I Stay in Aotearoa

My Dear Princess and Dear Fellow,

It's been five years since I arrived here in Aotearoa. 

It has flown by. 

I remember reading just before I left that it takes about 2 years for the homesickness to subside. It seems to have been roughly true in my case. Up until about 2020 I was still in Scotland in my head. 

We watched a lot of UK (especially Scottish) tv shows and didn't go out so much and so it was all too easy to forget where I was. Especially because Wellington city itself doesn't feel especially 'Kiwi'.

But then we moved to Paraparaumu and at the same time my social circle expanded. In these past two and a half years, I've felt much more comfortable in myself here. 

My new work family has obviously been a major part of this. 

And so I wondered this morning - am I the same person I was before? Or have the last five years changed me?

To explore this, you will find at the bottom of this blip an email I wrote to Fat Pete about an evening out with the Princess. You can see in it, I think, my sense of humour and my interests dating back to 2017.

Yes, I am clearly a completely different now. Obviously.

S.

Dinner with the Princess is always certain to provide at least one good story.  Here is last nights'. 

Her mum calls her up one evening.  

MUM: I’ve been for a colonoscopy.
PRINCESS:  What?
MUM: It’s okay. There’s nothing to get worried about, but the doctor did find a couple of friends up there.
PRINCESS:  What?!
MUM:  A couple of little friends.  It turns out I have worms.  The doctor said that it can be infectious and I probably caught it from a family member so you might want to get your girls checked. 

So the Princess was given the dubious honour of trying to figure out if her girls had any symptoms: 

PRINCESS:  Ummm…. Do either of you have itchy bottoms? 

(The girls pat themselves on their behinds). 

GIRLS:  No. We’re fine.
PRINCESS:  I don’t mean there. I mean… inside.  
GIRLS: Inside where?
PRINCESS:  Inside. You know. Where you poo.
GIRLS:  What?!??
PRINCESS:  It’s nana. It turns out she has worms in her tummy and she wants to make sure you don’t have them too.
GIRLS:  But what do worms in your tummy have to do with an itchy poo-hole?
PRINCESS:  Well… it’s where they come wriggling out.

The Princess was worried about how they would react to this. But...

The girls though this was the FUNNIEST thing ever. They couldn’t even breathe with laughing. The Princess said they were literally crying with tears at the thought that nana had worms stuck up her bum. The very mention of “nana” was enough to set them off all over again. So when the Princess's mum said she was going to visit, the Princess had to take the girls to one side. 

PRINCESS:  I want you to promise me you won’t laugh when nana is here.
GIRLS:  We promise.
PRINCESS:  No saying “Nana Has Worms Up Her Bum”.  Don’t even whisper it to each other.
GIRLS:  Okay.
PRINCESS:  And no singing the “Nana Has Worms Up Her Bum” SONG either.
GIRLS:  Awwww!

Yes, they’d even made up a little song.  I just wish I’d been there. The Princess is always at pains to tell me that her children are not usually this entertaining and she saves the best stories for me, but stuff like this makes me wonder if I should have been a father purely for comedy reasons.