Country Living – On the road

I find the distance I live from suburbia a constant source of both my ultimate pleasure and constant pain. At times I am guilty of living in my own little bubble – to me, our farm seems like the centre of the universe, and I often wonder why it is that everybody else lives so far away. When I visit Auckland and find myself having to deal with all that traffic and busy people, my whole body seems to tense up and it is not until I pull into our farm and see the beautiful landscapes, wide open spaces and the harbour that all of that stress leaves my body.

I seem to be torn between how far and how close I live to town, because it changes depending on the reason I have to drive in. For example, if I am having friends over for drinks and we run out of beer or wine then I am adamant that the half hour drive into town is the same as just popping next door to the corner dairy. But ask me to pick up my daughter from hockey at 10.30pm on a freezing winters night when my fire is roaring and I have my pyjamas on, then the trip feels like you’re driving to hell and back!

Then there’s the issue of fuel usage. My husband is a bit of a fuel Grinch. I honestly wonder if he has watched one too many of those Mad Max-style movies! You know the ones? Where the world has ended and fuel is as rare as diamonds! So to help combat any frivolous fuel wastage I have become a chronic list writer. Yep, that’s right, if you go missing in my house for too long, you will be added to my list! (Of course it’s not that helpful when you leave your list at home!). Then there are my secret little Morse codes that I have developed for the drive. It’s amazing what a life or death commodity baking powder has become in my house. “Honey, I just have to pop into town again and grab some baking powder or I won’t be able to bake your cake”, which is actually my Morse code for, ‘I just need to pick up something unimportant from The Warehouse, or meet a friend for lunch’. I also use a sneaky Morse code for times when my husband just wants company for the drive and needs to pick up something rather boring, like chemical or drench. This sneaky little one I have conceived (purely due to my own laziness) is, ‘but I desperately need to do the farm accounts!’ Now I know I shouldn’t make up fibs to justify my driving distance into town (but I bet you most farmers wives do!) and if there was anyone out there willing to bang-up a little supermarket, a couple of dress shops and a cafe at the bottom of my drive, then I would never again need any of these excuses, because I would never need to leave the farm.

So you can no doubt see why I grapple with my distance to town, but for the most part I love it, as it allows me to hide from the world. The funniest thing is though, my husband has just upgraded my family car and the one I am about to receive has a thumping big, fuel-guzzling V8 under the bonnet! Which is great for passing turtles on the road, but I am now fretting that my well-worn baking powder excuse will need to be replaced!