Whetu: Travelling Easy

HE: Ki ora Bro.
ME: Ki ora Whetu. What’s it this time?
HE: What’s what, Bro?
ME: What do you want this time?
HE: Me?
ME: You.
HE: Want?
ME: Yes.
HE: Want nothin’ Bro.
ME: Nothin’? Nothing?
HE: just comin’ to say good bye or as you PC honkies say Haere ra.
ME: You going somewhere?
HE: Leaving Helensville mate.
ME: Oh?
HE: Move out next week. Moving to Parnell. Choice place. Pool. Backyard for hangi. Take the missus…maybe.
ME: How can you afford that?
HE: The missus?
ME: The place.
HE: Rolling in it mate. Heaps of it.
ME: So the crop came in?
HE: What?
ME: Nothing. Forget it. How did you get all this money?
HE: Gotta job.
ME: You haven’t had a job in years.
HE: Gotta job six months ago. Earning heaps.
ME: What job?
HE: Good job.
ME: I guess it must be. But doing what?
HE: Hone’s travel agent.


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Queer as Folk

Surely it is a grim irony that Radio Live’s rural programme should this morning have an item on the extermination of rabbits. One would have thought the wilful destruction of Easter Eggs’ primary distribution channel could have waited until after the break. But farmers are not noted for their sensitivity or for embracing the finer nuances of life. That surely is why so many of them gravitate to Hamilton. Don’t get me wrong; I have nothing personally against rural folk, but after my experiences this week I do feel that far too many of them have the rather off-putting propensity to pick up their banjos and start duelling. Those experiences have been unsettling but don’t warrant detailing here. Suffice to say the North Country saying of “there’s nowt so queer as folk” certainly applies to some of our citizens and whilst many of those live in our cities, it seems to me a greater proportion live in our rural heartlands. Rather than far from the madding crowd, they are the madding crowd. I have also found the unsettling truth that a disproportionate number are called Watson. I don’t know why. Perhaps the inter-galactic travel agency that deposited them here lacked imagination. But they are among us. We have to live with it. However, having interacted with so many over the past week I, for one, am in no hurry to go canoeing any time soon.

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Interesting Times

As one reaches one’s dotage one finds the greatest of pleasures in the humblest of activities.

Gone are the great events of the past—the road-trips, the late-night poker, party crashing, the unrestrained (and restrained) sex and not caring what scotch one drinks.

They have been replaced with reading the Rodney Times.

Now I know this is not everybody’s cup of tea (another new-found pleasure), but the Rodney Times can be an interesting read. As a newspaper serving a largely rural area it gives insight into the lives and activities of a disparate if somewhat smug community.

I can take any edition as evidence of this. Yesterday’s for example. The lead story is an armed robbery of a bar not far from here, and under that story, on the same page, RT trumpets the lowest recorded crime in 15 years. The juxtaposition shows the editor has sense of humour.

But like so many things it’s only when we take something further that it gets interesting. The Kumeu Volunteer Fire Brigade is hosting a hoedown night, the mayor sat in a chair in Warkworth, Wellsford Kindergarten has a three-day (!) pumpkin festival, and we are told that on May 5 and 19 there will be ukulele lessons in Orewa—one is required to bring one’s own ukulele, though practice ukuleles are available for those not so endowed. I have bought mine.

As if to prove that even Rodney has a seedy undercurrent, we are told in the headline on page 15 that there is a Chery (sic) ripe for plucking. Unfortunately, that is another of those events now beyond my capacity and ability. With that as an appetiser though, one inevitably gravitates to the classifieds. If one is looking for raunchy escort ads one is disappointed, “Hire a Hubby” doesn’t quite mean what you think. But you can still get an Aurora Psychic Reading (“the best in New Zealand”) and whilst I am devastated to read that I have not won the Kaipara College Easter Raffle, it was at least won by Fryday reader Leigh Wilson, and Mr Mike Walker is happy to add the piano to my ukulele tuition.

The untutored may well think that reading a paper such as the Rodney Times is like a trip to Hamilton. But, I submit here, that is unfair. A trip to Hamilton is never great, never humbling, and certainly never a pleasure.

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Whetu Calls: Te Bismarck

HE: ‘Morning Bro.
ME: I know why you are here, Whetu.
HE: What? Is you one of those clairevoyeur types?
ME: Nope. I just read the paper, and knew you would be around. Is that it?
HE: What?
ME: Is that it in your hand?
HE: Yus. A plastic waka.
ME: And you is—are--selling it?
HE: Yus.
ME: As a kitset?
HE: Yus.
ME: All boxed up and everything?
HE: Yus.
ME: Why does the box say The Bismarck?
HE: What?
ME: Why does the box say The Bismarck?
HE: Spelling mistake. It should say Te Bismarck.
ME: I see. And why does that picture show gun turrets and radio aerials?
HE: It’s a fortified waka.
ME: So, apart from being plastic, it is a true representation of an authentic Maori waka?
HE: A what?
ME: I don’t think so Whetu. But thanks anyway.
HE: Not interested Bro?
ME: No.
HE: What about a used Skyhawk then?
ME: No.

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HE: Going cheap.