Dialogue: Into the jaws of Auckland drove the poor provincials

Midsummer in the city. Midsummer madness on the city streets. Two lanes of the Harbour Bridge have blown their tops. Someone has bombed the Shelley Beach off-ramp. And the provincial drivers have hit town.

Until the month's end, Queen St, Wellesley St, Victoria St and all adjacent streets will be full of cars with mud on their wheel-arches. Cars which stop for red lights. Or even for orange lights, thereby totally throwing the Aucklanders driving behind them.

Cometh the hour, cometh the men and women - many of us from places where rush hour means a six-second wait while a milk tanker turns into the farm driveway ahead.

You can easily recognise us provincial motorists. We are the ones with white knuckles and elbows clamped to sides as if this will somehow reduce car width and the chances of collision.

You see us at the top of the Harbour Bridge, lifting one hand off the steering wheel and one foot off the accelerator to point out Rangitoto. Trying to unfold a metre-wide map of central Auckland while paused at the Albert St-Custom St lights. Craning forwards to stare up through the windscreen as we approach the Sky Tower (which means that by the time we reach the casino we've already used up all our luck).

We can be found coming up the Southern Motorway at 4.45 pm on Friday, suddenly seeing the Khyber Pass exit on the left and trying to cross from the right-hand lane.

We are the ones who make the milk of human kindness turn to rennet. We should all be stopped at border posts near Drury or Albany and issued with rear-window labels that read "Provincial on Board."

We, in turn, have no trouble recognising Auckland drivers - especially the go-getting, high-achieving, fast-living ones.

We see them whipping up High St in Alfa Romeos with number plates reading ALL MYN ... ITS HIS ... HI FLY. That last one presumably refers to a dress code.

We see the steering wheels caressed by manicured hands of lissom blonds in designer black with multi-carat gold jewellery and cellphone genetically grafted to ear. And that's just the guys.

We rural drivers recognise our urban counterparts in other ways, too.

Auckland motorists shave while driving. They change ties and shirts. I'm not saying they are inattentive - they usually have both eyes on the road. However, the hands receiving data from those eyes are probably wielding pager and Filofax.

But let's be positive. I want to say how much I appreciate the friendliness of many Auckland drivers, particularly the way they wave to provincials.

I accept that in the interests of energy conservation, that wave may be done with only one or two fingers. Or it may be a male solidarity gesture in the form of a clenched fist. I take this latter gesture to mean may the force be with you ... or words to that effect.

We provincial drivers like to think our presence in Auckland this summer will have a threefold benefit.

We will make Auckland motorists feel superior and sophisticated by comparison. We will go back home brimming with Charge of the Light Brigade stories. Into the jaws of death. Into the mouth of hell.

And we will surely give some Auckland entrepreneur the idea for a new range of bumper stickers that we can take away and display in Eltham, Edgecumbe or Eketahuna: "I Survived the Cook St off-ramp," "I Changed Lanes at Onewa Rd," and - aarrghhh ...

* David Hill is a Taranaki writer.

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