New Zealand Life & Long Weekends 45 Years Ago

When I first arrived in Auckland a very long time ago or in late 1972 if you really need to know, it was a strangely `different’ place, somewhat apart from cities of a similar size in other parts of the world; certainly very different from those I had lived in. At weekends the streets of the city were deserted because all the shops were closed and if you ran out of milk or bread you had to visit The Dairy because a Dairy could, it appeared, keep the hours it pleased. In the twenty four hours before long weekends such as Queen’s Birthday and Labour Weekends housewives seemed to amalgamate in thought and deed to make a terrifying unified assault on Four Squares and supermarkets so that those who left their weekly shop until after three on Friday afternoon invariably found the shelves completely bare. But as I have said, it was still possible to make a purchase or two at the corner Dairy if you were not too fussy as to what you purchased. It was never easy to come by a pint of milk any day of the week, never mind in the hours preceding a statutory holiday because first of all you had to arm yourself with an empty bottle. Yes, long story, very complicated and involving milk tokens and delivery boys – needless to say I was most relieved when the much talked about great day arrived and we were all at last permitted to buy milk in much the same way as the rest of the world. In the first few months of my residency supermarkets themselves were exotic places that were spoken of but rarely visited because very few existed, at least in the form that we know them today. On the plus side a visit to one could be turned into a thrilling day trip and planned in advance. Shopping in the long gone days I speak of also involved legs of lamb at amazingly low prices and milk at an astonishing four cents a pint, cream very little more. It was real cream too and not that whipped up oil concoction that I was accustomed to in London. Very few people in London could afford the luxury of proper cream originating from the cow. I had been told prior to my arrival that New Zealanders entertained a great deal because there were few restaurants even in large cities and so grand dining took place in the home and therefore New Zealand women were more than competent cooks. I was not alarmed because I had several years previously taken a Cordon Bleu cooking course. I would be more than a match for them I fondly imagined. I was wrong and totally unprepared for the range and scope of culinary expertise of these antipodean women. Lunch and dinner parties were formal affairs I rapidly learned, usually catering for between six and twelve guests and all the women wore long dresses. I wore a number of Marks & Spencer’s night-gowns and reassured myself that they were at least evening wear. I was totally taken aback by my first dinner party where the hostess, a busy mother of three young boys who also served on a number of community committees and ran an after school hobby club, looked dazzling in a pink and silver floor length tea gown as she served, with enormous aplomb Seared Scallops, Beef Wellington and Baked Alaska. On the way home I said to my new husband, `I cannot imagine I will ever be able to give a dinner party in this country.’ He suggested’ helpfully, `You might perhaps think of taking cooking classes.’ There did not seem to be any point in mentioning the Cordon Bleu course.