'There's no heating in New Zealand'

By Beverley Doole writing in The Financial Times this past weekend:

Jill Marshall, 42, was born in Manchester. She was director of training and development at telecommunications group NTL before moving to Auckland, New Zealand, to write children's books. She lives with her 11-year-old daughter Katie. Her latest book "The Perfect Spylet" is published on Thursday, World Book Day.

I've always wanted to write for children. When I was at school I talked to the careers adviser about writing children's books and, to her great credit, she took me seriously. But life took over and all I wrote were history essays at Cambridge and then when I got a job I stopped writing altogether.

I loved my work at NTL. I got to do lots of blue skies stuff, sitting around and strategising and travelling across the UK. But it became less enchanting with yet another round of redundancies as the company merged so many times. Human resources is about advising others how to make their teams redundant but it's a different story when it's your own people. We were a very tight-knit group and I felt like I was shooting members of my own family.

That was when I had my millennium moment. As the century turned, I decided to pack in my job and do an MA in writing for children. I graduated in 2002 and in the meantime Katie and I had spent a few months in Australia and I decided I really wanted to be on this side of the world. Britain just didn't feel very safe to me any more. The place is full. There's no room to move, too many people, the traffic is bad and so is the weather. But the deciding factor came on the day I went to visit an immigration consultant. The bodies of Holly and Jessica - the two girls murdered in Soham - had just been found. I stood there, watching the TV, and decided to get out of the UK.
That's not to say you're completely safe in New Zealand or anywhere else in the world. But I wanted my daughter to have the freedom that I had when I was growing up. To be able to go to the shop, to be able to go to the park, without me worrying. That has been lost in the UK. In Auckland she can quite happily wander off with her mates or walk around to a friend's house.
Everyone who'd visited New Zealand told me it was like England 30 or 40 years ago. I expected it to be less cosmopolitan, less contemporary than what I actually found. I love Auckland as a city and I find it every bit as exciting and modern and lively as anywhere else I've been.

Outside the major cities life is a bit simpler and that is all part of the charm. As an example, our car broke down in a tiny town north of Auckland and I literally stood by the roadside with my thumb out. No help came from the frowning tourists, but the Kiwis careered to a halt to see if I was OK. Kiwis don't immediately think 'It's a trap, someone's going to beat me over the head'. In that respect, New Zealand is like England 30 or 40 years ago.

Moving to New Zealand helped me to get published. I'd been writing in the UK but it was difficult to get published. I had an agent but we didn't talk very often and only met once. When I decided to move to Auckland I emailed an agent here and she got straight back to me. We met in a café four days after I landed, she looked through my portfolio and said "I like the Jane Blonde one, I'll take that." She was so approachable, and that is the huge contrast with the UK. It was my publisher here who brokered the deal for Jane Blonde - she went back to the UK and talked to Macmillan.

You can be an artist in New Zealand, and people don't look so askance. Doing something creative, not having a "proper job", is more accepted here. It has made it possible for me to work with other writers, to find the right time and right space to write.
When you're sitting at your computer day in, day out, what you're looking at makes a difference.

From my office I have a great panoramic view of central Auckland. I'm quite high up and look out over nearly all of Ponsonby with its weatherboard villas and tree-lined streets. The furthest thing on the horizon is the Sky Tower downtown. My publishers say my Jane Blonde series is getting less British and I think that's partly because of the landscape. It sounds a big flaky, but there is a creative and spiritual energy about certain parts of this country. It charges the battery.

If I'm particularly bewildered I'll head out to Muriwai, one of the west coast beaches, and walk my dog. It's a black-sand beach where you can walk for hours and still not get any nearer to the end of it. There have been days when I've had it all to myself but even on a hot holiday weekend you will still find a lot of space. It takes about half an hour from the centre of Auckland. I've tried to get to Bournemouth on a hot weekend and you're stuck on a motorway for longer than you spend on the beach.

It was colder in New Zealand than I expected. It doesn't get as cold as in the UK, but it is more damp and chilly than I thought it would be. And there's no heating. It's quite bizarre. I asked a friend why that was, and she said "We're pioneer stock, we don't need heating." I'm getting central heating in my house.

Kiwis are incredibly friendly but it can be a bit difficult to get below that surface friendliness. People start up conversations with complete strangers - everyone does it - and a few minutes in they ask you how much you earn. They're friendly, and they're direct. I'm from northern England and it's like the northern attitude when I was growing up, where you would chat to someone in a shop.

I really miss Christmas. The cold, frosty Christmas with lots of lights and decorations and carol services. I miss the atmosphere - in the UK everyone throws themselves into Christmas far more than they do here. It's summer and everyone is pretty much waiting for the holidays to begin so they can get off to the bach [beach holiday house] on Boxing Day.

I've never been homesick but when we went back to the UK a couple of years ago I missed home, and home was New Zealand. The thing I value most about living here is freedom. Freedom to do what you want, when you want. And Katie is growing up with the confidence that that gives you. It's priceless.

FOOTNOTE

Jill is off to the UK in a couple of weeks to visit her Mum. Her Jane Blonde books (Macmillan) are selling by the truckload in the UK, NZ and Australia.

There are four published so far but eventually there will be seven in the series. I will shortly have a review here on the blog of the Jane Blonde series.