is only the second time anyone has tried to cheat me in New Zealand and sad to say, it was by non-native New Zealanders on both occasions, both in Auckland and at the same chain of coffee bars. This has never been a crime-free society, but in my previous experience, such behaviour was unthinkable here.
This is the country where when I phoned the Auckland-dwelling cousin of a Stockholm colleague to convey his regards, I was passed after a chat, to her husband, who asked me where I was staying. I told him.
“You’re not!” he stated emphatically. “You’re staying here!” And despite my protestations, within an hour they had come to collect me. I’d never met them before.
This is the country where, when we once turned up in Invercargill in the evening with our then three-year-old son and couldn’t find anywhere to stay, the chairman of the local motel-owners’ association, whom I had turned to as a last resort, assured me everywhere was full.
“We have a three-year-old child with us,” I said. “So what do we do?”
“You come round here,” he replied. “There’s no room in our motel, but we have a spare room in our house. We have a young child too.”
He later asked where we were going after Invercargill. We told him we’d really like to go to Stewart Island for a few days, whereupon he arranged it for us.
When we got back he had a room for us in the motel. This time we told him we were aiming to go next to Queenstown.
“My wife’s parents have a bach (holiday home) in Queenstown,” he said. “You can stay there. There’s no one in it at the moment.” They gave us bedding to take with us.
This is the country where, much more recently, I booked a bed-and-breakfast weekend in a small township about an hour’s train ride from Wellington, was met at the station by the host, fed afternoon tea by his wife, shown round the area, introduced to a number of people, taken to the biannual fair in a neighbouring town the next day, and given lunch the day after that before being taken back to the station.
Five days later my erstwhile host phoned me in Wellington and asked what I was doing that weekend. Surprised, I explained I was busy the next day, a Saturday, but had made no plans for the Sunday.
“I’ll come and pick you up,” he said. Which he did.
This is the country where I met some friends from Sweden who were on a cruise ship that called in at Wellington and who decided to take a taxi into town. When we got there, they gave the driver a tip - which he refused to take. (I had told them that normally you didn’t tip people here.)
I could go on. So it is doubly sad when someone from another background in the country’s biggest city, which has about one-in-three of the entire New Zealand population, tries to cheat me out of a few dollars.
------------
PS But incidently, the taxi driver I mentioned wasn’t a native Kiwi either.

Carbon footprint

As a keen supporter of public transport (though someone who will walk rather than ride whenever possible), a non-car driver and a person who would claim to be environmentally aware, I have a horrendous carbon footprint!

It has been created been far above ground level. In the past year I have flown from Stockholm to Chicago, Chicago to San Francisco, San Francisco to Auckland, Auckland to San Francisco, San Francisco to London, London to Stockholm, Stockholm to London, London to San Francisco, San Francisco to Maui (Hawaii), Maui to San Francisco, San Francisco to Frankfurt, Frankfurt to Stockholm, Stockholm to London, London to Stockholm, Stockholm to London yet again, London to San Francisco and San Francisco to Auckland once more!

No, I haven’t suddenly gone to work for one of the airlines, though I am certainly providing some of them with business at a time when they are most in need. I plead special (and very sad) circumstances this year, plus the fact that those closest to me live six thousand miles from my northerly habitat, but must also acknowledge an inceasingly irresistible urge to pack my computer and escape from Swedish winters, of which I have had my very fair share.

So now I’m in New Zealand again.