My vow to never stay in a dormitory again, proves rather short lived, and the latest such accommodation – a remarkable, spatial-physics defying experiment to squeeze eight beds into a cupboard – is not the most comfortable of arrangements and in truth resembles one of those clown cars that they are supposed to have in circuses: a tiny space into which a constant stream of backpackers and their backpacks stream into obliviously. All in all, I have decided that dormitories are simply
too sociable, particularly if you have to get up at seven in the morning while everyone else comes in at around three or so, and so I have come to understand that there are only two other viable possibilities.
One is to move into a ‘residence’, which provide student-style accommodation and consist of bland, blank-looking buildings full of single rooms clad in painted breeze blocks with desks and creaking beds – rent is about the same price as the hostels but they strike me as a miserable way to spend two months, not least because they seem to be populated almost exclusively by vest-wearing men who look like their recently ex-wives have changed the locks on them.
The second and more favourable option is to find a house-share to move into for the remainder of my time in Auckland and to this end, I peruse the listings from Wednesday’s paper and having photo-copied the page, dial a handful of numbers from a discrete corner of the office’s staircase.
The first number, from an advertisement boasting that once the rent has been paid each week, I’ll have to pay for “nothing else other than food.” proves to be an elderly sounding lady looking for a lodger.
“The last woman who stayed here was a florist.” She tells me, “Quite pleasant, but had an odd smell.”
It turns out that quite a few of the ads marked as “flatshares” are actually adverts for lodgers in private residences, and I decide that this is not really what I am after. The next circled paragraph of tiny text on the page looks far more promising:
“Parnell: 23+ to share with 5 others. Power, phone & sky included. Call Connie”
The next evening, I visit the house having spoken briefly with Connie and scribbled down directions in the back of my diary. Parnell is one of the prettier suburbs of Auckland, consisting mainly of a lengthy street arcing over and down a hill and disappearing into the blinking waters of the harbour in the distance. The street itself, a line of attractive cafes and eateries, hides a second, parallel strip of complimenting shops and restaurants hidden down little alleyways and indicated by a small forest of enthusiastic signposts.
The house is a large one. A big old wooden colonial building a couple of doors down the road from the cathedral, outside the front door is a wide veranda furnished with a pair of sofas overlooking the rest of the suburb as it drops away towards the sea. I push the doorbell and then ring the second doorbell and then, realising that neither work, knock on the glass window smartly a few times and wait.
Connie opens the door revealing a large hallway behind her, a wooden staircase winding up to a floor above it. I am beckoned inside and shown around.
It is a strange situation, auditioning for a spare room. The house on Brighton Street is occupied by five people at the present and in need of one more. Saying ‘hi’ bashfully to each of the five I meet as I am led from room-to-room, I am stuck by the need to make a good impression, as though I were at a job interview, but on a less formal, though no less judgemental scale. Questions such as ‘Do you play any sports?’ seem, in this context as perilous as those such as ‘Can you manage a database in Excel?’ might be in the other. I am not very good at job interviews, so heaven knows how my performance wandering around the house comes across. The house itself is terrific and passes my rudimentary selection skills with flying colours: it’s slightly run down admittedly, it has perhaps too many corners and nooks and crannies to be kept entirely dust and cobweb free, but it is endlessly interesting, bright and charming. There are actually eight bedrooms here, but fire-regulations keep the number of residents down to only six. The kitchen is large, and the lounge is spacious and comfortable looking. The bedroom itself is quite big too, with wooden floorboards and a built-in wardrobe, the doors of which Connie opens as though to reassure me that it is not inhabited by eight backpackers in bunks.
“Unfurnished, I’m afraid.” She says of the room, closing the cupboard doors and studying my reaction to see if the fact might put me off.
I witter on at excessive length about how it’s really not a problem as I can easily get myself an inflatable mattress and so on and so forth. I sound, I suspect, like a complete tool.
The house belongs to the church, on whose land it currently sits, something which is only recently true I learn, as it had actually been built in a different suburb but was moved here along with the nearby church itself to its current address. This eccentric detail of its history, accompanied already by its size and sheer atmosphere sells the place to me entirely and decide that not only do I love this place, but I deserve it after almost five months living in hostels. Put simply, I just want to live here for the next two months, and so as I bid my farewell to Connie and hear the door click shut behind me, I curse myself for my performance inside. Mortified that I should have come across as a gibbering wreck and be rejected as such, I slink off down the street miserably.
By Saturday, I have not heard anything back from Connie and so in a fit of self-righteous disappointment, conclude that they hated me and instead offered the room to someone who could commit to longer than two months – or, horror of horrors, someone who was a little more twenty-three, and a little less twenty-three plus. I try a few more numbers from the page of advertisements which I photocopied from the paper, but have littler more luck. Either way, I have minimal time to dwell on the subject as instead I meet up with Gary and Julia foolishly early in the morning, my feet booted up, bag packed ready for a day on the hills.
Auckland is a city built on, around and probably in volcanic cones. There are around eighty of them in the city – probably more, in fact - and so any journey from A to B will invariably involves navigating valleys C to E and hills F to G along the way. The largest volcanic cone, at nine-hundred metres above sea-level, is that of Rangatoto which is now an island some half-hour ferry ride away from the city centre and has been cordoned off as a nature reserve now that the possums which threatened to destroy its entire ecosystem have been eradicated. It is now home to various varieties of fern, jungle and the wildlife which live in each – except possums of course.
The last time the volcano erupted was around seven hundred years ago and it is now considered to be essentially dormant although the evidence of its last eruption is still evident throughout: the beaches here are black and much of the landscape is made up of large fields of ashen clinker spat from the cone, hawked up from deep in the earth like charred, stone furballs. Between this however, there are dense patches of woodland which makes the island look entirely green from a distance and it is only really when you get up close that you understand how alien a landscape it is.
The walk, of around ten kilometres – or six-and-a-half if you read the wrong page of the guidebook - takes us up to the summit and around the edge of the cone. The views here are spectacular, taking in the coastline of the city itself, and more interestingly, that of the other islands in the bay around which are a gentle scattering of yachts and speed boats carving up the still waters.
We hike downhill from the summit and stop off at a run of narrow lava-caves: square tunnels formed during the eruption which can be navigated with a little care and a torch, after this we cut across the island to Yankee Warf where we sit for lunch and are accompanied by a collection of evil-eyed gulls who squawk relentlessly (and fruitlessly) as we tuck into the sandwiches we bought on the ferry boat. It is peculiar to admit that I have been in New Zealand for almost a month now, and this is the only time I have been able to leave Auckland city itself.
The next morning, my phone rings at ten in the morning, barely half an hour after I have staggered out of bed and re-booked my room at the hostel for another night. The sound of the telephone is accompanied by the sound of seven hung-over room mates turning over pointedly in their beds in the universally accepted wordless expression of displeasure for a noisy and inconsiderate dormitory inhabitant.
I answer the telephone. It is Connie.
“You see,” she is saying, “Everyone else who looked at the room had to give at least two-weeks notice at their current places and, well, the room has already been empty for a week. When would you be able to move in, do you think?”
I look at the receipt in my hand for the extra night at the hostel.
“Now?” I suggest.
“How about Monday?” Connie says.
Aliana asks how the house hunting went over the weekend and she seems quite pleased when I tell her that I will be moving that evening after work.
“Good.” She says, “You don’t want to stay in a hostel.”
She grimaces at the prospect.
I had spent the rest of the weekend looking for cheap and/or free furniture – inflatable or otherwise – to fill the place with once I move in and find myself now eyeing up some of the desks and chairs due to be thrown out of the office during its move. Typically, although they appear to be potentially up for grabs, they will require a certain amount of machete-wielding skills to get through the red tape which binds them, and so I let them go.
As Aliana is about to leave, she stops in the doorway and turns back to me.
“I hope you have a good movement.” She says.
Labels: Vince
