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.