Posts by Emma Hart
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Things like that seemed very important to people I met in suburbs such as Fendalton.
Fortunately, these people can be irritated at very little cost to yourself simply by pronouncing their suburb "FENdltin" instead of "fenDAHLton".
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Oh darlings, this isn't even the first of my threads to be jacked by British cars.
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Just let me know when y'all get tired of the argument ...
oo, oo, Page 9!
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No, it is achievable if you are happy enough to move to "Ganglands Linwood". $100k got us some grass in 1997.
I live about two hundred metres from a sign advertising a new subdivision as being in a "niche pocket of Linwood". FFS.
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Christopher - the most common one I've heard of is NaNoWriMo - a novel in a month. Most of the people I've seen embark on it, however, simply weren't prepared for how much time it takes. Old hands suggest filling your freezer with meals before you start and arranging child-care.
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Sofie: no danger, we love the lemon tree. It's massive and ridiculously productive. I've also spent the winter planning what to do with the veggie garden, it's just a matter of having the energy to maintain it.
A satisfying perfumed pretty garden. Anyone could have it, if they want.
Yeah, my previous collection of 35 aquilegias was mostly grown from sneakily collected seed. My neighbour and I swapped "bits", I had stuff from my mother's garden. Moving around means starting from scratch again, pretty much, but now I can just... go to the garden centre (which is a block away, temptations far too close) and just buy things.
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If you have a garden and tend it yourself, you're middle class.
All the women in my family are really keen gardeners. But. We've recently moved into a working-class neighbourhood, and the back yard is a working-class garden. Clothesline, huge vegetable garden, compost heap, lemon tree, berry bushes - nothing that doesn't produce food.
Before that we rented in a middle-class neighbourhood. Every house had an area of garden out the front which was painfully immaculate - and which nobody ever used. Its sole purpose was to look good from the street. I found it really uncomfortable in a Stepford-y sort of way.
Yes, I am currently replacing a fairly sensible garden with an English cottage monstrosity, but I don't care. It's for me, and I intend to sit in it pretty much all summer. I have hyacinths out, and daphne and daffodils about to bloom, and the jasmine I've trained over the front porch next to the banksia doing the same is just about in flower. So yeah, the 'why' matters too.
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Ah, missed that thread. I was off-grid on a UK visit. Carrying out first-hand anthropological work on the class phenomenon (see my edit above).
Oh, no worries, don't expect anyone to read everything. It was just either link to that, or bellow for Megan.
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standing-up collar
...whut?
We are not making this shit up. Surely you have those in Remuera?
Cf here.
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One of the first people I met when I arrived in NZ was the Prime Minister, David Lange
A man who, as a child, tried to hide his middle-classness by refusing to wear shoes to school.
Can someone please explain to me the significance of the turned-up collar as a class signifier in NZ, me being a furriner round here and not used to your local ways?
Um, it came up on one of David's threads. It's a Merivale Matron thing, though I'm pretty sure it's also a Sloan Ranger thing. Short blonde bob, string of pearls, standing-up collar. Even if you are also wearing gumboots.