Low Mark for Schoolboy

At the age of 10 I was, as we characterise it today, a high achiever. Then abruptly and brutally I was brought to my knees by a scandal. The lasting trauma of that was the humiliation of being stripped of my prefecture in front of the full school assembly. Remember, I was 10. May the headmaster who made that decision rot in Hell.
For that reason, among others, I am firmly of the camp that says Hastings Boys’ High head prefect Kenneth Bradley should not be stripped of his prefecture because of a drink driving conviction. He has paid his penalty in court and has now the added penalty of having the matter discussed debated and debased as a national issue.
Leave him alone.
But this is not about Mr Bradley. This is about Mr Sainsbury.
Did you see his Close Up item on the issue on Wednesday? His first question of the Hasting Boys High principal was: “Does your school condone drink driving?” Oh, for God’s sake Sainsbury! What an idiotic question, right up there with your past idiocies.
I have the impression that Mr Sainsbury and his producers think he is asking the questions we would like to ask, or at least want answered. Well, here’s the message—we don’t. We are too intelligent. We don’t need stupid questions such as the one above and the clichéd questions that followed it and appear so frequently in Sainsbury interviews. Questions such as: “What kind of message do you think…” and “What do you say to the people….” I am just hanging out for somebody to reply, “Frankly Mark I don’t give a shit…and what did happen to Paul Holmes and Brian Edwards?”
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Ring of (un)Truth

I have to admire Ken Ring.
For all the hedging of bets such as predicting after-shocks in Christchurch virtually every second day amidst a swarm of such shocks he is at least willing to go out on a limb and predict a “big one” on one day: March 20. I understand from last night’s Campbell Live that he now denies making that prediction, but unfortunately for Ken it was literally recorded and it is here: http://www.radiolive.co.nz/Ken-Ring-predicted-Chch-Earthquake-and-the-current-terrible-weather/tabid/506/articleID/16322/Default.aspx from Marcus Lush’s Radio Live show.
So, I submit, Mr Ring’s credibility hangs on that day or, to give him a little latitude, a couple of days either side. Or does it? I earnestly hope for the people of Christchurch that he is wrong. But I’ll go out on the same limb he is hanging on so tenaciously and say he will be wrong. And I say that because of other circumstances and proclamations that suggest to me Mr Ring is nothing but a charlatan. For example:
1. His claim that dolphins beam sonar signals to the moon. Why? Is there someone there to hear them?
2. His claim that New Zealand is half the size of Australia, but most of it is under the sea. Well, that puts a new perspective on the foreshore and seabed debate.
3. He is the co-author of a book on how to read a cat’s paws. Pawmistry: How To Read Your Cat’s Paws. It’s interesting that Mr Ring no longer includes that book on his website in a list of his publications
4. Among his many self-proclaimed assets and abilities he claims to be a mind reader—you wouldn’t want to read mine Ken.
5. His previous careers as a clown and magician.
6. If he is that good, why didn’t he predict the (much larger) earthquake in Japan?
Ken Ring has his believers. You may well be one. Fair enough. But I am not one of them. I place no credence on his predictions and even less on his plaintive proclamations that he is not scare-mongering or promoting his myriad of books.
If I am proved wrong on Sunday March 20 my being wrong will be superseded by a far far larger tragedy. But I don’t think I will be.


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Our Broken City

In my youth I was a fan of the occult and thriller writer Dennis Wheatley. I remember little of his books now but one line from them lives on in my memory and at times gives me succour. It is: “It is God’s gift that there is no pain beyond a body’s ability to endure.”
My belief in that dictum took a severe hammering this week as I listened to the wretched stories of those who survived the cataclysm, and those who cling fiercely and bravely to the belief they are (still) on a rescue mission.
Nature raped that city. My old city. I worked in the Press building.
But it is the human tragedy and the human stories that defy belief. It is not for me the scale of that event. As damaging as it was for the community the city and the country, we can at least share that, deal with that with compassion, with strength and with a country united.
What we cannot share, what no level of compassion could hope to overcome, are moments. Moments and memories of horror and terror which so many people ill equipped to deal with them endured and will have to endure.
People like you and me.
I cannot conceive of what was it was like to be in the midst of those moments that Tuesday—one minute pounding away at a computer, next buried under tonnes of rubble listening to the harrowing screams of the dying in the darkness. I cannot conceive because you are a secretary, a reporter, an accounts clerk—you are not an off-the-shelf victim or some extra in a bloody Hollywood disaster movie.
All you are is someone who that day expected to go home at the end of the day.
Like me.
That is the human tragedy of the Christchurch Earthquake (and, yes, let’s make it a proper noun): that you are one of us.
But unlike us, Nature, and whatever or Whomever we feel controls Nature— inflicted upon you a dreadful pain beyond capacity to endure.
As Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd so prosaically but perfectly put it…
“It’s just not fair.”

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Bring Back Buffoonery

I have been thinking of buffoon. Buffoon is a word not often used today, which is strange because it is one of the few words in the English language that has an exact meaning and therefore not open to ambiguity. It means, according the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a ludicrous person. It does not mean idiot or wanker, which mean something else but often supplant buffoon these days. No, buffoonery has an exact meaning based on ludicrous and it should be brought back with haste because as I have seen in recent weeks and last night in particular there are so many to whom it so aptly affixes. Here is my list of current buffoons.

§ Hone Harawira—for throwing his toys out of the cot because one of his toys was not a ministerial limousine..

§ Moammar Gadhafi for having too many toys and using them to shoot people.

§ His son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, for saying the protests are the work of “drunks” –in a Muslim country.

§ Former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld for insisting even today that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

§ George Bush Jr for employing Rumsfeld

§ George Bush Sr for having Junior.

§ The Egyptian who named his daughter Facebook.

§ The Mexican woman now in the ninth day of a hunger strike she plans to continue until she gets an invitation to Prince William’s wedding.

§ Me for calling it Prince William’s wedding rather than Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding.

§ Me (again) for forgetting—or not knowing—a good friend’s birthday (sorry Linda).

And finally, the biggest buffoon of them all…
§ Mark Sainsbury—for a tragic, tragic disaster that deserved reporting of gravitas not idiocy.

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Old Friends

When I was a child, one my pleasures was the reading of the Biggles series of novels by Captain W.E. Johns.
I don’t know what drew me to them, but I know I was not alone; Biggles (worth) and his “chums” Bertie, Algie and Ginger had squadrons of, mainly male, readers throughout the world. Later in life I was to successfully parody those books in a play I called Biggles Flies Undone, which today, 28 years after its writing, is still performed.
In my late-teens I was drawn to another British series, that of Flashman, the consummate cad authored but not created by George Macdonald Frazer. Here the attraction is more evident—fast-paced, rollicking adventures set in historical events and featuring no small amount of sex. Later still I dropped the adventure bit and just went for the sex—the books of Henry Miller.
The point is that certain authors have charted my life and had my loyalty. One, a significantly attractive author from the United States, Sharon Kay Penman, even has me a fawning fan. They have stuck with me—until death, in the first three cases (Sharon lives, as does love and lust)—and I stick with them.
I can’t say that of other areas of my life. Nor can anyone, I think. We all hope those closest to us will remain so forever but even that can’t be certain. We hope that business relationships, particularly the rare friendships forged in the furnace of business, will be as enduring as steel but they too are prone to tarnish and rust. Let’s not even consider politicians.
I am drawn to the conclusion therefore that the only true rendering of the enduring but hopelessly optimistic adage “until death…” is a man’s reciprocated love for his dog. Everything else is fiction.
Am I depressed by that? No. Even an exemplary bottle of single malt whiskey will not last forever, not in my reach. And friendships, like whiskey, are there to be enjoyed and honoured while they last, as long as they last. To cultivate the analogy just once more: whilst most whiskeys and friendships are quickly consumed and have no lingering aftertastes, there are others—rarities—that linger and provide a fine “finish” and delicious memories. They are life’s treasures.
At 60 years of age I have more old and deleted friends than I will ever now have new. But that is a library of enrichment for which I am immensely grateful.

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King Bee A

Dear Liz
I may call you Liz, may I? I feel I know you so well and should we ever meet I am certain we would have an immediate rapport. Of course you would need to take my word—and me being a politician you may have some difficulty with that “Ha Ha”—but I am generally considered here in New Zealand as most approachable and, to use the vernacular, something of stud muffin.
Now, I trust I am not being too forward in writing to you like this. I have read that you are in some form of relationship with the Australian cricketer Shane Warne, but I have also heard that you are nothing more than text mates. I of course am married—more honesty—happily so, the Woman’s weekly continually tells me.
But I have always been able to differentiate between love and lust. I compartmentalise and it would be true to say that until such time as Bronnie takes to wearing dresses held together with safety pins, as you so graphically did some years ago (I still have the photos) she will remain in the love department while you will reign over that of lust.
Liz, you are hot!
Of course one is talking here of unrequited lust. There can be no expectation here of me, a mere prime minister, entering into anything untoward with the most beautifully proportioned, most seductively-eyed, most sensual woman in the world. Any requiting must by necessity be vicarious. And if Bronnie is woken at night by my sighing and groaning, one does not want to disabuse her of the notion that I am simply thinking of Hone Harawira.
Of course I am not; he is not hot.
I hope you will forgive this dewy-eyed boy—this man with a heart of lust—venturing forward in such a manner. Further, I hope that you will allow me to write to you again. Little missives from the king bee in the beehive.
I remain your devoted fan,
(Not so little) John.

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Brace Yourself

Prime Minister John Key is sporting a new holographic wristband that claims to improve performance and keep the body at an optimal "ionic balance" with "free-flowing energy pathways". Now, I also wear bracelets, two of them, given to me by my wife. But as much as I appreciate and love them (and her) they are not the swept up “New Age” bracelets that Mr Key is sporting. What on earth is ionic balance? And would it not be more apt for a politician, particularly a prime minister, to deal to iconic or even ironic balance? Still it does demonstrate that Mr Key is a new age man in touch and comfortable with his feminine side. Which makes something of an ironic balance, given that a former prime minister always looked more comfortable with her male side.

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Not a hickey as we know it Jim

Of all the body modifications—tattooing, piercing, etc—one can inflict on one’s body, the least intrusive would seem to be submitting to a hickey. The fact that I don’t really enjoy a hickey (from memory) does not mean I demean those who do. Yet, I read today in the NZ Herald that a woman in Christchurch came perilously close to losing her life because of a hickey. It appears that a 44 year-old woman experienced loss of movement in her left arm after her former partner gave her a hickey on her neck, near an artery, while watching television. Her surgeon told The Press in Christchurch that there was a clot in the artery underneath the love-bite, which had gone into the woman's heart and caused a minor stroke that led to the loss of movement. The woman recovered but I note that her lip-smacking partner is described as “former” and one assumes that his somewhat vampiric tendencies are targeted elsewhere. Love does indeed hurt.

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The Swinging Sixties

On Monday I turn 60. Sweet. Time to bring out the bucket and, to quote Jack Nicholson, not trust a fart. I have two consolations. One is that I hated the fifties –there is no particular reason and I felt much the same about the thirties; twenties were great, so were the forties, so will be the sixties--it’s every second decade, seemingly, that I get my shit together. The second consolation I have in turning 60 is that I am far from alone and far from old. The post-war baby boom saw to that. I am sure that in the history of the world there has never been as many people in their 60s or a greater determination not to think of it as a termination. Having said that, one must at this age wrestle with mortality. So, here is my bucket list. Rather than fill it with things I want to do before I die, I am filling it with things I hope I live long enough to see:
• The Black Caps win a match
• The Bulldogs win the Telstra Cup
• Canada win anything
• Intelligent life form discovered in Hamilton
• Me (society) not being blamed for every ill befalling Maori
• The return of the whiskey lake
• The Man Booker Prize given to someone readable
• Wilson Parking reduce its fees
• A Tui Billboard: Wilson Parking Reduces Fees—Yeah Right
• Recycling bins for infomercial exercise equipment
• Recycling bins for failed ideas—sorry, we already have that, it’s called Parliament
• A stop to the smaller and smaller type faces on anything I read these days
• President Jed Bush—let’s have some more fun
• A bald televangelist
• No televangelists
• The Super City work
• Mark Sainsbury ask an intelligent question
• Phil Goff give an intelligent reply
• Benjie Marshall as prime minister
• 70.


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Dollars and sense

Have you a spare million dollars? Good, I need it. Leave it in your letterbox and I will come and fetch it. I promise you it will be used judiciously if a little imprudently. It will, at least, be better spent on me than on this:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=344096961.
I can’t quite make this out—here is a guy on TradeMe asking one million dollars for a pair of “original” personalised plates celebrating New Zealand’s victory in the 1995 America’s Cup. I can understand his asking for that—you are free to ask what you want on TradeMe and I could ask that for a set of my toe clippings—but who would pay $1,000,000 for a pair of plates? That, I can’t understand.
To add insult to usury the seller goes on to suggest: “…if you are having difficulties in buying the perfect gift, then why not consider these plates?” Yeah, right; I can think of a number of you who will welcome this chance to buy me a million dollar gift (did I tell you it is my 60th Monday week?). But not this one please; I don’t want to spend the next 60 years publically proclaimed as a wanker for having such pricey plates on Pricilla (my car).
At time of writing, nobody has made a bid. Shock, horror. But if you are interested, a wanker, have no sense and no interest in giving me your spare million, the auction has 30 minutes to run.
Good luck.


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Dollars and sense

Have you a spare million dollars? Good, I need it. Leave it in your letterbox and I will come and fetch it. I promise you it will be used judiciously if a little imprudently. It will, at least, be better spent on me than on this:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=344096961.
I can’t quite make this out—here is a guy on TradeMe asking one million dollars for a pair of “original” personalised plates celebrating New Zealand’s victory in the 1995 America’s Cup. I can understand his asking for that—you are free to ask what you want on TradeMe and I could ask that for a set of my toe clippings—but who would pay $1,000,000 for a pair of plates? That, I can’t understand.
To add insult to usury the seller goes on to suggest: “…if you are having difficulties in buying the perfect gift, then why not consider these plates?” Yeah, right; I can think of a number of you who will welcome this chance to buy me a million dollar gift (did I tell you it is my 60th Monday week?). But not this one please; I don’t want to spend the next 60 years publically proclaimed as a wanker for having such pricey plates on Pricilla (my car).
At time of writing, nobody has made a bid. Shock, horror. But if you are interested, a wanker, have no sense and no interest in giving me your spare million, the auction has 30 minutes to run.
Good luck.

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