With Respect

I spent last weekend in Christchurch, and enjoyed it.

I have to admit that Christchurch has greatly improved since my last visit there. Not that I take credit for that. But I do congratulate the residents of Christchurch for not succumbing to the humiliation of not having the courage, fortitude and street-savvy to make it in Auckland. What they have done is accept their lot as perpetual members of the Flat Earth Society and set about making their city a better place.

How they have done it, I do not know. I imagine it must have been a slow and measured process—something like those easy questions at the start of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. First we’ll begin with “we’ll be a better city than Hamilton” (easy), then “a better city than Hastings” (harder), Orewa (ambitious to the point of ridiculousness), and so on.

How does this bettering manifest itself? Well, for a start Christchurch is cleaner than Auckland and, thus far, mercifully devoid of tagging; Christchurch’s notorious one-way system is now somehow more submissive; and the shopping and restaurant selection is probably the best in New Zealand.

But it is the people. It is the people of Christchurch who have most improved. On this visit I found them less insular than in the past, less focussed on the Crusaders, and less inclined to indulge themselves in fatuous criticism of Auckland. Instead we have shop-assistants and restaurant staff who are pleasant without being intrusive, and who really know their stuff when it comes to product knowledge. We have courtesy and consideration in the shops and on the streets. Even an arrest I observed was expedited with a modicum of decorum and the tacit acceptance that it was “a fair cop”.

Yeah, you are doing well Christchurch. Auckland, for once, could learn from you. Thanks for the experience.



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Now playing: Van Morrison - Here Comes The Night
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The Silence of the Lambs

This week I helped kill six sheep, none of whom had knowingly done me harm, and all of whom showed appreciative enthusiasm when I chatted to them the previous night.

To say the lot of a farmer is a hard one has a somewhat obscene quality about it if compared to the lot of the sheep. Nevertheless, it is difficult for the sensitive mind to cope with abrupt juxtaposition of those most durable and adroit of bedfellows—Life and Death.

At least while sober.

Yes, I am a farmer—a writer/farmer, with the prospect this year of becoming writer farmer and politician. In a practical and emotional sense I owe it all to Maggie, whom I met less than 18 months ago and married last October—I think you know about that (if you don’t, let me know).

What you may not know is that Maggie and I live on an oh-so quaint cottage on a beautiful farm owned by Maggie’s sister and brother-in-law. We work the farm together, though much of it is left to my (new) brother-in-law Colin, who knows about such things. The closest I get to livestock is my computer mouse.

But on occasions, such as this week, I need to step in to help out.

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It's all Greek to me.

The ethnic brawling between the Serbs and the Croats at the Australian Tennis Open has a surreal quality about it but will come as no surprise to anybody who knows the history of the relationship between the two peoples. Even as a united nation (Yugoslavia) they were at each others throats and of course it got even worse when Yugoslavia disintegrated.

The brawling itself is unusual and has been stated so by Croat and Serbian tennis players and officials. This ethnic violence at sporting events apparently occurs nowhere else in the world, and the players themselves get on pretty well together—on and off the court.

So what is different about Melbourne, where the Tennis Open is being held?

I blame the Greeks.

I read that the Greek spectators have been egging on the Serbs while remaining just that—spectators. Which says to me one thing: the Greeks are the new Italians. No that’s unfair: the Italians at least went to war—didn’t win any, but at least they were there. The Australian Greeks on the other hand are cowardly content to stand on the side-line and watch others go for it.

How the mighty have fallen. Greece was once a proud nation comprising great military states such as Sparta and Athens that produced the mightiest army and navy of the known world. A near neighbour, Macedonia, produced arguably the greatest general of all time, Alexander. Now it has all come to this: standing back and watching someone else trade blows outside a tennis match in Australia.

Yet, when I think about it, it should come as no surprise. What has Greece offered of late? A police force that wears frocks and a musical starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton John. Even its contribution to international cuisine says something. In fact, to me, it’s the greatest indictment of all. While its neighbour Turkey offers us great meat dishes full of succulent mutton spiced with fabulous though mysterious tastes—great, solid fare a man can use, what does Greece offer?

A salad.

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Going Bush

“They invented the perfect tool for the New Dumb. They can now flourish in a land of serious stupidity and greed. They can infest the planet with every sick arsehole you can dream of and make him sound sane. Now, any cheap, lying fuck can become President of the United States and sound good.”

-- Hunter S. Thompson on the invention of computers to his friend Ralph Steadman, circa 1980, quoted in Steadman’s memoir The Joke’s Over (William Heinemann: London). In February 2005, four months after George W. Bush’s re-election, Thompson put a gun to his head and shot himself.

New Year's Resolutions

I think most of us at least contemplate making New Year’s Resolutions--something we resolve to do from the moment we wake on New Year’s Day; anything we are doing that night before we wake, such as the hardy-annual “I shall not drink again”, counts as the year before. In fact, most of us save up our resolutions for that moment, defying common sense and sometimes propriety for the simple expedient of creating an anniversary we can remember. How embarrassing and self-emasculating therefore that most resolutions don’t last beyond January, something we’d rather forget.

I made several resolutions this year, but will follow propriety and not reveal what they are; two are already consigned to history, anyway.

The history of the New Year’s Resolutions itself is quite interesting: the tradition goes all the way back to 153 BC. Janus, a mythical king of early Rome, was placed at the head of the calendar and the populace was required to make promises in homage. The fact that Janus was known to be “two-faced” says something for the credibility of most resolutions.

This brings us to George W. Bush.

I asked George if he had made any New Year’s resolutions. “Many,” he replied, among them his intent to finally read War and Peace, once it comes out in books on tape format and when, as he said, he can get his head around “this peace thing”. The President is also committed to having an exit strategy from Iraq—he got the idea from the Donald Rumsfeld affair: it involves getting rid of one war and replacing it with another.

Helen Clark was too busy to receive my calls when I wanted to ask her what her New Year’s resolutions were and her husband Doctor Peter Davis was unable to tell me what his were either—apparently he is still waiting for Helen to tell him and she is yet to return his calls. John Key quipped that his resolution was to get “the key to the door” and then the cheerful cherub displayed his mischievous nature by admitting that was last year’s! This year, he says, is to make editors making plays on his name in headlines—assuming John of course that there are any headlines for you to make.

Tony Blair and Richard Branson have eerily similar resolutions: they intend to swap jobs with each other. John Howard says he would think about it but would get back to me when he finished watching Australia obliterate England in the Ashes Series, the Australian cricket team said the would get back to me as soon as they had obliterated England in the Ashes Series, and the English cricket team said they hadn’t yet had a resolution but, like last year, one could be expected within three days. The New Zealand cricket team said they would be rotating theirs, but didn’t expect to be making many.

Graham Henry says he won’t be making any resolutions, predictions, explanations or comments, and how the hell did I get his number anyway.

Many other politicians, world figures and sportspeople refused, like Helen Clark, to return my call. But one did. To give Saddam Hussein his due (as one does), his simple and brief reply to my questions as to whether he intended to make any New Year’s resolutions was: “You’re kidding, right?”

New Year’s Resolutions? It’s all in the execution, I guess.

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Suicide: The Final Word

When the great British comedian, Tony Hancock, alone in Sydney and befuddled by booze and barbiturates, committed suicide in 1968 he left behind two suicide notes--he was, after all, a perfectionist.

The first note--by far the more concise--is a classic of poignancy and pertinence; it reads simply, 'Things seemed to go wrong too many times.' There is art in that note. In the end, it succeeds in doing what many of Hancock's other final performances did not: it shows what an artist and premature loss Tony Hancock (at the age of 44) was.

However, Hancock is not alone. Many of the world's greatest artists have saved their greatest work for their suicides--whether in the manner of the act or in their note explaining it. Hemingway did it spectacularly though rather prosaically with a shotgun in his Ketchum (Idaho) kitchen; Brutus, after sticking the knife into Caesar, then did it to himself; Sylvia Path characteristically took the artistic route with her 'Dying is an art like everything else. I do it exceptionally well'; and Curt Cobain certainly gave credence to the claim that suicide is the ultimate expression of self-criticism when he wrote, "I hate myself, and I want to die."

But, where is all this heading? Well, a friend and I were the other day discussing the idea of irony. Irony, being in part: 'the use of language with one meaning for the privileged few and another for those addressed or concerned' (Oxford Dictionary of Current English), is of course a Fryday fundamental. However, my friend drew my attention to an article in New Yorker magazine that celebrates irony better than I have yet managed to do. The article, by Tad Friend, discusses the propensity of people to use San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge as a jumping off place.

It seems that this stately structure has literally and figuratively been a bridge to another world for all of its 66 years. On average, somebody jumps off the Golden Gate every fortnight and it is the world's leading suicide location. The first jumper did it three months after it opened in 1936, 1200 others have done it since. Where the irony comes in is the care that is often taken. For example, the Golden Gate has a sister bridge, the Bay Bridge, but nobody has jumped off that--it is too ugly, apparently.

But the far-from-final irony is that not everybody succeeds. The incidences of surviving a leap from the bridge are quite high (forgive the irony in that statement).Numbers are not exact, because some survivors have simply swum away, but many have jumped, survived, recovered, and then recorded what they then thought were their final thoughts (a leap from the bridge takes 4 seconds). One of those, Ken Baldwin, who jumped in 1985, later made the following magical statement and in doing so reinforced my belief--clung to--that there is always a better way. That he also managed to say it in such a humorous and ironic way adds to its power as a salutary lesson. As he fell, Baldwin recalls, 'I instantly realized that everything in my life I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable--except for having just jumped.'

Now, that's irony! Hancock would have liked that.


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Now playing: Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah
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Yearling

With only a few days to go of the current year, it could be seen as incumbent on Fryday to undertake a review of that year; I reject that encumbrance.

“The best and worst” is done ad nauseum, and you probably find it as boring as I do. The only people who relish retrospective regurgitation are those who actually appeared in the news or those in Palmerston North, Canterbury, and Hamilton who think it still is the news!

However there were a couple of personal highpoints that I should not fail to mention: persuading the highly desirable, inevitably interesting and surprisingly indefatigable Maggie Fordham to marry me was one of them; the wedding itself was another; as was the post-wedding party spent with family and friends.

Elsewhere I look to the unwavering support of friends/colleagues in what, to put it mildly, has been a difficult job as “spokesman” for the Rodney District Council; akin to that, the superb job my friend Mitch has done in taking up the reins of the writing company.

All of which has given me the foundation for what I know will be a difficult 2007.

But, that’s next year: a few days, a trip to Matakana, a sojourn to the movies, and one or two bottles of wine away from now. I’ll worry about it when it arrives.

For now, the only encumbrance I feel upon me is one I embrace with alacrity and sincerity: and that is to wish you all that is fresh and invigorating for the balance of the holiday season, and a rich and wonderful New Year.

Next week: what the newsmakers’ New Year resolutions reveal about themselves.

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God Knows

Dear President Bush,

What is it with you?

I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that all we have in common is the same first initial. Yet, you persist in writing to me as if I am a great friend and confident. Too often, too, you exhibit an air of superiority, which is difficult to comprehend and, in your case, impossible to justify.

Yet to the best of my recollection this has all happened without you receiving a single acknowledgement or even recognition from me. You refer to our “conversations”. When did these happen? Did I miss something? I have a great many conversations with a great many people, Allah is a particular friend, and it would be true to say that sometimes, late and night, after a good meal, and a bit of a nightcap, my friends and I will attempt to right the wrongs of the world (as one does), but as far as I am aware those conversations have never included you as a participant—though, I have to admit, “wrongs of the world” have undoubtedly included you as an example.

In any case, what makes you think you would get automatic entry to my place? Boy, are you in for a rude awakening!

What concerns me most though are the things you purport to do in my name. You imply you have a God-given right; do you think I give out rights like certificates? Even if I did, a Texan would be so far back on the queue they’d be looking up the backside of Brian Tamaki. Iraq? That was all yours, babe. Do you know how much grief that caused me with the Muslims next door, and they are only marginally better than the Catholics at the best of times.

But it is Christmas and I can afford to be magnanimous. What is it they say: to forgive is divine? This then is in the form of a gentle admonishment, one that I hope you will take on board and digest: from this point you will, I hope, be a little more circumspect in your comments and attributions. You will acknowledge, as Presidents have done before you, that God has no place in the White House. I have not been near the White House in decades—since Kennedy in fact: it was a fun place back then. You will cease and desist from acting in my name; you will also desist from evoking my name; I find it personally offensive the amount of evoking you are doing lately, and I can tell you for nothing your wife Laura is not too happy about it either.

And finally you will cease writing to me. Your ingratiating letters, barely literate at the best of times, simply grate. And, no, before your devious mind turns to alternatives: I don’t have a text-capable phone. This correspondence is at an end.

So is this letter; I have a birthday party to organize.

Merry Christmas.

G.

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Ducks in a line

Morning, noon, night, anytime, anywhere: there is a lot to be said for a good duck.

A good duck, particularly in the morning, can set you up for the day. A good duck does nobody any harm. Have you heard of anybody being harmed by a duck?. They, like rabbits and sheep, have a God-given nonchalance about them, without the timidity of the former and stupidity of the latter.

I like ducks.

Witness then my distress when hearing earlier this week of the death of a mother duck and her three ducklings killed, run over, squashed flat, buzzard-meat (or its New Zealand equivalent) on busy Rosemount Road in Henderson. Worse still, the tragic augmentation of four orphan ducklings left behind.

But then...

Then was the company, the staff of whom, espying on this busy road the plight of the ducklings, rushed to their aid. Then there was the burly truck driver, from IMF, who desperately brought his rig to a grinding halt to avoid hitting one of the ducklings then left his cab to help the staff round up the duckling brood; the same driver who then took the orphan ducklings home to be raised by hand, as he had done, it was revealed, with other ducks before.

And then there were the 60-odd motorists, New Zealanders, who patiently and uncomplainingly waited in line and in queue on one of the busiest roads in town at the busiest times of the year while all this was done and then and only then went about their business.

I love ducks; I love New Zealanders more.

A Brash Act

I was today going to forward the penultimate letter from George Bush to God; I also toyed with the idea of paying tribute to Hamilton in honour of its acquisition of the V8. But all was overtaken by yesterday’s announcement that Don Brash was resigning.

You have to feel sorry for media. Well, you don’t have to; I certainly don’t, and that is despite last week being accorded the honour of “best media personality” but I digress. You have to feel sorry for the media when they have a surfeit of stories. They have the stadium debate (which, have you noticed, if now described more accurately as the stadium debacle?) and they have the Brash resignation. Which to run with? Both. Which to give prominence to? That’s the question.

So, let’s talk League.

Tomorrow night the Kiwis will beat Australia to retain the Champion’s Trophy. No question, no qualification. Bluey has the boys believing in themselves and all the old hoodoo of forty minute football is a thing of the past There are also cracks showing in the previously formidable and impervious monolith that was the Australia league team. Their backs will sparkle but their forwards will have no answer for the battle up front and that’s where the game will be fought and, in the Aussies’ case, lost.

Brash is a good bloke. He was in his own arena the Beckham of banking. But politics is not a game of finesse such as soccer; it is simple and it is brutal. Like League. Brash was never going to make it playing that game, not against Cullen and Clark; he was outweighed, he was out-muscled, he was out-played and inevitably he was in the end out the door. But does that necessarily mean the other side won?

No, I think not. To carry the sporting analogy one final step: I think that in being instrumental in removing Brash the Labour Party may, just may, have scored an own goal. It won’t be so much in who replaces Brash—that won’t be the key—it will be that the present Labour front row of Clark, Cullen, Mallard et al will be seen finally for what they are: brutal, vindictive and vicious

Walk The Line

Lying in bed on such a marvellous morning as this I was hard pressed to find any reason to rise and do battle with the political has-beens, wanna-bes and never-will-bes who inhabit Rodney here north of Auckland. But there are reasons—good ones: my boss John Law is often challenging but always invigorating; his PA Vicki Shanley is glorious, gracious and totally devoid of veneer. Today there is also the prospect of a leisurely drive to the wine country of Matakana, and later a few drinks with crusty old journos who by 7.00 tonight will have solved all the ills of the world. So, it is not all bad.

Nevertheless, this week I was mortified. And before anybody such as .33 rushes to say that is an inevitable consequence of getting married, let me say it was something to do with Rodney. As many of you know, I work for the Rodney District Council, and each year we at the council poll our residents to find out what they think of us. This year we did well on the provision of services such as libraries, parks etc; quality of life in Rodney scored rather well too; our mayor (John Law) scored highly.

But in the attitude and behaviour of council we did less well. As a governing body, we instilled little confidence in the community. Our administration was perceived as lacking and our general administration not up to scratch. Of course there are arguments in rebuttal to this, and one can question some of the methodology of the poll. Also and even so such a poll is valuable in highlighting deficiencies and giving us improvement goals to work toward.

So, why am I upset; why am I traumatised? I am because of one single line in the report. One line of 7 words, 33 characters. It nearly destroyed me. It is this:

“Overall, you did less well than Hamilton.”