The Armchair Traveller
Chapter 2 Clothing
One thing that always amazes me is the clothing some young people feel it necessary to take and wear on their travels. Our Canadian sisters had four suitcases full of clothes, most of which they abandoned when they left. They had foolishly brought clothes with them that were too small in the hope that they could diet while travelling but unfortunately the New Zealand chocolate and ice cream was their downfall and they were unable to fit into any of their clothes after three months. These clothes, and others discarded by our children, became the basis of our clothing box that we have available for our farm helpers. We find it useful to have complete sets of warm dry old clothes in various sizes, so we can completely outfit ors visitors if necessary.
Never was it more necessary than in the case of Yoko and Nori, two delightful Japanese girls who arrived by bus one winter’s afternoon and who were looking forward enthusiastically to their stay on a real New Zealand farm. My doubts began as I collected them from the bus stop to find that instead of the usual backpack they each had a huge suitcase. These were too heavy for them to lift so they were accustomed to tow them along on wheels like large, well-behaved dogs. When we arrived at the house our rough concrete was more than a match for the wheels and it took a great deal of pushing and heaving before we eventually installed the girls in their bedroom. They exclaimed at how different (i.e. primitive) everything was compared to Japan, as they had only entered the country the day before. Unfortunately their arrival coincided with a power cut so the house was in darkness. They decided we obviously didn’t have electricity yet, a view that was reinforced when we gave them candles to undress by. Their nervous giggles verged on hysteria as we said goodnight. Fortunately the power was on again in the morning and was greeted by the girls with huge relief, as both of them would rather have had their throats cut than be seen without their hair washed and blow dried every single day.
When Yoko and Nori came out to breakfast on their first day of work we realised that they had no idea of the reality of outside work. Both were dressed smartly in white sneakers, designer jeans and white sweatshirts, complete with matching white T-shirts underneath. Not only were they freezing cold in their thin cotton clothes (their fingers and faces were a delicate shade of blue) but they obviously had no intention of getting dirty. To their disgust I pulled out old jerseys and track pants and bullied them into changing. They came out resentfully to suffer the further indignity of being given old rubber boots to wear on their feet. After the initial shock they became quite fond of these outfits, Nori in particular taking a fancy to David’s spare work hat which she wore constantly, despite it coming down nearly to her nose. The girls excitedly took pictures of each other as they stood beside various trees and farm implements then after being shown what to do amazed us by becoming the fastest mandarin pickers we have had before or since. Every evening they carefully showered and changed into a different outfit and by the time they had been with us for a month I don’t think they had worn the same thing twice. They carefully washed their clothes by hand each day and were far too modest to allow me to hang them outside on the clothesline for the world to view. Instead they rigged up a complicated system of lines and pulleys in their bedroom and dried everything there.
Lynette and Shelly had quite a different attitude towards washing clothes. They proudly told me that they had each brought a month’s supply of underwear with them that they presented for me to wash on the day they were each wearing their last clean set. Naturally it was raining at the time and the drier had decided to go on strike by first blowing all the fuses then sulking and only using cold air.
This habit of presenting all their washing at the last minute is not restricted to Canadians. Four young Swedish guys came to stay and despite my pleas for their clothes to wash while the weather was fine they brought in four plastic garbage bags of clothes on the day before they left. It was, of course, raining and this time the drier had broken down completely.
Harriet, a young French girl, arrived one summer in a spotless white T-shirt and shorts. We viewed her outfit with some trepidation and showed her some work clothes, which she resolutely declined to have anything to do with. We urged her to dress in something that wouldn’t show the dirt. This she refused to do and went out to work each day in yet another of a series of white outfits. To our amazement she possessed the uncanny ability of someone who had obviously been Scotchguarded at birth to spend a day hauling avocado logs onto a greasy filthy trailer, then driving back along a dusty track, all without getting a speck of dirt on herself. She and David would arrive back at the house for lunch; he would be hot, sweaty and filthy while Harriet was a vision in cool, clean white. How she managed it was a mystery. I initially suspected that David had fallen for her not inconsiderable French charm and was doing all the hard work himself but he insisted that wasn’t the case and had her help me in the garden for a few days so I could see it for myself – I was filthy and sweaty while Harriet looked as if she was fresh from a cool shower.
Marc was German, a young man who came to stay with us and enjoyed it so much he extended his visa and returned three more times. He, unlike the girls, travelled with the bare minimum and gladly wore our farm clothes as a change from his only two outfits. He took a particular fancy to my daughter’s pink sweatshirt, which he wore each time he came and which I had to prise off him to wash. He asked if he could keep it and I never quite figured out if he was;
a. colour blind
b. didn’t realise pink was unmanly
c. actually was unmanly
I’m afraid my refusal disappointed him and the pink sweatshirt remains and is still being worn although by now it is a little the worse for wear. So if you come back again Marc I will give it to you!
Marc gets the prize for the best sport. By the time he arrived for the fourth time all our accommodation was full as we had taken on four extra foster children for a year. He ended up sleeping in a small outside room, which holds the collection of dollshouses I have made and display. We squeezed in a stretcher and a table and he slept there for a month very happily. He said he enjoyed writing letters to his friends and family and telling them he was sleeping in a dollshouse.
Attitudes to clothing vary as much as attitudes to nudity. As it gets very hot here in summer we have our own swimming pool which is fenced off in a secluded private spot. As a family we don’t bother with bathing costumes and it is David’s habit to arrive back at the house for lunch and strip off for a quick swim first. We always warn visitors of this and tell them they are welcome to join us but if it worries them then they don’t have to use the pool when we do.
The Japanese and Israelis we have found to be incredibly modest to the point where they will nearly expire from the heat rather than let anyone see them clothed other than head to toe.
The Europeans, on the other hand, are very different. Katy from Germany, who had a face and figure worthy of Miss World, announced that she always swam naked and thereafter hopped into the pool with us in all her glory – making David and I acutely aware of our middle aged bodies.
Katy has one bad experience in New Zealand when her car was broken into outside a youth hostel in one of the large cities. She had two large rubbish bags in the car; one was filled with gifts for friends and family back in Germany and the other with her dirty clothes that she was intending to take to a laundry. The thieves took only the dirty clothes, much to her delight, as she was then able to use her insurance money to go shopping for more.
My rather casual attitude towards clothing underwent a change one day. After coming into the house hot and sweaty from an afternoon spent in the garden, I stripped off my clothes and threw them in the laundry tub before walking into the kitchen en route to the bathroom for a shower. Much to my surprise, Henry, an elderly friend of the family, had arrived to see my husband and was sitting at the kitchen table reading a newspaper while he waited for him. Henry looked up and stared at me and I did the only thing possible. With all the confidenc
e of the emperor in his new clothes I said hello and walked past him to the bathroom where I collapsed in nervous giggles at the pop-eyed look on his face. Henry, being a gentleman, has never referred to this incident and in order not to embarrass him, neither have I.
One of the experiences I treasure is of having four young Swedish lads to stay. They arrived in early summer and were given the job of cleaning and filling the swimming pool. This they did with a lot of enthusiasm and very little clothing. I recommend having four blond pool attendants to any woman as a means of brightening up her day. Sadly, David decided to weed the pool area, an activity he has never done either before or since and took away any reason I had for hanging around the swimming pool.
Most of our farm helper ladies place great store on personal appearance, particularly when it comes to hair and make up. Our daughters watched with incredulous delight as a succession of young women carefully applied make up and styled their hair before going out to work on the farm. They were initiated into these mysteries themselves by some of the willing teachers, who after one look at me were quick to offer their services. They felt I was letting the side down somewhat by never bothering with make up and tying my hair back with a rubber band before jamming a shapeless hat on top. I confess I could not see the point in spending hours each day in all these rituals, which to them were essential. We wax our oranges, not our legs! There are always constant complaints about the hot water running out when they have ‘only been in the shower for fifteen minutes.’
On one memorable occasion David gave a mimed demonstration of how to take a shower in two minutes to a couple of female visitors, who were helpless with laughter at the end of it. One other idiosyncrasy of the shower in the cabin is that it will suddenly run cold. Loud shrieks and the sight of a naked body leaping into the passageway are fairly common until they get used to it.
The Japanese are very proud of their skin and it is apparently considered very beautiful to be pale. One poor lass, when asked to weed the garden, went out in the full heat of the summer sun in boots, trackpants, long-sleeved sweater, gloves and a hat. She was determined not to get a tan and had to be continually revived with glasses of cold water. This made a complete contrast to two Irish girls who were so desperate to get a tan to show off that they resisted all my efforts to slap sunscreen on them and would roast in the sun until their skin was the colour of a beetroot. Their only complaint was that as soon as they laid blankets out on the grass they had to fight off the dogs and cats for the privilege of lying on them.
It is not uncommon for our foreign visitors to come to New Zealand with the wrong clothing for the climate. Because our country is a Pacific Island they see this as a place of sun, surf and palm trees and expect the weather to be hot all year round. How wrong they are. Some poor souls arrive in winter and confront us in righteous indignation when they find it cold and wet, particularly if they have only brought summer clothing with them. The clever ones from the Northern Hemisphere time their six month holiday to get three summers in a row, the unlucky one suffer miserably through three winters.
One foolish Canadian arrived at the airport on a very unseasonably hot winter’s day and promptly shipped all her warm clothing back to Canada – and was then forced to spend all her available cash the next day on replacing it all.