Worzels World - A Winter of Content?

 

I have a home that I enjoy where I can live the way I choose in the manner I prefer. There are very few who would choose what I have chosen but they are free to do it their way at their place. Surely this is a major reason for home ownership.

Time at home is the reward I give myself for work done elsewhere. When I have a holiday, I go home. Of course like every property owner I do a lot of work at home too. But if it is the sort of work you enjoy then that too is as good as a holiday.

I have tried the other types of holiday. I have sat in traffic on hot summer days in even hotter stationary cars. I was once stranded and starved in a Moscow airport devoid of food and roubles waiting for a delayed connecting flight. I have slept on a wooden bench in a Belgian train station and on another in a shepherds hut in Morocco. (Wooden benches are universal: I would assert that the quality of a civilisation can be reasonably gauged by the quality of its wooden benches.)

All of these things were more or less endured during what might be termed a holiday. I did many foolish things that resulted in discomfort and danger but I have learnt not to do such things any more. I went to my doctor and told her my arm was hurt in three places. She advised me to stop going to those places. I heeded her advice.

In all my wanderings I have seen nowhere better to stay put than right here. And the wider world was a kinder place back when I was on holidays.

Okay so our farmers have been duped by big business but then who hasn’t? And ‘Corporate Capture’ has slid it’s greedy tentacles through our district in what appears to have now been allocated as common debt. Ratepayers are being bled to fill the pockets of foreign shareholders. Such is the trickery of compounding interest. Yet it is but a shadow of the shenanigans in Europe and the US. If the news reports are in any way related to what is actually happening elsewhere then we are living pretty well here in comparison.

I need only cite that Donald Trump could conceivably become president of the United States as proof of the confused times in which we live. But reports from abroad also include drone strikes and suicide bombers, refugees, extremists, fundamentalists and terrorists. And lately unprecedented numbers of planes falling out of the sky. Seems like there is unrest and upheaval everywhere in a simmering world doing its utmost to reach boiling point.

Can this confused amalgam of hatred and destruction be called World War Three? If so then at present it is far removed from us. The world at large may be at crisis point but my tomatoes grew well this year and hasn’t the autumn been pleasant?

While the world at large looks to be growing increasingly dodgy at best, we can at least hunker down here at home in Northland, New Zealand. In uncertain times it is no disadvantage to live in a slower steadier place at a slower steadier pace. The food here is good, the people mostly decent. We have yet to completely ravage our environment. The land, if not totally unpolluted, is at least not poisoned. Our water is fairly clean and there is as yet no shortage of it. None of these things can be taken for granted elsewhere. This is why it is important not to tell anyone else about this because it’s people that spoil things and the less people the more sustainable the environment.

The holiday migration of Auckland campers northward always disturbs me. They pay a kings ransom to live in Auckland but given half a chance they swarm up here like well heeled refugees.

Of course the broadband is slow, but the Internet is not really a necessity, is it? Sometimes I reckon we’re better off without its influence. Some of the roads are in poor nick and the promised by-election bridges have, like other politicians promises, not materialised. But who cares? Life goes on and the job gets done anyway. Going elsewhere only costs time and money and wherever else you go, it’s probably not as good as where you started from anyway.

So I have resolved to treat myself to a holiday this winter. I’ll be right at home.

n prof_worzel@hotmail.com

“… we can at least hunker down here at home in Northland, New Zealand. In uncertain times it is no disadvantage to live in a slower steadier place at a slower steadier pace.”