Helena Hutt is back in the swing of mummying, Wellington style. The organizing white board in the kitchen, after the blissful emptiness of summer, has filled up with grids of who has to be there when. She spends half the day in her car, shuttling small people about.  And as she drives, she notices something. It’s a definite phenomenon.

The first couple of times, she did a double take, thinking that she recognized her younger, trendy sister Winona and her partner Will in obscure corners of the ever-unfashionable Hutt Valley. It never was them; just their younger, trendy dopplegangers. Straightening out a mailbox here…emerging from a Belmont or Naenae forest walkway entrance there…at a local dairy,  delighting the proprietor by cleaning them out of expensive aloe vera drinks…most tellingly, in the school parking lot, chatting earnestly and driving badly.

A certain migration seems to have begun. The real estate crashlet, paired with the annual February rental squeeze, has given the Hutt Valley new appeal to the young and sensible.

Helena hums happy little songs as she drives along. She won’t be saying “I told you so” about the Hutt in the next year. But she figures she’ll be saying it a lot the year after that.  Once the coffee shops and cafes follow the hipsters to their affordable real estate enclaves.

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