The hills of Wellington--December 7

Last night's post was done by Joan--she can type twice as fast as me, and she writes with a good deal of humour. It is a change for her to be writing something that is not couched in legalese. The houses on the hills of Wellington are a marvel--the roads wind very steeply, hairpinning their way up and down, and a huge variety of houses-- from superb modern architecture to old cottages with corrugated iron roofs--are perched on the sides of the hills. Great ingenuity has been used to build little cantilevered parking places for cars, and some houses are so far above the roads that the owners have their own forms of cable cars to pull up loads from the street or from their garages. Some of these are a form of monorail and actually transport the house owners up to their houses. (Think of some forms of those indoor stair-climbers advertised in the AARP magazines)

Last night the winds were so strong that it was difficult to open the car doors when we arrived at the apartment building, and the huge building trembled a bit in the wind. Our landlady welcomed us very warmly, and she did explain that the building did rock a little in the wind but the recent earthquake tests had shown that it was quite safe. This was reassuring, but she cautioned us that we should never have windows open on each side of the apartment as the wind would simply suck all the contents of the apartment out through the leeward side of the building. Whoooshh--and there would be nothing left.