blogging it real

During my long exile in Dunedin, I seldom mustered the energy to describe the true atrociousness of the place - it's pure shit qualities, and general lack of saving graces, with the sole honourable exception of the beaches on the Otago Peninsula (although even these, it must be said, have the same backdrop of boring, relentless pastoralism ... although through no fault of their own).

Anyway, would be seditious conspirator Tim Selwyn captures the qualities of the general area quite nicely in this diatribe on Southland (all of which is applicable to Dunedin, with the possible exception of the part about local ladies).

Invercargill. What can one add that hasn't already been said? A grid city for a grid population of Christians. It was 5:10pm and the street lights came on because it was dark already. It was also 6 degrees. The "city" was filled with a smokey coal stench and the southern half was even worse - blanketed in a thick, acrid, grimey smog that was absolutely filthy and made me nauseous. Every man and his dingo had a fire going - the chimneys were pouring it out like a Filippino rubbish tip. Invercargill is dead flat, dead boring, and if the standard of housing and dress sense is any measure, also dead broke. Most of the time trying to converse with locals so they would say "r" with that rolling accent (which is cute) was for naught. The girls, like most in Southland, were fairly chubby and looked to be closely related to one another. It couldn't have been more completely crap if it was raining shit (emphasis added).

Well said, Tim.