Auckland has the blues

Another week in purgatory for the country. Would’ve felt more like hell for Aucklanders. Stressful for plenty. Comfortable for some. Desperate for others. salute to all of you.

As a born Cantabrian, the cognitive dissonance created by Auckland’s lockdown plight is strong. Losing the Log o’ Wood to Auckland in 1985 left a scar. That scar is not an orphan. They all originate from a pre-existing and admittedly provincial animus towards Auckland, conditioned in we Mainlanders from birth.

So, I’ve never felt comfortable in Auckland. But as a Wellingtonian contently living on its magnificent South Coast, my view of Auckland has evolved into a more confused state.

But boy is that conditioning hard to shake. When working with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters, a Blues man, I enjoyed reminding him their resurgence coincided with their appointing a Crusader-raised coach.

I became a lapsed Catholic the day I was confirmed, the final act in a Faustian pact Dad made with the church to marry Mum. Dear Dad followed the fine print of the contract, then set me free.

The point is that just like my anti-Auckland baggage, occasional feelings of unexplainable guilt suggest a residue of religious conditioning that’s difficult to shake.

To sort out my ambivalence about Auckland, I consulted my go-to source, Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy. According to Dante’s over 700-year-old schema, I am in purgatory, and I suffer from either a misdirected love towards Auckland or a deficient love. If I suffer from deficient love, it’s because of slothfulness. Tick. Over the years, nearly all my trips up there have been for work of some kind. Getting home to Wellie after work has a strong pull. But I haven’t made much of an effort to go up north otherwise.