Rob Rattenbury: Quality produce just a hop, skip and jump away

Whanganui's main street, Victoria Avenue. Photo / Lewis Gardner

OPINION

Two things about living in a big city in New Zealand are travelling time and convenience shopping. Travel time is usually a large part of the day and shopping is done at the local mall, especially for food and groceries.

Everything is a rush from finding car parks to wheeling your trolley around a crowded supermarket, perhaps looking after small children as well, dodging people who insist on stopping in aisles to talk, their trolleys taking up the whole space. Resisting the ongoing urge to impulse-buy. Of course that’s the point of large supermarkets, set up to tempt the punters with all sorts of goodies and treats.

Fighting the traffic in the carpark, watching trolleys with minds of their own take off in the wind, or just because the user has let them go. Dodgems.

The staff are busy and sometimes quite impersonal. Standing in queues while a customer insists on writing a cheque and chatting to the checkout operator, who is doing their best to be polite while looking at the line of trolleys yet to be processed. I know, petty, but it was annoying when life was just too busy. Thankfully those days of cheques have gone.

No such thing as farm-fresh produce. That’s 50 kilometres away, far too much of a faff to be bothered with.

We lived that life for about 10 years as a family before deciding enough was enough. Life is too short to be sitting on motorways, in traffic jams, at lights. Standing in queues trying not to be rude and hurried.

Off to sunny Whanganui - well not today, it’s bucketing down outside as I type this with frozen fingers in the office, too lazy to put the heater on.

We arrived here and found our local Woolworths up St Johns way. Investigated. Nice big carpark, empty when we, as shift workers, wanted to shop. An airy store that was enlarged further within a short time of us arriving and really friendly, helpful staff. Nice people who, over the years, stayed and became part of our shopping week.

The fortnightly grocery trip was a doddle. Traffic is a lot lighter here, even nowadays.

We also soon figured out a route around the hinterland to buy fresh food, a trip my wife made fortnightly, me with her if on days off. Out to Imlay for our meat from the shop, sadly now no longer there. Then across to Laugesens market gardens in Westmere Road for our fruit and vegetables, maybe a piece of fruit each for the kids, then around into Francis Road for a couple of trays of eggs, cheap as.

In season, maybe out to the main road for some strawberries, stopping off at the place in Watt-Livingstone Road that grew the best tomatoes around.

As ex-city dwellers we were used to driving distances to do anything and that little circuit around the country area was not far for us. Fresh food was the payoff, plus dealing with the really friendly butchers and market-gardeners.

I had a work colleague who arranged fish orders from Wanganui Seafoods for staff and another who was mates with the guy who operated the pie factory in London Street, bargains galore.

Most noticeable of all was the quieter pace of life, something we still enjoy today, 40 years later.

I sit watching the news some nights, wondering how people put up with the daily commute in Auckland, Wellington and other large centres. It must be maddening. It’s a bad traffic day for me if I get two red lights at the city bridge.

Some probably have to stop on the way home at a supermarket to buy groceries or, at least, dinner. Tired out from rising early, sitting in traffic for an hour or so in the morning, working all day at jobs full of stress, then driving another hour or so home in the evening, worn out, praying for the weekend.

Life is busy in Whanganui but it’s a different kind of busy for most people. Travel is not a hassle. The biggest traffic density is about half an hour in the morning and at night on a few bottlenecks around town, you know them. Lunchtime and after school traffic can be busy for a while. Whanganui is the kind of town where people who work can go home for lunch. Not a happening thing in Auckland or Wellington, believe me.

I knew we had made the right decision coming to Whanganui when, for the first time in my working life, I was able to walk to work, about 20 minutes, and home again. That sounds odd to many but true. Even driving to work was a five-minute exercise at most, with a guaranteed park.

Whanganui is slowly growing but is the place to live.