by I was about to write a list of things I’ll miss about Wellington. Top of my list was going to be the weather. Yeah, I know, the weather. In Wellington. When I listen to the 7am weather bulletin, the Wellington forecast is usually bright sunshine with a high of 14. Or torrential horizontal rain and a high of 14. Or nor-westers gusting to 130 k’s and a high of 14. The Cook Strait and rugged landscape otherwise plays havoc with Wellington’s weather patterns, but blissfully, the temperature needle hardly twitches for weeks on end. I was going to say how much I’ll miss that in Romania where the high will deviate a long way from 14 in both directions. But then today happened, the rain, the hail, the snow (yep), the wind that you could hardly stand up in, and as for the high, what high? (That’s what I said in 2009 when I was (mis)diagnosed as being bipolar.)
I gave my last English lesson on Monday. He and his wife have invited me over for dinner next week, which will be the last time I see him, in lieu of a lesson. They’re very pleasant people. He had a good last lesson as we went through three readers. He seemed to be more attentive and I was particularly impressed with his pronunciation of “shelves”.
There are billboards up all over the city as the mayoral election approaches. There are several prominent ones for Jo Coughlan that are made to look like road signs, and have slogans like “Four lanes to the planes” and “Toot for a second tunnel”. My carpool mate and I were wondering how on earth Ms Coughlan pronounces her surname. There are no fewer than seven common pronunciations of -ough in English, as in tough, though, trough, through, thought, thorough and drought. (Just look how close the first six of those words are to one another.) So what is it? Coo-lun? Cow-lun? Coff-lun? Turns out it’s Cog-lun. Different from all seven of the above. Fan-bloody-tastic. I’m not voting for you Ms Coughlan unless you change the pronunciation of your name. You’ve got plenty of options. (Ms Coughlan is Bill English’s sister-in-law. Her father, Tom, played one game for the All Blacks in the fifties. Tom’s brother, who died a few years ago, was at the same home in Timaru that my grandmother spent her final years; I remember he had enormous hands.) I won’t be voting for Jo anyway because I doubt I’ll get the chance before I go away, and even if I do, prioritising the car ahead of public transport is not where I see Wellington’s future.
