My current New Zealand passport is due to expire in June next year so, mindful of the fact that les douaniers don’t like you to travel on a passport with less than six months to run, I thought I would apply for a renewal in good time. Accordingly, not wishing my photo ID to make me look even more decrepit than I actually am, I popped into MacFadyen’s in Stirling for a haircut, thence to Timpson’s for a photo. (I recall a rather Bacchanalian night out in Sydney last century, when a group of us passed our emergency medicine fellowship exams, following which we took an early morning flight back to Auckland. At the Sydney Airport check-in, the official glanced at the passport of a very beautiful young lady in our group, glanced up at her, and said, “You look even worse than your passport photo.”)
Timpson’s (“a family business run on the values of trust & kindness”) did well by me. Granted it’s a bit of a mug shot (I believe Timpson’s employs people who have been detained at His Majesty’s pleasure), but that’s what you want. You mustn’t smile, rather look glum, even a little shifty. Nothing sums up the fleeting nature of life (swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, my mum said) better than the series of one’s passport photos, perhaps seven or eight increasingly wrinkled snaps before the final expiry date. When I bought my all electric Skoda Enyaq a year or two ago my local shopkeeper remarked, sincerely but perhaps a little tactlessly, “That might be your last car.” I must mention the passport to him.
Then I contacted a New Zealand pal who might vouch for my identity, and that was me sorted. I went online on Thursday evening and submitted my application. And now here’s the thing. On Friday morning around 10.00 am I parked at Ingliston Park & Ride, by Edinburgh airport, and took the nine or ten mile walk into Edinburgh city centre, along the route of the tram line. Just as I set off, I got a text to tell me my application had been processed and the passport would be delivered by courier to my home address on Monday. How good is that? Well, here we are on Monday. Hopefully I can give you the result in real time.
My NZ passport is very important to me. I entertain this pipe dream. I call it my “Blue Bayou” fantasy. “I’m going back some day…” I’m having a conversation here in Blighty with increasing frequency. When I mention that I have dual citizenship, the reply is usually, “Lucky you. A bolt hole. You can get out.” I usually agree, and say that if Mr So-and-So gets in at the next general election, I’m off to Ninety Mile Beach. Of course it’s a bit of an indulgence. Why would you want to leave a place when perhaps one thousand people are desperate to come here across the channel every sunny day? The grass is always greener.
Doubtless my nostalgia for NZ is a little rose-tinted. Certainly when I was last there, just before the Covid Lockdown in 2020, I was aware that the country, or at least Auckland, was becoming a little more like the rest of the world. It was becoming expensive to dine out. The house prices had sky-rocketed. The main highway was in a state of perpetual gridlock.
I think New Zealand was quicker to realise the reality of an impending pandemic than the rest of the world. In the five weeks that I was there, in February and early March, the newspapers (not usually renowned for their foreign news coverage) were full of news from Wuhan. Then in early March, just after I’d returned to the UK, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern effectively closed the borders. It must be said that NZ managed the pandemic extremely effectively. Cases, and fatalities, were low. But inevitably the economy took a hit. And this was ultimately why Ms Ardern lost popularity at home. Her public health measures came to be regarded as draconian. The contrast between her reputation at home, and abroad, was stark. A prophet is never recognised in her own country. I think it was Enoch Powell (and he would have known) who said that all political careers end in failure. Jacinda Ardern wasn’t actually voted out of office. She chose to step down when she felt that she had, as she put it, “nothing left in the tank”. But when I gathered that she had become unpopular it did make me realise yet again that NZ, like everywhere else, was falling in love with the love of money. It’s the economy, stupid. I believe that the NZ I knew, thirty, forty years ago, would under similar circumstances have tightened her belt, mucked in, and pulled together.
(Text update 1120: parcel will arrive soon. I’m getting quite excited.)
Yet, returning to my passport saga, it does seem to me to indicate one thing: New Zealand still works. New Zealanders have a can-do attitude. All things are possible. Kiwis take a pride in what they do because, indeed, they are proud of their country. They – actually I should say “we” – don’t have much time for obfuscation. Temperamentally, they would rather remove difficulties than create them. I always remember a scene in the film The King’s Speech, starring Colin Firth, Helena Bonham Carter and Geoffrey Rush. I know I’ve blogged about this before, but I think it’s worth a reiteration. When, at his coronation in Westminster Abbey, King George VI asks the Archbishop of Canterbury to ensure that his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, is accommodated in the seating reserved for the royal family, the archbishop, who is a snob and who thinks Logue is a parvenu and an upstart, scratches his chin and says, “Well of course, your Majesty, I’ll see what I can do, but it is going to be very, very difficult.”
Why should something be easy in one country, and very very difficult in another? I think the answer lies in powerful, vested interests. When something of vital importance to the little person is of no interest to, or offers no advantage to, or perhaps even threatens the prosperity of the rich and powerful, then that thing of vital importance is liable to be kicked into the long grass. To paraphrase, if it’s not too fanciful, you might say that the difference between NZ and the UK is the difference between unicameral government, and the House of Lords.
1230: Passport’s arrived, bang on time.
God bless New Zealand.
jamescalumcampbell 