Scrub Buzz Insideout

Treaty of Waitangi 101

2012-02-07T14:19:00.001+13:00

“I don’t feel responsible for anything my ancestors did and I don’t think there’s anything to redress – it’s all just history – shouldn’t we all just move on and worry about the future?”

It was early February about 23 years ago and I was hitching with an Aussie friend somewhere North of Kaitaia. We’d managed to get to Cape Reinga but were finding it hard getting any rides on the way back. It was getting dark and so we’d broken the golden rule and just hopped in the first car that stopped for us. It looked fairly flash and the man driving it was a middle aged Maori man in a suit. It was the late eighties and we were in Waitangi country and within a few minutes of being on the road again we were on the subject of the Treaty – which was when I made the above statement. It was typical of the times that I’d gotten through a fairly good secondary education and the first year of a degree in politics and I still knew nothing about the Treaty or any real history of New Zealand but still felt quite confident expressing the view that we should all just get over it (what ever ‘it’ was). He said that I might take more of an interest if I suddenly saw an army of disenfranchised Maori soldiers in camouflage gear storming South and holding the North as sovereign territory before re-grouping to take the rest of New Zealand in a civil war.

In the rear vision mirror I saw my friend’s eyes widen. I looked at him. He looked at me.

I noted that he wasn’t entirely serious. I suggested that he might have a bit of trouble finding the camo gear to cover his generous puku and as long as the other soldiers were in the same excellent state of fitness I felt pretty safe in the knowledge that I would be able to out run them. At which he burst out laughing and invited us to dinner as he said he was hungry and wouldn’t want his impressive puku to be diminished in any way. As he was getting out of the car I whispered to my mate that I was sure I knew him. I couldn’t find any family friend connections but his face was definitely familiar. He took us to what seemed to us like a flash restaurant – we had no money and were embarrassed so we just ordered a coke. He ordered half a chicken with all the trimmings for us each. The meal became an entertaining lecture on the Treaty of Waitangi 101 from which he quoted verbatim. At one point my mate whispered “You’re out of your league”. I nodded and agreed to keep my mouth shut for the duration of the journey. We also decided that if he was a Maori radical terrorist he was a really nice one. He drove us back to Orewa where he was staying. It was, by this time about 1am and we said we’d be fine if he just dropped us on the side of the road – we’d make our own way home. He insisted on asking us exactly where that might be and then drove about 40 minutes out of his way to drop us in the driveway. As I got out of the car I wanted to thank him but didn’t feel I could without knowing his name. “You can just call me Matt.” He said. “Or Matiu – whatever you like. And the penny dropped. “It’s Rata isn’t it? Your surname I mean.” I said. He nodded.

I still think of him around Waitangi Day and wonder what he’d make of the status that the Treaty holds in New Zealand today. Would he see it as progress that the brash pakeha hitch-hiker is just as keen to keep the Treaty clause in the legislation for the sale of SOE’s simply because the Treaty is a long term community based way of looking after the future which encompasses possible environmental and social consequences and not simply a thin and very temporary bottom line?

Glass half full or glass half empty?

2012-01-30T23:40:00.002+13:00

Glass half full or glass half empty? It depends what you’re drinking. If it’s John Chilwell’s turnip grappa it is never empty enough, on the other hand if it’s anything that doesn’t strip an Essex girl’s make-up off before it hits her lips – it’s probably half full – or it could be that if you’re Greek you may have lost patience with any form of optimism and you’ve simply gone out, got bladdered and thrown the glass in the fireplace in disgust.

It does seem that in this new world disorder– Pollyanna may have finally been the victim of a hit and run. Perhaps she had all her shares invested in a finance company as strong and trust-worthy as an old hay barn. An old hay barn in Christchurch.

It could just be that we are seeing the rise of the age of the Pessimist – Eeyore (the symbolic leader of the movement) may finally triumph over the epoch of Pollyanna positivism that frankly bordered on a cult like following of the power of thinking REALLY NICE THOUGHTS. All the time.

Under the Reich of Right thinking conflict is ‘negative energy’, asking difficult questions just brings everyone down and looking at feasible ways a project could possibly go pear-shaped before committing all your time and money was tantamount to heresy.

I’m guessing here but I bet Terry Serepisos wishes he’d had a few Eeyore like book-keepers around pointing out where the possible bummers might lie further up the road instead of surrounding himself with bankers and society show ponies who just kept nodding their heads and tossing their manicured manes at him.

Much as I hate to admit it, Annie was cute with the way that she’s always betting her bottom dollar that the sun will come out tomorrow. But what if it doesn’t?

You have to question the odds. Why put money on something as fickle as weather? Not after this summer anyway. And the bottom dollar? Shouldn’t she go and buy a thimble full of Fonterra milk with that last one?

It’s people like Annie that have gotten us into this global financial meltdown! There’s a reason why the sugar Daddy is Daddy Warbucks. A gilded era of unbounded optimism leading to a run on unsecured credit and the ensuing instability only being sorted out by a bloody great war – whereby someone who makes guns or sells food will be the winner at the end of the day.

I like the idea of a steady resilient hope – it’s just that I think we’ve been won over by her poor cousin; feckless and lets face it: clueless unbridled optimism.

Bullied into submission by the ‘power of positive thinking’ the natural worriers amongst us have had their input side-lined in favour of the bright and eternally happy believers who want us to think they are what they think themselves into being.

Kim Dotcom is an excellent example. Hire a private jet to make people think you are rich. And you will be. Look rich enough to buy your way into a country. And the gates will open. An optimist will see this as proof that positive thinking works. A pessimist will see this as proof that neither positive thinking or money prevents anyone from being an egg. Nor does it prevent them from doing dumb things with their money once they have it.

Come the revolution Pollyanna and Annie will be shot. As examples to all those others who believe in the power of positive vibrations. Failing that I condemn them to half a glass each of John’s turnip grappa. That should sort them out.

Never smile at a crocodile

2012-01-24T23:03:00.003+13:00

Never smile at a crocodile. And never, and I mean this, laugh out loud at a white supremacist Nazi when he’s having a beach day in Northland with his supremely white mini jackbooted toddler. I didn’t – the camo trousers and jack-boots on a frying Saturday morning were slightly scary. As was the camo flick knife that was attached to the camo trousers. But I was laughing on the inside.

I was also in slight admiration for the young right-wing extremist. It takes some dedication and commitment to be wearing heavy-duty jack-boots and to have your politics tattooed all over your arms on a sunny day. The swastika and the storm-troopy lightning bolts are fairly hard-core on such young puny white little limbs. It seemed all wrong somehow and so I went to offer him some sunscreen because I thought it might be deeply uncool if he had to go back to Wellington or Christchurch or wherever he’d come from to fight the cause of bright pink supremacy. He might get accused of ethnic diversity tolerance and beaten up for being gay. I also thought that his practically albino beautiful little skin-head son looked very cute in the jack-boots and could only be so blindingly white if he had been part of a special breeding programme – possibly on Kyle Chapman’s ‘Aryan Base’ farm in Rangiora where like-minded skinheads play paintball and grow organic vegies. I also hoped that if the toddler suddenly ran off into the waves, he’d do so between the flags so that someone who wasn’t wearing 10 kilo strapped up boots on would be able to save him.

I wondered if young storm trooper was feeling the hate on such a sunny day with all the different coloured bottoms of the local kids covered in their surf club’s colours, going about their business of grabbing sticks and putting their foreheads on the sand in preparation for greater things like: saving lives one day. Somehow I always thought it would be easier to feel more hatey if you lived in a miserable climate. Maybe he’d come North to take a break from the right wing resistance – if so I hoped he wasn’t going any further North where he’d definitely be in the minority colour group because then he might get a radical boot camp of culture and politics somewhere north of Rawene.

If this young kid ever became a lifeguard would he still only want to save white ones or would the camaraderie, fun and responsibility shared among his multi-coloured companions make him see things a different way?

It must take an awful lot of energy and a sense of impending doom and persecution to maintain unlimited hateyness against almost everyone who is not the same as yourself. I’m on the right wing resistance email list mainly because Kyle is a worse speller than I am which makes me feel good. A few weeks ago Kyle sent me this cheery missive regarding the Food Bill:
“We really are in the last days of freedom. We know most of you will sit back and wait for it all to roll over you while you hide away and pretend you will be ok. Rabbits like that will get whats comming. But those who want to stand up and help us work against these laws and lack of freedom, join us, or start your own resistance. Prepare. Arm yourself. will you let Government inforcers take your food and arrest you for growing it?” (sic.)

I intend to arm myself with organic carrots and joust John Key if he approaches.

I laugh – but sometimes I think we should take these guys at their word. How many people laughed at Norway’s mass murderer Andres Behring Breivik and his lunatic right wing Knights’ Templar before he actually carried out what he had already calmly (albeit insanely) said he would?

Get a grip on the real world

2012-01-16T22:56:00.002+13:00

Technology is making us stupid. It allows me to write a nonsensical language of my own device and then press ‘spell check’ to make my spelling mistakes and idiosyncratic misuse of grammar completely disappear.

Technology lets me look up the weather forecast on the web instead of sticking my head out the window to see what the wind and clouds are doing.

About a thousand years ago when I was an exchange student my Thai host Mum smacked my legs with a stick for following her round with a note-book trying to write down the recipes for what was to me, crazy exotic food. Her logic was that if I wasn’t prepared to commit them to memory I was only pretending to be interested and therefore I should bugger off out of her kitchen and leave her in peace to cook. I have never forgotten a recipe that I’ve watched a good cook make since. But why would you bother to commit anything to memory or keep in a mind store from which you can later dip and call it ‘common sense’ or ‘general knowledge’? Why would you do that when you have the Internet?

Why bother slowly working on the same recipe over a life time until it’s utterly perfect and then handing it on to someone who’s interested when I can have 7 different mediocre versions of the same thing I can randomly choose from the web? As long as I’m not stuck somewhere without broad-band or there’s a massive power outage that is.

Years ago before iphone apps there were published guides. If you wanted to travel and see lovely things and lonely places and meet truly wonderful locals the first thing you did was to buy a lonely planet guide. You carefully noted all the places that it suggested seeing and then go somewhere entirely different – pick a place on a geographical – not a consumer map and wander there slowly. That way, in South East Asia at least, you could avoid the yoga pant wearing ganja-toking idiots with ridiculously young local girlfriends who were ‘doing’ Asia and a lot of magic mushrooms in between.

The point being that internet lists of things to do, places to eat and stuff to buy are slowly atrophying the muscle of discernment that allows us to make up our own minds about the world around us. We are also developing short term memory loss by constantly having everything on hand. Here’s an experiment: Ask anyone under 24 for their telephone number . Chances are they’ll tell you just as soon as they’ve looked it up on their phone.

Maybe we don’t need to know stuff anymore. Like the educational trend, which reeked of an abdication of all responsibility: the idea that teachers are ‘learning facilitators’ and students just have to know how to find resources and then collate the information. I still think it helps to have a grip on the real world by knowing your coordinates – socially, historically and geographically. Which brings me to GPS. I never tire of the GPS stories my parents, who run a lodge, tell. People who have had their range rovers dragged off beaches by Dad’s fergie tractor because ‘the GPS’ told them that heading into the tide was the correct way to get to a hotel. People who have ended up in Gisborne on their way to the Coromandel. From Auckland. The Italian captain of the cruise liner that ran aground this week insists that according to all the navigational charts and GPS there was not supposed to be any rocks there at all! Those sneaky goddamn heat-seeking rocks! I wonder if at any point, anyone looked out the window and thought ‘that cliff face is bloody close for such a big ship’! Or, if in such a technologically advanced monstrosity, you could see past the casinos and dancing girls to be able to see out any window at all?

Nudey Rudists

2012-01-10T00:06:00.003+13:00

Nudey Rudists. So christened by the small person, nudists will now always be known thus, and will continue to hold a special place in my heart. Mainly because they are so charmingly, harmlessly bonkers. Who can really be offended by people who play lawn bowls entirely nude? Who can fail to be amused by a group of knitting nannies completely starkers? I know that this is deeply immature but surely we have more compelling things to get upset about than a couple of nuts – making their own re-run of a free willy home video?

I wish I could feel the anguish of ‘outraged of Kensington’ or whoever has been writing all those letters to the ed about ‘prancing exhibitionists’ but I can’t quite muster the energy. Girls in Israel are getting thrown off school buses for wearing immodest head gear and hundreds of girls around the world are routinely disfigured by acid attacks for not knowing their correct place in the world. A place that does not include being anywhere near a school or often anywhere public. There does not seem to be much international outrage being vented on these girls’ behalf but one tanning extremist in our own backyard is enough to make the papers go into fainting fits and have the matrons of St Helliers and Maunu reaching for the smelling salts before whipping up some fetching tulle covers for the piano limbs.

I should declare in the interests of transparency that I would rather join the army or go to a Kiri te Kanawa concert than get my kit off at any beach. Unlike many high maintenance models from Latin America I am well aware that I am the wrong side of 40 and everything is following a migratory path south which at this stage is looking like it may be a one way voyage.

My personal disinterest in nudey rudism is therefore a community service but I really don’t give a fig leaf if anyone else wants to indulge – I doubt I would even notice. I have twice now been in the company of completely nude men in public and have failed to notice. Once I was deep in conversation with an old friend while walking late at night when we were accosted by a flasher. Not wanting to lose the thread of the discussion we went on arguing amicably on our walk until she burst out laughing and asked if we should perhaps go back and ‘scream or something’ seeing as we had obviously failed to react appropriately and the flasher was now standing dejectedly in the middle of the road behind us. The other time was out at Uretiti Beach. I had bundled kids dog and friends into the back of the truck because the waves and weather told me I had a good chance of getting a free feed of scallops from a big Easterly swell. Ecstatic that this had in fact proved to be the case I failed to notice the nude bloke wandering aimlessly at the high tide mark. The small person kept pestering me while I was getting more than my limit of snapping scallops to give this individual some money. In frustration I shouted at her that just because we couldn’t see his home or his lunch box didn’t mean that he didn’t have both. “But Mum!” she said speaking slowly so that I would get it “How can he have a home if he hasn’t even got enough money for some togs?” Good point. In my enthusiasm over the scallops I had missed that we were with three very small people at the local nudist colony. The other kids didn’t notice. They dress like that all the time. For a nano-second I thought about my responsibilities as a parent and whether this really was appropriate. There were still at least 3 sacks worth of scallops floating in the tide. Irresponsible to leave them all to the nudey rudists. Even if they couldn’t afford to buy themselves a decent pair of budgie smugglers.

New Year’s resolution

2012-01-02T12:01:00.000+13:00

New Year New Life so the saying goes in Spanish. I like the idea of having a new life as quite frequently I feel like I’m trapped in some really bad Almodovar movie where everyone is over acting and there seems very little point to anything at all. Mostly I think that if my life were a movie it would be one that would be described by critics as missing some important things that would warrant engaged viewing. Things like a plot. For example.

The problem has always been that while I like the idea of a new life and am very good at making resolutions I lack any kind of resolve, which means the follow through is always lacking. One New Year, I made a resolution to go to Argentina and marry a gaucho with an enormous… now don’t be silly… or rude…. Estancia. Yes. Farms there are about the size of small African nations. Cattle rustling is so endemic because it takes 6 weeks to ‘ride the fences’ to find out what’s missing by which time your livestock is someone else’s barbeque. The resolution was made in all seriousness -ok, well it might have involved a few drinks with some gay bloke friends and a religious portrait adorned with votive condoms, they’d given me which I later regretted taking through customs. The plan was that I would spend my days riding aimlessly round on horses, drinking mate and not doing much of anything except watching the polo (pronounced poulou) and buggering about. Which I thought I’d be quite good at. While the intention was quasi-serious I lacked the resolve that many women have when they are hunting down their marital quarry. I am easily distracted. And have a very low tolerance threshold to boredom. The only real chance I had of actually seeing out this ridiculous fantasy was the estancia owning mining magnate I went out with on a single date. He spent an hour and a half talking about business and then talking into his phone – I exited through the restaurant kitchen and for all I know he sits there still. I’m sure he wouldn’t have noticed that I was gone and my Spanish was too bad to stretch to convincing lies so a doing a runner seemed the appropriate thing to do. I had failed to pay attention to the details. Like; if you really want an estancia you might have to put up with living with a plonker. It hadn’t occurred to me there should be any sacrifices inherent in the resolution.

Life coaches and other people who can’t find a real job would say you have to be very specific. You have to float your intention out into the universe and the universe will magically deliver. Except in my case. When I ask the universe for peace and happiness I get a stray cat and an insane Polish neighbour.

It seems that the universe might be like one of those creative writing classes where they give you 3 completely nonsensical elements and you have to compose a narrative from them. Peaceful, happy or otherwise.

Self-knowledge has led me to have much lower expectations and so this New Year’s resolution is going to be much easier: I will always use the old Orewa road to get to our largest city from the North. I will admire its beauty and it’s distinct lack of ridiculously long queues of irate people waiting in front of toll booth machines that don’t work or are not written in the language of the person randomly punching at buttons in front of you. I will note that taking the slow way has saved me precisely an hour, which I wasted trying to pay $2 for the privilege of saving 10 minutes in a spiffy tunnel.

I will resolve not to vote for any more politicians who suggest that flash roads are the answer to the economic woes of the North.

Seriously – the one thing we’re not short of up here is time. What were we really going to do with that 10 minutes anyway?

We feel your (christmas) pain

2011-12-27T20:17:00.001+13:00

I may live to repent the purchase of a ‘genuine New York kazoo’ to pop in Santa’s stocking. My daughter on the other hand – may not.

I wrote last week on the likelihood of me going to hell based on the number of times I had been told that I would by staunch upholders of one religion or another as a way of quashing any argument. Hell holds no fear for me now. Pilgrims: I have been there but I return to tell you. Nothing. Nothing – is worth going there for again. To Satre hell was other people. He was right.

Hell is a 6 hour car ride in Boxing Day traffic with a protesting 8 year old and a genuine New York Kazoo. It’s like being held hostage by a meth-fuelled Indian snake charmer with a penchant for monkey bars and peppermint chocolate. ‘Ma uh uuummmm’ (why is it that kids can make this one syllable word last for three in such a scary way?) “Mum, she asks ‘can I stop at a park?” “No.” I reply in a non-festive and generally unaccommodating tone. We are then treated to at least 20 minutes (although it could have been longer I was losing track of time as well as my mind) of ‘Jingle Bells’ and the theme tune to Sponge Bob Square pants on the Kazoo. And that was how we came to do a monkey bar crawl back up state highway 1 stopping at every gas station to buy peppermint chocolates to fuel the monkey bar binge and to prevent sudden onset kazoo playing. I must have been hypnotised. The mad Latin, watching the sugar crazed small person swing tirelessly from bar to bar shakes his head and wonders out loud what the hell I thought I was up to with the New York kazoo deal. “Are you insane or is Father Christmas a bit twisted and does he really really hate us?” He suggests throwing the kazoo in the rubbish bin and then pretending the nice looking Korean family next to us stole it from him at gunpoint. I suggest that perhaps this might be taking it too far. He says there’s not a place far enough to take the genuine New York kazoo. He could be right although I’m suffering from Stockholm syndrome and am starting to think that our kidnapper and torturer is loveable and worth having a relationship with if only she’d stop playing the genuine New York kazoo.

My grandfather always said that the bag-pipes sounded their best when heard from the other side of a body of water. When he said this, most people thought he was being generally pleasant at whatever rural social outing my grandmother had taken him to which involved the ubiquitous marching band with bag-pipes. What they didn’t know was that he was actually referring to large bodies of water – like the Atlantic Ocean for example, and had an almost phobic dislike of the sound of bag-pipes at all. I feel the same about the genuine New York kazoo. It’s even mind-bendingly annoying when the kids have given up playing tunes and are just giggling inanely into it as they watch parents try to pretend they enjoy having their heads slowly twisted off.

So to all of you suffering in camp grounds in their tents. To those in small baches and caravans or at home where there really is no escape. To all of you trapped with the plastic lawn mowers with the clicky things, with the key-boards with 100 different computer generated animal noises or the creepy Baby Alive dolls that randomly tell you to pray: it is important for you to know. You are not alone. We feel your pain and remember – the instruments of your torture, thanks to our disposable consumer culture, are bound to be broken by lunchtime. It’s just a question of maintaining the will to live that long.

I’m going to burn in hell

2011-12-20T02:49:00.000+13:00

I’m going to burn in hell. I know this because more than a few people have told me so. It’s lucky Mr. Skinner is not going to burn in hell. He knows this because… well, he just knows. I’d like to know how one gets the guest list for Satan’s Halloween knees up but Satan and I are not exactly on speaking terms right now so it’s unlikely I’ll be so privileged.

It must be nice knowing stuff like who is and who is not going to hell – especially at Christmas. It’s way easier than doing other stuff like loving your annoying neighbours and family members or trying to cook turkey when you think you might secretly be a closet vegetarian. Mr. Skinner is so sure in his all knowingness especially in the face of an opinion different from his own that he has driven down to Auckland to vandalise Church property and make Whangarei famous, yet again for being the hub of uber-conservative religious mad-men rather than a thriving arts and business centre.

Can’t we find some better way of getting into the news? We’ve only just let them have John Banks and now we’ve unleashed Mr. Skinner. I hope he’s made his point. Which is – if you vandalise stuff and you’re 15 and you run away, someone can come and stab you to death and then not go to jail for doing so. If you’ve got a gold card and you do the same in the name of religion then you get away with it entirely. Mr. Skinner is incensed that Glynn Cardy, the vicar of St. Mathew’s in Auckland, has put up a poster showing a slightly shocked Virgin Mary checking a positive pregnancy test. I’m not a huge fan of the tendency toward feather ruffling by showing Mary in bed with Joseph or putting a condom on the Virgin Mary – just for the sake of it. Billboards that specifically annoy Muslims, Hindus or Atheists wouldn’t be big on my list of favourite things to have in a city either – unless of course they were making fun of neo-Nazi skinheads, and then I might find them quite funny.

I would never go about slashing things that I disagreed with though – I’d have been far too busy during the last electoral campaign, I mean where would one start? The fact that Mr. Skinner is a Catholic is deeply disappointing. The last census stated that I was one too – there was no box for ‘derailed, transgressing and often argumentative’ Catholic, but I made do. I suppose I don’t like people like Mr. Skinner giving us all a bad name in the same way that law abiding Muslims don’t like everyone thinking that they carry Osama Bin Laden’s handbook and keep a bomb under their bed. I thought that rampant intolerance was so passé in the Catholic Church and that we’d been there and done that about 500 years ago and learnt our lesson. I thought we’d leave the rabid rantings to the new guys on the block – usually the DIY Christian Fundies who get to lay down the law as they interpret it and point the spiritual bone at anyone they disagree with by telling them they’ll burn in hell.

Catholics, I smugly thought, lacked the zealot gene and were unlikely to have stickers on their cars which read; “ A Jewish Carpenter is my Navigator” as they reverse into your car while doing the Christmas shopping. I know what you’re thinking. I am so going to hell. The bonus of that is: Mr. Skinner won’t be there. However while we’re here I’d like Mr. Skinner to know, that the cauldron in my back yard is specifically for opening mussels. The broom out the back is for sweeping the drive and has not shown any evidence of levitation despite my best efforts and that I wish him a peaceful, loving and tolerant Christmas. Oh. And a Satan zapping light saber from Santa.

Great New Zealand Camping Trip

2011-12-12T23:00:00.001+13:00

I’m not sure what happened to the Great New Zealand Camping Trip but like saveloys and the perm and set it seems to have been binned in favour of more exotic cultural pastimes.

The New New Zealander (my research for this is limited to friends in Auckland) goes to Vanuatu or New Caledonia and gets someone else to watch the kids. Excellent plan but where is all the group bonding and imminent divorce proceedings over the pitching of a tent that I remember from my childhood? They are very early memories of camping, as Dad decided to give full rein to his house building instincts and constructed ‘the bach’ as an unlicensed, architect free zoned structure that still stands resplendent in its black tattoo parlour wallpaper interior which he picked up off K Road in the 70’s. There was the joy of meeting the local flora and fauna too. The moreporks, which my brother had convinced himself were Haast Eagle sized raptors ready to carry him off every time he went out to the long drop. The frolicking of Te Kuti and Love Joy. The joys of camping on the Coromandel in the ‘70’s meant sharing the love with the hippies and their idiotically named goats. The old canvas tent that leaked and the smell of sleeping over cut grass can never be replicated in some club med never never land. The delicate balance one had to effect to get in and out of the camp beds that could snap you up like an Aussie side show crocodile if you got it wrong. The insect repellent that could kill humans if left in confined spaces and the fact that a slice of watermelon was a huge treat worthy of a commemoration photo. Holiday movies were not an option because the nearest cinema was 300kms away and fast food – was kahawai steamed in newspaper.

In the days before Kathmandu shops made the whole camping thing into an urban chic fantasy – camping was a design and entertainment free zone.

In an effort to restore cultural heritage (namely mine) I’m inclined to get in touch with my inner pakeha and make the entire family go camping. I am sure, that like any Latins repressed under authoritarian regimes –it will only be a matter of time before they rebel. I know, deep in my Anglo heart where we believe all punishment has a purpose that I will lose my army of unhappy campers at day one. As I gather pipis and wash out towels in a single bucket insisting on how much fun we’re all having being at one with nature, they will disappear and I will have to hunt them down in all my camping-hair, bucket-washed glory. I will find them holed up in some hideous bunker with supercilious room service and cable TV, eating chips and taking it in turns to watch Scooby Doo and every soccer game being played on the planet. They will be happy. I will not. x

The mad Latin insists that the only people who go camping are lunatics and terrorists – when I point out that Che Guevara spent a good part of his life camping out in the jungle – he replies that this was exactly his point. Camping is to him a perverse embracing of homelessness engaged in by deluded wealthy people. He has the same opinion of adobe houses.

I have already had the Latin camping experience once – when I insisted that the extended family’s kids fore-go the tv set and engage in something thrilling like building a nikau palm teepee I got looks of resigned yet slightly appalled despair. I was going to mention that we had only kerosene lamps that screamed like a banshee and attracted huhu grubs onto your books but thought better of it. I was delighted that they all decided en masse to go and sleep in the tent for the night and congratulated myself on introducing them to the great outdoors.

It was only in the morning that I noticed the missing TV set and the 20 metres of cord extension stretching over the dew covered grass.

All I want for Christmas

2011-12-05T23:39:00.003+13:00

The staff room where I taught in my first job had a ‘Wall of Horror’ out of sight of students. On the wall were shelves of purple glitter dolphins, bizarre plastic masks, a large phallic icon from some fertility festival and a horrible horrible plethora of Hello Kitty items. These were the truly horrendous gifts we had been given as ‘foreign’ teachers. Not every gift made it to the Wall of Horror. It took me a year before the tie I had been given by the group of paranoid Taiwanese army sergeants who had made it clear from the start that they didn’t want any girl teaching them, could be accepted as worthy – in all its appalling glory, of the wall. I’d worn it as a badge of dishonour for most of the year after the official notice had been issued that all female teachers were to wear skirts. Not every Hello Kitty item made it either. To be accepted as a true gift of horror it had to be entirely pointless – it’s very existence had to confront all rationalism and engender a shudder just beholding it. The Hello Kitty furry toilet seat warmer was a centrepiece, from memory.

It seems slightly evil to be thinking of really appalling gifts to give people at Christmas time – does it make it worse that this cheers me up? I only realised the true extent of my grinchishness when I looked at the titles on my internet browsing history and they were, in order:1) Christmas sucks. 2) Christmas is for losers. 3) Psycho Christmas.

The fact that I had spent a happy hour looking at the websites that actually exist for these titles and found an excellent new Christmas carol called Psycho Christmas by a punk band, is immaterial. The point being that there was a community of like-minded grinches who feel ambivalent towards what is supposed to be a time of loving, forgiving and turkey. Perhaps I should create a support group. The thing is that while I love Christmas, I suffer from Yuletide guilt – it seems vaguely mean to wallow in the festivities when so many, have had such a deeply rotten year. Divorces, the loss of a child, or a business hitting the rocks seem to be brought into sharp relief when the world seems to be conspiring to appear to be the Waltons on cocaine. While there’s no point in having a deeply rotten Christmas just to be empathetic to friends having hard times – there is something perversely pleasurable about the thought of truly horrible gift giving just to take the seriousness and sting out of it all. I’ll start with all my silly lefty friends of which there are a few. I will give them a copy of Sarah Palin’s new book. When they say ‘You really shouldn’t have’ I will know they really mean it.
The eco-nuts might enjoy tasteful animal parts as souvenirs in the Australian style. Like a kangaroo’s balls, preserved as a cigarette lighter. They won’t know whether to thank me or turn me over to the authorities.
Family members might be exposed to the joys of an opshop toy rescue bid. Truly creepy dolls toys and crafts end up in op shops and must be released. Some of the dolls that I’ve freed from the likes of Hospice or Salvation Army look like they’d need an exorcism before they could be gifted. I might save those for my special friends. For recalcitrant work colleagues I could gift something truly memorable – like an hour with Wayne Peters for example– but no. Not even I’m that mean. And then there is always the imaginary gift. The one that you wish existed. I know what it looks like. It’s a music video of Christmas Carols sung by Lockwood Smith and Phil Heatley, with Rodney Hide as the principal dancer to ‘yellow bird… up high in banana tree…yellow bird you sit all alone like me…” John Banks with his groovy glasses would play bongo. If it exists – it’s all I want for Christmas.

The New Zealand election is over

2011-11-28T13:42:00.001+13:00

“Santa’s dead.” That’s what the four year old at the bank told me when I asked about her behavioural status with the big guy. The Mum was making slightly embarrassed choking motions to me behind the girl’s back which could suggest either some religious arguments against the worship of consumerism through the cult of Santa or it could be just some creative, if slightly extreme budgeting. Stocking filling becoming stressful? Kill off Santa. End of.

I had the same reaction on Sunday morning after the election. The promises are big. National says we’ll be back in surplus by 2014 but I think even Santa would have trouble delivering on that one.

Christchurch is a whole lot more broken than I could have imagined when I was there last week and everywhere you look screams massive amounts of money to fix it. Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal could easily just decide they’re not going to pay back the money they owe in the same way that Argentina did over 10 years ago. It’s served them remarkably well. This could take a super-hero and looking at the pre-election posters it seemed as if the election had descended to caricature. Phil Heatley played a geeky Robin to Key’s mask-like Batman. Post election Winston was even speaking like the Joker; ‘ He’d been marginalised, stigmatised and even demonised’. His words. His stigmata was not in evidence but the slightly messianic ‘help is coming’ message hinted at him having been crucified by mainstream media. In fact he managed to resurrect himself on the third day with his pinstripe penguin suits and joker smile to smite the people of Gotham city with another enormous spanner to be thrown at Key’s well-oiled political machine.

The good people of Epsom ended up being nicely shepherded into the corral (baaa!) where they got to have two National MP’s where everyone else just gets one. This means that a well to do suburb in Auckland now has more stamp in Wellington than most of Northland put together. Farcical and embarrassing but Banks doesn’t seem to think so – with his new glasses he looked like the mad Scientist out of Finneus and Ferb. I wouldn’t be surprised if a platypus is controlling his brain too. He seems intent on reinventing the Act party (never mind that people have supposedly just voted for the old one, this alone makes the Epsom result a joke) and making it into something new. What about a time machine? Or a banana? And about a million people, most probably the disaffected (young, unemployed), dislocated (refugees from Christchurch) the disinterested (again that would be the young) who didn’t bother to vote at all. Not to forget the whole squadron of people, especially in Northland, two of whom I met this week, who did not vote, not because they didn’t want to but because they just can’t read. That’s right. They are almost entirely illiterate. In New Zealand. I’m not sure that NCEA standards or deep sea drilling or the sale of energy companies is going to address such problems as illiteracy because it arises out of a complex cluster of factors that cause a poverty deeper than that which can be described on a balance sheet.

The South Americans really are much better at true democracy than we are for the simple reason that they were without it for a very long time. It’s a civic duty to vote. Welfare is cut if you don’t. You cannot get a business loan if you don’t. Maybe we could learn something.

The election is over and the people have spoken but I have a feeling when the hang-over is over we might just wake up to find that Santa has well and truly sucked the kumara and there is no masked crusader there to take his place.

The Death of Small Children

2011-11-21T14:36:00.008+13:00

Letter to God Regarding the Death of Small Children by Cancer. With respect to some of the things about this world that are really pissing me off I have decided that it would be best to address these concerns to someone in charge. In lieu of finding the appropriate body, organisation or board I have decided that your position as master and creator of the universe is probably the correct channel to pursue.

In my role as embodied spirit currently occupying a human form down here in Christchurch I have to say that you have seriously fucked up big time this time.

The death of small children from cancer is something you really should reconsider as I believe it falls in the category of the cruel and unnecessary and while many things on this earth may also be filed under this heading I do believe in this case you have gone too far.

For starters it’s not like a 4 year old boy could possibly fit into any ideas of karmic nature or cause and effect. He’s only been here 5 minutes. There are many who perhaps would justify such an end but I note, with a considerable amount of ire – that they are not on your cancer list.

I have at my disposal a list of more suitable candidates should you require it and am happy to share my thoughts on who would more appropriately have their life pre-emptively terminated before they can do any more damage. I do acknowledge that Gaddafi has already been taken out and I have crossed him off my list. This little boy’s name, please note, is conspicuously absent and I am confused as to why is he is still suffering and is not in fact, cured and heading off to the beach this summer as I had asked.

I know that this is not how things generally work but this is a rather urgent matter and I think it’s particularly bad form that you have chosen to slope off just when the going gets rough.

I have serious issues regarding your complaints department – in all honesty you would be better to fire all your staff there as they have done nothing to address my previous complaints or redress the issues.

When you said ‘Suffer unto me the little children’ I did not seriously think for a minute it would be the children that would suffer. What is that all about? I mean really? And it’s not like I can give any comfort to his Mum either.

I mean I could say “ ‘This all has a higher purpose’ but that’s the kind of thing Christians say that make you want to shoot them in the head. Seriously. What possible purpose can this be serving? It is patently bloody obvious that it is not his time. Not for another 70 years at least.

I cannot believe people saying that ‘he will be better off in the place he is going’. That also produces in me a homicidal response. He’s pretty well off where he is right now. He has a family who love him and a beautiful world to discover and that’s the thing – if you can get so much right whether in a ‘try and tweak’ form of evolution or the instant ‘just add water’ variety of creationism – if there is so much that is so irrationally right about this world – how could you get this one just so plain wrong?

Having worked a lot in kitchens I know that a truly great chef (which is kind of what I imagine you to be except with some very exceptional recipes) takes the flak and stands the heat – even or most especially when they or their staff have got something wrong. I’m sending this plate back.

I’m asking you to seriously reconsider the whole deal with children getting cancer and if this issue is not resolved in my lifetime I will be asking for my money back on this whole life deal.

Yours faithfully, (just)

Nickie Muir

Helens voice

2011-11-07T23:56:00.001+13:00

I miss Helen Clarke’s voice. Phil could do with it right now. It was a voice honed over years of being a chick trying to get heard in a big boy’s game and had the low steady grind of a two-stroke lawn mower perfect for riding over bullies. Bullies hated it precisely because it usually beat them at their own game. It was calm. It was rational. It took no prisoners and did not stop until the point had been driven home. It was not conversational and it did not often stretch to compromise or concession – it was, in short, the kind of voice that one would need for an election campaign. This was the voice or at least the style that was needed in the Leaders televised debate because the actual arguments seemed to be entirely irrelevant.

Reviving the spectre of Jerry McGuire by a constant lectern thumping ‘Show me the Money’ on the part of John Key might have scored points with the old boy financiers but was an unfortunate link given the state of the world economy and the reasons for it being that way. It seemed like an ‘80’s throw back and given that National seems set to send the cash cow to the meat works in terms of selling power companies – it all seemed ill advised. Still it made Phil look like a dork for a few seconds so I guess it was successful and John looked like he was having fun saying it so that’s good. I think.

Having sat through the debates I’ve started shouting back at both the radio and the television. The eight year old – with a nonchalant raised eyebrow – says “Mum – you do know they can’t hear you – right?” Embarrassing but I wish they could. What I’ve been shouting is “Show me the Numbers!!!” Because the numbers – and I have to confess numbers are not my forte – but these numbers that the political Pooh-Bahs are chucking about are doing my head in. Seriously – does anyone really understand them and if they do can somebody please explain it to me?

Can you really predict much when we’re not even sure if the Euro is going to exist next week? Do you know anything if Italy’s situation makes Greece look like someone overspent the petty cash from the local kindy? How can you not guarantee early childhood education but can guarantee the banks and finance companies? Is it really a good idea to sell a family business with a good cash-flow in order to pay down the mortgage or is selling state assets more like selling the family home and then having to rent? Amongst the revenue rhetoric are there any real numbers that make sense to financially illiterate people like myself?

At this point I’m thinking of voting based on the time honoured ‘eeny meeny miny mo’ technique. As suggested by the eight year old who was extremely unimpressed with my need to view the leaders debate when we were squandering precious Sponge Bob time. Her conclusion and insightful summary of the issues? “This sucks. No offense.” None taken, especially when said with a lisp and as valid a response as either of the leaders were giving to each other’s policies.

The only thing I really do know is how to finally catch ourselves up to Australian wages – and I’ll let Phil and John know for free. No consultant fees. First you balls up your job back here in New Zealand by being a racist dickhead. Then you write a book that makes it to the bargain bin by day two of sales entitled “ What was I thinking?” Not a lot. Obviously. Then the Murdochs offer you to the Australian public as the next best thing. Worked for Paul Henry.

Stand up and be counted

2011-10-31T21:56:00.005+13:00

Didn’t elections used to be more fun? I remember giving an entire class of Japanese schoolboys a lecture on the New Zealand electoral system as a response to a request for ‘information about election.’ Of course they had been liver –lafting that very week, which was nice, as were the 39 penises, small but perfectly formed in blu-tack that they arranged on the desks. I bored them to death about New Zealand elections as a form of punishment and as an obtuse lesson in the importance of correct pronunciation.

This election is shaping up to be an exercise in a similar form of the death of humour by boredom. Borges once described politics as ‘two bald men fighting over a comb’ and watching Phil and John go at it is about as exciting as drinking tea at a fundamentalist wedding. They both look like fops with swords ritualistically slashing at each other without actually doing any damage or getting much else done.

This time round there is a lot more at stake. It may be, especially if you are young and unemployed, as Mr Key’s campaign kicks in; ‘time to stand up and be counted’ but the idea that questions about sustainability are the equivalent of a big stop sign to any form of development is – simplistic and just wrong. If it were all just a question of digging it up and shipping it out to build a well and wealthy community – Australian mining towns would not be the harsh, physically and psychologically damaged places they are and Waihi would have zero unemployment. New Zealanders made it very clear where it was inappropriate to mine when the idea of mining our National parks was raised. I don’t believe the protest was about stopping mining as much as it was about protecting the business interests of our tourism operators and the money that is engendered from the ephemeral nature of our image overseas. It was not about a bunch of hippies and actors walking off their lattes with a few placards – it was a rational undertaking of the mantle for the guardianship for the real world bottom line. A bottom line, which has significantly changed its definition over the last 20 years.

Ecuador; as are other countries in Latin and South America, is asking for the first time, not the worth of the oil underneath their national parks like the Yasuni, but what the value to the world is – of keeping it where it is. There will always be room for mining – I spent an hour listening to the benefits of sand mining over large-scale tourism from a well-respected ecologist on Stradbroke Island recently. She made a good case. It’s the ability to have a wide-ranging and constructive debate and the insight to be able to form the kinds of questions that lead to the redefinition of such terms as ‘value’ and ‘wealth’ as in the case of the Yasuni initiative, that will move the debate on from the lobbing of grenades between ideological bunkers. Failing that, if the politicians just keep randomly swiping at each other we can send our local representative a little blu-tak sculpture with a note saying. “Please. Stop being dicks.”

What is crucial for an interesting election is that young Northlanders get over their terminal apathy, get informed and stand up and make themselves counted. One way of motivating the under 25’s is: food. Call it the bribery barbie: it doesn’t matter whom they vote for as long as they understand what each party or candidate is offering them and that they exercise their right to choose. If I were a meddling kind of grandma with a big family, which I’m not and I don’t, I’d make sure they only got fed if they exercised that privilege – that civil obligation; to vote.

Celebrating all our heroes

2011-10-24T22:42:00.003+13:00

It’s the season of heroes. And this year, with the aftermath of Pike River, Christchurch, weird international unnatural disasters and an oil spill; as a country we really needed a win. There was a collective sense of the need for a real good time and a celebration of the good guys who really reaped the rewards of sporting resilience.

There are other heroes too. The quiet ones we don’t always celebrate or even know about but who nevertheless show a fortitude of spirit and courage deserving of honour. I didn’t want to write this column. I wanted to write another one. The one with the happy ending and miraculous recovery. The one where everyone lives happily ever after – or failing that; just lives.

About a year ago I wrote about the diagnosis of a brain tumour of a friend’s gorgeous little boy. He looks like the sort of little boy that 1950’s postcards depict; a tussle –haired blondie with a penchant for killing monsters with plastic swords. He is her beautiful baby boy and after a year of the kind of treatment that makes parents seriously consider not treating their kids at all – he’s not going to make it.

‘Sometimes’, she said, ‘there are just too many layers of hard.’ And there have been layers upon layers of hard for her and others like her this year in Christchurch. There is the rough unchartered terrain of a very sick child to negotiate and the brick wall hurdles of relationships that fracture under the strain and family that just don’t seem to get it. There is the creativity required to make a desolate quake destroyed city into a fun adventurous playground for a small child for a single Mum of limited means and unlimited imagination. Taking the remote control of the broken TV from their 3rd broken house and giving it to the small almost broken person – she told him it had super powers. Hearing that the demolition cranes and balls were in town she took him in his wheel chair and let him believe that every time he pressed the buttons he was in fact controlling the cranes and the demolition machinery. For an afternoon he was Bob the Builder’s destructive evil twin. He spent it happily smashing up an entire city with his remote control and an audience of quake battered citizens cheering him on. For that idea alone she deserves a medal.

For every layer of hard that she has weathered this year I have seen in her another layer of diamond strength resilience. Given the worst possible news any mother can receive, she refuses to ‘live in that context’. She will not open the cards with the waterfalls and the silver writing. You know the ones. She will not do flowers or sorrowful faces and it is not because she does not know what is coming or she is in denial. She nursed her terminally ill mother through the last phases of cancer and she knows better than most what the outcomes are. Dancing on the brink of the abyss of loss – dancing lightly on that edge so that her only son remembers the last times as the best times, takes the courage and grace of true heroism. Loving to the extent that you do not allow yourself to fall apart until the job is done, in the border country of loss, shows resilience beyond the rational and is truly the stuff of heroes.

We need to celebrate all our heroes - it’s just that some don’t always get the street parades they deserve.

Scrap metal in the bay

2011-10-17T23:08:00.002+13:00

Fresh, primed and pristine as a Finnish sauna goer after the serious media soft-soaping we’ve been receiving at the hands of Maritime New Zealand. We are told to expect another major oil clean up on the beaches of the East Coast. Fair call; with a sick ship creaking on a reef with a bloody great crack down the middle of it and over 1000 tonnes of oil still on board. Catherine Taylor – the director of Maritime New Zealand seemed amazingly calm when she spoke on Radio NZ saying she’d spoken to a ‘wonderful young Maori person’ at a local marae and that they’d said they ‘could do the clean up’ and that she was going to go and inform other Maori communities down the line so that they could get organised to do their stuff. I wonder what it would feel like on those local coastal marae to be consulted about a clean up having been almost totally ignored when it came to the consultation process regarding off shore drilling.

If we get told to expect more oil on the beaches often enough – it becomes an inevitable fact of life rather than an abhorrent preventable disaster and the public are far less likely to get upset about it. We are distracted by images of swimming pools of frolicking salvaged penguins and forget to ask the bigger, harder questions. John Key is insisting on the ‘unfortunate series of events’ line – unaware perhaps that we are unconsciously sending out the message to all our international guests that we are clean green and 100% pure NZ by total accident rather than good management. There appears to be an underlying assumption that this disaster is ‘just one of those things that happens’ and that we should just get over it and leave it to the experts. It is also symptomatic of a government who continues to behave as if the environment and the economy are two separate entities encased in impermeable sheaths and that the latter is the poorer cousin.

This government is set to shed over 100 DoC technical experts as unimportant, unaffordable luxury items. He is right however in that oil spills and shipwrecks are incredibly difficult things to manage. Having failed 7th form physics, I can’t pretend to understand what is going on in that big creaking piece of scrap metal in the bay. The people getting winched onto that dark and dangerous ghost ship to crawl through spaces attaching hoses deserve to be awarded national hero status and never have to work again. Would their job have been so dangerous if the decision to act unilaterally by MNZ could have been made earlier in the window of good weather? It appears that the salvage operation is always the owner’s responsibility and Ms. Taylor has already admitted that the owner’s response was ‘tardy’ at which point Maritime NZ stepped in. When exactly should it be MNZ’s time to take over a salvage operation when there is a risk of a major environmental disaster? Couldn’t the oil response team take immediate control and then pass the bill to the owners? To be blunt; does a Greek boat owner possibly up to his neck in debt, really give a rat’s arse about what happens to a wreck that already looks like it was on its last legs anyway?

The Director of Maritime New Zealand is an accountant. It is fashionable to have hospitals, schools and our environment managed by accountants. Managers managing managers who oversee a committee of clipboard armed administrators. They make nice flow charts. MNZ have the authority given by the International Convention on Oil preparedness response and Cooperation to which NZ is a signatory, to levy oil and shipping companies to fund any clear up of spills. They also have a minimum level of equipment immediately available for a spill of up to 3,500 tonnes of oil, which covers the amount on the Rena then. I know this because the flow charts say so.

Oil Spill

2011-10-10T01:14:00.000+13:00

We’re an optimistic lot us humans. Or deluded. We kid ourselves that we’re the masters of our own cleverness and then we get upset when things break – or crash or sink. How could this happen? This is a once in 100 year event! Surely there must be someone to blame for all of this! “As a species we are clever at developing fabulous stuff and shipping it round the world but we just don’t spend much time or money on wondering about avoiding worst case scenarios when it all goes wrong. Especially in our ‘positive thinking’ obsessed culture; dwelling on the possibilities of failure and general disaster is for losers. We hope it goes well, close our eyes and cross our fingers.

The thing with oil spills though is that this approach doesn’t seem to be serving us very well. The problem with the ‘this is a very complex and unique situation which would only happen every now and again and we have to be realisitic’ approach, that Mr. Key is in favour of, is that it doesn’t help if the now and again is in your life time and you eat from and live by the affected beach.

New Zealand is a big weather, rough water island on the bum of the planet so it stands to reason that accidents will happen and weather will hamper attempts to remedy the situation. Help will be awhile coming. Anyone trying to catch boats in the Pacific will tell you that there is many a rust-bucket out there and that the rules for carrying hazardous liquids on land in those expensive brand new rigs – seem to be very different from the ones that apply at sea. Given this, it would seem prudent to have a fairly well stocked tool box on our own shores when the need arises. As it does – often. Since 1998 New Zealand has had 4 significant oil spills with a combined leakage of over 500 tonnes of fuel.

The Maritime Safety Authority boasts on its website of having over 12 million dollars worth of gear on our shores for cleaning up oil spills. I think we’ve just spent more than that on an upgrade of ‘fan zones’ in Auckland just in case more people want to watch a footy match. Given the income from oil surely the oil companies themselves could contribute more to having the highest technology available for cleaning up when it all goes wrong. $12 million seems woeful in comparison to the cost of environmental damage to fishing grounds and recreational areas.

How do you factor the real cost of getting it wrong? And that’s the other thing; I remember watching the attempted clean up after the Exxon Valdez and various other documentaries on oil spills as a kid (normal kids played pacman) and the gear all looks the same. In the age of the ipad is there really nothing more that can be done other than spray detergent and put some ineffectual booms out? There is little point in focussing entirely on the hows and wherefores of one underpaid and possibly underqualified sea captain running aground. That’s what government spin doctors will want us to focus on.

The oil spill that happened in the Coral Sea last year, came as a result of a ship being about 8 kms off course. From what I could understand, the captain was navigating with something akin to a primary school geography book. We can’t just put it down to ‘human error’ and then pretend it won’t happen again. It will. If a real education is not the ability to have all the answers but the capacity to form the right questions – then there is a lot more to ask about than simply who we should blame. According to the MSA risk assessment survey in 2004, Northland is three times more likely to suffer from a major oil spill than the Bay of Plenty ever was. What then are the right questions that need to be asked in order to either prevent or minimise the damage from the same thing happening here?

Who is Dan Carter?

2011-10-06T15:57:00.002+13:00

I was going to send the above 4 words as my entire column. They would have looked pretty on the page floating there – in space; leaving readers time to think about things other than Dan’s groin. A philosophical question perhaps. Is Dan the Man or is there in fact an entire team of All Blacks and he just had a bad day at the office and now the other 29 have to go to work? I even thought about wondering out loud if Dan was in fact a rugby Jesus. We follow Dan into the light. He leads us out of the darkness of having to think about elections or listen to Don Brash. He fights against evil. Australians. In his undies. For example. But I’m not that silly. I’d still be opening hate mail from Christian fundamentalists at Christmas time, which would take all the fun out of it. Besides, I know that is not true because an ex-property developer in Brisbane is claiming that title.

It would have been fun to write an existential column consisting of four words but I chickened out and the editor would have gone mental anyway. There would have been the embarrassing phone call, ending with the droll ‘Now give me the real bloody column because no one pays you to be a smart alec.’ And so, in the interests of responsibility, I’m not going to. Instead I’m writing to the Chinese Premier and asking him to invade. I will tell him to hurry up because if he does it right now… no one will notice. The first thing I will request in the new regime, is a reduction in free speech which I hope will curtail anymore stories of weeping women crying over Dan’s nether regions. Somehow I can’t imagine the Chinese getting so swept away in a Tsunami of irrational nationalism over a game of table tennis. Under the new authorities we could do away with elections all together which, given the lack of a credible opposition – it seems we’ve done here anyway. At this stage, John Key would actually have to streak across the field in green and gold body paint and knee Sonny Bill in the groin, rendering him incapacitated, to even make the election look interesting.

Thankfully, I can console myself that New Zealanders are minnows in the international arena of taking sport to the extremes of religious ecstasy and our ability to rope an entire country into a St Viticus dance of national pride, is still in its juvenile stage. For true professionalism in this quarter, we have the Argentines. I am under express orders by the mad Latin to never speak of the ‘superstitious bollocks ’ which is the Maradonian Church. Which is why I’ll write about it instead. A spiritual congregation of fanatics who have somehow taken the fact that Maradonna, perhaps the world’s greatest footballer, wore the number 10 (diez) on his shirt which is similar to the word ‘Dios’ to mean that he actually is God incarnate. White robed priests carry footballs crowned with barbed wire to altars with Maradonna’s image. The fans celebrate Maradonian Easter on the 22nd of June. The day that Argentina knocked England out of the 1986 world cup. Followers must name their sons Diego. It’s hard to tell how much of this is extreme football fanaticism, and how much is the general Latin American taking of the proverbial. I note that many of the makeshift shrines and altars seem to be placed in bars and pizzeria joints and I imagine there are many conversations with partners which begin: “I am going to worship.” “No you’re not, you’re going to the pub with your mates to watch 20 year old video clips of that old cocaine junkie Maradonna.” “How dare you question my spirituality?!” We’re not quite that bad. Yet.

The Rugby World Cup

2011-09-28T03:11:00.006+13:00

Rugby journalism is the art of the blindly obsessed interviewing the mutely inarticulate about the completely unknowable yet paradoxically: the completely predictable. Someone will win the game. Someone will lose. Everyone will agonise over it during and after and come to the conclusion that rugby was the ultimate winner on the day and that it was, invariably, a game of two halves. Seriously. How many halves are there ever going to be, to be a whole game?

Along with such deviancies as secretly liking Australia and loathing meat pies I have to also confess to just not getting rugby. It’s ok if Sonny is getting his gear off or there are Latins to look at, but the idea of watching big guys with no necks and an alien where their ear used to be just doesn’t do it.

Hours can be spent watching three-day horse events or polo. There are the pretty horses; but rugby occupies the same mental space as Sufi whirling dervishes or Finnish stick walloping nudists. I’m a foreign anthropologist witnessing a rare and incomprehensible ritual without language or any knowledge of the rules every time I watch a rugby game. But this is world cup and I know the risks . I may be banished to some remote kingdom and have to spend years in exile eating hokey pokey ice-cream and remembering random cricket scores in order to prove my worthiness to re-enter the realms of kiwidom. Which is why we, the ignorant and feckless individuals who do not care enough to understand rugby, need commentators and journalists so that we can absorb their views and pretend that we belong.

The promos for 3 news has one rugby boffin sniffing the seats at Eden Park and telling of the joy of the patter of “little spiked feet trotting out of the change rooms, the smell of horse liniment. Strong. Deep.” Sounds like gay porn with cowboys – I could get this so wrong so decide not to borrow from that source. Searching the channels I scout opinions from the players themselves; ‘I think the other team played very well, but we played to our strengths and we came through.” Well you’re not going to play to your weaknesses are you? Although that could be entertaining, I have yet to see a player play dead on the field and then when everyone’s got the ambulances running, suddenly jump and make a run for the try line. And, came through what exactly? The storm? The war? What is the metaphor they’re getting at that I’m missing?

I know I will be tested after the Argentine/Scottish game. I take notes so I’ll be prepared. Cantenponi says that they must win to stay alive. This might be true if this were soccer in Argentina. It’s not unknown for soccer stars to be shot by disgruntled fans for some mistake but the Wellington crowd looks harmless enough. I listen to the commentators trade notes on the ‘teeth crunching – botty squeaking excitement”, of it all. Cantenponi converts!! Yay!!! I think, but to what? Buddhism? Suddenly I catch a glimpse of a parade of my Pakeha uncles, brother and Dad – they are wearing Scottish tartan hats but they’re shouting for Argentina. I can’t see the mad Latin anywhere. The commentators are babbling; ‘The Argentines are shouting and singing, as they do.” The mad Latin rings, he’s chanting: “ He who’s not jumping is a big fatty!” There are 2 thousand others chanting with him. ‘What are you doing?” I ask. “I’m jumping – obviously.” He shouts. ‘How come you’re not with the others?” ‘I got kicked out for jumping and singing. I couldn’t sit still any longer I can’t ‘do’ pakeha – so I’m up with the jumping hooligans. Also – your uncles have memorised rude phrases in Spanish and are shouting them at people.” “Female genitalia of your sister’s parrot, being one of them?” “Yes! How did you know?! I have to go – We have to jump!” I do a quick check: Nope. Teeth uncrunched. Botty not squeaking. Still don’t get it.

If there is a hell – it will involve people randomly breaking into song with pitchforks

2011-09-20T13:38:00.003+12:00

The small person has developed a taste for musicals. I take this as proof that my partner had a dalliance with the sort of person who liked ‘Evita’ and that the person who calls me Mum is not my biological offspring. The deviance, encouraged by her grandmother who bought her Mama Mia (do I need to explain why a 7 year old singing ‘give me, give me, give me a man after midnight, is just so wrong?) Annie, and Mary Poppins.

After yet another day with a sick kid however, Mary won and out came the DVD. Happiness restored I sat and listened, amused, to Mrs. Banks and the ill one sing; ‘cast off the shackles of yesterday, shoulder to shoulder into the fray… our daughter’s daughters will adore us, and sing in grateful chorus: Well done! Well done sister suffragette!’ on Monday, exactly 114 years after New Zealand women gained the vote. Unfortunately it seems – their daughter’s daughter’s don’t adore them or even really get what all the marching and fuss was about. My generation got it because we still saw obvious signs around us of many of the jobs and systems for the boys. I think we might have over done it with the skin head hairdos and boiler suits though because the generation that came after us preface any objections to gender inequality with phrases such as “ Not sounding like a feminist or anything but….” And yet women are still missing in action in politics both here and internationally. Unlike Saudi women we do get to vote but as far as women MPs go, we have more than the US but less than Norway, Sweden and inexplicably Rwanda.

To my knowledge, there has never been a woman MP from Northland. The North instead seems to specialise in blokes whose political longevity relies not on dynamism and an ability to advocate and hustle to put something in the kete, but instead on their ability to continue breathing. Provided they are not caught chasing after underage strippers they get to stay. It’s like the Kremlin in the eighties – a conveyer belt of guys that all look the same and get replaced by someone who looks, acts and believes exactly the same. The Whangarei electorate is dire – the last time we had a change of colour here – I was 7. John Banks lasted for about 18 years until he was unleased upon Auckland. They must have wondered what the hell they’d ever done to us to deserve him. The current MP will have been in office for about 15 years by the time he romps home again next election.

My letterbox could do the same if only I could get it on the National party list. It’s not necessarily a bad thing it just makes for excruciatingly tedious politics. Sure, thanks to MMP the party vote still counts nationally for those of us who feel our electorate vote, because of substantive traditional margins and a lack of opposition, is essentially wasted. But it’s the lack of real sport in it that makes the game listless – and surely adding a few more women to both major parties’ ranks would help. Otherwise we’ll just have to satisfy ourselves with the blood sport of watching the Act party implode but there’s such a lack of suspense when they just keep stabbing each other in the front. Nope.

We need some genuine rough and tumble in the political ring of the North and perhaps it might take some women to do the job. Take a look around. Every second one of us is one; surely we deserve some kind of a voice? Georgina Abernathy, one of the original Kiwi suffragettes said; “It’s for the good of the family, and the young around us that we are requesting justice at the hands of the State.” That still seems like a good rallying cry over 100 years later. Politically, if Northland were a musical it would be Annie – singing ‘Tomorrow’. Yup. Things do eventually change; you’ve just got to keep hoping.

World Cup NZ

2011-09-13T11:24:00.003+12:00

The world cup has got me thinking that you can tell a lot about a nation from its national anthem. Here in New Zealand we sing a song of warm fuzziness and humble pleas, not to God of our particular nation, but a God of all nations thereby acknowledging our own insignificance in the greater scheme of things. We meet in love and general niceness and ask only that if there is strife and war to be dished out to the cosmos, that the universal God be so kind as to give us a miss and send it all elsewhere. Historically – so far so good.

We’ve missed out on most of the starvation strife and prolonged civil wars that most countries have copped and while that makes for a peaceful and pestilence free existence it also makes for a rather boring (although sweet) national anthem. While the haka may carry some of our national fire in the belly, with its throat slitting bum baring ferocity – it has also become a ritualised display of fossilised aggression. Friday showed us inspired choreography and breathtaking creative coordination. It also gave us haka a la bollocks, haka with feathers, haka with imaginary canoes and haka in ties. OK. We get it. Everyone is really angry and ready to fight the enemy (in a friendly and sportsman like way – just ignore the whole throat slitting bit.)

Our national anthem and the haka seem to sum up our slightly schizophrenic national psyche. As does the Argentine’s. Saturday had the mad Latin driving round town with the national flag on our beat up truck. I’d personally like to thank whoever nicked it from him when he left it in the carpark. The flag and the upcoming game with the English engendered in him a need to drive about town singing the national anthem out the window and inciting war against those Malvinas stealing pirates – those offspring of Satan: the English. I had to remind him that this would also include me – and technically – our daughter.

Part of the problem with the Argentine anthem is its blood and guts hyperbole which gives the expression ‘over the top’ a whole new dimension. In fact the toned down version had to be created because the original was so long and gory against the Spainish that it offended the wave of later Spanish immigrants to such a degree that it frightened them. “to resound with horrible din: the whole country is disturbed by cries of revenge, of war and rage.In the fiery tyrants the envy spit the pestipherous bile.” You get the idea. And it went on. And on. For personal entertainment I did suggest that with all those double barrelled surnames and excessive hair product in the Argentine team – the best response if they were ever to face the haka -would be to blow a big group kiss the way of the Mighty All Blacks. I regretted it. It triggered another round of the national anthem where he swore they would gain victory or all die in glory trying. Which is why I’m supporting Japan, simply because they’re called the ‘Cherry Blossoms’. The idea of a bunch of rucking maniacs going by that name delights and inspires.

I’ve had just about enough of the machismo of rugby - it’s time for the All Blacks to reclaim their feminine side. The English have stolen their uniform anyway so it’s time for a change. What about renaming The Mighty All Blacks, the Little Kowhai buds and going for a yellow look? My only hope is that they play like a pack of girls. The NZ women’s rugby team pack of girls that is. And that’s because; the Black Ferns always win.

Let’s Not Get Real Then

2011-08-23T22:13:00.011+12:00

Reality is such a bastard. You get off your little sail boat to find that the share market has tanked like a kamakazi fighter plane and you can’t even pretend to be worried because you have never owned any shares. Unfortunately your job is still there waiting for you so you can’t pretend to be young and disaffected so that you can go on a brick and Molotov cocktail spending spree round the neighbourhood either. The news tells you that Libya and London are burning and you wonder how this happened in 3 weeks and what Libyan or London youth have in common apart from one being very heavily armed and fairly keen on setting fire to posters of Gadafi. Why would you bother to keep stuff around that you only intend to burn? Would London youth even recognise a poster of Cameron? You note that there are not many Libyans setting fire to stuff in order to get some brand name shoes.

In the same time a head of broccoli took the same trajectory (but in reverse) as the kamakazi pilot and hit a new high of about 4 bucks a head making it slightly more expensive than either gold or rhinoceros horns. You hear on the unofficial jungle drums that there will be unrest on the streets of Northland because there is no weed to be had because all astute dealers are saving it for the world cup. Nice to know that Northland is not a basket case abandoned by all political interest or leadership and is in fact a kohanga (nest) of entrepreneurial genius. You alight from the little bubble that is a sailboat to discover the Aussies complaining about having our apples over there. They’ve managed to keep them out since early colonisation and their banana growers are madly screaming “Yes! We have no bananas!" after Cylcone Yasi, which means the three that they raided from their Aunty’s garden will now cost you about $15 a kilo. Really. They’ve managed to deflect not only our apples but Ecuador’s banana imports as well in order to protect their growers. What have they got that we don’t? Why don’t we look after our own tomato growers who would need to sell their product at about $15 a kilo on the fringes of the season to make any money when our happy isles are awash with cheap Aussie imports? When does a free market just become a dumb one?

Alighting from the alien craft you wonder why everyone still cares what Standard and Poors has to say about anything at all. What does it matter if the States is no longer a triple A rated country when the really interesting thing is that the President gets a ‘please explain and see me in my office’ note from China? And he went.

Could the image of the United States as a symbol of everything wrong with rampant capitalism be any more tarnished than it already is? Why yes. Obama could always get Saatchi and Saatchi to do an ad campaign for him. As living proof that Telecom CEO and corporate honchos in general as well as advertising people also live on alien craft that hover slightly over the surface of earth without ever alighting: we have the Abstain for the Games idea.

I applaud the effort to improve the gene pool in New Zealand but what I really love is Sean Fitzpatrick driving round in a creepy pink hand.

Bizarre, slightly porno and yet so KRoad on a Friday night.

This is what happens when rugby goes corporate. The world is mad. STAY ON YOUR BOATS.

Secret Love Affair

2011-08-15T16:48:00.010+12:00

Go on shoot me. It has been going on for quite awhile now. We can’t meet as often as I’d like and we go for long periods where absence only increases my illicit desire. It started when I was 19 and having had a row with my father declared that I would be leaving his house and going over to the other side. I swore I knew what I was doing, a point not underlined when my army surplus backpack, having seen better days in ‘nam, fell to pieces at the airport. He fixed it up with the electrical tape he always carries for such emergencies while my mother worried quietly in the background. Inexplicably he bought her a duty free Lladro polar bear and then made me carry it on my travels. Perhaps he thought if I could keep a piece of fragile china safe he may, by some parallel universe magical thinking, increase the chances of my coming home in one piece too. And so I left.

To my other great, secret love: Australia. I know. I have complained about the constant migratory trail of our young and ambitious to her arms. I have worried that the massive muscle of her mining power could easily sell the ambiguous advantages of becoming our own ‘dig it up, ship it out’ mini state. I know I have been shocked that a country so close to us in so many ways has had such a different relationship with her indigenous people, or by her big ballsy brassiness. And yet I can’t help myself. From that first trip where I hopped on a train in Sydney in the late hot afternoon and thought I could be in Rockhampton by midnight, I have been awed by her vast beauty. And equally enchanted by her rich kaleidoscopic biological diversity. Climbing out of the rut and taking the small person, I’ve gone to find fragments of an earlier life and see some old friends, on a boat in the Coral Sea.

The small person says that her Mum has two versions – the work one and this one, the one who can spend a couple of weeks beach-combing and fossicking for treasure, she says she likes this one better. We are off Orpheus Island where my friends ran a research station for years and so this is their backyard and our kids go feral, playing at being rock wallabies on golden granite boulders that surround a crystal bay. Rainbow bee-eaters come to feed in the mangroves and rays glide around the boat, vigilant marine intelligence operators. Clicking shrimps, the cicadas of the marine world, deafen and the eerie cry of curlew can still spook even the rational among us. Everywhere the high tide mark of Cyclone Yasi, that stripped vegetation and picked up handfuls of boats and threw them with the petulant ferocity of a child throwing a tantrum. 8 metre waves in some places causing huge tidal surges, ripping up marinas and seaside villages before the Japanese tsunami and our own earthquake eclipsed Yasi in the news. Bananas at 15 dollars a kilo is one lingering consequence. We find a dead dugong and wonder if the sea grass is damaged and they are going hungry. The girls snorkel in clouds of damsel fish. A leopard shark, dressed and moving like a westie girl out for a night on the pull. Mudskippers; emissaries from the Ministry of Silly Walks. Dolphins catching fish under a porch light at the bottom of the garden and a wild koala at the front door, a million gar fish jumping in unison under the torchlight.

Travelling with the eight year old reminds me what I often forget. That it’s never about the work or the money or the goals. It is always about the people and the places and being enamoured and enchanted by them both. Read this carefully for I shall write this only once. After finishing the last sentence, fold the paper and eat it. My guilty secret is out, it’s true. I really do love Australia, and some of the special people who inhabit her.

Roller Derby

2011-07-18T22:11:00.008+12:00

There are days when I am seriously bored. Bored bored bored. If I were a kid and it were the school holidays – I'd tell my Mum this. 400 times. Seeing as I actually am the Mum in this case I decide to go in search of some fun where I can take the 8 year old and the mad Latin with me. Generally speaking, someone of my age who is seriously bored with winter and the universe should perhaps seek some form of mid-life adult crisis entertainment like… Zumba or Swingers parties. However I'm also the sort of person who actually once spent 2 hours at a Swingers party without realising what the deal was, giving a whole new dimension to the meaning of the word 'clueless'. I had to leave after feeling obliged to let one of the women know that I'd just seen her husband head upstairs with some other cheeky tart. Prevention of pear-shaped social situations is always going to be less messy than any sorting out that might need to be done later – and mistakes do happen – he might have been showing her the bathroom or something. It wasn't my first language and I knew I was floundering. She looked at me as if I'd just had a lobotomy – which is pretty much what I'd decided to book myself in for has I headed for the door, alone, to hail the next available taxi. Nope – some serious fun of the family kind was required – everyone having survived what I'm sure was Swine Flu, or Rat Virus or some other heinous bug that has yet to make it to world headlines. If you haven't had it – don't worry; you won't die – you will just want to. We all needed a night out. We could go and sit in the ‘all weather events stadium’ to watch rugby and discover that only true href="http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/taniwha/1"target="_blank">Taniwha could survive the mud and sleet and generally swampy conditions. The idea of watching rally cars – while I applaud the fact that it's an international event that is fantastic for the hospitality industry – wasn't what was called for either. I did go and clap and look enthused but noted that in Cordoba, where I've spent a few summers at rally time, this type of event would attract over 100,000 people.

Now, unfortunately, if the CBD in Whangarei were a boat, it would be the Marie Celeste and everyone else must have gone to Australia to look for a job. Councillors Kahu Sutherland and Merv Williams should worry less about attracting 'the wrong type of people' to town and worry more about having anyone left behind to vote for them.

And then – from the boringness – we were delivered. If you haven't discovered the Northland Nightmares you haven't lived. It's a case of the good girls gone roller derby and it is a manic depraved celebration of everything you tell your kid not to do on their first day of kindy. It is big girls behaving badly. It is as if Barbie's evil twin had a love child with Arnie and then let her offspring dress up in Halloween gear and then go feral. It's what the girls who get kicked out of ballet do. The names alone are worth it; Demolition Dolls, Diva Destruction,Tan ya Hide, 8th Deadly Sin, Psycho Sis and some maniac racing round the track in bright silver undies with 'Wanna Rumble' on her arse. These are the kindy teachers, nurses and Mums of three allowing their dark scary alter egos a night out to party and they are serious stars. They're still on their trainer wheels and have yet to reach the full scale mayhem that American roller derby girls get to but with their crazed make-up and kick butt attitude they are great fun to watch. August 6th will see the Hellmilton Roller Ghouls (from, Duh, Hamilton) battling it out with the Northland Nightmares at the Kensington stadium.Be there and shout loudly or you shall be condemned to boringness forever.

Makers and Takers

2011-07-11T22:20:00.007+12:00

There were two kinds of people in this world: the makers and the takers. What surprised me most at the late stage that I became interested in money (being a hippy with a backpack is not such fun with a kid in tow) was that often the takers are the ones who can most afford to give back a little. When I woke up and realised that with the number of dependents we were responsible for, and the low possibility of finding well paid work in the North, meant that I actually could not afford to keep working for wages and stay here - it came as a shock. Once I'd got my head round this new fact, it came as an even bigger shock to realise that it was entirely feasible to avail myself of all the educational and health resources this country has to offer, to do very well in either business or in the buying and selling of property and to pay absolutely nothing in tax. The business section in Whitcoulls will tell you how in less than 5 titles. Obviously –the fact that this bothered me rather than excited me into fantasies of how to make the next quick buck would suggest that I'm not really cut out for the real world of business. The fact that there are, genuinely talented and inspiring business people who have had enormous financial success and yet are still also bothered by this is heartening. These would have to be the kinds of people who are interested more in building a robust national economy rather than just making it to the rich list by building a vast personal fortune. Sam Morgan noting the strangeness of not paying any tax on the money he made in selling Trade Me and his decision to continue with his own charity work as a result, is a sign of a great maker in the making. Andrew King, Director of the Property Investment Association, on the other hand, always does a good impression of the Zombie King being let loose in the broad light of day whenever the words 'Capital Gains Tax' gets mentioned. There's a lot of virulent hissing and a sudden explosion where his head used to be followed by a puff of smoke over a pile of designer clothes on the floor. Andrew is good at the implied threat; Labour voters are more likely to be tenants and will undoubtedly suffer from higher rents should the Capital Gains Tax be introduced. He assumes that no one with a rental investment will vote for a capital gains tax but forgets that they are in the minority anyway. He also forgets to add that landlords with multiple properties will tend to sit on them much longer which will stop one of the worst aspects of being a tenant in a rental property in New Zealand. Anyone who has spent a year renting in a real estate boom will know how tedious it is to be thrown out of your 7th house in as many months with three weeks to find a new school for your kid and to find the money for the move and somewhere that will take the pet rabbit. Rental investments can never be considered a worthy focus for all the business talent that exists in New Zealand but why would you risk doing anything else when it has traditionally been such an easy (and lets face it – low risk, lazy) way to make money? When it comes to working out policy it's never a good idea to listen too closely to the takers – you just need to look at the USA to realise this. Obama is trying to bring to heel an economy that is currently borrowing $125 billion a month with another 500 million in debt about to mature in exactly 2 weeks. Enough to make anyone's eyes water. He suggests taxing private jet flight tabs that run into the millions and he gets the Republicans stone walling and squealing like possessed little piglets about to be exorcised. When the takers start squealing policy makers need to respond by just getting out the earmuffs.