Matt Heath: Is spring rubbish?

Spring in Cornwall Park, Maungakiekie, One Tree Hill. Photo / Alex Burton

OPINION:

Hard to believe it's September already. It's that time of year when many Kiwis start asking big questions like, is spring a bit crap? Is it just a rainy, windy extra step on the way to proper sunshine?

There's a lot of love out there for summer with its holidays and vitamin D, winter has its fans in the skiing community, and there's nothing prettier than autumn. But what does spring have to offer New Zealanders?

There's some bulbs, some shoots, some blossoms, some lambs, it's a little less cold, and that's about it. Spring has been accused of being a stopgap season; not quite winter, not quite summer.

In 2014 a man named Steve, who claimed to be from the University of Auckland Physics department, devised a way to unscientifically test the value of people, things and events. The system was dubbed P____ or Genius. The G stands for genius and the P for something that nearly rhymes with genius. It's probably best described as a low-level binary poll of breakfast radio listeners.

In the years since its launch, the system has been used to rate hundreds of things. On the genius side, it's placed the Queen, Tom Cruise, nurses, firefighters, automatic vehicles and seagulls (surprisingly). On the negative side, vaping, Prince Harry, cruise ships and for reasons that we still can't fathom, the moon. Why do New Zealanders not like the moon?

This week on the Matt and Jerry Breakfast Show on Radio Hauraki, we put spring through the P or G test. I took the G side, and my co-host, Jeremy Wells, took the P.

The main points of the P argument were as follows:

• Spring is horrible for people with pollen allergies, and 2022 is predicted to be one of the worst ever.

• It rains nearly every day in Auckland in spring.

• In the South Island, the cute lambs pop out in spring. They frolic around, making everyone happy. Then there's a cold snap, and we get that yearly story on the news ending in dozens of dead little lambs on the back of a ute.

• Spring is a nothing month. Not too hot, not too cold.

• After a break from mowing for winter, you have to fire up the lawnmower again.

People enjoy the sun in Cornwall Park. Photo / Alex Burton

The main points of the Genius argument:

• Lambs are cute and smell of lanolin.

• It's a great season to get bizzay whether you be human or beast.

• Summer is only 45ml of rain and heaps of wind away.

• Things actually grow in the South Island in spring.

• You can trot out the "four seasons in one day" cliche.

With the P and G positions stated, voting opened. Passions were high. The text machine exploded. If there was a dinger attached to it, it would have been ringing like a phone. Voters are only required to text a p or a g but hundreds felt so passionate about the issue they added comments. Here's a small sample of some of the feedback:

• P - This topic gives me hay fever.

• P- It's not warm enough for how sunny it is, and it's too bloody windy.

• G - Spring is a genius prequel to summer.

• G - Spring is genius because there are freesias to pick whilst out walking.

• You guys are absolute muppets; venereal spring isn't till the 23rd of September this year.

I assume the final texter meant vernal, not venereal. In the Southern Hemisphere, the equinox occurs on September 22 or 23, when the Sun moves south across the celestial equator. This is known as vernal spring. For the purposes of P or G, we took the start of spring as September 1 (as most Kiwis do). A venereal spring would be too STI-related for most people's taste.

After three hours of intense debate, 1302 votes were cast, and spring joined the All Blacks, dogs, cricket, avocados, LPG, socks and jocks for Christmas, bus drivers and Charles Upham on the Genius side of the great P or G log affixed to the studio wall. Spring, you have been deemed genius, may you live on forever in exalted glory.

Get out there and enjoy it, New Zealand. As I said in my last column, there's vitamin D out there even when it's raining.