A much better pace of life

David Alexander

Quieter life: former Aucklander Emma Walker in Oxford, North Canterbury, where she has opened a gift shop.

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Why would a Ponsonby woman, a classic young, single metropolitan go-getter, suddenly land in a quiet backwater such as Oxford, North Canterbury?

For 37-year-old Emma Walker, it was the pursuit of slow. "In Auckland, I was always busy, busy, busy. But I couldn't tell you what I was doing. I never really had any relaxed down-time, sitting at home with a book, or going to the beach."

Oxford looked the perfect antidote. "I thought there wasn't going to be the rush and the hustle and bustle. I wasn't going to be stuck in traffic an hour a day each way. I wasn't going to have someone on my back always demanding answers and results.

"It'd just be slower. I'd be able to go to farmers' markets on Sundays, eat all this good local produce stuff like that," Walker says.

The move shocked her friends. A category manager for a national retailer, Walker says she just decided to leave one day a burglary was the last straw and went to a career coach to work out what she should do.

"It was like a jig-saw puzzle. I could tell you what the different pieces were like, but I couldn't see the final picture how they came together."

The answer was that she should go somewhere nice and open a shop. It became a gift, books and gourmet-food shop, called Emma's at Oxford, after she visited the town for cooking personality and author Jo Seagar's famous country-cook school.

Making a go of her own shop means, of course, that Walker is still busy, busy, busy, but in a completely different way, she says.

"It's great. It's a much better pace of life. The quality of people is really good. There is no flash one-upmanship, such as: `I've got to have the flash house, the flash telly'. I haven't had one moment when I've gone: `Oh God, I really miss Auckland'," she says.

- © Fairfax NZ News