Big thoughts and little hope

This week I have been living in hope; hope that I would win the $35,000,000 offered by Lotto’s Big Wednesday When that hope was dashed I found new hope, from a most unlikely quarter: the American Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. I didn’t know such a publication existed or that there would be sufficient material to sustain it. Clearly there is; the journal has been going for 35years and addresses such scholarly subjects as Marital Disruption as a Stressor, Reliability of the Dyadic Adjustment Scale and the Longitudal Course of Marital Stability. And here I was just looking for something on vibrators! But what gave me hope was an article by our very own (Canterbury University) Dr Alice Boyes. The aptly named Dr Boyes found that whereas a slightly overweight woman may evoke a negative reaction in their men folk a woman is more forgiving and don’t see a man’s weight as an impediment to a full and loving relationship. Now, that is very considerate of you women. Good on you for taking a realist view and giving we slightly rotund individuals hope that you are not soon about to walk out on us leaving us to our KFC and sausage rolls. Having said that, weight didn’t figure prominently for women in the list of characteristics that make up a good relationship. It only scrapes into the top 10. For your interest, Dr Boyes’ list in ranking order is: Warmth/trustworthiness: understanding, supportive, kind, good listener, sensitive, considerate. Attractiveness/vitality: sexy, nice body, attractive appearance, good lover, outgoing, adventurous. Status/resources: successful, nice house, financially secure, dresses well, good job. Having published that list, I am now in terror of finding how many of those characteristics my wife thinks I offer. I can only…hope.


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Now playing: Luciano Pavarotti - De Crescenzo: Rondine Al Nido
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Now playing: Luciano Pavarotti - De Crescenzo: Rondine Al Nido
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A Little Schoolin’

In a speech yesterday Dr Sharples, who is Maori Party co-leader, said Maori should be able to go to university without any qualifications.
NZ Herald: Thursday 18 June 2009.

The call came. I knew it would. He was there.

HE: Bro.
ME: Whetu.
HE: Howse it goin’?
ME: Fine. You?
HE: Good. Just want to say bye.
ME: Bye? Where youse..where are you going?
HE: Uni?
ME: University?
HE: Yup.
ME: Which one?
HE: All of them.
ME: All of them?
HE: Big whanau, bro. Got to spread meself around. Thought I would do a couple of weeks at Auckland, do a bit more with the cuzzies at Rotorua, then down to Wellington and then…
ME: What are you taking?
HE: Anything that’s not nailed down, bro. You know me.
ME: No, what course are you taking?
HE: Course?
ME: What are you…learning?
HE: Learning?
ME: Isn’t that why you are going to university? To learn? A profession?...A trade?…A skill?…Something?
HE: Oh, I’m going to learn something!
ME: What?
HE: How to get a student loan.


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Now playing: The Band - Don't Do It (live)
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The Secrecy Surrounding Swanson

My wife and I are contemplating moving to Swanson. Swanson is of course the place South Aucklanders will be visiting when they can no longer get off at Mt Albert. Swanson also rhymes with swan song and therefore seems a particularly apt place to be for someone overseeing and foreseeing the final curtain on a career.
I know little of Swanson. Its location west of Auckland, but not quite the Waitakeres, would suggest a haven for suburban closet artists without the intestinal fortitude to go the whole way of the West Coast. It also seems a place of itinerants, either going to Bethells or escaping Ranui. Houses seem comfortable and that’s entirely appropriate given, as I see it, Swanson will be considered a comfort zone for many. That perhaps is its attraction for me.
On the distaff side living in Swanson would require a lot more travelling on my part. However, I enjoy driving so that is no great issue. I am rather put-off though by the secrecy surrounding Swanson—what have they to hide? When places as bland as the Twin Peaks of Mt Albert and Mt Roskill stand naked before us, why is it we never hear anything of Swanson? Am I being too harsh? Think about it: ask someone in Christchurch to list Auckland suburbs and I guarantee it will take a long time—if ever—before they get to Swanson. Mind you, the probably couldn’t name any Hamilton suburb; even Hamiltonians struggle to do that.
And maybe that’s what worries me most—is Swanson Auckland’s Hamilton? Now that would be an irony, would it not—me living there? Still my wife and I are having a look.
As a vastly more famous Swanson (Gloria) once said, “Time for my close up...”

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Now playing: The Three Tenors - Various: Memory, Ochi Tchorniye, Caminito, La Vie En Rose
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Let’s honour Arbor Day or inject ourselves with cyanide and inflict a painful death as a preference.

Birdsey Northrop is a name to conjure with. So is Leonard Cockayne. Northrop and Cockayne never met but they had in common passion for trees and particularly the planting of trees. It was Northrop who took the essentially American tradition of Arbor Day globally; Cockayne was the man who introduced it to New Zealand and is “generally recognised as the greatest botanist who has lived, worked, and died in New Zealand.” Implicit, there may be greater botanists than Cockayne, but none fulfilled all three distinctions of having lived, worked and died in New Zealand. I am sure that there are at least a few eminent botanists presently living and working in New Zealand who can’t wait to die here so they can claim Cockayne’s crown.
But what of Arbor Day itself? According to Wikipedia, it was founded officially by Sterling Morton (whom I thought was a Wallabies back) in Nebraska in 1872. The celebration may have its original roots in Judaism in a celebration called Tu B'Shevat. By the 1920s each state in the United States had passed public laws that proclaimed a certain day to be Arbor Day or Arbor and Bird Day observance. The dates differ and were established depending on climate and suitable planting times. As mentioned, the wonderfully and aptly named Birdsey Northrop brought Arbor and Bird Day to the world. As far as observance goes, I personally have not derived much pleasure, much less sensual delight, from observing trees. Birds are a different matter.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, today is Arbor Day of course. In New Zealand anyway. And it’s also Friday and this is Fryday and I have nothing else for Fryday that wouldn’t expose me to an enormous defamation suit from Dr Richard Worth. And what’s Richard worth? Not a lot. So, we’ll settle on trees and if you think that’s boring, I can only apologise, ask for your forgiveness, and suggest you mull over the thought that how vastly more boring would be Birdsey Northrop in the flesh. I have spared you that.


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Now playing: Nilsson - Mr. Richland's Favourite Song (Harry Nilsson) 1968
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The Town I grew Up In

The town I grew up in, Kaiapoi in Canterbury, was very much like any other small New Zealand town in the 50s. It was the epicentre for the largely rural community that surrounded it. The biggest businesses in town were the pubs and the stock and station agents. Kaiapoi also had the world famous (genuinely) Kaiapoi Woollen Mills, but that produced no distinction, no worldly view; Kaiapoi was, like every other small town, proud, parochial, xenophobic and crushingly boring.
Given that, the large cities were also like that, as I remember them.
These days, the cities, with the exception of Hamilton, have changed and changed for the better. Vastly more cosmopolitan, cities have lost all those traits of the 50s including, sadly, pride, particularly in Auckland. But they are at least better; the small towns are not. New Zealand’s small towns are still parochial, xenophobic and crushingly boring but any pride that is left is self-delusional. They are no longer the providers for the back-bone of New Zealand; the backbone of New Zealand is no longer the backbone (one is challenged to find out what is these days) and much of the towns’ workers gravitate temporarily, and their young people permanently, to the cities. They add nothing to those cities, other than a force of worker-ants, but they detract and diminish the town.
Until recently, that trend seemed to be reversing as more and more city dwellers, attracted to the rural lifestyle, were moving to the country, and places such as Rodney where I live growing expotentially and dramatically. But the declining economy put paid to that; people stay put. And the towns, after a brief renewal of hope, have resumed their sad decline.
There was one policeman in the town I lived. He was Jack Highstead. I doubt very much that he ever rose above the rank of constable. But he ruled the town and he protected the town and he didn’t need a stab-proof vest to do it. He’s gone now, of course. But his police station—that epicentre of both fear and reassurance remains. Only now it is a museum; much like the town and much of the country it served.


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Now playing: The Band - Last Of The Blacksmiths
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On the Left Bank

Now if I was a Westpac employee and mistakenly transferred $10,000,000 instead of $10,000 into a customer’s account I would be seriously worried about retaining my job. Fryday feels sorry for that person. Mistakes happen, and this appears to a slip of the fingers that could happen to any of us. So I hope Westpac reacts compassionately and realistically in regard to their employee. Of the couple who absconded with the money I am more ambivalent. It was certainly fortuitous for them, given their parlous financial state, and you have to say they were opportunist. But my question is how did they do it? Any time I have gone to my bank (and I have a very friendly bank) to withdraw any sum exceeding $1000 I go through a series of checks. Now, if I also had a bad credit history, as this couple apparently has, and all of a sudden I was withdrawing millions of dollars in a single transaction, which they must have done given the time-frame, would not this have rung some warning bells? We’re told by a banking expert in the NZ Herald today that standard international procedure for large transactions ($250,000 or more) meant that even if the money had been transferred in stages, it would have been subject to a "value dating process", which would mean a delay of up to two days before funds became available. Seems that didn’t happen here. So this couple seems to be fortunate on a couple of accounts with their back account. Of course, they are now on the run and they may not win out in the end. Then again, they just might. It’ll be interesting to keep track of this story.


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Now playing: Ry Cooder - River Come Down (PKA Bamboo)
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Albert you didn’t know this

Ms Lee - a National List MP and candidate in the Mt Albert election - apologised yesterday after saying at a public meeting on Wednesday night that the new Waterview motorway would channel South Auckland criminals past the electorate and reduce crime.
As reported NZ Herald Friday 15 May.

Ms Lee has been rightly and roundly criticised for her comment. It was insensitive, inaccurate and I am sure deeply offensive to the citizens of South Auckland. It implies that the people of South Auckland are second-class, lack culture and vision and have little to occupy their days. It was a vicious attack—her suggesting that South Auckland people are so lacking in anything else in their lives that they would want to visit Mt Albert. Nobody wants to visit Mt Albert. Mt Albert people don’t want to visit Mt Albert. It vies with its sister, Mt Roskill, as the most crushingly boring place in Auckland. To suggest, as Ms Lee does, that even South Auckland criminals would have reason to visit Mt Albert shows an astonishing lack of knowledge about the criminal classes—South Auckland or anywhere. My friend Whetu, who crops up on these pages from time to time, tells me that it is a fundamental of good thievery that one steals only what one can sell.
ME: And you can’t do that in Mt Albert?
HE: Nope.
ME: Why not?
HE: Nuttin there.
ME: Nuttin…Nothing?
HE: Me cuz, Jonno, he a bit of an apprentice, you know. He went to Mt Albert to steal stuff.
ME: Did he? And…”
HE: A Bell TV, three lava lamps, six fondue sets, two Barry Manilow posters, four crates of National Geographics and a PYE Radiogram.
ME: He raided a second-hand store?
HE: Nope. An upmarket house in Grande Ave.
ME: So it’s not true that the new motorway will divert South Auckland criminals?
HE: Only get us through Mt Albert quicker to get to good places.
ME: Such as?
HE: Swanson.


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Now playing: R.E.M. - Everybody Hurts
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Fryday turns 10

Fryday is written on an antiquated Hewlett Packard Pavilion 500 laptop using Word 2003. It is then transferred to Microsoft Outlook and sent as an e-letter to a select and somewhat resilient bunch of readers. Finally, it is converted and posted to the Fryday blog, where it’s read by a much wider audience, over 10,000 hits at the last count. The content of each Fryday is never decided earlier than Friday, its designated day, and often it’s still not known when the writing begins. It takes 10 minutes to write. Its subjects range from the mass murder of Sea Monkeys (its most commented on edition ever), the machinations of my mate Whetu, GWB’s discourse with God and Helen’s with her therapist and many posts extolling the virtues of Hamilton. It started as a test of the theory that the pen is mightier than the sword when I decided to use a mass mailing to “fry” a company I characterised as Auckland’s worst panel beater. Fryday is still going, but so is the panel beater so I should have used a bloody sword. I tell you all this now because to the best of my recollection that panel beater post was exactly 10 years ago today—at least this month. Fryday has turned 10, and because I have lived with the bloody thing for a decade (with two short breaks) I hope you will forgive me noting the occasion with a little bit of a flourish. I have never regretted writing Fryday, but I do regret that various computer meltdowns and a late decision to commit each Fryday to a permanent Word file have meant I lost most of those early posts. If later readers of the e-letter are interested, some of those early postings can be found in the archives of http://frydaysblog.blogspot.com/. I would like to know from anyone who has any more on their computer.

The thoughts of Fryday today go to the families and colleagues of Senior Constable Len Snee, and his two fellow officers who this morning remain in hospital in a critical condition. Constable Snee’s body remains outside the house where he was shot, despite the extraordinarily brave attempts of some policemen to retrieve it while under fire. Amidst this horror there comes the emergence of courage and…pride.


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Now playing: The Moody Blues - Had To Fall In Love
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Pigs I Have Known

Today I am home with a mild dose of flu. It’s been percolating around my system for a few days without amounting to more than a couple of sore muscles and a table tennis like competition between temperature extremes. It’s a pig of a thing, but not, I hope, Swine Flu. However, prudence on my part and a pervading paranoia by others have kept me at home where, without any likelihood of an immediate duck (see last Fryday), my thoughts have swung to pigs and their lack of a spokesperson or advocate. You see, this morning on Morning Report, Charge d'Affaires at the Mexican Embassy in Wellington, Luis Enrique Franco, made a pretty compelling case for not blaming his country for the outbreak. He pointed out that the number of confirmed cases in his huge country was fewer proportionately than in many other countries currently. So, we can dispense with Mexico. However, as it is entirely natural in such matters for us to seek to blame someone, I guess it has to be the pigs. Poor buggers. Not only do they have to cope with having their very own flu, now they get blamed for giving it to us. Might they (pigs) well say that they are simply keeping it in the family—I believe pigs and humans are closely related, some closer than others. But the problem is they have no-one to say that for them. Not for your average pig, a charge d’affaires with an ornate, authoritative name. The last pig of note was called Babe and the most famous of all Piglet had a friend called POOH. No wonder nobody can take them seriously. As for activist pigs, there has been none since Animal Farm and that was a dystopian allegory, which sounds like a disease in itself. So your average pig is on a hiding to nothing on this matter. Even past “animal” pandemics such as bird-flu and horse-flu garnered more sympathetic attention because birds are cute and horses stately. But pigs? As I said, poor buggers. My croaky cry this Fryday? Give them a break, they have enough problems already.


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Now playing: Bruce Springsteen - Livin' In The Future
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Love a duck

I have a friend who rather enjoys a good duck. If he could, and he often does, he will have one in the morning and another at night. I have even heard tell of him phoning his wife to tell her he is coming home for a duck in the afternoon.
The guy is insatiable.
Personally, I have never yet had one that satisfies me. I am told I am strange in that regard. There are few indeed, I am told, who do not enjoy a good duck. Even when it’s not done right, it’s good, I am told. Yes, I am told. In other words, people talk a lot about ducks they have had. And will have. It seems an obsession for them; one I, somewhat sadly, cannot share.
But is that indeed symptomatic of my strangeness? Am I indeed unique in that regard? I think not. Whilst I have nothing but circumstantial evidence for this contention, I can point to quite a number of people who, through their demeanour, and their silence on the subject, give every appearance of never enjoying a duck or indeed perhaps never having had one—of note, anyway:

 Helen Clark
 Tariana Turia
 Gordon Brown
 George Bush Jr (but not, sadly, senior)
 Tom Cruise
 Geoff Boycott
 Most Canadians
 All Dutch
 Greenpeace activists
 Green Party
 Osama bin Laden

But, like many on this list, I can be “turned”. In fact, I am receptive to a duck right now—right now, as I write. Right now, as I look out my window and at my brand new fire-red BMW, called Pricilla, and a f**king duck sitting on the bonnet! Oh yeah, you had better believe, and here I put my wife on notice, I am in for a good duck tonight on a plate!

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Now playing: Kris Kristofferson - For The Good Times
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Unreliable Rodney

I don’t know whether it is the economy or the emergence of reality TV and docudramas such as Border Patrol but we are in danger of losing sight of one of life’s staples—humour. There doesn’t seem to be much of it around at the moment, certainly in New Zealand. We are taking ourselves far too seriously.
I knew last night we were below par when I saw Rodney Hide on TV, devoid of his incessant and ingratiating grin. Of course he was meeting Auckland’s mayors and that would swipe the smile off anyone’s face—but, still, Rodney Hide? The dancer par excellence, the workout king, the judicator of jovial, the Yellow Peril? Yes, we are in parlous state when Rodney starts to take himself seriously. We have to fall back on Keith Locke.
I blame Billy T. James.
The late great Billy T. James gave us the apex of New Zealand humour, taking up that mantle from the earlier John Clarke. There has been nothing of their kind since. In them we set the bar too high. I doubt we will ever attain that level of humour, at least from our entertainment sector, again. And these days “comedies” such as Diplomatic Immunity inflicted upon us are less of a laugh than laughable. If Billy T. James was the apex of New Zealand comedy, Diplomatic Immunity is the nadir, akin to the long-forgotten (thankfully) Melody Rules.
TV, through this and other comedic attempts, fails us.
So do politicians. Because if we have now to resort to relying on politicians to give us a good laugh we are well and truly in trouble—Keith is silent, Winston is gone and Rodney is, clearly and sadly, no longer reliable.


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