Whenever I get the urge to say "townie!" and snicker at someone recoiling from a horse, or running away from a chicken, I give myself a firm mental shake (because an actual shake would look weird) and remind myself I grew up, mostly, in Auckland.
As a teenager in Auckland it was all about listening to the right music, wearing the right clothes, having a Farrah Fawcett hairdo (in my defence it was the 70s).
I had platform shoes, bell bottoms and a long-haired boyfriend.
I also had parents. And they wanted to move to the country.
My friends were horrified. They offered to hide me so I didn't have to go. "Maybe my parents can adopt you?" suggested my best friend.
But no. I was bundled along with furniture, house pets and siblings, into our Toyota Hiace van and dragged, kicking and screaming northwards.
To Okaihau.
No, I hadn't heard of it either.
It appeared to have a school and a shop. Maybe two shops.
From its one main street a gravel road wound away towards our new home on a small farm.
The gravel road appeared to have only one lane. I pointed this out but neither parent seemed at all concerned.
I pointed out that if something came the other way we were all going to die. Still they were unconcerned.
It was also really dusty and if we weren't killed in a crash we were all going to suffocate, I told them.
They ploughed on regardless and eventually came to a white house all alone in a sea of green, grassy paddocks.
It was awful.
There was no traffic. There was grass everywhere and animals were looking at me. I did what every good teenager does. I sulked.
Things didn't improve when I discovered that it was dark at night. No, not normal dark ... real dark, the no-streetlights kind of dark. And the first time I went outside in it there was something following me in that dark. I could hear it. It was someone walking, wearing boots.
The boots were going crunch, crunch on the gravel of the driveway. Crunch crunch crunch. I froze. Crunch ... crunch ... then an almighty snort! When my heartbeat returned to normal I realised the crunch crunch was actually munch munch and I'd been scared by cows, eating.
Even in daylight there were terrors. In the first few days our city-bred fox terrier managed to pee on an electric fence, shock himself in a sensitive place and run to hide under furniture for several days, venturing out only to be accidentally shot by my brother wielding his first ever slug gun.
That was our first trip to the local vet.
The next one was after my mother, attempting to drive the tractor, ran over her spaniel-x dog and broke his leg.
Then the foxie got kicked by a sheep. It was a miracle he ever came out from under the couch again.
The farm dog was having a far better time of it.
Sold with the farm, he was happy in his old, familiar, incredibly stinky dog run. But still happier when my little sister discovered him.
My city-reared sister was distraught that the dog had been living like that. The dog was delighted when she took him inside and snuggled on to her bed.
Our mum was way, way less delighted when she found the reeking beast curled up in the clean sheets.
The dog confiscated, my sister found there were still worse things afoot on the farm. The water troughs were full of poor, abandoned frogs.
She kindly rescued as many as she could, filling the bath and handbasin in our bathroom with nice fresh water and ... frogs ... so many, many frogs.
Very ungrateful they were too. They didn't stay in the nice clean bathwater, they climbed out on their skinny, sticky frog-legs and climbed up the walls, the doors, on to the ceiling.
They squeezed under the bathroom door and hopped along the hallway, gathering carpet fluff and turning into hopping hairballs. Weeks later there were still dried frogs to be found in dark corners.
Before long my brothers had added a baby hawk to the mix, which had to be fed bits of dead rodents and possums.
My mother kept it supplied by picking up roadkill and putting it in the dog food freezer. Which promptly turned up its toes and froze its last, on a particularly warm Northland summer's day.
The resulting stench is hard to forget.
But it did lure the foxy out from under the couch.
It was all too much for me. The grass, the fresh air, the open spaces. The frogs and creepy cattle and roads with no tarseal.
One night I secretly packed up and left. I was going back to Auckland.
I trudged for what felt like hours, through the dark, spooky countryside, alongside ditches and bushes.
Just as I was tiptoeing past a big old gnarly macrocarpa tree something made a horrible noise. It sounded like a tiny serial killer coming for me with an equally tiny chainsaw. "Screeegghh" it shouted, and I ran.
Whatever it was chased me all the way home, I swear it. It was right on my tail when I flung open the back door and headed bedwards.
My parents laughed and said it was a possum. I knew it wasn't, I'd seen possums and they were cute. This thing surely had scales and red eyes.
I stayed in the country from then on. Escape seemed fraught with danger.
Last month I went to Auckland for the first time in ages.
The roads had dozens of lanes. I was convinced I would be killed at any second. And it was so smoggy and grimy, If I wasn't involved in a crash I was sure I'd suffocate.
I was relieved to get home again after. It turns out it's not all that dark in the country, you just need time for your eyes to adjust.