Today’s guest post comes cour­tesy of Daisy Coles — you read more of her stuff over at daisyandzelda.wordpress.com

I’m sit­ting in my togs on shady grass in a hid­den cor­ner of Europe. I’m watch­ing the drag­on­flies flit round a lazy lit­tle branch of the Danube, with a wine spritzer in one hand and an incom­pre­hen­si­ble news­pa­per beside me. An absolute­ly for­eign heat wave is weigh­ing on my shoul­ders: there’s no ocean for thou­sands of kilo­me­tres, and the air here knows it. It gets heav­ier and heav­ier: it will only be bro­ken by one of those oth­er­world­ly after­noon storms tomor­row or the next day. Right now though, the sky is painful­ly blue.

But what am I think­ing about in this moment? Out of nowhere, a lit­tle pang strikes my heart. It’s nos­tal­gia – yes, it’s actu­al­ly nos­tal­gia – for the Welling­ton win­ter.

The weath­er is the big thing to hate about Welling­ton: the Welling­to­ni­an’s fly in the oint­ment; the Auck­lan­der’s glibly pulled trump card as to why their grass is green­er.

In win­ter it’s at its mean­est. Rain can come at you from any (and often seem­ing­ly every) direc­tion and gets at you inde­cent­ly, even under your clothes some­how: dis­re­gard­ing of your virtue. Wind will pick things up – whole, dense, seri­ous things, like books or food or birds – and hurl them at you petu­lant­ly. Com­bined, these two ele­ments will seize on your fresh­ly done hair and pick it apart until your spir­it is bro­ken entire­ly and you run cry­ing into the pub­lic loos in Aro Park, to stand in front of the fog­gy mir­ror won­der­ing what on earth you can do to make your­self pre­sentable at the office.

But you’ve got to admire it, right? It is ulti­mate­ly, glo­ri­ous­ly wild and unpre­dictable. Who knows where these awe­some forces come from? We have heard that they swarm up from Antarc­ti­ca itself, the most souther­ly of south­ern out­posts, to prey on us, unchecked by any bas­tions of civil­i­sa­tion along the way – how roman­tic is that thought? And then, as quick­ly as they come, they are gone. Sud­den­ly, you’re shov­ing your lat­est umbrel­la in the bus stop rub­bish bin and life is all sun­shine and a huge glassy har­bour and a long, cold beer at the St John’s Bar.

In Welling­ton win­ter, you’re often run­ning – or being pushed – down a wind tun­nel, from one haven to anoth­er. From a café where the warmth comes from a big shrine of a cof­fee machine to a bar that’s warm from peo­ple heat, every­one sit­ting round tables of house whites qui­et­ly let­ting their soak­ing wool­lens steam dry. From brunch to a gallery; from a restau­rant to a movie the­atre.

You start appre­ci­at­ing your work­place, because it’s heat­ed and your flat sure isn’t. Your flat smells the same as every Welling­ton flat you’ve ever had: kind of mush­roomy­-oniony, espe­cial­ly in the bath­room, which is per­pet­u­al­ly damp. You sus­pect there’s a hole in the ceil­ing in your bed­room where the bas­tard wind’s cun­ning fin­gers have actu­al­ly been push­ing water in at you, because your duvet nev­er feels com­plete­ly dry and there are tiny black mould spots on the bot­tom of your cur­tains.

There are cracks in the wood­en floor­boards in your lounge through which you can actu­al­ly see day­light, and this com­pris­es some of the only sun­shine your flat ever sees. After your week­ly Sat­ur­day gro­cery out­ing you walk up 58 steps between your car and your front door tot­ing your bags of food and it’s inevitably rain­ing cats and dogs and blow­ing a gale.

But these are clichés that, if they enter your head, you nev­er say out loud.

Because we don’t, do we? If a Welling­ton­ian com­ments on the weath­er, it’s ‘Ooh, it’s a bit windy!’ (cheer­ful­ly sar­don­ic) or ‘Ah, a bit of rain. Looks like it’s pass­ing over though’. Those who were born here nev­er give it a sec­ond thought. Those who end up here via places fur­ther north nev­er get used to it. They blithe­ly pre­tend they’re still in Hawke’s Bay and nev­er put on such things as rain­coats, wool­ly hats or long trousers – or even own them, half the time. Those who have grad­u­at­ed to a Welling­ton flat from a Dunedin one can only be glad they’re sit­ting around watch­ing Short­land Street and sip­ping their Milo wrapped in one sleep­ing bag, rather than two. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor is some­thing very kiwi: a blind­ness to hard­ship, a will­ing­ness to make do; a pride in it.

In gen­er­al, I’m not a fan of win­ter in itself (I’m one of those ex-Hawke’s Bay peo­ple deter­mined to deny that any item of cloth­ing with the word ‘ther­mal’ in it is ever nec­es­sary). In fact, I have trav­elled back and forth across the world over the last few years bliss­ful­ly avoid­ing it.

But I love Welling­ton. And I have this sus­pi­cion that Welling­ton’s win­ters are one of the things that defines it. I have lived through my share of them, and in my mind the col­lec­tive mem­o­ries are large and frus­trat­ing and cold, but ulti­mate­ly heart-warm­ing. They are all coloured by an unde­ni­able feel­ing of com­mu­ni­ty: the shared human, kiwi, Welling­ton­ian expe­ri­ence of eking out an exis­tence in a crazy lit­tle green val­ley as forces unfath­omable rage mete­o­ro­log­i­cal­ly above us, and laugh­ing about the bath­room mould.

Ah, I do miss it.

But for now, I’m going to sip on this spritzer and try to tease a lit­tle mean­ing out of this news­pa­per, and then present­ly I’m going to go inside and send mes­sages to peo­ple back home gloat­ing about this damned heat, I think.