Rob's Blockhead Blog

Illogical nonsense on the Turin Shroud

2011-12-22T08:28:00.000+13:00

I see there's now a claim the Turin Shroud may be geniune after all. The story doesn't quite bear out the headline - the scientists have only concluded that they don't actually know what might have caused the images of a crucified man to appear on the cloth.

That is not quite the same as saying, we don't know, therefore God did it.

But here's the thing: even if God did do it, is this really such a good advert for God?

If there is a Supreme Being has the power to perform miracles, shouldn't this Supreme Being do some useful ones?

I mean, if this Being has that sort of power, shouldn't this Supreme Being perform a miracle and, to take a topical example, prevent this sort of child abuse rather than just make some strange marks on a bit of cloth?

It seems to me that anyone who venerates the Turin Shroud as some sort of sign from God has seriously got their wires crossed.

If it is a "sign" from God, its a very dubious one.

Things to Worry About

2011-12-20T11:46:00.003+13:00

North Korea. These people have just lost their beloved Leader, one of only about three people north of the 38th Parallel with a weight problem. These people are crazed with hunger and now with a weird collective grief. Sort of like the Princess Diana thing, only instead of Elton John they have nukes.
Europe. These people are crazed with debt problems and with, in the jargon of the financial markets, 'kicking the can down the road'. They've now got the fiscal equivalent of stubbed toes and they're running out of road. The thing about debt and deficits is that at some point you have to start the long slow paying back. New Zealand learned this 25years ago - slowly and painfully, and our political discourse is still scarred by the decisions made at that time. The EU can only get worse, and it will be worse for a long time. And they also have the baby boomers tipping over into retirement - at least NZ didn't have that imminent problem in the 1984-92 period.
Ditto the US. They're now going into presidential election year which means the chances of anyone saying or doing anything sensible for the next 12 months is pretty minimal.

Cheerful sod, aren't I? Well, as far as New Zealand's prospects are concerned, I am quite optimistic - over the medium term, anyway. I've written about this here and here will be a third installment in the New Year.

I'm not convinced 2012 is going to be all that great. But the combination of diversification of markets, with New Zealand now being geared to the part of the world that is just beginning to grow; New Zealanders' newfound interest in savings - for the first time in a very long time; a political system which is not gridlocked and which is, however imperfectly, dealing with the country's problems instead of ignoring them and/or just blaming them on 'the 1990s'; and a very transparent set of government finances, means the medium term outlook for New Zealand is quite positive.

We're not going to boom - and it would not be a good thing if we were - and a country of 4.5 million people, spread over a comparatively large and difficult land mass, will always be vulnerable.

But for the first time in my lifetime - and I'm 47 - I'm looking a decade ahead and seeing solid reasons for optimism.

25 Days In November

2011-11-01T13:09:00.000+13:00

Will be spending much of the next four weeks writing about the election, along with covering whatever form the global economy's ongoing impersonation of a hormonal emotionally incontinent 14-year-old takes this particular cycle.

Oh, and tax. There's bound to be some tax stuff in there. Yummy yummy tax.

The twitter feed is probably the best short form way to keep up with things, as the entire news industry is now being twatted.

I may not be making much sense by the end of the month. Wibble.

What's wrong with daylight saving

2011-10-13T07:45:00.001+13:00

I've never been a huge fan of 'daylight saving' - a silly term for basically buggering about with the clocks. (yes I know 'Buggering About With The Clocks Time' instead of 'Daylight Saving Time' is a bit convoluted. It has the greater virtue, though, of accuracy).

No, it isn't that it fades the curtains, as someone famously grizzled when it was first introduced.

Nor is it, totally, due to memories of having to get the cows up early, something I wrote about once before.

Daylight saving, I have decided, is discriminatory.

There is no particular reason why the clocks are shifted back when we switch into 'NZ Summer Time' (don't make me laugh) to take advantage of the longer daylight hours.

Is there any particular reason why it is assumed people will need the extra daylight hours at the end of the day?

Why not in the morning?

This is where the discrimination comes in: daylight saving is Nightist. It penalises those of us who are 'morning people' or 'larks' and favours those who are 'night people' or 'owls'. (We should probably find an NZ bird equivalent of this. 'Moreporks' is an obvious replacement for owls, but I'm not sure about morning. Tuis, maybe.)

Someone should do a study on this. I harbour dark suspicions that those of us who are morning bods (yep, I'm one) are not as productive during NZ Summer Time.

This has got to have an impact on GDP.

We will never catch Australia by 2025 if we're going to penalise some of our most productive citizens in this way.

And besides, those of us who are morning bods don't get to stay as late at the summer barbecues.

It's just not fair.

The 1981 Tour: The Protests, the Rage, the Moustaches

2011-09-05T09:38:00.001+12:00

“That’s a bit too bloody corny,” I thought last night, watching the two lovers across the 1981 Tour divide embrace in Onslow Road, next to a group of protesters overturning a Holden Kingswood.

The scene – the climax of Rage, a drama about the ’81 protests – was reaching a bit too hard for some sort of symbolic reconciliation and redemption.

He, a protest leader from conservative provincial New Zealand who had been radicalised at University: she a Maori cop who had been working undercover with the protest movement and had, despite herself, fallen in love.

Staging their first honest kiss next to that up-ended Kingswood - which was one of the most memorable photo-images from that bitterly divided year – seemed a bit too cute.

But despite my natural cynicism, I found myself choking up.

There is what might look like a similarly stagy bid for a feel good ending, with Julius Nuyere, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM) later that year, saying how the New Zealand protests gave black Africans hope.

The speech looks a bit contrived, but the co-writer of the programme, journalist Tom Scott, was at that CHOGM meeting and, at the time, reported Nuyere saying pretty much what he says in the film.

‘Rage’ is very well done. There’s a couple of liberties taken - I don’t think the Clean’s ‘Boodle Boodle Boodle’ came out until after the tour, for example - but these are minor.

The small touches are neatly done and they give the drama depth. It is all too easy, when writing history of large events like this, to turn every dialogue into a speech and to paint all the action in large brush strokes.

This is mostly avoided. The characters are real, not sloganeering archetypes.

One small example: Ginette McDonald, who has only a minor role as a middle aged, middle class, woman caught up in the protests.

The mark of a great actor is being able to capture a character with a few lines and a look, and McDonald is a great actor. Here, she conveys not only a character but a whole sub-stratum of New Zealand who were opposed to the Tour, not because of radicalism or any great bolshiness, but due to a slightly bewildered but determined decency.

If you missed ‘Rage’ last night, get hold of it. Its very very good.

Maybe we're doing it wrong.

2011-08-04T13:13:00.000+12:00

Disconsolately picking at a cold roast lamb sandwich this lunchtime, contemplating the week's more important news items.

The NZ dollar has, of course, been giving us a real world demonstration of that old saying about eagles soaring and getting sucked into jet engines. Or something.

Other pieces of news have been more disquieting.

Firstly there is this, the revelation a 25 year old bloke managed to steal stuff from a Navy ammunition dump.

The burglary happened on the weekend: the navy reported it to the cops on Monday.

I would have loved to have been in the North Short cop shop that morning, when the Rear Admiral dropped in and said, please sir, some P addict lowlife nicked some stuff from our ammo dump.

Isn't the whole point of having a navy is they're supposed to, you know, defend stuff like this?

Fire the bloody bloke in charge of this ammo dump - find the bloke who broke in there and make him Chief of Defence Staff or something like that. We need him, clearly.

At around the same time, this bloke built himself a hovercraft.

Ok, it killed him and all, but it seems to me that he was showing the sort of initiative which the bloke who nicked stuff from the Navy also showed and which the Navy themselves seemed to be lacking.

Another missed opportunity, I fear.

If the Swedes can produce someone trying to split atoms on their stove, we can do better than this.

Quote of the month - from Busted Blonde

2011-07-20T07:59:00.000+12:00

"Willie Apiata could be #1 on the ACT list and Maori still wouldn't vote ACT. Instead they would just lift their skirts or drop their trous and give Brash a look see at the hairy brown eyeball."

Full post here

A rare recommendation

2011-07-15T11:55:00.002+12:00

A neighbour who is a professional wine taster occasionally donates a brace or trio of wine bottles our way, with only the first couple of inches missing.

We get on very very well with all our neighbours, but this one, especially.

Anyway, we got to sample this magnificent choice recently - Ostler Caroline's Pinot Noir.

Now, I've often been rude about NZ red wines. Historically, the rare good ones are way over-priced, and you could get an equal or even better Aussie red for roughly $10 less.

And the fashion for pinot noir has mostly left me dubious - I've had some good Central Otago ones, but any I've had from other regions taste too thin for my liking.

This baby - we had the 2009 vintage - is magnificent. I'll leave the usual jargon about berryfruit and the like to them what does such stuff.

Let me just say this is a full, palate-stonkeringly great brew. The flavour and body is as strong as any good Aussie red, only more polite and subtle, because we're Kiwis.

Yeah, the price is pretty steep. We'd never have tried it if we'd had to buy it. This is very much a special occasion wine. But if you've got one of those occasions, this is a goodie.

Speaker-Speak

2011-07-12T14:41:00.001+12:00

"can I jusst say, to Paul Quinn at the back of the House there, that his interections....are not adding anything."

Mr Speaker Lockwood Smith, to National back bencher, a short time ago.

This is polite Speaker-speak. Roughly translated, it means: "mate, you're being a fuckwit. Shut up."

I am following the House from the home office, having contracted something vile of a flu-like nature, but which can't possibly be flu because i had my flu shots.

Also trying out the new machine - an iPad. I likes it. I likes it a lot. And it is faster than the laptop.

Vengeance with a Back

2011-06-24T17:07:00.000+12:00

The osteopath has been doing an Eddy Izzard on the spinal column - yeah I know that's chiropracty...chiropractory...chiropractism...whatever they call it - and yeah I know osteopaths and chiropractors view each other with the kind of warm regard normally associated with relations between Black Power and Mongrel Mob, or maybe between the local Playcentre Committee and the local Kindergartetn Committee....but the general approach, when you're on the slab, seems awfully similar.

They both sort of try to turn you into a gibbering, breathing pretzel.

A few things I have been reading - stuff about NZ's economic imbalances, mostly, and I really want to get away from it right now, because I think we're going to have to have someone turn our economy into a gibbering pretzel. Which would be an improvement, I suppose, and at least our economy only needs a 'crack yer bones' treatment rather than the economic equivalent of chemotherapy, although we're going to need it for about a generation.

We're not quite Greece, although another recession or another earthquake and we will be.

I'd planned to get away from all this stuff, and I now shall do so. Elsewhere on the web, Dr Yobbo has been visiting hotels in Auckland and working out what he can nick:

'Vanity kit', consisting of three cotton buds in a small cardboard box. I stuck one in each nostril and still didn't look like Prince's ex. It's possible I was doing it wrong, but I reserve the right to sue.

Dirk Flinthart has been sleeping badly:

...when I heard a stentorian electronic monotone blaring out from somewhere downstairs at 0300, I groaned and pulled the pillow over my head. But Natalie got up and investigated, and didn't come back, and that kind of meant I had to do something manly and tough, so I got up and grabbed my robe.

A bit closer to home, and a bit more seriously, Chris Trotter - and others - are saying the polls understate Hone Harawira's support because a lot of his supporters use cellphones, and/or are young.

It is now an article of faith among some sections of the Left that the methodology of New Zealand pollsters is irredeemably flawed. They argue that since more and more young, brown and/or poor Kiwis no longer use landlines, polling agencies that continue to rely on interviews with landline subscribers are bound to produce results significantly skewed towards the opinions of old, white and rich voters.

Ah, yeah. Parties doing badly in the polls always seem to argue that for some reason their supporters aren't getting polled. I heard Labour and, particularly, Alliance people ran it in 1996, (and Labour people again in 2008) on the grounds that a statistically significant chunk of their supporters couldn't afford phones at all. In 1996, just under 1996 of NZ households had a landline: in 2008 it was around 98%.

I've heard National and Act people run the same argument, in 1999 and 2002, on the grounds that a disproportionate number of their supporters are self employed, and too busy to answer polls.

It was almost all self-deluding, whistling-in-the-dark stuff, although from memory Act did do a bit better than the polls suggested in 2002 (National did worse).

There might be a bit more variation in tomorrow's byelection, because it is for the country's northern-most Maori electorate, and if the stereotypes are true, there is a disproportionate number of the country's drug dealers in that electorate - people who famously buy cheap prepaid cellphones on Trademe rather than have a landline. But I'm always dubious about stereotypes, especially self-serving ones, and this one is a bit too pat. I'm also not too sure if drug dealers are particularly conscientious about voting.

Tim Watkin, meanwhile, was on the panel with Winston Peters last weekend and wonders if it is all over for the guy. I had a similar response, watching the same interview, especially Peters' 'We're still relevant' at the end: it had the same slightly desperate and defeated tone as Muldoon's 'I love you too, Mr Lange,' in the last debate in the 1984 election.

Watkin also notes something I think is being under-estimated by most of the opposition parties - especially Labour: that there is a very different mood in the country.

The earthquakes in particular have changed the mood of the country in ways we still don't entirely comprehend. There's a wariness abroad in the land; a sense that things have changed.

He's right, although I'd say the change started before the earthquakes - Canterbury's tragedy has, however, made the mood deeper and stronger. I'd say the origin is in the global financial crisis and the realisation that the country can't go on running up debt. The earthquakes have given this an even sharper focus: they're a reminder that we are very vulnerable on a number of fronts and we need to be a lot more prudent if we're going to deal with these.

Bugger

2011-06-19T17:37:00.000+12:00

That last post? The one with the screenshot from Google Maps? It is where a tramping trip began last Sunday.

And ended there, too. Prematurely.

There are other people I need to inform of the whole thing, including my osteopath and, perhaps, ACC, although they're a bit more toey these days about back injuries....and also a couple of mates who I had planned to go tramping with over the next couple of months. It looks like lugging anything large and full of scroggin around on my back is going to be a bit of a no-no for a bit.

Typing this is bloody hard, actually, MORE ANTI FLAMM NEEDED.

I did manage some tramping. Left that carpark and went in to Aspiring Hut. Back felt a bit iffy from the start and after about 20 minutes was even more iffy, like iffy as in WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ME. iffy.

I did stay in there a couple of nights, because (a) by the time it was hurting enough to turn back the hut was closer than the start and (b) Presbyterian bloody-mindedness PAIN IS GOOD FOR YOU YOU SLACK BASTARD.

I did take some good photos and if technology is being reasonably gracious and/or the residue of antiflam on my fingers isn't caused me to poush the wrong button, these are below, or at least somwhere on this page. You'll have to find them yourself. It hurts me to point.

The last is from the drive out, but I like it. The first is from the Aspiring Hut, the second is on the way in. This area is usually covered in snow by this time of the year - the conditions are more like April than June at the moment.

Google Earth is Awesome....

2011-05-25T09:44:00.000+12:00

...when it turns up images like this:

But less so a bit further along the same road. That carpark doesn't look much like Mt Aspiring to me.

The Ponsonby DCs - G'Day Mate.wmv

2011-05-14T21:31:00.000+12:00

Well you got a good day for it, mate....

On Double Downs, FOMOs, and prudential funding requirements.

2011-05-11T07:21:00.001+12:00

Disconsolately pondering, this morning, the media frenzy over the KFC Bubble Brown Burger or whatever the thing is called, as I make my way to a briefing on the Reserve Bank’s financial stability report.

Well, I say ‘media frenzy’. The fact is people seem keen to read stuff about a burger. This coverage is demand-driven, dammit.

Now, I know media, especially online, is being driven these days by a thing called ‘FOMO’ – Fear of Missing Out. FOMO sounds to me, in fact, like some sort of psychological condition driven by insecurity. Either that or the brand-name of a personal hygiene product. (Or both, I suppose.)

FOMO would seem to be driving the demand for news about this new burgery thing.

Apparently this cholesterol-laden comestible item is a complex beast, and people need to study the aspects of it closely in case they don’t quite get it.

FOMO never seems to apply to things like prudential funding requirements, for some reason, at least not until it is too late (cf October 2008, Lehmans).

While I'm doing the Kiwi Music Month thing... the Chills at the Gluey, 1990

2011-05-03T19:35:00.000+12:00

One of my favourite lyrics of any NZ song. Captures something of the great Kiwi OE, without being too overt about it.

Sitting in a foriegn setting,

Bands in backgrounds always play

Their phoney lonely cacaphony,

It didnt have to be this way

Some place alone,

And noone known,

So far from home here.

I really didnt choose to leave you,

To tear myself away so long,

To travel and unravel all the fabric we'd sewn,

So now somethings wrong,

And the world we used to know has gone,

Some place alone,

And noone known,

So far from home here.

Years of awkward confrontation,

I'd like to set your mind at ease,

I'm stuck here in these muddled ages,

I find the words won't please.

Where could we dwell

Within our past alive and well?

Escape from all thats hard to bear

To where the child as you were creeps near

Without fear?

Scary things arent always clear

To hide in fiction and nostalgia

Can be eerie too

You cannot drive and steer rearview.

Someplace alone,

And noone known,

So far from home, here.

Bill Watterson. Genius.

2011-05-01T16:11:00.003+12:00

The Chills - House With A Hundred Rooms

2011-05-01T00:03:00.007+12:00

For Kiwi Music month. Song which always evokes student flatting days. They all kind of merge into a blend which becomes one massive dysfunctional house with threadbare carpets, bamboo blinds, beer crates, and someone grizzling that someone else hasn't done their flat duties that week.

Don't Fight it Rodney, its bigger than both of us....

2011-04-26T20:30:00.001+12:00

Act Party caucus. There's five blue figures, on a white circle....

Anzac Day

2011-04-25T09:11:00.001+12:00

ANZAC is difficult to write about because its all pretty much been said.

But it seems like not a bad day to note what I don't like aobut the signs on State Highway One advertising the Waiouru Military Museum.

It bugs me every time I drive past (and I did so again,yesterday). Under a picture of old servicemen on Anzac Day is the line 'See what these eyes have seen.'

That is just wrong. Wrong factually, because no museum could possibly present such a thing, and if they did few people would want to visit.

Wrong in a wider sense too because it seems to me the whole point of Anzac Day is to respect the fact that the blokes who went to war saw things, horrific things, the rest of us will never have to see.

A bit surprised by a hunger

2011-03-06T10:38:00.000+13:00

Poem for Sunday - from the determinedly irreverent Philip Larkin

Church Going

Once I am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside, letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting, seats, and stone,

And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut

For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off

My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.

Move forward, run my hand around the font.

From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -

Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few

Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce

'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.

Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,

And always end much at a loss like this,

Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,

When churches will fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show,

Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?

Or, after dark, will dubious women come

To make their children touch a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort will go on

In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;

But superstition, like belief, must die,

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,

A shape less recognisable each week,

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last, the very last, to seek

This place for what it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,

Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff

Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative,

Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation - marriage, and birth,

And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built

This special shell? For, though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,

It pleases me to stand in silence here;

A serious house on serious earth it is,

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,

Are recognized, and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete,

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious,

And gravitating with it to this ground,

Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,

If only that so many dead lie round.

The Shakes

2011-02-28T14:00:00.000+13:00

Dropped some stuff in to the Wellington library's collection for Christchurch. It is a very very small thing, more symbolic than anything else, but it looked as though a lot of others were doing other small things. The librarians were having to empty the containers quite regularly, I was told.

Set aside the magnitude of the earthquake, unless you’re actually digging people out or helping patch them up then pretty much anything you can do seems pretty small. The point is to try to do something.

We’re such a small country, spread along these slender islands so very far from anywhere else. What’s the first thing New Zealanders who don’t know each other do when they meet overseas? Usually, it’s to work out who we know in common. And we usually find someone, although it may take a drink or two to work it out.

So there’s an instinctive reaching out for each other when something this big and awful happens. Most of us who haven’t lost someone want to be part of this, want to help. Those who have lost someone, I’m sure, just want it all to stop. And the hard and awful thing is that its not going to.

Supermarket scene yesterday: a woman from Christchurch dissolves into shaking and tears because she walked in without grabbing a shopping basket and now can’t get back through the turnstiles to get one.

I get her a basket as I come in: she thanks me as she phones her friend waiting in the car and says ‘I’m sorry, I’m not ready for this.’ Her friend comes in, takes her hand, tells me apologetically [God, we can be so damnably polite at times] that they were caught up in the earthquake.

I say something banal but hopefully encouraging and we all move off down separate aisles.

I was off work when the shake happened, for reasons which, when set aside the earthquake, can be filed under 'don't matter a hill of beans'. The week is a bit of a jumble, about as jumbly as this post.

Stephen Stratford has a link to a wondrous performance of the First Lamentation of Maundy Thursday, based on the words of the Prophet Jeremiah.

From memory, there's a bit somewhere in the Bible where Jeremiah shakes his fist at God and asks the Big Fella what He's playing at.

To which I can only say, Amen, brother.

Sunday thoughts on the King James version from the Guardian

2011-02-20T13:33:00.000+13:00

Jeanette Winterson leads off:

The King James translation was written to be read out loud – and that simple overlooked fact changes every argument about "difficulty" and "comprehension". Even now, the phrasing of the King James has a naturalness to it. Awkwardness disappears within a few chapters of vocal reading – providing that you will trust yourself and trust the text. I say that because children are not brought up to read out loud any more, at home or at school. This is a new problem in the history of language development. Until mass literacy, reading aloud was essential and a pleasure.

As every poet knows, words begin in the mouth before they hit the page, and it is our experience of learning language. The King James karaoke nights, common to households where long familiarity with the stories meant that everyone joined in the refrains, built a confidence with language that the educated classes prefer to imagine as their own. My dad left school at 12, and never learned to read properly. He had no trouble with his Bible, and when he didn't understand a word or a construction, he asked Mrs Winterson or the minister. He was a man of few words himself, but he had dignity of speech, learned directly from the King James.

Scrapping the King James version, in the well-meaning way of the well-educated classes, had a number of effects, the most decisive and the most disastrous of which was to destroy for ever an ordinary, everyday connection with 400 years of the English language.

The whole thing is here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/18/king-james-bible-language

War with Australia - repost from 2008

2011-02-20T08:53:00.001+13:00

With the Australian/NZ relationship back in the news, I thought I'd repost a piece I wrote in 2008 after John Birmingham, an Aussie whose works I revere, wrote a piece advocating invading New Zealand. I wrote this response, outlining the differences between our two great nations. Some of it has dated a bit: most of it, not.

John Birmingham, a man mostly famous for killing flatmates with felafels, has responded to Australian cities doing rather badly, compared to New Zealand, in an international survey of good places to live.

His solution: Australia should invade New Zealand.

At the outset, I think we need to note the Australian enthusiasm for invading countries is clear evidence they've been hanging out with the wrong crowd lately. But more importantly, Mr Birmingham makes a number of factual and strategic errors, as I've outlined in an open letter.

JB,

We appreciate you had a choice of countries to invade, so thank you for choosing New Zealand.

There are a few things you should have considered though.

Firstly, you’re wrong about us abolishing the New Zealand Defence Force.

OK, we scaled it back a bit. Got rid of the RNZAF Strike Wing. We still have the aircraft though: you would think someone would want to buy a dozen Skyhawks but so far people have missed this opportunity of a lifetime. Even that bloke who came looking wearing an old nightshirt and a really overdone three-day-growth.

The Skyhawks are currently at one of our many secret air force bases, under tarpaulins. We can get them out again, you know, and it would please the New Zealand Army no end, because they’d get their tents back.

And the sheep jokes….bit behind the times there mate. We’ve still got a few sheep farmers, but most of them converted to dairy over the past decade. They saw too many cow cockies installing new swimming pools to pay less tax.

Pools, or as you Aussies quaintly call them ‘Poo-ee-walls’ (honestly, how does anyone get three syllables out of a five letter word?) are tax deductible if you claim they’re for irrigation purposes. And as is well known, Kiwi Ingenuity can do anything with a piece of number-eight fence wire and a tax break.

Yes, we have a few luxuries denied to Australians. Things like water. We’ve got tonnes of it the stuff, pretty much everywhere, with the notable current exception of our hydro lakes - a mere temporary shortfall, I assure you.

And where you have the world’s biggest, flattest, driest sand dune, we’ve got bush. Yes, I know you Aussies talk about your ‘bush’ but when you do we just smile quietly to ourselves.

That’s the Kiwi Way, JB.

We’ve got real bush: tall, thick, slimy stuff which covers a third of the country. It's good stuff to hide in, JB, real good for launching guerrilla raids on invading forces, particularly invading forces who are not used to (a) real trees (b) real rain and (c) real hills.

But that’s minor stuff. You are overlooking a couple of crucial differences between our two brothers-in-Anzac.

Your mob got started when the Poms shoved their undesirables (I'm sorry, but it's true)...their undesirables onto leaky, unsafe, disease-ridden barges and sent them across storm-tossed oceans to the other side of the world.

Notice the difference? NZ got started by a bunch of people who voluntarily got into leaky, unsafe, disease-ridden barges and voyaged across storm-tossed oceans even further than Australia.

Just to prove a point.

And when they got here they found the locals had voluntarily rowed here from Asia.

Unless memory is pulling a foot fault, when your guys first arrived they had a big piss up. When the first mob got to New Zealand to sign a treaty with the locals (yep, we did that too: we’re FAIR. OK, the small print left a bit to be desired, but caveat your own empties and all that)

...Anyway, when that lot arrived they had a prayer meeting. They then signed the Treaty.

THEN they got pissed.

This is why your little Antipodean Operation Sea Lion wouldn’t work. Yes, you’ve got the numbers. You’ve probably got the firepower, if Dubya lets you bring it all home from Mesopotamia (see, that’s another difference. We kept out of that little dust up, even though Dubya asked us real nicely. We might be a bit slow and bloody-minded at times, but we’re not DUMB. Unlike some countries we could name).

The Kiwi is a dowdy, rather dour bird, JB, but be warned. A country which chooses rugby as its national game and all-consuming passion - a game which involves blood, mud, and the total impossibility of winning unless you break the rules and not get caught, is not to be under-estimated.

And once we’ve sent our version of the press gang around the P labs to hoover up all the psychopathic nutters, and we’ve given them some bayonets, told them about Galatos and Minqar Qaim and Chunuk Bair and them loose…well, I wouldn’t want to be in your imitation Doc Martens.

Ever read the Winnie the Pooh stories as a kid, JB? It was an analogy of the British Empire, as it then was. You guys were Tigger.

We were Eeyore.

So take note and be warned, JB. Yes, you’d probably win, initially. But your hedonistic, happy-go-lucky natures would not enjoy the experience. We would de-bounce your Tigger-ish nature and send you home a sadder and - OK this is a bit of a stretch - wiser Tigger.

We’d hate it too, of course. But we’re used to that.

You would hate hating it. We’d get a sort of grim satisfaction out of it.

So stay where you are, JB. And in a few years, when that all-enveloping sand dune you call ‘the bush’ has reached downtown Brisbane, we’ll see if we can get you a ‘mates rates’ deal on water.

Despicable

2011-02-18T06:38:00.001+13:00

I normally have a fairly strong stomach for some of the games and hypocrisies of politics, and it takes a lot to make the needle on my personal Outrage-ometer move.

But the political response to the court decision which says carers of disabled can be paid the minimum wage for sleepovers sticks in my craw.

National can find the money for BMWs for ministers but can't find the money to pay carers for the disabled the minimum wage for sleepovers.

That's not a cheap shot. Ministers have made noises about how their hands are tied on the issue of the luxury cars - but they clearly didn't try very hard to free their hands.

On the issue of minimum wage to pay carers for the disabled? Wriggle wriggle, desperate wriggle. They're even talking a law change.

Labour are no better. In office, they fought the carers tooth and nail on this issue. They didn't give a shit about them.

Yesterday Labour MPs' nauseating glee at the decision turned my stomach. The callous and nasty political games being played on this are absolutely despicable.

'Sleepover' care for disabled people usually involves broken sleep. (one outfit I know just calls them 'wakeovers' - but then that outfit also pays above the minimum wage. A number of providers do, in fact -but the largest, IHC, does not).

It is hardly glamorous work, it often involves cleaning up shit and piss and trying to calm down frightened and anxious people who cannot communicate, or be communicated with, very easily.

They deserve better than to be politicians' playthings.

Banana surprise

2011-02-17T20:35:00.001+13:00

Stephen Stratford reminds us it is the always slightly disturbing Barry Humphries' birthday today.

Here he is with Deborah Harry. The duet at the end is ...something. I would like to have seen them do 'Picture This' but I suspect even Harry would have trouble hitting the notes in the chorus on that one these days.

Dame Edna and Debbie Harry

Round the traps....

2011-02-16T20:10:00.001+13:00

A series of choice lines from blogs I checked out this evening.

Ally rises up to the challenge of her rivals:
I wrote an awesome song based on my experiences in the campground showers, it is called "Pubes of a Stranger" and it has the same tune as Eye of the Tiger.

Stephen Stratford visits the 'great literary lines that might get you laid' and votes for “Stuff me in a tutu and let’s screen experimental videos all day.”

Doesn't do it for me. I'd go for the Amisian

“You know how it is when two souls meet in a burst of ecstatic volubility, with hearts tickling to hear and to tell, to know everything, to reveal everything, the shared reverence for the other’s otherness, a feeling of solitude radiantly snapped by full contact — all that?”

because I love the way the last two words deflate the whole thing.

Afterthought: Amis junior's prose here borrows from a passage in Evelyn Waugh's great novel about journalism, 'Scoop' which also uses two words at the end of a long, apparently emotive sentence, to undercut what has gone before:

Why, once Jakes went out to cover a revolution in one of the Balkan capitals. He overslept in his carriage, woke up at the wrong station, didn't know any different, got out, went straight to a hotel, and cabled off a thousand-word story about barricades in the streets, flaming churches, machine guns answering the rattle of his typewriter as he wrote, a dead child, like a broken doll, spread-eagled in the deserted roadway below his window — you know.

In more serious mien, Cactus Kate in one sentence puts her finger on the great thing about court coverage and in the next sentence the problem with it:

"Publishers must love court reporting because it is generally excluded from possible Press Council complaint and other proceedings because the court is public. If you study court reporting in any depth to a case you are familiar with because you have sat in court everyday with them during it..."

Every day. All Day, or most of it. When you could be chasing other stuff. And the court staff hate journalists and usually will do anything they can to obstruct you.

Oh, that's not the bad bit...in fact, that's the fun bit, because unless you do something really objectionable they can't throw you out, so you can entertain yourself coming up with ways to subtly annoy them.

No, its the all day thing. Opportunity cost and all that.

Rich Bastards, Poor Bastards

2011-02-13T15:51:00.000+13:00

It looks like we’re in for another round of that tedious old debate about whether the rich in New Zealand are heroes or whether they are crooks.

This invariably turns into a moralistic whine-fest.

Deborah Coddington kicks it off, ably assisted by David Farrar. Danyl at the DimPost puts the contra view here.

Where to start? Well, I think Deborah makes some good points but she loses me when she talks of “championing” the well off.

Successful people, by definition, don’t sit around whining no-one is championing them.

Danyl’s arguments, on the other hand, hinge on that sour, four-letter reductivist word, “just”. It is always a good idea, whenever you see the word deployed in this way, to think very carefully about what is actually being said.

This approach involves focusing on just one aspect of what went into someone's success and implying its presence somehow invalidates the whole thing.

John Key and Sam Morgan were successful because they were just lucky, apparently.

Well, no. Other New Zealanders also set up web sites which copied eBay. The fact you probably can't name any tells its own story.

John Key was part of a relatively lucky generation but unless he was a generation of one, which doesn't seem very likely, so too were a hell of a lot of other people.

(I'm not out to "champion" either of those two, btw - I'm citing them because others have. )

But I think we need to get a bit less prone to label all our more financially blessed fellow Kiwis as charlatans or silver-spooners.

It seems odd to bewail our poor economic performance over the past 40 years and then in the next breath badmouth everyone who does do well for themselves.

Doing well as a country, earning enough to pay for the lifestyle we think we deserve (and as a country we do have very high expectations) means learning to get a lot more comfortable with the fact some people are going to be better off than others.

I don't think we need a culture which "champions" wealth.

But we do need one which does not automatically seek to pull down those who have wealth-generating abilities. At present this is the default setting of all too many New Zealanders and, apart from being nasty and envious, it is quite destructive.

Whoosh Whoosh

2011-02-10T16:19:00.000+13:00

Well when you say 'meet deadlines' you have to understand that I'm a bit of an introvert.

I generally manage to give them a friendly wave.

NEw Year's Writing Resolutions

2011-02-07T10:17:00.002+13:00

"The devil is in the detail."

"The jury is still out on..."

If I use these terms in any of my stories this year you have my permission to pelt me with rotten fruit.

Shy egomaniacs

2010-11-03T09:48:00.004+13:00

Stephen Stratford at Quote/Unquote has a nice little post about journalistic introverts and how often the stereotype of the loud beery partygoing journo is belied by the number of rather quiet types who inhabit the industry.

A line in one of the first books I read about journalism, Tim Crouse's 'Boys on the Bus' summed it up - one of the journalists interviewed commented that most journos are "shy egomaniacs".

A lot of us - especially the print journos - are most at home behind a keyboard. Personally I do my best and clearest thinking when I'm actually in the act of writing, although it helps if I've done some thinking (preferably while exercising) beforehand. Not always possible these days, however.

Journalism is also a role. It helped a lot, when I was younger. I was normally a bit of a wallflower in a social situation, but if I had to go and get a story it gave me a reason to talk to people. Very very useful.

It could leave you a little one dimensional though. I remember going to a real social situation, when I was about 19, at a hall in Pukekohe. Got talking to a very attractive woman, thought things seemed to be going reasonably well, until she asked me what I did and I said I was a journalist.

"Oh yes," she said, and then, with a real edge in her voice: "Is that why you're interviewing me?"

Ouch.

Time and life experience knocked off my awkwardness. Some of it, anyway.

Leaps and Bounds

2010-01-26T09:53:00.001+13:00

Australia Day.

Scanning my CD collection recnelty I noticed there's a disproportionate number of Aussie artists: Cold Chisel, the Cruel Sea, Hunters and Collectors and Paul Kelly being the main ones, but also a few outriders like the Black Sorrows and Tex Don and Charlie.

Paul Kelly captures my mood best today, so here's "Leaps and Bounds", off the 'Gossip' Album.

There used to be an actual clip of this, filmed on the top of the MCG, but its been taken down.

Pity.

The song has a fantastic warmth and a love of place. Especially that bit that goes 'down past the river, and across the playing fields....'

While we're at it: off the same album, a live version of the much blacker 'Adelaide'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPbcC-F2Z0U

Great opening line:

'The wisteria on the back verandah are still blooming
And all the great aunts are either insane or dead.'

The man's a poet.

How can I?

2010-01-17T11:14:00.004+13:00

DPF has a most common google search thing of 'how can I get my girlfriend/boyfriend to....'

Danyl has responded with a 'how can I get my husband/wife to....' search.

I've just done a straightforward 'h

ow can I?' search. It's a little more thought-provoking, I think.

UPDATE:

and another simple 'How can you...?' question.

The commonly asked questions show the Interweb in all its infinite variety, don't they?

One last post for NZ book Month

2009-10-31T23:30:00.000+13:00

Owen Marshall's "The Divided World'.

I hitched around the South Island in the summer of 1994-95, on a tramping trip, with this in the backpack.

It seemed appropriate.

NZ book month -18 and 19 - Barry Gustafson on Muldoon and Holyoake

2009-10-27T11:04:00.004+13:00

I am going to shamelessly cram a couple of extra books in today because I am so far behind the pledge to do a book a day.

As well as the earlier post, here are two offerings from New Zealand's best political biographer.

Barry Gustafson has done a great deal to correct the tendency, very noticable when I began taking an interest in NZ politics as a teenager, for most academics to concentrate on writing about left-wing politicians.

He is also thorough and fair. I am something of a political biography junkie, and I think 'His Way' - the biography of Sir Robert Muldoon - is the best local political bio I have read.

I do think Gustafson is a little too gentle on Muldoon. But that is a matter of interpretation. One soon learns, in reading about politics, to skirt past a writer's own interpretation and concentrate on the raw information being presented.

And there is plenty of that in 'His Way'. The stories of the internal machinations of National's caucus, from the mid-to-late 1960s, though to Muldoon's demise in 1984, include a lot of previously unavailable information.

The only other quibble - and this probably reflects my own pre-occupations - is Gustafson does not put quite as much emphasis on economic issues as I would like.

Muldoon came and spoke at an Auckland University Political Studies class, of which I was a member, in 1989 and was asked what his biggest mistake was.

He said he thought his biggest error was not realising the economic downturn New Zealand found ourselves in from the late 1960s was a major economic shift. They assumed it was simply another cyclical downturn, and reacted accordingly - i.e. with Keynsian pump-priming.

Gustafson - who, from memory, co-ordinated that university course - was in the middle of interviewing Muldoon at the time and similar comments are included.

There is an overlap with the Holyoake book. Muldoon was very much Holyoake's apprentice and the period 1966-75 was, in different ways, a vital part of both men's lives.

The most intriguing earlier part of the Holyoake book is the demonstration of how distrusted Holyoake was by National's more business-oriented wing. There was a concerted bid to get dump Holyoake when National was in opposition between 1957-60, a move driven by Auckland business. The book shows National's business wing was never very happy with Holyoake.

Again, it is intriguing how Labour's internal politics was much written about from the 1950s through to the present day, but National's were completely unrecorded, until these books.

In their different ways, they show a very different New Zealand to the one we live in now.

Holyoake was notoriously heavy-footed when he got behind the wheel of a car and collected a number of speeding tickets. There is an incident where the then Transport Minsiter, Peter Gordon, marched into Holyoake's office with a wad of tickets, ripped them up in front of Holyoake and told him to ease up on the accelerator pedal.

No PM today would get away with that without it being made public.

Then again, Holyoake was incredibly stingy when it came to spending on his own or his ministers' comforts. He refused to commission what became the Beehive, and the curtains in his office were literally rotting because he refused to have them replaced.

There is also a nice comment about Holyoake's greatest hardship when he became governor-general - the long lunches. Since growing up on a farm he'd taken the attitude that lunch took seven minutes, maximum, to eat, before getting back to work. He'd taken the same approach as PM, apparently.

For anyone with an interest in New Zealand politics, these books are essential reading. And Gustafson deserves a knighthood, in my opinion, for his work.

NZ Book month -17 - 'The Shag Incident' by Stephanie Johnson

2009-10-27T06:36:00.009+13:00

McGee's memoir (see last post) mentions an infamous incident which occurred at Auckland University in 1984: playwright and lecturer Mervyn Thompson was abducted, assaulted and tied to a tree by a group of anonymous militant feminists. Allegations - never proved - of sexual harassment and rape were made.

Stephanie Johnson - who apparently was one of Thompson's pupils at the time, and always maintained his innocence - bases this mystery novel around the same incident. In the fictionalisation, Howard Shag, a former All Black and bestselling author, suffers a similar assault. He, though, refuses to talk and becomes a recluse.

The story begins years later and unravels what happened, and why, and the tale is (of course) nowhere near as straightforward as it first seemed.

McGee's own comment on Johnson's book was "I thought it was a terrible injustice to ex-All Blacks everywhere that the central character, even in middle age, could be over-powered by 6 women."

I am not so sure. I depends on the ex-All Black, and on the women. I first attended Auckland University in 1985, not long after the Thompson incident. One of the abductors, who held a prominent position on the Student Union, also used to serve as a bouncer on the door of Shadows on Wimmins Only Night (Mondays).

Six of her would have no trouble handling, say, a Terry Wright or an Allan Hewson.

The book itself is an enjoyable read, and Johnson rightly picked up a couple of awards for it.

NZ book month -15 and 16: two from 'Hard to Find Books' in Onehunga

2009-10-25T08:34:00.004+13:00

A very busy trip to Auckland, but I managed a couple of hours out at Onehunga's 'Hard to Find' Books.

It is huge now, and there are a few other branches. If it isn't the country's best second hand book store, it is in the top five. I remember when it was in a basement behind the main street, a chaotic shambles of a place with, for no adequately explained reason, a large disused printing press in the middle of the room. Popped in there a few times in 1987 after visiting my grandfather, who was in Greenlane, dying of cancer. It helped take my mind off things.

Anyway, this visit reaped two very different books from different authors. 'Tall Tales, Some True', from playwright and former very-nearly-an-All Black Greg McGee; and 'Memories of Muldoon' from property investor, commentator, and very-nearly-a-politician Bob Jones.

McGee is most famous for writing 'Foreskin's Lament', a play which probably seems dated to younger people now but in retrospect it captured a New Zealand torn between an almost unconscious nostalgia for the certainties of an earlier time, and the growing recognition that the economic and social ground was shifting uncontrollably and irrevocably under our feet.

It's weakness - to my mind - is that, like so many New Zealand plays, it had to have an angsty rant at the end. New Zealand plays are full of 'Angsty Rants' and they all seem very adolescent to me. Too many playwrights saw John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger", or its various derivatives, too often.

At least the Angsty Rant at the end of 'Foreskin' has some quite clever wit.

McGee himself trialled for the All Blacks and was very nearly picked for the 1972-73 tour to the United Kingdom and France, but narrowly missed out. McGee had had a number of previous run-ins, on and off the pitch, with 'Grizz' Wyllie, who he often marked (they were both loose forwards) and given Wyllie was one of the leaders on that tour, McGee seems almost relieved not to have made it.

"I didn't have the physical or psychological avoirdupois to be an All Black", he concludes, in a line which made me laugh out loud. One can only imagine the reaction of Wyllie or someone else of his ilk to a word like 'avoirdupois'.

(No, I'd never heard it, either. I had to look it up).

McGee covers his later writing assignments, including the controversial - and, now, topical again, 'Verdict on Erebus' television series. He does his OE playing rugby in Italy, gets caught up on the edges of Bert Potter's decidedly dodgy Centrepoint commune, which tries to state a takeover of a voluntary group he is doing legal work for (Centrepoint did this, or tried to do this, to a number of similar organisations in Auckland in the late 1980s)

But the book itself, while it covers the development of a very good rugby player who wanted to be a writer, also records McGee's developing - perhaps a little late developing - maturity.

There is a lovely bit, when he links up Mary, who was to become his wife. Mary already had a couple of children and McGee tells the story of his suddenly having to grow up if he was going to keep this relationship well.

"In my rapid movement from pot plants=0 to little boys = 2, I didn't always, or often, cover myself with glory. But in time, I came to see that Mary's way was the only way, that if adults aren't capable of acting like adults, the children don't get a childhood."

I have added the italics. I think its a great piece of wisdom.

Bob Jones' book was written to correct what he saw as the unfair demonisation of Sir Robert Muldoon.

I'm inclined to pay Jones' views considerable respect, and not only because he writes well. He was a friend of Muldoon's who nevertheless helped bring Muldoon down, publicly breaking with Muldoon in 1983 and setting up the New Zealand Party which pulled votes away from National in 1984.

Jones' breach with Muldoon was over principle rather than a personal matter, although the battle got very personal indeed.

They had great similarities: two boys from the wrong side of the tracks, very bright mavericks with no social advantages who got amongst the country's social and educational elite and, in their different ways, caused mayhem.

Both had a contempt for people who owed their position to where they were born and what school they went to. And good on them for that.

There are some good yarns in here although I suspect some have been glossed over.

One story which is not here, but which I heard Jones tell at a Press Gallery function a couple of years ago when the smokers decamped to Parliament's front steps, was about him and Muldoon arguing into the night over the government's economic direction.

They had apparently been going at it, hammer and tongs, for hours. Muldoon eventually ebbed - one suspects after giving they bottle a fair bashing - and pauses, looks Jones in the eye and says,

"Do you know what really worries me? What if you're right? At least you will argue with me. None of these other bastards will do that."

Personally I refuse to don rose-tinted glasses for Muldoon. I don't think he was the demon some have portrayed him as, and I don't think he caused the economic crisis which engulfed New Zealand from the mid-1970s.

But the way he chose to deal with that crisis made matters worse. And the bullying side of the man - and he was a bully, no question - is not something I can applaud.

NZ book month - no. 14 - "Slinky Malinki" by Lynley Dodd

2009-10-17T07:49:00.004+13:00

This collection of four Slinky Malinki stories has become something of a - now rather battered - icon in our house.

My daughter has autism (relatively mild) and global developmental delay. She is six and, until fairly recently, her spoken language has been that of an 18-month/2 year old.

Earlier this year this became the compulsory bedtime book. All four stories.

And after a bit, she started saying the words herself. She has now committed some of them to memory and recites them to her toys. I went past her bedroom the other day and she had Dorothy the Dinosaur and a couple of other dollies she has been given lined up on the bed and I could hear, somewhat haltingly, the words

Slinky Malinki jumped high off the floor

He swung on a handle and opened the door

So this book will, I think, always have a special place in my heart.

Beyond that, Lynley Dodd is brilliant. It is actually very difficult indeed to write stories which can be easily read, even for adults: writing them in rhyming form, for small children, even more so.

A lot of children's books fail miserably at this. Dodd is head and shoulders above most of them.

Dead Parrots and the like...

2009-10-17T07:38:00.003+13:00

Ele @ Home Paddock has noted the Monty Pythons are to receive a lifetime BAFTA award.

For an alternative, irreverent take on one aspect of the Python's career, this isn't bad....

NZ book month -12 and 13 -two Maurice Gee Novels

2009-10-15T08:52:00.004+13:00

His best, I feel - and no, neither of them is 'Plumb'. Much as I loved 'Plumb' when I first read it - it was a book I sat up until 1am reading, when I first bought it at the Auckland Uni bookshop - these two are better, I feel.

Both 'Going West' and 'Ellie and the Shadowman' have a great sense of place and time. These are always Gee's strengths but in these two he excels himself.

Here he is on the Wellington winds:

You bend into a southerly and fight back,. Its an honest ind, the true Wellington wind. The northerly comes behind your back and punches you. It pushes you this way and that and puts a knee in your groin.

One reviewer at the time observed that Wellington and Auckland are almost additional characters in 'Going West'. Gee captures the cities superbly - he does something similar in 'Ellie', only with Wellington (again) and Nelson.

nz book month -10 and 11: '101 Great Tramps' and 'Soundtrack'

2009-10-13T15:48:00.006+13:00

"You hold in your hands a book crammed with blind prejudices, foggy memories, rash declarations, unsubstantiated assertions and, quite probably, lies."

That is the opening line to 'Soundtrack' but it could perhaps just as easily be about 101 Great New Zealand Tramps - except for the lies bit.

Both these books are associated with things which have given me a great deal of pleasure, made significant depredations upon my bank account, and have, in their different ways, taken a toll upon my physical frame.

In 1989, as a university student, I got an earlier edition of '101 Great Tramps' and decided I was going to do all the trips contained therein.

The gods were listening to this vow, and in the ways of gods everywhere, decided to have a little joke. A bout of severe glandular fever, soon followed by several years' chronic fatigue syndrome, were the result.

But that is the gods for you. Bunch of bastards. I've since managed quite a few trips in the book, and will do one more in January.

So, up yours, gods.

'Soundtrack' is also, but in a different way, a book by enthusiasts for enthusiasts. And it has moments of sheer hilarity. Here is Smithies on Flying Nun band The Verlaines, dismissed by some as "a bunch of classically-trained smart arses who made arty rock n roll for brainiacs:

This is most unfair. The fact that I can barely button my own shirt hasn't stopped me shouting 'Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine Verlaine' to the chorus of 'Death and the Maiden' alongside far more erudite souls. The fact that I thought 'Pyromaniac' was all about someone who loved pies doesn't stop me thinking its a great song.

Well, quite. (and he's right, it is a great song) My only grizzle with the book is it focuses on albums. The great art form of New Zealand music, at least in the 1980s, was the EP. There were good financial reasons for this but also good quality control reasons. Personally (and I know this is sacrilege) I find there are few NZ bands who can sustain an album's worth of material.

And - a personal gripe - somehow the Able Tasmans are virtually totally overlooked.

But it is still a great book. It will make you return to the music.

And 101 Great Tramps will return you to the hills.

NZ book month -07 and 08 and 09: Two cookbooks and a garden book

2009-10-12T11:20:00.005+13:00

Three books for the NZ Kiwi Book Month challenge today, (because I will catch up to the daily challenge by the end of the week. Oh yes. And then get behind again.)

First up: 'Food for Flatters'. A colleague at the Whakatane Beacon recommended this to me when I was 18, flatting for the first time, and just getting my head around

this whole complicated cooking lark.

It was aimed at culinary morons like myself. It began with how to boil an egg, and went on from there.

I added my own refinements, as you do: I liked boiled eggs hard on the outside of the yolk, but runny in the middle.

I found the best way to achieve this was to put on The Rolling Stones 'The Last Time' just as the egg started to boil, and hoick the egg out again when it finished.

Second cookbook - Rowan Bishop's 'The Good Health Adventure Guide'. (no picture, sorry: my copy is too blotchy to scan).

This was recommended to me in the summer of 1989/1990 - I had gone down with a particularly vicious bout of glandular fever and hepatitis in Winter '89 and it was taking me a long time to get over it. This book helped, teaching me some healthy but enjoyable stuff to eat. At the time was surviving on steamed veggies, boiled rice and smoked fish.

It has some marvellous recipes which I still use: the sweet and sour zucchini and chick pea dash is very good. I was to use the rolled oats hotcake recipe, some years later, when I was running half marathons. (those days are now long gone, sadly).

Thirdly, the Yates Garden Guide. Which is, at present, helping me construct a veggie garden, for the first time in my life.

NZ Book month -05 and 06: Fred Dagg and Tom Scott

2009-10-10T15:14:00.004+13:00

There is no way I'm going to meet this challenge Ele has set unless I cut a few corners. Been out of town the last couple of days and going to be out of town for a week from next Thursday.

So... I'm going to do two books a day for the next few days.

Kicking off with a couple of humorous tomes.

First up: Tom Scott's 'Ten Years' Inside', a collection he put out in 1984 after 10 years cartooning and writing in the Press Gallery for the Listener. The cartoon I've attached is from that collection - and it is a useful reminder, to those who have rather canonised David Lange since that time, that Lange was very equivocal about Labour's anti-nuclear stance until he realised how popular it made him.

John Clarke's collection 'A Dagg at My Table' is my number six entry for NZ Book month. Its a collection of his work, some of which is from after he hopped across the ditch to Australia.

Two examples will more than suffice, I feel.

Firstly, here he is on duck shooting:

You hide yourself away in a herbaceous border somewhere so you can’t be seen by anyone at all under any circumstances except from the air, by something like, say, for argument’s sake, a duck…

The important thing at about this state is the decoy. You have to give the duck the impression that you are actually yourself, personally, another duck.

There are two main methods of achieving duckhood. The first method is to fire the shotgun. This will break your shoulder off and bold both your arms neatly around your back in the manner made famous by wings. You fall backwards into the water and you will look and feel distinctly duck-escent.
The other thing to do, of course, is to sound like a duck, and for this there is a time-honoured device. You take a large bottle of whisky, remove the cap and suck on it very hard, drawing the liquid up into the body and making exactly the same noise ducks make when they’re having a few.

Of course in a twinkling of the first person you’ll see ducks swooping about all over the place. And snakes. And, in the fullness of time, elephants on bicycles.

And his analysis of real estate advertising is a classic:

‘Owner transferred reluctantly instructs us to sell’ means the house is for sale.

‘Genuine reason for selling’ means the house is for sale.

‘Rarely can we offer’ means the house is for sale.

‘Superbly presented delightful charmer’ doesn’t mean anything really, but it’s probably still for sale.

‘Most attractive immaculate home of character in prime dress-circle position’ means that the thing that’s for sale is a house.

‘Unusual design with interesting and solidly built stairs’ means that the stairs are in the wrong place.

‘Huge spacious generous lounge commands this well serviced executive residence’ means the rest of the house is a rabbit-warren with rooms like cupboards.

‘Magnificent well-proportioned large convenient block with exquisite garden’ means there’s no view, but one of the trees had a flower on it the day we were up there.

‘Privacy, taste, charm, space, freedom, quiet, away from it all location in much sought-after cul-de-sac situation’ means that it’s not only built down a hole, it’s built at the very far end of the hole.

‘A must for all you artists, sculptors and potters’ means that only a lunatic would consider living in it.

‘2/3 bedrooms with possible in-law accommodation’ means it’s got two bedrooms and a tool shed.

‘Great buy, ring early for this one, inspection a must, priced to sell, new listing, see this one now, all offers considered, good value, be quick, inspection by appointment, view today, this one can’t last, sole agents, today’s best buy’ means the house is for sale.
And if ever you see ‘investment opportunity’ turn away very quickly and have a go at the crossword.

NZ book month 04 - Selected Poems, Allen Curnow

2009-10-08T06:38:00.003+13:00

Fourth, entry, day eight of the NZ Book Month challenge....will catch up by the weekend.

Not a massive Curnow fan, and not a fan of poetry which is self-conciously about 'nationhood' or anything like that.

But I love 'The Unhistoric Story', one of Curnow's early poems. The continued refrain 'something different, something nobody counted on' does, it seems to me, say something about New Zealand.

Here's the first and last stanzas (I love the last stanza):

Whaling for continents coveted deep in the south

The Dutchman envied the unknown, drew bold

Imagers of market-place, populous river mouth

The land of Beach ignorant of the value of gold:

Morning in Murderers Bay

Blood drifted away.

It was something different, something

Nobody counted on.

…

After all re-ordering of old elements

Time trips up all but the humblest of heart

Stumbling after the fire, not in the smoke of events;

For many are called, but many are left at the start.

And whatever islands may be

Under or over the sea

It is something different, something

Nobody counted on.

NZ Book Month - 03 = The Lovelock Version by Maurice Shadbolt

2009-10-06T11:56:00.005+13:00

OK - I'm wayyyy behind with this NZ Book MOnth Challenge, kicked off by Ele @ Home Paddock - whose latest effort is here - and joined by Deborah at In a Strange Land - latest book here.

We're day six and this is my third... hope to have caught up by Sunday.

I think this was the first NZ novel I read out of school - I picked it up when I was working in Whakatane. Got a hard cover edition on special at the local book shop for $5.

And it is very good. It is a weird mix of realism and fantasy - but don't let that put you off. The fantasy bits are carefully rendered and not done in a self indulgent way.

The story kicks off with the Lovelock family in the Otago goldfields. Family patriarch Herman ducks out for a smoke of his pipe one evening and an angel appears before him.

The angel appears a bit incompetent, and seems to need to keep checking his notes. The exchange between this angel and a very sceptical Herman is, to my mind, one of the great (and all too rare) comic scenes in New Zealand literature:

"An angel appears. Who, truth be told, the unusual lighting effect excluded, is really no more than a crabby old clerk with wings.

“Behold, the angel announces, you have been chosen…. All is vanity, the angel says with a wince of distaste. All is waste and vanity. All.

There is a brief pause, with notes furtively consulted, allowing Herman an intervention. You sure, he asks, you got the right man?”
And, later, after Herman extols the reasons for gold digging:

“Keep to the point, the angel insists.

It is the blasted point, Herman argues.

Consider gold, proposes the angel.

Herman considers it, as suggested, with some satisfaction.
So what is it? The angel asks, after further perusal of notes.
You tell me, Herman sighs. It looks to me like you got all the answers there."

The tale follows the family as Herman turns messianic and leads them to found a village at the mouth of what appears to be the Mokau River on the North Island's west coast.

The story follows them up until the late 1970s - when the book was written. On the way we have stop-offs with the industrial unrest of the early 1910s; World War One and Gallipoli; and a "distant relative" who wins a medal at the 1935 Olympics gets a passing mention.

It is a serious novel which does not fall into the trap of taking itself too seriously - a trap far too many local novels have fallen into.

NZ book month - 02 "the Unauthorised Version" - Ian Grant

2009-10-04T09:58:00.005+13:00

I am running a little behind schedule on this - I'm at my parents' farm, where the mobile broadband is a bit ropey, and looking after my six year old daughter, while also trying to complete two columns for work.

I will catch up later in the week.

Ian Grant's "The Unauthorised Version" is a cartoon history of New Zealand, and has recently been updated for at least the second time. The edition in the picture is the first one, which came out in the early/mid 1980s.

Anyone wanting a potted, enjoyable history of New Zealand could do a lot worse. The book is a quite brilliant summary of our history: it has a bias towards the political, as you would expect, but given its approach it manages to cover quite a lot of ground. It packs in as much information as the Penguin History of NZ or other similar one volume tomes, but does so in a light way.

We have produced a number of world class cartoonists in our history and all the big names, and a lot of the little ones, are included.

Very highly recommended.

NZ Book Month - 01

2009-10-01T14:13:00.004+13:00

Day One. Start with the master.

First read a collection of Frank Sargeson's short stories (not this edition) in 6th Form English

They didn't make a huge impact at the time: it was more a lingering thing.

Although they were from two generations previously, having been written in the 1930s and 1940s, they were probably the first stories I ever read which were in recognisable settings, with - and this is the important bit - people who spoke in a recognisable way.

Seven years later, part time at university and working as a postie, I picked up an English paper. It wasn't my first choice, but I was trying to get into Law School and you had to do two English or two Philosophy papers as part of your Law Intermediate.

This collection was part of the course and I picked it for the first essay question. And when I started reading the stories (about two days before the essay was due, sadly) the characters seemed to peel from the pages and stick to the brain like the literary equivalent of decals. (now there's a word I haven't used since I was about 12).

Sargeson's minimalism was perfectly formed for the way New Zealanders, especially male New Zealanders of the middle 20th century, speak and think.

I've tried reading some of his later work but nothing beat this collection.

Python One, Cat Nil.

2009-09-29T11:26:00.004+13:00

I meant to post a link to this earlier.

I think anyone bothered by annoying neighbour's cats should be allowed to buy a python. It's only fair.

Python One, Cat Nil.

2009-09-29T11:26:00.001+13:00

Bloody Daylight Saving

2009-09-27T16:18:00.002+13:00

When it came in, back in the mid 1970s, it was supposed to save energy, or something. It was a response to the First Oil Shock. Either that or something to do with decimalisation.

It all happened around the same time.

<>It's all been downhill since then. Hare Krishnas and grievance counsellors everywhere. Bring back the bloody old days, least you knew where you were. < /Grumpy Old Sod Mode>

It was a bugger getting the cows in to the shed, when daylight saving started. The old Jerseys were well trained, and if they were in a paddock close to the shed you could leave the gate open at night and they'd wander down in time.

First year of daylight saving, I still remember trying to get these bloody cows to wake up. They weren't moving: they knew damn well it was too bloody early and they wanted another hour's shuteye.

Can't say I blamed them.

Milk production dropped that first week, until we'd all adjusted. The thing is, we didn't have the option of just milking them a bit later, because if we did we'd either hold the tanker up, or he'd just miss us.

After that first year we used to phase them in, getting them up 10 minutes earlier every couple of days for a fortnight before daylight saving kicked in.

Bloody Daylight Saving

2009-09-27T16:18:00.000+13:00

John Key on Letterman

2009-09-25T12:00:00.002+12:00

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/2902434/John-Key-on-David-Lettermans-Late-Show/

I didn't get the first two....I don't think Key did, either. Letterman didn't get number five.

Howie

2009-09-25T09:14:00.004+12:00

Howard Morrison was more my parent's sort of music than mine, but he still came over as a bit of a laugh.

The folks had a live record of the Howard Morrison Quartet dated about 1963 (yes, you young 'uns, that is before I was born. Just. )

I can only remember a couple of the numbers: 'Mori the Hori', a local version of Ray Stevens' 'Ahab the Arab' and a song you'd never get away with now.

'Rioting in Wellington', a topical number which had jokes about the current events of the time (politics and rugby, mostly. Not a lot has changed there, then).

And their version of 'Grenada', which was mentioned on the radio this morning as the number which always brought the house down. The report didn't say why, it just played a burst of it.

The bit which seemed to bring the house down, from the recording I remember, had nothing to do with the singing, but a spoken bit in the middle which told a song about a Mexican farmer, Poncho, who raised bulls for bullfights. Very big bulls, very many bulls, which would then be shipped off to the cities. The punchline being, "I tell you, Senorita, this Poncho is the biggest bull shipper in all of Mexico..."

Which was quite daring, for the time. The audience reaction is so intense it literally distorts the recording.

The only other Howard Morrison related memory: working on a labouring gang at Port Waikato surf clubhouse, summer 1981-82, before going to Polytech. "How Great Thou Art" was a huge hit at the time.

There was a council work gang doing some work along the road, and the bulldozer was being driven by this huge Maori guy. He used to sing 'How Great Thou Art' when he was working the bulldozer. Top of his lungs. You could hear it above the noise of the machine.

Battle of Britain Day

2009-09-15T07:22:00.004+12:00

September 15.

Its worth remembering, for New Zealanders, that the man who commanded the fighter forces in 11 Group which bore the brunt of the battle was a New Zealander, Keith Park. Also that the number of New Zealand pilots flying in the battle was more than any other Commonwealth country apart from Britain itself.

The most comprehensive and analytical book on the battle, Stephen Bungay's 'Most Dangerous Enemy', in analysing what and who won the battle, concluded Park's skill as a commander was the most crucial factor:

"Throughout the long months of strain, Park hardly put a foot wrong, making all the major tactical decisions, attending to relevant details, visiting pilots and airfields himself, and fighting an internal polticial battle….Park’s performance was extraordinary. In the way in which he anticipated and countered every move of his opponent, it has many parallels with Wellington’s at Waterloo; but whereas Wellington sustained his concentration and bore the strain or some five hours, Park ran the Battle for five months.”

The apogee of this was the fight on September 15. A week earlier, the Germans had switched from attacking airfields to bombing London. It was a blunder on their part, but it may not have looked that way at the time. Their first attack on London was met with few fighters - they were still covering the airfields. The following week saw continued attacks, but indifferent weather. To the Germans, it appeared they were winning.

September 15 changed that. Park had moved all his Spitfire squadrons to the forward sectors: they met the day's two big attacks of nearly a thousand aircraft and drew off many of the fighter escorts: the bombers were then met by a series of attacks by defending Hurricane fighters. The battles seem to have been particularly fierce. Pilots had seen London burning and they tore into the Luftwaffe. Many of the attacks were head-on: there were also a number of cases of pilots ramming German bombers when the pilots found they were out of ammunition.

Churchill - whose country house was not far from Park's headquarters - happened to visit on September 15, as he had done on previous weekends. He watched the way Park was dealing with the incoming raiders and at one point, realising Park had committed more of his fighters than he usually did, asked where the reserve was.

"There is none," Park said. Some instinct had told him to throw in everything he had.

Park had served in the army in the First World War, both at Gallipoli and at the Somme. He'd been injured several times, and then he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. He was shot down twice and wounded there too.

After the first war he'd had a staff job. He had something of a delayed reaction to his war experiences and a note on his file said something to the effect that 'this officer should not be put in situations of high pressure.'

How wrong was that? Between July and October 1940 the defence of Western Civilisation depended on how he decided to fight the Battle of Britain. His pilots were not known as 'The Few' for nothing - Park had to husband his resources and a wrong decision would have been disastrous. In the First World War Churchill commented his Admiral of the Fleet was the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon: Park was the Second World War equivalent.

It wasn't a one off for Park - two years after the Battle of Britain he commanded the forces during the siege of Malta. Again, he won against the odds.

There is a nice story about Park on the ship taking him out to Malta. Also on board was a bunch of young pilots on the way out to reinforce the squadrons there. They were a little boisterous and the senior naval officer on board banned them from the officer's bar.

Park - who outranked the senior naval officer - countermanded the order, saying 'those young men have faced, and will face, dangers you will never have to face.'

After the war he retired quietly in Auckland.

Too few New Zealanders know about this man.

The Beatles - Hey Bulldog in the studio

2009-08-30T15:11:00.001+12:00

Back in the late 60s the only time I remember seeing musical clips was when they were jammed in between programmes to fill a gap. The word 'Interlude' could come up. More often than not it was an orchestral version of 'Do You Know the Way to San Jose' being played with a film of a steam engine. My brother and I used to call that 'The Interlude Song'.

I remember seeing a musical clip at my aunts - this would have been mid- 1968, and I was four - and being told it was The Beatles. I could never recall the song - the only thing I remembered was one of them, at the end, throwing picking up his jacket and throwing it over his shoulder.

Discovered recently, through Youtube, the song was 'Lady Madonna'.

This clip is from the film which went with that, but - obviously - the song is not 'Lady Madonna'

The tale goes they wanted to film the Beatles in the studio to go with the 'Lady Madonna' single and they figured, since they were in the studio anyway, they'd record a song.

The Lady Madonna clip has them singing and playing and at no point do the words and singing and playing match the tune, but that was pretty common in those days anyway.

A few years ago someone went back to the film, unscrambled it and put this together.

The song is one of Lennon's nonsense numbers, in the same vein as the more well known 'I Am the Walrus'. I like it for a lot of reasons, one of the big ones being it hasn't been played so often any magic has long since departed, which is how I feel about most of the Beatles output.

It's also got some great playing. The bass in particular, along with that nagging rhythm guitar riff. Ringo's drums are heavier on the tomtoms than usual, and the lead guitar break is a great little slash and burner.

Otherwise fine....

2009-08-07T16:24:00.002+12:00

I'm starting to wonder if our weather has taken a jump a month forward.

May this year definitely had June weather: from memory December '08 was unusually sunny, at least the earlier part of the month. January weather.

Right now it feels like spring outside. August is usually bloody miserable but there's a definite whiff of sap in the air.

No sign yet of Wellington's bastard spring north westerly gusts though. Back when I was regularly cycling I used hate the spring. I lived in Thorndon and used to cycle up Moleworth St the wrong way and cut through Parliamentary grounds, scattering officials and minor party MPs behind me.

But the wind tunnel at the corner of Bowen and Lambton was an evil beast. Still one minute, and then it would up and sweep you to one side.

30 Random songs from the ipod...

2009-08-04T16:36:00.002+12:00

...or in my case, iTunes on the old Powerbook. [Hat Tip; MacDoctor who, like me, has his classical tunes skipped by the random play function]

1. One – U2
2. Promises, Promises – Naked Eyes
3. Shine a Light – Rolling Stones
4. Something to Talk About – Bonnie Raitt
5. Pink Orange Red – Cocteau Twins
6. Donca – Headless Chickens
7. Rock a Bye Baby – Fetus Productions
8. Silence of the Sirens – Cake Kitchen
9. Blood and Fire – Indigo Girls
10. Tonight I Fancy Myself – Beautiful South
11. Time – Pink Floyd
12. Don’t Look Away - The Who
13. Soothe Me – Sam and Dave
14. Rolling Moon - the Chills
15. Money-Go-Round – The Kinks
16. Won’t Let You Down - PhD
17. Jigsaw Puzzle – Rolling Stones
18. The Myth of Trust - Billy Bragg
19. Needle and the Damage Done – Neil Young
20. Keep the Faith – Bon Jovi
21. If I could Start Today Again – Paul Kelly
22. I Thank You – Sam and Dave
23. Get Yourself Toigether – the Jam
24. I’d Die To be With You Tonight – Jimmy Barnes
25. So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry) – REM
26. Hey Negrita - Rolling Stones
27. Conversations – Cold Chisel
28. Bed and Breakfast Man – Madness
29. Talk of the Town – Pretenders
30. Get Ready - The Temptations

Whoops Apocalypse - Pixies

2009-07-21T06:22:00.001+12:00

Thought of this, yesterday arvo...

The Bledisloe

2009-07-17T10:35:00.006+12:00

Twenty years ago, the All Blacks could field players with half a leg missing and still beat the Wallabies.

Would that were still the case. Here's hoping tomorrow night is a goodie. Pity its not in Dunedin. I don't buy this "Eden Park jinx" on the Wallabies. They're Aussies, they don't like the cold. Put 'em on an Otago pitch with a southerly roaring, that'll learn 'em.

View from lounge, earlier today...

2009-07-08T12:01:00.004+12:00

Lake Tekapo - its a photo, not a water colour. Looking all postcardy...

2009-07-08T11:59:00.003+12:00

The whole 'where were you and what were you doing when you first heard....' etc etc

2009-06-29T11:45:00.003+12:00

...which people already seem to be doing over Michael Jackson.

People only seem to talk about this when someone famous karks it - there doesn't seem so much talk about other momentous events, like, for example, the fall of the Berlin Wall (which affected me quite deeply at the time, much more so than the death of any celebrity ever did).

Spinning the memory dial back, I remember Elvis dying, because it was the first I'd ever heard of the guy - I'd just turned 13 and although I remember 'Suspicious Minds' vividly from around the time I started school the name of the singer never really registered.

I was milking cows when I first heard John Lennon was shot. Dad was ill with leptospirosis and I was doing the evening milking with Grandpa. 'Mind Games' was on the radio and I remember thinking that was an unusual tune for 1ZB to be playing during drivetime. Then Mark Bennett came on and said Lennon had been killed.

Princess Di? This will sound horrible to some people, but when I first heard she had been injured in a car accident (it wasn't clear she was dead at that point) my first reaction was 'Brilliant - I wonder what spin-meister came up with that idea'. A cynical blackhearted journalist's response, maybe, but the more I saw of her the more I thought she was a spoilt and manipulative little tart. (Not a fan of Charles either - I think he's a drip).

Went for a run, came back and flicked on the teev and they said she was dead. Felt a little bit guilty about my earlier reaction - I think its wrong to celebrate or even mock the death of anyone, unless they're in the Stalin/Hitler category. The ensuring global emotional spasm though seemed to be to be a symptom of a deep underlying mental illness.

Similarly with the Michael Jackson overkill. Shame the guy is dead, and all, but the widespread level of emotional identification there seems to be with people this famous strikes me as perhaps the most psychologically unhealthy aspects of our age - for the famed one as well as for those who adore the famed one.

So..on a lighter note - Armstrong and Miller's take on the "where were you/what were you doing when your heard JFK was shot?"
WARNING - its fairly rude.

Another Angel

2009-06-26T13:06:00.005+12:00

I see Farrah Fawcett has died. 'Charlie's Angels', which made her name, first appeared on NZ tv in 1977, around the same time I turned 13 and the old hormones kicked in.

She was very much the star of the programme, particularly with the guys. Although a lot of my schoolmates were rather keen on her, personally I always preferred the Kate Jackson character.

Moments like this often throw things into perspective. In retrospect, it was the start of a lifetime of preferring smart but awkward women ahead of the more glamorous types.

For some reason...

2009-06-26T13:01:00.001+12:00

...the last two didn't appear in the previous post. So here they are again - jet over Mt Cook, and what I think must be one of the world's best drives, across the McKenzie Basin.

Holiday pics...

2009-06-26T12:03:00.004+12:00

...and why blogger wouldn't let me upload them last night but did it in a trice this morning I don't know.

And isn't getting a slide film difficult these days? Went into a pharmacy in Christchurch, asked the assistant for a slide film and got a blank baffled look. 'What treatment is that for?' she asked, after a very long pause.

Anyhoo...

1. Snowstorm approaching Aspiring Hut, around 3pm 15 June 09.

2. North Temple Valley Basin. Those are frozen waterfalls you can see on the rock. The river (to the right) had also frozen. There was no wind. This photo only begins to capture how magnificent it was.

3. Jet over Mt Cook.

4. The world's greatest drive? Mackenzie Basin, north of Twizel looking towards Cook and Tekapo.

Thoughts from a holiday....

2009-06-22T19:34:00.001+12:00

It was very nice.
I'm not there any more.
Damn.

Over the Hills and Far away...

2009-06-11T17:49:00.002+12:00

Gon out.

Backson.

Busy Backson.

Tom T Hall (I Like Beer)

2009-06-07T21:50:00.002+12:00

I once sang a one year old (not my child) to sleep with this song.

True story.

He'll sue me one day, I know it.

One of those spectrum quiz thingys

2009-06-07T21:26:00.001+12:00

My Political Views
I am a right social libertarian
Right: 3.61, Libertarian: 4.12

Political Spectrum Quiz

Which feels about right.

The quiz is here.

Worthy Pursuits [chough!!}

2009-06-04T05:20:00.001+12:00

Wednesday. Lets see.

Got up. Coughed up green stuff. Had breakfast. Of grapefruit and stir-fry garlic, ginger, broccoli carrots and almonds. [what? Who are you calling weird??]

And tea. Lots of tea.

Got email about press conference. Got another email asking about rumours about Richard Worth.

Cried off press conference as I seem to have a factory producing radioactive slimy kryptonite somewhere in my lungs.

Got tape of press conference. Apparently worth has done unspecified Bad Things and is being stood down.

Way to go, PM’s office. Excellent damage control. You just set half the journalists in the country chasing every possible rumour about Worth. It's not like we had a lot on, anyway.

Got a couple more phone calls asking about various rumours about Richard Worth. I wheeze some I have heard.

By lunchtime I’ve heard half a dozen new rumours about Worth and I’m not even in Parliament Buildings.

Wrote column about superannuation. Talked to some economists.

Went to doctor. Tell him I’m feeling better, he says no I don’t and writes out a scrip.

Then he quizzes me about Richard Worth rumours.

From Emma Jayne Cranston's Reference Book

2009-06-02T13:06:00.002+12:00

From a book what I read on the weekend.....

OLIVIER, Sir Lawrence
Thirty years on, there’s still a kind of kinship that separates those who saw Larry’s Oedipus from those who didn’t…Will anyone who was there ever forget Larry’s ear-splitting scream of anguish which all but took the roof off the New Theatre? I once asked Larry where he’d discovered that terrible noise. It was the cry of a bull moose caught by the knackers in a trap, he told me, a ghastly high-pitched wail of agony he’d first heard when hunting in Canada as a young man.
Larry gives each word of a part a unique rasp of danger which is his and his alone, and yet – and this is the really extraordinary thing about him – when he’s sitting quietly on the train to Brighton, if it wasn’t for his enormous false nose, his stage makeup and his habit of suddenly bellowing like a bull moose caught by the knackers, he could be mistaken for any other commuter on his way home after a hard day as the office.

Kee--A!!

2009-05-31T11:55:00.003+12:00

Ele @ Home paddock ran into a kea on Rob Roy glacier...I ran into this one, same spot, at the end of June a last year... probably a rellie.

Kiwi Music Month 3 songs for final day - 3 - The Clean: "Anything Could Happen"

2009-05-31T11:52:00.001+12:00

Ahh... One of those 'moment' songs. Straight out of school, straight out of the country, to Wellington Polytech journalism course. Walking down Devon St to Polytech and hearing this coming out of one of the student flats and thinking, that's just how I feel....

Kiwi Music Month 3 songs for final day - 2 The Verlaines - Doomsday

2009-05-31T11:46:00.001+12:00

Kiwi Music Month 3 songs for final day - 1: Look Blue Go Purple perform "In Your Favour"

2009-05-31T11:43:00.001+12:00

2009-05-30T19:30:00.001+12:00

From Telethon '93.

..and Brazier, Lyon and Gamble do the country classic 'Sea of Heartbreak'

2009-05-30T19:29:00.001+12:00

Here endeth Kiwi Music Month with a couple from Telethon - Herbs' 'Listen'

2009-05-30T19:26:00.001+12:00

Kiwi Music day 28 - Straitjacket Fits - Down in Splendour (1990)

2009-05-27T21:26:00.001+12:00

Oh Ok, another one from what I call the Burning Train Years.

It's a great song although I have no idea what it is supposed to be about and the pictures don't really help.

Shimmering, atmospheric jangly and slightly melancholy stuff. I'm a sucker for it.

Budgets past...

2009-05-27T07:34:00.003+12:00

Both Ele at Home Paddock and Inventory2 at Keeping Stock

have memories of Budgets past, listening to the radio in the evening.

The first I remember was Bill Rowling's second, and last, Budget as finance minister in 1974. I was just starting to take an interest in what was in the newspaper and there was a Minhinnick cartoon, the morning of the Budget, of Rowling on the phone and saying 'Good morning, Nordy...'

It was, of course, the first Budget after the First Oil Shock and it was expected to be a tough one. (it wasn't). 'Nordy' was Arnold Nordmeyer, architect of the 1958 'Black Budget'.

It was either that Budget or the next one I was at a dance at the local hall on Budget night, and all the dads - farmers, all - were out the back in the kitchen, listening to the radio as it was being read.

What hit me at the time was the atmosphere of ... not quite dread, but disquiet. The economic ground was shifting under our feet and things would never be the same again. People knew this, even if they weren't up on the detail of economics. A great part of Muldoon's appeal was he seemed so certain - he provided assurance in what was becoming a very uncertain world.

Whenever I think of Budgets now, I think of that country hall, and that room of worried farmers.

Kiwi kMusic day 27 - The Bats - Courage (1993)

2009-05-27T06:12:00.001+12:00

Love the bass line in this. It just sort of says the whole song's theme.

update,,

2009-05-24T23:34:00.004+12:00

Various family health dramas ...stable, I think is the word.

The horse may have bolted, but things are stable.

Wind howling like a howly, windy thing outside. We're in the cloud, we occasionally hear planes try to land at the airport and then get warned off.

Probably a bad day for the controller to stop sniffing glue.

Kiwi Music Month day 24.....Split Enz - Sweet Dreams (1976)

2009-05-24T23:34:00.001+12:00

...my favourite Split Enz song, by far. Back from the Phil Judd era. There's about five different tunes in this song, the lyrics are all over the show but seem to reflect undergraduate studies in existentialism...

Love the chorus. 'Sweet Dreams, every once in a while....'

Kiwi Music month day 21...Karen Hay on RWP

2009-05-23T18:05:00.005+12:00

...No ack-shual NZ on this clip.

Just Karen Hay, on Radio With Pictures, with what was pribablee the first rill koywoi ack-sunt on the Tully.

Danse Macabre - Between The Lines

2009-05-23T18:05:00.001+12:00

Bit slow at the moment...got a bug. Feel as though I've been in an incubator with half a dozen Mexican Pig Farmers.

This one was on the ' More Hits and Myths ' compilation. It is also yet another song from the early 1980s with a video which featured shots of Auckland CBD.

Future historians wanting to see how Auckland looked around 1979-81 will find music videos a primary source, I'm sure of it.

I am not fit to blog...

2009-05-21T17:33:00.005+12:00

...or so it seems.

I've done a couple of Youtube links for Kiwi Music Month and they haven't turned up yet. They may yet do so - there is sometimes a lag.

They were of Danse Macabre's 'Between the Lines' and a clip of Karen Hay talking on Radio with Pictures.

Egg -cullunt.

Bugger of a week. Got some bloody chest infection. More seriously, also were told this morning Better Half needs urgent operation tomorrow.

I may be offline for a bit. At least until after the Budget.

Will do a Kiwi Music catch up then.

In the meantime, Six Great Kiwi Songs I've been unable to find clips for:

'Frantic Drift' - The Chills
'Sex and Agriculture' - Dance Exponents
'Sometimes Nothing' - Daggy and the Dickheads
'Don't Shoot Down the Only Woman to Ever Love You And Don't Put the Blame On Someone Else' - Otis Mace Guitar Ace
'Untameable' - Desert Road
'Crisis after Crisis' - the Verlaines.

Kiwi Music Day 19 - Dave McArtney's Virginia

2009-05-19T06:56:00.001+12:00

More from 1980, this one filmed in Wellington.

Even got the bucket fountain in Cuba Mall.

Kiwi Music Day 18: The Swingers - One Good Reason

2009-05-19T06:41:00.001+12:00

Their first single, before 'Counting the Beat'. Like this one better.

Nice shots of Auckland CBD, 1980. Memories of going up there from Waiuku with a carload of mates around that time.

I tried posting this yesterday but it didn't take. Trying again...

Kiwi Music Month day 17 - twofer Sunday (1): Street Talk - Back in the bad old days

2009-05-17T19:40:00.001+12:00

Street Talk - Hammond Gamble's band, late '70s. This wasn't a hit, but its the only one I can find on Youtube.

And it kind of fits.

I wanted 'She's Done It Again' which was a demi-hit (I had the single at one point). Or 'What Happened to Lucy'. Or even better 'Leaving the Country' which was the first of a number of great Kiwi OE songs.

They also did the jingle for Uncles Burger Bar chain ("Uunnnn-Cills...love at first bite/fine city food/for big city nights"...
)

Kiwi Music Month Day 17 (2) .Citizen Band - Rust in my car

2009-05-17T19:35:00.001+12:00

Song I always associate with sixth form, although according to this it came out a couple of years previously.

Whatever. They always seemed to be playing it on Hauraki in 1980.

Kiwi Music for the Weekend: The Chills: The Great Escape

2009-05-15T17:02:00.001+12:00

Lovely tune, one of the Great Kiwi OE songs.

Kiwi Music day 15...The Able Tasmans - Hold Me 1

2009-05-15T09:57:00.001+12:00

Bit late today...this is from one of my favourite NZ albums ever, the Able Tasmans' 'Hey Spinner!'

Lyrically I have to say I think this is a bit weak. But I love the joyous cascading waterfall of keyboards, drums, and violin.

The Able Tasmans weren't in many ways a typical Flying Nun band: their sound is, I think, very like the early Split Enz.

A mix of keyboard-led melodies and slight dorkiness. Its a very Kiwi thing, I think.

Kiwi Music Month Day 13: The Warratahs - St Peters Rendevous

2009-05-13T07:48:00.002+12:00

Warning: the technical quality of this is pretty rough. But its an amazing song.

Came out in '88, or around then. Full of emotion: mourning for the old NZ which was dying, bankrupt, and which becomes a metaphor for the mute mutual love and angry incomprehension between dying father and a rebellious son.

Suggestions welcome

2009-05-12T21:22:00.002+12:00

[yes I know I'm shouting: try to imagine me doing it through clenched teeth, if it helps ] DOES ANYONE KNOW A GOOD BROADBAND PROVIDER IN WELLINGTON?

I USE TELSTRACLEAR AND LATELY THE SERVICE IS BLOODY AWFUL: THE CONNECTION IN THE EVENINGS IS SO SLOW I MIGHT AS WELL BE BACK ON DIAL-UP.

Kiwi Music Month Day whateever it is...Sharon O'Neill - Words

2009-05-11T14:30:00.002+12:00

...included for historical interest. 1979 was a weird time.

O'Neill had come to fame on TV show New Faces, singing more ballad-ish type numbers sitting at a piano. 'Lucks on your Table' etc. Voice a bit like Linda Ronstadt, songs a bit like Carole King.

Then she put this out and upset the oldies. It was a bit too modern.

It had an electric guitar.

She wore tight jeans and leaned on the mike-stand like that reckless rocker Billy Joel.

She had a perm.

She burned off one demographic and never really convinced the other, although I suspect this clip has a place in the heart for blokes who were about the same age as I was (15). I recall a conversation at school after this was shown on Ready to Roll. It covered many aspects of the performance, with one point of contention being whether or not she was wearing a bra.

I suspect it was her biggest hit, but I don't know that for sure and I'm blowed if I'll look it up.

Look at the audience. Party-ville NZ, late 70s. The guys doing that great dance a lot of us did - stand on one spot and sort of shuffle a bit, and definitely don't move your arms, otherwise people will think you're gay.

My wife recalls me dancing like this the first night we met. If she's in the right mood, she'll give a demonstration.

Kiwi Music Month day 10...The Mockers video for Trendy Lefties

2009-05-10T15:37:00.004+12:00

Remember seeing this on Radio With Pictures, early 1982. One of the first things the Mockers ever did and one of the best. Interesting guitar riff.

I think 'trendy lefities' was a Muldoon phrase. Probably about journalists.

Anyway, the song itself was on the Ripper compilation Goats Milk Soap... Still got a copy.

Kiwi Music - for the Weekend....Higher Trails (Original) - John Hanlon

2009-05-07T18:29:00.001+12:00

This was a 'short' at the pictures, mid-70s. If you don't know what that means, ask your mum or dad.

I was about 11. The mountains, on the big screen in a small town flea-pit, were utterly breathtaking.

Even on here, they're still pretty stunning.

Kiwi Music Day 8 - three bitsers

2009-05-07T18:01:00.002+12:00

I'm getting in early because I'm tied up tomorrow morning....

I've got three incomplete numbers which also tell a sort of story, in their way.

The first thing I've found is an excerpt here from 'Big Bad Don' - its a version of the more famous American song 'Big Bad John'. The NZ version was about All Black fullback Don Clarke. My folks had it in the radiogram when I were a lad.

It's also pretty representative of that short-back-and-sides culture of the time.

Then there's a mix of Fourmyula's 'Otaki' - Fourmyula's most famous song of course was 'Nature' and although this is a bit rough I kind of like it. It's also very hippyish - a lot changed between 1965 and 1970....and the last bit is the Avengers' Love Hate Revenge' which has already been carried by Keeping Stock.

Of paper shufflers, Kiwi Music, and not worrying about Daggy Boy

2009-05-07T07:16:00.005+12:00

Ele at Home Paddock responds to a comment from - who else? - Cactus Kate about what farmers think of paper shufflers. The comment is in the context of NZX buying a bunch of farming publications and the reasons for doing so.

I won't comment on that - much - because I'm too close to some of this stuff. But here's a - true - story which illustrates the point fairly well.

A colleague, also from a farm, told me this one - as a child she was with her dad at his run-off in the King Country when the new bank manager called in (the fact he even did this dates the story). The bloke turns up in his suit, introduces himself, and is really putting on the smarm a bit. He gets asked what he does with is spare time and volunteers the fact he likes a bit of shooting. Farmer's eyes light up. "Really? There's some good shooting around here. You want to do some now?" And before the bank manager has time to say yes or no a 12 bore is pressed into his hands. The farmer also quickly convinces him the best place to shoot from is from the Landrover. Not from the cab though. Or the back.

No - sitting on the spare tyre which sits on the bonnet. The bank manager is perched precariously in his suit on this dusty tyre: the farmer hops into the cab, puts his daughter (my future colleague, the one who told me this story) into the passenger seat. Revs up the engine. And whispers to his daughter: "watch me make this little ******** **** himself."

Meanwhile, Keeping Stock has Fred Dagg/John Clark and assorted helpers doing his 1998 version of 'We Don't Know How Lucky We Are' as the daily Kiwi Music number.

I seriously think it should be our National Anthem. There's a self-satirising under-current, which is good, and a national anthem with this would be unique.

Hell, we could even lead the world!

It's also bloody true, I feel.

One important change to the lyrics in the 1998 version, and one which showed that economically things had turned around - the 1975 original version had a line about:

"If things get appallingly bad

We all get atrociously poor

If we stand in the queue with our hats on

We can borrow a few million more."

The 1998 version replaced this with the line:

"If things get appallingly bad

We're all under constant attack

Remember we want to see good clean ball

And for God's sake, feed yer backs!"

At the moment, of course, we'd have to reinstate the '75 version...

Kiwi Music Day 7 - The Mutton Birds - Ngaire (1993)

2009-05-06T17:37:00.001+12:00

'Bittersweet' is such an over-used term, but here it fits. A lovely song about disappointment and heartbreak. I love the little bits of detail like 'you knew I had to come here/you knew there was no work at home' and the poetic bit at the end of the last verse:

'Is that the sun that's rising on you now? And did it shine the day you changed your mind?'

Remember seeing them live in Wellington in around 1995....a bunch of people in front of us said, more or less together as the band came on and plugged in 'Hope they play "Ngaire" - and then the band opened with it. It set off a magic night.

KIwi Music Month Day 6: Hi-Revving Tongues - Rain and Tears

2009-05-05T20:50:00.002+12:00

Was a hit around the time I started school - a wet and miserable winter.

Yes that's Pete Sinclair introducing them, so this must have been from Happen Inn.

Two asides - firstly, if it were not for the need for certain unlikely events to have taken place, Bernadine Oliver-Kirby could pass for Pete Sinclair's love child. Watch the movement of the head, mouth and eyebrows next time she reads the news. Its Pete Sinclair to the life...

Also this tune is a straight rip off of Pachelbel's Kanon in D. Not that its unusual in that - a lot of pop songs have been based on it.

Apart from the ones mentioned in this rant here, there are also Oasis's 'Don't Look Back in Anger' and Petula Clark's 'Don't Sleep in the Subway'.

All kind of tangental, but never mind...