as New Zealand as dags on a sheep's bum

I wrote to an ex-pat mate who was asking about my health that "I am not a hang of a lot better". The retort came that my "Maru Maru dialect" was "as New Zealand as dags on a sheep's bum".

That breakfast email followed on from a confusing mix of waking thoughts, jumping around the world, about exhibition openings, ironman competitions, goals, expectations, building tables out of doors, building houses, fitness of body and mind, what to wear tonight, fitting in to another culture, and putting the rubbish out before it walked out by itself.

I decided that the rapid response to my slang meant that it was the writing ex-pat, not me, who is "just a tad" homesick. Here, at least for now, is home. But I would have loved to have been in Taupo yesterday.

A further comment made me really think. "Still any girl that can say "hang of a lot" should be strong enough to survive".

How true. A few years ago I wrote, but don't have here, an essay about New Zealand culture, and what "being a kiwi" means to me. I wrote - not knowing what was ahead of me - that, if I were translocated into another culture, the thing I would strive to achieve in a new place would be the ablility to be independent. I remember writing that it was the urge to be independent, and the "kiwi can do" attitude, that defined me. I think I then abstracted from that how education and communication are most important to me.

So language barrier or not, tonight, although friends will come to support me, I go to the opening alone, self sufficient, resolutely independent.

My biggest problem today is not my health, but what to wear. My clothes no longer fit; running up and down ancient steps has been good for me. I have to look good, out of respect for myself in this image-obsessed culture, and out of respect for my friends. And I am a professional, and this is my work. I go to my wardrobe and despair.

Yesterday I read an article about "slave labour" in China. I could look good for very little cost if I bought from the Chinese shops here. I hope the workers are paid and treated well. But I don't know that, and I do wonder, when sometimes I do buy Chinese at the markets. But most of my clothing is "proudly made in New Zealand".

Before 6pm I have to find something in basic black, get out the machine and alter it, and add something to make me, as my mother-in-law used to say, "a mass of dash". Good old Kiwi can do.

So much for my supposedly glamorous European life. So much for feeling that I belong here. Occasionally I wear buzzy bee and Mary-Lou doll ear-rings in Italy.

Sometimes I am still a Kiwi, I guess.