Saturday 30 December 2017

Not all animals are equal

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Pity the poor possum. Totally despised in this country, huge amounts of money are justifiably spent on their eradication every year. If only they knew better they could migrate to Australia where they are regarded as cute furry little animals, loved and even protected.

If you think about it, animal rights people, usually wearing leather shoes and leather belts, are surprisingly selective. I recall some years back when emotive scenes on our TV screens of fur seals being clubbed to death in the arctic circle caused outrage in this country, while at about the same time the management at the Waingawa freezing works were celebrating the killing of one million lambs that season; right on our doorstep. Is there anything cuter than spring lambs cavorting around a paddock? Why did the fur seals get all the sympathy? I suspect it was the bright red blood against the backdrop of the white snow that elicited our overwhelming compassion. Contrast this with Waingawa, where the blood was hygienically washed off the smooth concrete floor almost before it landed on it.

In a satirical column in Wellington’s Evening Post many years ago Bob Jones came out in defense of the cod. He questioned why people became so upset when whales beached themselves. Dozens flock to the scene and do their best to refloat the huge mammals, then burst into tears when their effort are inevitably unsuccessful. Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of cod are harvested daily and nobody bats an eyelid.

The latest pest animal to be despised is the rook. This is a large black bird that has become the scourge of the local farming community. Bird lovers are not saying a word about the concerted efforts to get rid of them. Tui’s and Takahe’s lead a charmed life. Rooks are rubbish.

Sadly this selective affection can also be seen in the human community. I remember some years back  when 38 black Africans were shot dead in the Ugandan jungle to avenge the killing of eight whites who were in the area to have a peek at a colony of gorillas. The organisers of this retributory exercise conceded that those killed may not have had anything to do with the slaughter of the tourists. They are continued to pursue and destroy, and as far as I am aware no human rights group ever stood up and condemned this apparent overkill. Those blamed for the brutal murder of the tourists were the Intarahamwe (Hutus to you) though foreign correspondent Paul Henry, who was in the area at the time trying to find kidnapped Douglas Kear, thought that is was more likely to be Ugandan rebels who were to blame. Never mind, the Hutus were expendable as far as the world community were concerned and it must have been great sport for the bounty hunters. Rook shooting and possum trapping wouldn’t have held a candle to a good old Hutu hunt.

It’s the way of the world though that some species are more valued than others. I recall a train crash just out of London many years ago that killed six British commuters. About the same time 1500 Bangladesh citizens perished in a huge flood in their hinterland. The train crash made our news screens over three or four nights, with vivid scenes and emotive commentary. The Bangladesh tragedy rated about one line on one of those nights. The ratio then is six Britons to 1500 Bangladeshis. We don’t know the acceptable proportion of Anglo-Saxon tourists to Hutus, who were admittedly a fierce and murderous lot, but it will be hugely disproportionate.

The most bizarre aspect of the Ugandan incident was the arrival of a group of FBI agents to apparently retaliate for the uncalled-for slaughter of six of their nationals. You can just picture America’s finest, black suits, slouch hats, plastic identity tags, and shoulder holsters striding through the jungle in search of the perpetrators.
They would have skirted round a party of grazing gorillas, cautiously approach a clearing and confront the wretched enemy; black men, dressed in regulation T-shirt and shorts gleaned from Oxfam parcels, with machetes in hand. In a nutshell just about everything they own in the world draped around a thin malnourished body. After their experiences of gun battles on the streets of New York this would be child’s play for the G-Men. In short order the skeletal Hutus would be mowed down as the Dick Tracey look-alikes remove the guns from their holsters, fire in rapid succession, dive to the ground and then roll over towards wooded shelter in moves they would have learnt by rote from watching episodes of The Naked City and Hill Street Blues during their adolescence. The machete bearers would have had no answer to the finely honed skills of the well fed and well educated Americans and the tourists will have been further avenged.

The bemused gorillas would deplore the theory that they eventually evolved into humankind. Worse news for them though is that there is now a school of thought in America, legitimised by a chair at Berkeley University in California that hypothesises that Darwin got it around the wrong way and that humans actually evolved into apes. When I heard this I thought: “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!”

If you’re a possum choose Australia for your country of birth. Rooks are acceptable in England, but lambs and cod are doomed internationally from day one. The Intarahamwe and other black Africans have an appalling life expectancy and yet, there, but for the grace of God, go you and I.

(First published on the 17th of March 1999)

“It’s absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.” - Oscar Wilde

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Sunday 24 December 2017

A photo update

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              See the story on the Van Nguyen family by going to 2013 then to June the 13th

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Saturday 23 December 2017

Silent nights, but hectic days

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“A long time ago in Bethlehem, so the Holy Bible say, Mary’s boy child Jesus Christ was born on Christmas day.” So starts one of our most popular carols, although the composer says it’s not a carol, but a Christmas song. Written in 1956 in calypso-style by Jester Hairston, Harry Belafonte heard the song being performed by Walter Schumann’s Hollywood choir and sought permission to add it to his album ‘An Evening with Harry Belafonte.’ An edited version was subsequently released as a single and became a worldwide hit.

Theologians however could be excused for having trouble with the last line of the verse; “And man will live for evermore because of Christmas day.” Strictly speaking, that’s not what the ‘Holy Bible say.’ According to Jesus’ parable of the sower only one in four (the good soil) who hear the message of the Kingdom will fully discern it and bear fruit and therefore receive salvation.

And it would be safe to assume that includes both men and women.

However in an increasingly secular world this minor aberration won’t matter too much. After all it is the season to be jolly, say the organisers of the world, and then they throw anxiety, strain, and financial hardship at us. For good measure they allow heat exhaustion if we live in the Southern hemisphere, or, in a cruel twist of fate, freezing cold conditions for our fellow global villagers in the northern reaches.

Christmas need not be recognised by atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus and all manner of people who don't have to get involved, but in an almost suicidal bid to be part of the action they go along with most of the traditions and even mark their own calendars from the year of Christ’s birth, despite some suspect timing.

It’s now thought that the sixth-century Roman Monk Dionysious Exiguus who established the Christian calendar may have miscalculated His birth by about 5 years. If so, this means we could actually be living in the year 2022!

Also much controversy and speculation surrounds the date of Jesus’ entry into the world; over 100 different options being ascribed. Many say shepherds do not allow their flocks to be out between November and April; too cold, therefore the child must surely have been born in the Northern hemisphere summer, between May and October.

Others claim December the 25th was chosen in the fourth century by the Christian church because on this, the longest night of the Northern hemisphere year, pagans celebrated the victory of the god of light over the god of darkness. A competitive celebration, a “Christ Mass,” was therefore set up to honour the birth of the “Light of the world.”

Whatever, we’ve stuck rigidly to the December option and from that doubtful decision we insist that all the jobs we wanted done around the place over the past year are finished by that mystical moment in time, and the pressure mounts.

The pace of life quickens considerably as we approach the so-called “festive season” and hospital emergency departments gear up for people presenting with stress-related illnesses and ready themselves to receive the victims of road accidents, often incurred because of excessive alcohol intake, for many an essential stimulant for the period, so that the uncertified birthdate is celebrated in real style.

Sadly, the birthday Boy barely rates a mention these days as the jolly white-bearded man in the red suit seems to have acquired centre stage. And while harassed shoppers try to buy the right present for the right person at the right price, available carparks outside gift shops disappear faster than people who admit they voted for amalgamation!


I heard a story about a lady who was shopping with her two small children in a department store before Christmas. She waited for an elevator and when the door opened she saw that it was full, but just managed to squeeze herself and her two small children in. As the elevator began to move, and barely able to breath in the confined space, she turned to those around her and said, “You know whoever started this Christmas thing ought to be shot!”

“No need,” said a voice from the back, “We already crucified Him.”

“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.” - Shirley Temple.

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Tuesday 19 December 2017

You'll truly wish you hadn't read this.

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When I’ve read about some of the recent Lotto and Power Ball winners I am reminded of the story of the Englishman who some years ago who won over three million pounds on the football pools.

The first thing he decided to do was to buy himself a car, so he fronted up to the Rolls-Royce agency and requested a brand new Rolls-Royce. The salesman asked him did he want a Corniche or a Silver Cloud? The man said he knew nothing about cars; in fact he had never owned or even driven a car, so he said he would need some guidance on just what model to acquire. The salesman was astounded. He suggested that if he’d never driven a car it would be a big mistake to start out at the top of the range. He thought he would be better to perhaps buy a Mini. The man agreed and enquired just where he would be able to buy a Mini.

So the Rolls-Royce man took him outside and showed him a premise just down the road with a big sign that said Austin-Morris and told him that the good people there would be able to sell him a Mini. When he approached the salesman at the Austin Morris agency about buying a Mini he was asked did he want a 750cc model or a 1000cc model and did he want a standard version or perhaps a Mini-Cooper. He explained that he knew nothing about cars; in fact he’d never owned one so he would need some help in making the choice. The salesman expressed surprise. Did he think it was a good idea to go out on the High Street with a new car when he’d never owned one and had never driven one. Our man agreed that it was risky and the Austin-Morris man suggested he should perhaps start off with a motor-bike.

He directed him across the High Street to where a big sign said BSA-Triumph and so over the road he went and inquired about purchasing a motor bike. “Two-stroke or four-stroke?” he was asked, and “How big a motor would you like?” The man was confused further and explained to the good people at the motor-bike shop that he didn’t have a clue what two stroke or four stroke even meant and he was unsure about the size of the motor. He had he said never owned a motorbike and had never ever contemplated riding one.

The salespeople at BSA-Triumph were astounded. “Just look at the traffic out there!” they warned, which was bumper to bumper and looked un-navigable. “Do really think you would last five minutes out there on a motor-bike, given that you’ve never ever ridden one?” they asked. They suggested he’d be better advised to abandon his plans and instead buy a push-bike.

“Where would I buy a push-bike?” our man wanted to know and he was directed to a shop just over the road that had a big sign announcing that it sold cycles and toys.

He crossed the road once again and inquired at the bike-cum-toy-store about purchasing a push-bike. “Certainly sir,” said the assistant, “What type would you like? A Raleigh Twenty perhaps; would you like Sturmey-Archer three-speed gears and do you want handbrakes or back-pedalling brakes?”

The man explained that he’d never ridden a push bike; knew nothing about them and would even need some instruction on how to mount one. The salesman was amazed. “Do you really want to go wobbling out on to the High Street with all that traffic on a push bike that you’d never ridden before?” he asked incredulously, “Why you could get yourself killed!”

“Well then,” asked our cash-rich, but now wearying consumer, “What should I buy?”

“If I were you,” said the salesman, “I’d buy a hoop and a stick.”

“And where would I get a hoop and a stick?” our man wanted to know and was directed down to the toy section of the shop where a most obliging lady behind the counter happily sold him a hoop and a stick.

So he went off merrily bowling his hoop with the stick along the footpath all the way to the end of the High Street humming merrily to himself and before long he found himself out in the country. After a time he happened upon a picturesque country pub. So he steered his hoop with his stick into the adjoining carpark, laid them both down in a parking spot and then went inside and ordered: “A pint of your very best ale, please landlord.”

He felt at peace with the world. A pint of beer in his hand, no debts, money in the bank and a brand-new hoop and a stick. He allowed himself a second pint and by now feeling totally fulfilled, went back out to the car-park to retrieve his prized acquisition. To his absolute dismay the hoop and the stick were gone.

He was heartbroken. He went back inside and complained bitterly to the publican. “What sort of an outfit are you running here landlord?” he wanted to know. “A man comes in for a quiet beer, minds his own business and than goes out to your car-park to get his hoop and his stick and someone has stolen it. Just what kind of hostelry are you operating?”

The landlord was sympathetic. “Don’t get your toga in a knot,” he said. “Anyway how much did the hoop and the stick cost you?”

“50p” the man said, so the publican went to his till and took out 50p and gave it to the stricken football pools winner. “Here you are, here’s the full cost of your hoop and your stick.”

“It’s all very well trying to placate me by giving me the money back,” said our man, “But how the heck am I going to get home?”

(First published 31st March 2006)

"There is nothing more reassuring in the world than an unhappy lottery winner." - Tony Parsons



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Friday 15 December 2017

Will homes of the future need kitchens?

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Anyone skirting the town of Masterton in the 1950s looking for a bite to eat or the opportunity to take home food cooked and ready to consume had surprisingly few choices. For special occasions fine dining was available at the Empire or Midland hotels, both owned by the Licensing Trust.

They offered white tablecloths and serviettes, and a confusing array of cutlery that included fish knives that looked like oversized butter knives, and butter knives that we never saw at home anyway. Working your way in from the outside edges of the silverware was part of the mystique of the hotel experience, even if the food itself, in hindsight, was pretty bland.

You fronted up in your best clothes.

Fish and chip shops invariably had dining rooms at the rear of the premises serving hearty and reasonably-priced fare to the proletariat and the mine hosts were well-known and well liked. Ted Tozer at Tozer’s Fish Shop, Wally Grbavac at the A1, Mattie Nola at the Central and Mattie Kurta at the Wenvoe.

Fish and chips were the only takeaways on offer, although for a change of diet you could ask for sausages and chips.

New entrant was the Chief Shanghai CafĂ© which burst on to the scene in the late 1950s opposite St. Luke’s, then known as the Knox Church. Ebullient owners Jimmy Yee and Alan Chan served Chinese food with a numbered menu that was a new experience for rank and file Mastertonians, though I noticed most who dined there still ordered steak and chips.

You could get a cup of tea and a sandwich or a slice of cake upstairs at Hugo and Shearer’s or the WFCA department stores. Teabags were unheard of; tea was served from a silver teapot in Royal Dalton cups and saucers.

Two coffee bars may have slipped into my 1950s timeline, the Kalinga and the Calypso and maybe even the Waldorf restaurant.

So with my best endeavours memory-wise I can only come up with twelve outlets retailing ready-to-eat food in the Masterton CBD back then. In 1950s Masterton there would have been a population of around 15,000 and now we’re looking at close on 25,000 so today there will be more cafes, restaurants and takeaways to cope.

And you bet there are; at my last count there were sixty-six outlets to succour an apparently ravenous population and I’m not including the petrol stations who offer coffee-to-go and snacks and pies

After coffee bars came into vogue, licensed restaurants appeared and then the franchises: Kentucky Fried Chicken, McDonalds, Pizza Hutt, Subway, Burger King, Hell’s Pizzas, Dominoes and Pita Pit. Ethnic restaurants evolved and gave our palates worldly insights and as our tastes became more sophisticated the Chinese category didn’t need to offer up steak and chips.

Meanwhile lots of autonomous cafes appeared as if from nowhere, most showcasing the same fare: quiches, pies and unappetising vegetarian dishes; plus cakes, muffins and scones twice as large as their 1950s predecessors, but apparently necessary to fill our increasing body weights.

If you look back at my original twelve you will see only the Waldorf remains, although the A1 name persists, but at a different venue in a different style.

If I had written this column a few weeks ago the number of eating houses would have been sixty-four. But recently the Screening Room restaurant opened in Kuripuni and just this week Don Luciano’s started trading on the corner of King and Chapel streets.


Luciano’s outgoing and gregarious host, Marvin Guerrero, probably has enough personality to make it a success, but he needs to remember that 65 other nervous business owners will be looking on apprehensively wondering just how far the discretionary dollar can stretch.

“In every restaurant, the hardness of the butter increases in direct proportion to the softness of the bread” - Harriet Markman

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Friday 8 December 2017

A royal connection does wonders for business

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I’ve been enamoured with Meghan Markle ever since I started watching Suits on Netflix about a year ago. The lawyers may have been playing the lead roles, but it was the paralegal who took your eye in most episodes.

Well mine anyway.

And so I am full of admiration for Harry, but then again that’s what prince’s do, don't they? They marry the most beautiful women in the world. And they don’t have to be handsome princes either; think Prince Charles.

But I am delighted that blood other than blue is now going to invade the royal gene pool.

Meghan’s mother is an African-American and her dad is of European extraction.

The current royal bloodline has large dollops of German lineage; much of the history of how this came about is hidden by Royal decree because we, the great unwashed, might get upset if we got to know some of the scurrilous background.

But we mustn’t get too excited about the potential change. Markle sound uncommonly like Merkel so she might just be strengthening the existing bloodline as well as infiltrating strains from the African continent.

And I do have a warning for Harry.

Dr Hook and his merry band of medicine men once warned in a mega-hit that if you’re in love with a beautiful woman, it’s hard. Hook reckoned everybody wants her, everybody loves her and everybody wants to take her home.

Well Harry’s taken her home, but he’ll need to watch his Ps and Qs. (I’m talking Philip and the Queen here, by the way.)

So where to now? Well there’ll be the wedding of course, beamed worldwide to an audience of multi-millions, our womenfolk will painstakingly pore over the wedding dress and the bridesmaid’s frocks, and Ed Sheeran will probably croon a love song in St George’s Chapel before he shifts permanently to New Zealand.

Meghan will take all this in her stride; she’s been there and done that, unlike any other royal in modern times. She recently passed muster with a stunning performance with her betrothed when they did a walk-by amid fawning crowds in Nottingham. The handbag she was carrying has apparently gone viral and the small Scottish label, Strathberry, is being swamped with orders.

It reminded me of the time when the Queen Elizabeth and Duke of Edinburgh visited Masterton circa 1953 and they lunched at the Empire Hotel in Queen Street. As they drove northward to the next town in their itinerary the butcher next door to the Empire who served the hotel (a Mr Neate) proudly wrote on his window: “The Queen ate our meat.”

Quick as a flash my father came out with a brush and white poster paint and wrote on his butcher’s shop window: “God save the Queen.”

I won’t be going to the wedding. Devotees of Ms Markle’s beauty and acting ability are not automatically on the guest list and about 200 million people will need to die before I am next in line to the throne.

The longest sentence you can form with two words is “I do”. – H. L. Mencken

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Thursday 7 December 2017

Pulling the wool over other people's eyes

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When I was a kid, on every first day of April, at some ungodly hour of the morning, just before he went off to work, my father would wake me with some tall tale that would encourage me to leave the comfort of my room and make an inspection. A claim that it was snowing, or even that there was an elephant on the front lawn would fool me easily and I would bound out of bed to look out the window, only to met with a chant of: “You silly April fool!” or similar.

I gather it wasn’t just a tradition in our family, but I suspect that it has died a slow death in recent years. Certainly I must confess I haven’t kept up the tradition myself of late.

It wasn’t always the case. The best April Fool’s fun I ever had was back in the seventies when I booked some air-time on the only local radio station at the time, 2ZD. Old school friend Arch King was the breakfast announcer and assistant manager to Johnny Shearer, neither of whom were averse to having a bit of fun.

We pre-recorded an interview that purported to be broadcast live. There were sound effects of hammering, banging and general carpentering and Arch said he was in Long’s Meat Market’s shop in Queen Street and allowed me to describe the scene. I told the listeners that the noise was being made by a couple of builders who were erecting a sheep pen in our front window. More sound effects, as we appeared to be walking through doors to the rear of the premises, and Arch spoke of a small stock trailer in the back yard that was housing a strange looking sheep.

He asked that I describe the rare animal to the listeners. I was happy to oblige. The sheep I said was unusual in as much as it had three back legs. Butchers were always short of legs of lamb and this rare breed of sheep was going to resolve that shortage. I said they had only recently been discovered in the hinterland of Iran where they had subsisted on sand and the odd bit of tussock. I explained that we’d imported a number of them and that had them out on our small farm at Norfolk road where they were being kept in a sandpit. We were slowly weaning them off the sand and on to the lush grass. At the moment, because of their conventional diet, the meat tasted a bit gritty, I claimed, but once they had been weaned off the sand and were fully digesting the pasture we were providing, I was sure they would be as palatable as our conventional breeds.

I said we were going to put this sheep in the newly erected pen in our shop window and the general public were invited to come and inspect the intriguing animal before it was taken back to the sand pit at Norfolk road at midday. Traditionally, April Fool’s Day finishes at twelve noon.

I added a rider. Because this particular type of sheep was not well established in Iran, there was no title for the breed. I offered a $20 meat pack for the person who came up with the best name.

The interview was broadcast at ten to eight on April the first - a Monday morning. Within minutes the road outside our shop was crowded with cars; many had to be double parked. First to arrive of course were those people coming into town with their car radios on. But they were soon joined by a host of others; often mothers with kids, the kids, in some cases, still in their pyjamas.

The footpath was literally streaming with people desperate to see the five-legged sheep. They weren’t totally disappointed. In the window we had a children’s play pen and in the pen was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a sheep with three back legs. Signwriter Bill Wellington had crafted this for us and there was a balloon coming out of the sheep’s mouth that said ‘Today is the first day of April’ and another sign at the back pointing to the third leg that read: ‘This leg is for pulling!’

Most people saw the funny side and business was brisk. Those who didn’t want to admit they been caught out came in and bought something; many of these folk had never dealt off us before in their lives. The Times-Age featured the story with a photo of the cut-out sheep on the front page.

Wairarapa College teacher Don Simpson won the meat pack. He came up with the name ‘Sloof’ which is of course backward fools and we deemed this to be most appropriate. You’d be amazed how many people sent in serious entries.

A few days later the wife of a prominent farmer came into the shop and told us that on the Monday morning she was cooking breakfast for her husband and was surprised when he came down the stairs all dressed up.

“I thought you were going to work on the farm,” she said, but her husband told her that he that just had to go into town to have a look at this remarkable sheep in Longs’ butcher’s shop window.

She said she marched him over to the calendar and reminded him of the date. He went meekly back upstairs, changed into his old clothes and spent the rest of the day at the back of the farm. “When he realised it was April the first,” she said, He looked very sheepish,”

Well he would, wouldn’t he?

(First published May 3rd 2006)

“These are the good old days. Just you wait and see.” Steve Turner.

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Friday 1 December 2017

A curmudgeonly report on the perils of travelling

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We recently went on holiday to the ‘winterless north’ of New Zealand. When you’re retired the word “holiday” doesn’t have the same ring to it or the appeal that it once had and the old NAC slogan ‘flying is the way to travel’ now makes good sense. We drove on the roads and from Taupo north they are nightmarish with articulated trucks and campervans sharing the highway with cars and passing lanes seemingly few and far between.

One of the reasons for the journey was to visit relations who have built a new house overlooking the Kaipara Harbour north of Auckland. Our timing was a bit astray as the house was unfinished and the landscaping non-existent. Adding to that, the Kaipara is less picturesque than it sounds.

We had intended to venture further to the Bay of Islands, but Northland’s roads are narrow and only two-way with a number of one-way bridges that National promised to fix when they were fighting off Winston at the election-before-last.

Winston won on that occasion, so the promised bridges have never materialised.

We realised we’d have to encounter the same traffic snarl-ups on the home stretch so it made no sense to carry on. We overnighted at Dargaville and came back through John Key’s old electorate, Helensville. It seemed a world away from Parnell, where Key actually lived and if names mean anything it should surely have been Ms Clark’s constituency.

In Auckland we went through the new Waterview tunnel which is inaptly named as there is no water within sight which is just as well as it dips down rather frighteningly as you enter and is eventually 45 meters underground. I understand it is built below housing estates so some of them must have had vast basements that needed to be avoided.

We came back through Rotorua and Taupo with a fleeting glance at Tauranga.

No need to describe Auckland’s traffic, we regularly view it on TV news channels, but I can report that poor old Tauranga is now suffering from the same dilemma.

Rotorua was a sight to behold; it’s about five years since we were there last and it’s looking better than ever. We stayed in the near-new Millennium Hotel and the cavernous foyer was filled with tourists coming and going the whole time.

We booked our accommodation one day ahead on-line via my cell-phone and although the premises generally looked fine on the website they were often pretty substandard when you arrived. Despite Trivago’s glamorous TV ads that display spacious rooms as low as ninety-five dollars we paid at least two hundred dollars a night, and tended to be given the worst room in the least attractive section of the complex.

I complained about this to one owner who told me it was my own fault for booking through an agent rather than ringing direct. He said, “We hate you guys when you do that because the booking company takes our net profit in fees.”

Our last two nights were in Taupo, so I rang ahead directly to the Wairaki resort only to find when we got there our room was at the back corner of the complex, our view was over a service lane and there was no likelihood of sun ever streaming into our room.


It’s a grand place; 175 acres of marvellously manicured tree-lined grounds, with tennis courts, a nine-hole golf course, unique geothermal features which allow for two heated swimming pools, and over 200 rooms. My guess is that less than twenty of these were occupied while we were there and yet we got the same standard of accommodation as if we had booked through an agent.

In the last few years we have generally holidayed in Australia which is a cheaper destination than New Zealand. We will often rent an apartment on the Gold Coast adjacent to a beach with three bedrooms and two bathrooms, a large lounge and a well-appointed kitchen. All this for $750 a week.

In the pokey little NZ motel unit you have to sit on the edge of the bed to watch TV and the shower is usually over the bath which probably doesn’t comply with our stringent new health and safety regulations

In an effort to encourage us all to holiday within our own boundaries Tourism New Zealand used to say: “Don’t leave town ‘till you’ve seen the country” and feature a Kiwi kayaker who was about to go over Africa’s Victoria Falls.

From our experience, they’ll have to do better than that.

“One way to solve all the traffic problems would be to keep all the cars that aren’t paid for off the streets.” – Will Rogers 

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Tuesday 21 November 2017

Coalition looking for a new high

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I recently spoke to a lady who works as a counsellor at an alcohol and drug addiction centre in Auckland. She told me something I guess we all knew; the scourge of methamphetamine usage is reaching epidemic proportions.

She said that the gangs are skilfully marketing the product. A “hit” costs about a $100 a time and most of the addicted require at least one daily dose. Naturally I wanted to know how anyone could afford a $700 a week habit. She suggested robbing or defrauding fellow citizens was one option though many addicts are being recruited by their supplier to become dealers themselves.

It reminded me of the Amway vendors of old. Amway put out a glossy catalogue full of desirable products, but any Amway seller I encountered seemed more interested in me becoming sub-agent rather than actually wanting to sell me something out of the brochure.

So enrolling new peddlers is the answer to all product marketing, but with a devastating effect on society when the merchandise is as additive and harmful as methamphetamine.

She also allowed that she was aghast that the Green party had convinced its coalition partners to have a referendum on legalising cannabis. She said she has never ever counselled a meth addict who hadn’t initially started out as a marijuana user, sometimes as young as ten or twelve years old.

So I asked a keen Green supporter to counter this argument. His response was plausible. The gangs, he opined were pretending not to have cannabis available because they knew it wasn’t addictive. Instead they would rather sell you “P” as this meant you would constantly come back for more. “By making cannabis legal, with the government raking in the tax,” he said, “you kill off the gang’s sources of income.”

Marijuana has been legalised for those over the age of 21 in Colorado. This was the first American state to do so and the rest of the US has been watching with much interest. Colorado has a population that is not too dissimilar to ours and reports show that their retail pot-shops are raking in more than a million dollars a day.

It’s not just cannabis itself that is for sale, but pot-infused chocolates, biscuits, creams, lozenges and tinctures.

Recent reports I have read show that in Colorado fatal road accidents involving drugged drivers and presentations at hospital emergency departments have increased markedly.

Meanwhile we are being softened-up for the referendum with regular reports of the magical medicinal properties of cannabis.

The CEO of the Waitemata District Health Board, Dr. Dale Bramley, says his DHB is responsible for running drug and alcohol addiction therapy services for the Auckland region and the staff see the clinical and social impacts of cannabis use on a daily basis.


He said the link between chronic cannabis use and mental health issues is well-proven. “A substantial number of individuals presenting at the hospital’s mental health services have their presenting problem complicated or worsened because of the use of cannabis.

“Smokers of cannabis are about 2.6 times more likely to have a psychotic episode than non-smokers. High doses of marijuana can produce a temporary psychotic reaction and in some users can worsen the course of illness in patients with schizophrenia.

“Numerous studies following users over time and through the experience of the DHB’s own drug and alcohol services show a link between marijuana use and later development of psychosis – those who start young and smoke heavily are at an increased risk for later problems,” he wrote in the New Zealand Herald.

Marijuana use has been linked to other mental health problems, particularly among the young, who can suffer from depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and personality disturbances, including lack of motivation to engage in activities they would usually find rewarding.

Dr Bramley said we should not be conveying to our impressionable teenagers that cannabis use is harmless. It’s not and it never has been. Any initiative that potentially makes cannabis more freely available will only further increase the burden of medical, psychological and social problems that cannabis use already has on our financially struggling health boards and our communities.

So, varying opinions; you’ll have to work it out for yourself.

“Kids are no sooner off the pot than they are back on again.” - Stuart Francis

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Saturday 4 November 2017

Is Jacinda going to take us back to the future?

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I used to own a trucking company. Well, that might be a bit of an overstatement; in fact it was only one truck. Even then I only half-owned it; my partner in the venture was Max Stevenson, a rival butcher from down the road. Truth is we didn’t own much of it either; that prerogative went to the finance company.

Anyway, despite being fierce rivals in the retail meat trade, we thought it prudent to combine our talents to jointly own a truck that could deliver carcass’s from the Waingawa freezing works to our two shops in Queen Street. While we were about it we offered the service to all the other butchers in the Wairarapa, most of who responded positively. By combining our surnames we came up with a name for the enterprise, Stevlon, which sounded more like a cosmetic manufacturer rather than a raw meat company, but then on reflection, there are some disturbing similarities.

To deliver meat to other retailers meant we had to apply for a cartage license; a tiresome and costly necessity in those days before transport deregulation. You’re never going to believe this, but our application was opposed by the New Zealand Railways. They challenged all license applications as a matter of course.

A hearing took place in the Masterton County Council boardroom and two high powered, and no doubt highly paid, lawyers from NZR endeavored to have our application dismissed.

It was not lost on the hearing commissioner, genial Carterton lawyer Ian Wollerman, that there was going to be some difficulty in railways picking up the meat at Waingawa and delivering it in the wee small hours to a butcher’s shop in (say) Martinborough, so he granted us our license.

We engaged a driver named Herbie Karaitiana, an excellent employee who’d had many years’ experience driving carcass-meat trucks from Wairarapa to Wellington. Our run only took about three hours a day from 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. but conscientious and fastidious Herbie would have spent another hour or so keeping the truck scrupulously clean. The driver’s award at the time however required that we pay our driver a minimum of forty hours a week, which we accepted and factored into our charges.


Everything went along swimmingly until the Drivers Union heard about out little operation and called to see us. All hours worked before 8 a.m., they said, required the driver to be paid at double time rates. We pointed out that this was in fact the only hours our driver worked, but he was being paid for a full forty hours. Sorry said the union (another exaggeration; they never say sorry) but you must pay your driver fifteen hours at double time and the other twenty five hours (remember these were the hours he didn’t work) at the normal hourly rate. We squealed, but they were unsympathetic.

Then they threw another doozy at us. We needed to pay the driver an extra $1.40 per hour “key money.” This expanded to $2.80 per hour on double time of course. The reason for this new imposition, they said, was that he had to carry the keys of all the shops he delivered to, and this was an added responsibility.

We rang the other local trucking companies to see whether this last charge was justified. They said it wasn’t, but the Drivers Union had been trying to instigate it for years. It was clever tactics to pick off a small company with key money and this would create a precedent that they would then bring to the next wage negotiations. It would then be difficult not to have it included in the national award. They pleaded with us not to give in.

I must point out that Herb. Karaitiana did not instigate any of this and during negotiations tried to take our side. He was taken outside by one of the union heavy’s and told to shut up and mind his own business. The end result was that we had to sell the business to an owner-operator who was not bound by union rules. Herbie lost his job.

I tell you all this because it’s becoming clear that our new government is keen to take us back to the days of the crusading unions before the reformation created by the Employment Contracts Act.

The stand-over tactics we endured by NZR lawyers and bully-boy union officers should remain an unsavoury relic of the past.

Max and I often used to contemplate what might have happened if we hadn’t won the day at the license hearings. We had this abiding picture of a locomotive, with a full head of steam, loaded with carcass meat, chugging down Masterton’s main street, heading for our two shops.

“Every man’s occupation should be beneficial to his fellow man as well as profitable to himself. All else is vanity and folly.” - Phineas T. Barnum

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Tuesday 31 October 2017

And now, my far-sighted analysis of rugby

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Both my parents were keen tennis players and to enhance their skills they built a volley board in our expansive backyard. It was quite an edifice, with a single tennis court sized concrete pad in front and the height of the board itself was about the same as the crossbar of a rugby goal post.

This meant in the winter months I could use the structure to kick a football over and as a result I became fairly proficient at goal kicking. At the beginning of every football season the coach would always ask the assembled team: “Who fancies themselves as a goal-kicker?”

Three or four of us would generally come forward and I would often win the ensuing contest and subsequently become the teams designated goal-kicker. I played on the wing for a time and then as a flanker or a number eight and back then it was a mystery to me as to why the All Black’s goal kicker was always the fullback.

Surely there were locks or hookers or centres whose parents had volley boards in their backyards and had honed their skills to be at least as good if not better than the fullback?



All this changed of course when Grant Fox came along. Overnight it was the first-fives who took all the kicks. Didn’t matter that some of them couldn’t kick their way out of a paper bag; think Wallaby first-five Bernard Foley in the recent Suncorp Stadium test against the All Blacks. If winger Reece Hodge hadn’t finally stepped up to the mark New Zealand would have won the contest quite comfortably.

It’s an odds-on bet that Hodge’s parents were keen tennis players.

But there are a whole lot of aspects about the game of rugby today that mystify me. Foremost among these is the way the referees allow the halfback to put the ball in under their hookers feet. This is patently illegal. The rule book says it must be placed on an imaginary line in the centre of the scrum - or words to that effect, but because the referees have universally decided to hardly ever police this basic law, we seldom, if ever, see a ‘win against the head.’

‘Tight heads’ were once a feature of the game, but now the side with the scrum feed can be certain of winning the ball, which begs the question: why have scrums at all? Scrums these days are always collapsing on themselves, causing injuries to the players and frustration to the viewers as the games get held up endlessly causing Grant Nisbett and his cohorts to eventually run out of idle chatter.

Penalties for scrum infringements are given by referee guesswork which confuses the commentators and the laughable call sequence mantra, ‘crouch, bind, set’ sounds like an opening stanza for Morris dancing.

Give the ball to the team offended against and let them have a free kick. Result: more movement and less injuries resulting in a free-running game that would make Rugby League look cumbersome by comparison.

Then there is the business of the petulant player who throws the ball away robbing the opposition of the chance to have a quick throw-in. This infuriates me. It’s illegal of course, but the referees and the assistant referees are too busy admiring their images on the big screen to observe the infringement.

And don’t get me started on the TMO’s. I don’t want to appear insensitive, but in most cases Stevie Wonder would do a better job. I’m amazed at the number of cameras that are available to focus on the player grounding the ball - or not - and after seeing all the angles in slow motion, with my 20/20 vision, it is abundantly clear to me the All Blacks almost always score and their opposition seldom do.

And just to show that I am not biased towards our national team; why on earth do so many of them think they ought to have their hair cut like Kim Jong-un? If Donald Trump ever gets to see them with short backs and sides and their jelled-up mop tops he will probably issue orders to nuke them.


And finally there’s their tasteless psychedelic footwear and multi-coloured mouth-guards. Some All Blacks already have yellow teeth so they don’t need a black and yellow tooth protector to make them look like as though they’re auditioning for a vampire movie.

Polished black boots and pearly white mouth-guards should be a binding instruction from the public relations people at the NZRU.

So my readers - both of you - will now recognise my analytical brilliance when it comes to rugby and I intend emailing the Rugby Union offering my services for the upcoming Northern tour. I will run the touchlines yelling advice through a hand-held megaphone.

They will no doubt tell me I should have followed my parents and taken up tennis.

If the volley board was still around I would go and bang my head against it.

“The trouble with referees is they just don’t care which side wins.” – Tom Canterbury

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Saturday 28 October 2017

A tale of two Dicks in a bygone era

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The Palmerston North squash club was holding a weekend tournament with a fancy dress cabaret in their clubrooms on the Saturday evening. The good-natured Masterton Police people had lent me two uniforms after I had displayed my mob clearing abilities on the Friday night over the road from the Masterton police station. “Uniforms” is a bit of an exaggeration; all we needed on a cold winters night were two great-coats and two helmets. We could supply the dark navy pants and substantial black shoes to complete the illusion.

My partner in crime was John Booth. Older residents who want to put a face to a name would be helped by knowing John’s father was well known stock buyer Randell Booth and his mother was Sister Booth, for many years the matron at Glenwood Hospital. John had joined the navy and seen the world after leaving school, but back in the early sixties, when this tale unfolded, he was managing the Masterton Metal Company at Waingawa.

The reason for wanting to dress up like law enforcement officers was because all sports clubs in those days operated illegal bars for their members to thwart six o’clock closing. We saw an opportunity to cause all sorts of havoc by bursting into the venue wearing police uniforms while the cabaret was in full swing and interrogating the hapless revelers. There would be members of the Wairarapa squash clubs in attendance but we relied on the collars of the coats being turned up high and the helmets down as low as we could get them, to avoid recognition.

We drove over on the cold wet night in my Volkswagen with our two girlfriends who later showed exceptional taste by marrying us, and when we got to the club we sent them on ahead to mingle with the party goers while we chose the best time to make our assertive entrance. The club lounge was upstairs and we wanted to carefully time our arrival to give full effect to the pandemonium we were hoping to create.

Finally we braced ourselves, ran up the stairs and burst through the doors, notebooks in hand. People recoiled instantly at the sight of us. Glasses were hastily hidden in a variety of places and many imbibers fled into the toilets which now became unisex, and were soon full to over-flowing. Some had glass shaped bulges in the most unlikely parts of their persons. John started to take down the particulars of those nearest the door while I marched up the bar, slapped my notebook on the counter and said authoritatively to the ashen faced barman: “I want names!” To be fair, and to avoid exaggeration this all happened in less than a minute or two before a Masterton club member recognised John Booth, knocked his helmet off and when mine was forcibly removed the cry went up: “It’s Long and Booth,” and after much relief-based hilarity, the party was back in full swing.

There was a prize for best fancy dress, which we won, and the evenings revelry might have ended there save for a conversation around the bar with a couple of Dicks that revealed a new opportunity. I use the word Dick in its true sense. These coincidentally were the Christian names of the two men who feature in this story.

To protect the innocent I can reveal that one Dick, was the manager of Masterton’s largest insurance company and the other was the professionally qualified superintendent of Masterton’s largest institution. These two thoughtfully considered that rather than waste the uniforms we might go in to the city centre and have some real fun. They were both competitive squash players and had not brought fancy dress over as such, but had for the occasion dressed up as a couple of larrikins. They had blackened their faces with burnt corks and wore disheveled clothing, the complete antithesis of the type of dress they wore, commensurate with the positions they held, back in Masterton.

We agreed to motor on down to Broadway where the two Dicks would create a disturbance and John and I would subsequently arrest them. A fairly simple procedure. Marion and Judy accompanied us in the Volkswagen; the two Dicks traveled in Dick Insurance’s car. It was pouring with rain but true to the era Broadway was a busy place thanks to the Saturday night picture-goers. Broadway had two theatres quite close to each other, the State and the Regent which shows you how much imagination the people who chose the names for New Zealand’s cinemas had back then.

We parked the Veedub about midway between the two theaters, Dick’s car was a few spaces down. John and I walked up the street with our hands clasped behind our backs nodding to the general public who being disgorged from the theatres and ensuring that the doors of the retail premises were locked and secure. Archetypical police behaviour back then before there was a plethora of patrol cars available to the gendarmery.

Behind us the two Dick’s started an altercation with each other which we turned around to inspect. We rushed back and attempted to break them up. Onlookers did not recognise any play acting. In fact the performance of the two Dick’s would have rivaled anything the moviegoers had seen on the screen that night. They rolled over and over on the footpath as John and I tried desperately to pries them apart. They both ended up in the gutter which was streaming with rain water. The illusion was complete. We “policemen” tried to elicit help from the onlookers who were now literally in their hundreds, lining both sides of the footpath. We got no help. Even back in those relatively law-abiding times, the larrikins were the heroes and were being egged on by the baying crowd.


Dick Insurance decided to take off and I followed in hot pursuit, while my colleague struggled without public assistance with Dick Institution. I yelled to the crowd: “Stop that man” but they parted like the Red Sea to ensure him a safe passage and actually jeered at me! One lady did try to help. She attempted to trip Dick Insurance up with the hook end of her umbrella and very nearly succeeded, but he only half fell and then regained his balance.

The last man to leave the confines of the Regent, he must have been sitting in the front row, came to my aid. He was well built but elderly, perhaps in his seventies, possibly a world war one veteran even, who said: “I’ll get him officer” and dive tackled Dick Insurance, spreading him all over the footpath. I got him, now half stunned, in a full-nelson and dragged him back to John who was struggling to get his charge into the waiting Volkswagen. By now the crowd were cheering, not the two successful policemen, but the two larrikins, who had put up such a good fight.

All this was witnessed by Marion and Judy who both surprisingly accepted proposals of marriage from us not long after. They had to stay on the footpath while we drove the arrestees around the corner and hid in the backyard of a closed service station. We waited there until the crowd had dispersed and then went back for Dick’s car and to pick up our potential fiancĂ©es. They told us that we had fled the scene at an opportune time. As we had pulled away the real police arrived in real police cars, apparently alerted by a member of the public who would have told them that two of their colleagues were in all sorts of trouble on Broadway. Reports of the arrest, and of their fellow policemen leaving the scene in a lime green Volkswagen, must have seemed surreal.

Marion just happened to work at Dick Institution’s institution. He didn’t want to hear a word of this back at work on Monday, he cautioned her, given that discipline was an essential ingredient in the smooth running of the organisation.

As far as I know, she never told one other nurse.

(First published May 3rd 2000)

“Son, when you participate in sporting events, it’s not whether you win or not, it’s how drunk you get” - Homer Simpson

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Wednesday 25 October 2017

How come we've never kept up with inflation?

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Imbibers and diners venturing into Bannister Street’s revamped Joxer Daly’s (now known as the Craft Beer Kitchen) will likely notice a large wall hanging featuring a bevy of bountiful, boater-hatted, bow-tied butchers. Actually I’ve used a bit of artistic license here, remove the bevy and the bountiful; there are only two butchers, but I love alliteration.


One of the above is Dan Simonsen; the other shall remain nameless for the sake of decorum, anonymity and good taste.

The photo was taken in 1967.

Eyes might be sensibly averted to the mouth-watering prices on the meat displayed on the counter in front of the two journeymen. Porterhouse steak is a mere 64 cents a pound. Decimal currency was just in, but we still sold goods in pounds rather than kilos. Converted, porterhouse would have been at $1.40 a kilo.

I checked in at my favourite supermarket last week and saw that porterhouse steak is now $35.99 a kilo, so it has increased 26 fold in 50 years.

Well, you’re thinking, so what? When inflation is taken into account, and we’ve certainly had plenty of that over the intervening period, prices naturally go up. Well my research via google showed that the average weekly wage was $50 in 1967; today it’s more like a thousand dollars, so that’s a 20 fold increase.

If we multiply the 1967 price by the wage increase we get $28.00 a kilo as opposed to $35.99; so steak may be steadily pricing itself off the market.

Strangely enough, the price of beef in the paddock hasn’t increased to anything like that extent, obviously attendant costs have.

If we did the same exercise with lamb the discrepancy is even greater. In the full-sized original photo, lamb loin chops are shown at 33 cents a pound; that’s 73 cents a kilo. Today’s supermarket price: $26.99 a kilo. In this instance the multiplication is times 37.

But the real disparity lies in housing. We built our first home in 1963. We borrowed 2500 pounds off the government-owned State Advances Corporation at an interest rate of 5%. I was being paid 20 pounds ($40) a week at the time and had my wage had been just below that level the interest rate would have been 3%.

You could build a modest three-bedroomed home for 2500 pounds back then, no garage or garden shed; they came later. If you proved you owned the section freehold (average price 150 pounds) State Advances would willingly lend you the money.

These solidly built houses are well entrenched in this town and have all stood the test of time.

Repayments for the 25 year loan weren’t too much of a burden and with ongoing inflation, sometimes rampant, became even less so.

Meanwhile the incoming Labour government has promised to build a tens of thousands of ‘affordable dwellings’ for first home buyers and suggest they will be priced at somewhere between five and six hundred thousand dollars.

My generations first homes cost us at most $6000 - multiply that by the 20 fold wage increases and you get $120,000. So somewhere in the mix today’s young couples have lost around four hundred and eighty thousand dollars.

The two butchers in the photo at CBK are smiling. And so they should be; they lived in the best of times.

“I hate everything about the twenty-first century - except its dentistry.” - A. L. Rowse

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Monday 23 October 2017

A lawless masquerade

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Back when I was single I used to play squash. Not very well, but I played. I played after squash too. We all did. Belonging to sporting club was a necessary adjunct to life back in the days when the pubs closed at six. The clubs adhered to no such closing regime and stayed open till late so you could refresh yourself after a gruelling game of whatever it was you were playing. The police turned a blind eye to after hours trading most of the time but had to make a raid on the odd occasion to keep their hands in. One week it might be the Blairlogie or the Taueru (two pubs on the road to the coast; both suspiciously burnt to the ground after the introduction of ten o’clock closing) the next week, a luckless sporting club. Getting caught drinking after hours carried no life sentence other than eternal shame to your family. In the sixties major crimes of the times were jaywalking, bookmaking and unlawful carnal knowledge; the latter now seemingly expunged from the lawbooks for some reason completely unknown to me.

We visited other squash clubs from time to time to play in competitions and then invariably to join them in a social cabaret on the Saturday night of the tournament. One such outing was to occur in Palmerston North and a friend and I and our girlfriends decided to give the tournament itself a miss but attend the Saturday night function. The event was to be a fancy dress. It occurred to us that if we were to arrived dressed as policeman, given that the illegal bar would be in full swing, we might just create pandemonium. There were no costume hire companies in town in those days so on Friday night I went cap in hand to the Masterton Police station and asked if I could borrow a couple of uniforms for the following evening.

Back then the tiny police station was on the corner of Lincoln Road and Church Street. I think the total compliment of police personnel was about five or six and the CIB section served the whole Wairarapa. I was politely told by the pleasant gendarmes manning the station that it was illegal for them to lend out uniforms. This was Brian Maude and Geoff Russell and they seemed genuinely sorry that they couldn’t help. I was about to walk out when they had a curious change of heart.


Over the road quite a large crowd was gathering outside the car company known as H. J. Jones Ltd. McKenzie Flooring now occupies the site. The friendly Austin/ Morris dealership was owned and operated by likable brothers Les and Eric Jones, both sons of the original owner: “H.J.” A Wairarapa Car Club Rally was leaving from the premises and had drawn a crowd of well over a hundred people who were taking up the footpath adjacent to where the cars were leaving from and had spilled on to the road. Passers-by were having great difficulty passing by. My two gregarious police persons said I could have the uniforms if I put one on now and went over the road and dispersed the crowd.

It seemed like a fair swap to me so I donned a navy great-coat (it was raining) put on the helmet and marched over to the madding crowd feeling somewhat drunk with power. “Move on” I said in the best PC Plod manner I could muster and moved the crowd back from the footpath edge allowing those wanting to use the footpath as a footpath an uninterrupted passage. I enjoyed the experience. Never before had so many people been so moved by so few in such a short time. With apologies to you know who.

I looked back at the station and saw constables Russell and Maude peeping over the half white painted windows with sheer admiration written in their expressions. I suspect their mouths, which were hidden, would have been in the wide grin mode. All would have gone swimmingly to plan if someone hadn’t recognised me.

That someone was Jack Jenkin, some years previously he had been my scoutmaster and he told me later he would not have known it was me except I was wearing pointed toe shoes. We used to call them winkle pickers. Fashionable for young men at the time, but hardly the attire for a policeman on duty. He cried out for all to hear: “It’s bl*#@y Ricky Long!” using language that would have made Lord Baden-Powell blush and the crowd swarmed back to their previous untenable positions. Mob rule returned to the streets.

Sole Times-Age photographer at the time was Norm Daken and he shot a picture as I turned to grin at his greeting. I rushed back to the sanctuary of the police station and found my two policemen in fits of laughter, well pleased with my performance and agreeing wholeheartedly to lend me the two uniforms. “By the way,” they wanted to know, “Who was it that took the photo?”

When I told them it was the Times-Age photographer the colour drained visibly from their cheeks. Lending a police uniform was a sackable offence. If the picture was published they could both lose their jobs. I was reminded too that my own role was a hangable felony, or something akin to that.

I was sorry I had placed us all in such a position. They invited me back to the station at nine the next morning to see if the three of us could somehow convince Norm that it would be in everyone’s best interests not to publish the photo. By the time I got there the hapless photographer had been interrogated under a powerful white light in a darkened backroom that didn’t really exist and had reluctantly handed over the negative and the print. There were no distinguishing marks on his person to suggest that the photos had been beaten out of him. I suspect he had probably been promised an exclusive scoop on the next major crime in the town as a reward for his co-operation. This would likely have been someone caught double-parking. Anyway Norm was his usual cheerful self as he left the station and seemed not too phased at having lost the opportunity to print the picture.

Messrs. Maude and Russell kept their end of the bargain and handed over two uniforms and at Palmerston North that night we had even more fun which will be the subject of next week’s column. I found the offending photo the other day during our house shift and thought that forty years on the Times-Age might at last like to publish it at last.

I met Brian Maude last year at a Licensing Trust conference in Auckland. He is now retired from the force and is a board member of a major trust in that city. I assume Geoff Russell has also retired, so there should be no repercussions. Unless of course, Police minister George Hawkins decides to withdraw their pensions.

Meanwhile I’m relying on the likelihood that the statute of limitations for being charged with impersonating a police officer will have well passed.

(First published April 26th 2000)

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”- Margaret Thatcher




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Tuesday 17 October 2017

Is this the longest war?

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I went to see the film Battle of the Sexes recently. In essence it’s the story of a 1973 tennis match between Billie-Jean King and Bobby Riggs which became the most watched television sports event of all time. Trapped in a media glare King and Riggs, aged 30 and 55 respectively at the time, were on the opposite sides of a binary argument, but to some extent the real story was about off-court issues. Male chauvinism, equal pay, women’s liberation and even lesbianism were closely examined and mostly found wanting, even taking into account the era of the match-up.

Riggs, the world’s number one tennis player in 1939, is an old pro with a gambling addiction who has lost his drive and is looking for the next hustle. He firmly believes that an over-the-hill tennis veteran can beat the young female champion.


Meanwhile King has been arguing on behalf of her fellow players on the American women’s tennis circuit to be paid more and although the proposed match looks like a gimmick she realises the message it could send to the world if she wins. To complicate the issue, despite apparently being happily married, she unexpectedly falls in love with her female hairdresser.

And all this based on a true story.

If art really imitates life then the male of the species comes out of this rather badly.

A few years ago David Cunliffe apologised for being a man and subsequently lost the leadership of the Labour party, but perhaps he had a point.

Pay equity and glass ceilings are still relevant topics of conversation and then as if to emphasise the real life battle of the sexes out of left field wanders the grotesque Harvey Weinstein.

We’d all heard the stories of the ‘casting couches’ but turned blind eyes assuming the dalliances were consensual. A number of credible victims have come forward however alleging rape, and other sordid expectations from the pusillanimous producer.

But there are mixed messages. Italian film star Asia Argento says Mr Weinstein forced himself on her originally, but then concedes to later having a number of agreed-to liaisons with him ostensibly to further her career.

Meanwhile Weinstein admits to some misdemeanours, but assumes therapy will cure his perceived addiction and believes Mrs Weinstein will understand.

She doesn’t of course - and has left the building.

Can Mr Weinstein seriously be cured? I see a parallel in American doctor Vernon McGee’s ungenerous description of alcohol addiction. “If alcoholism is a disease,” he says “It is the only disease that comes in a bottle; the only disease contracted by an act of will, the only disease that is habit forming and is the only disease given as a Christmas gift.”

Writing in England’s Daily Telegraph 'Everyday Sexism' campaigner Lara Bates reckons Weinstein is not a “beast” or a “monster,” but a man who has behaved like many other powerful men. “While many decent men have been shocked and appalled by the emerging allegations, women everywhere have nodded grimly, thinking of their own Weinstein’s. If we insist on labelling Weinstein a monster, then we must face up to the fact that there are monsters everywhere and it shouldn’t be the responsibility of their victims to stop them,” she wrote.

You could argue that despite the 44 years since Billie-Jean and Bobby’s classic clash, the battle of the sexes is still being waged.

“Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes.” - Marilyn French

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Wednesday 11 October 2017

Are you being served?

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I was in a menswear shop in a shopping mall in another city recently. The franchise is noted for its fine polo shirts and I was gazing at their latest samplings when a shop assistant asked me if I needed any help. I assured her I didn’t; I was just looking I said. I have a number of this company’s particular brand of polo shirt, but my wife pointed out that these were new colours and were made of a vastly improved material from those languishing in my wardrobe. She thought I should upscale my trousseau.

I assured her that my current vestments had a few more years left in them, but she reckoned they were getting out of shape and were fading. Both of these observations may have had a semblance of truth in them and it’s a characteristic of modern womanhood that they seem to always want their consorts to be seen in the latest fashion; as if anyone else would notice.


I moved to another display stand and did discern a pair of shoes that I coveted, but by now my wife had sensibly moved next door to a ladies-wear store and so was not there to urge me to acquire. Not that I would of have; although I am not the male equivalent of Imelda Marcos I do have more shoes than you can shake a stick at, some of them having barely been worn.

The shop assistant, passing by with clothes she was about to stack on an adjacent shelf, wanted to know was I still happy just browsing? I assured her I was and eventually left the premises with my credit card still firmly ensconced in my wallet.

I’m not the least bit unhappy with this outcome, but there was a time when shop assistants were known as salespeople. I have come to the inevitable conclusion however that employees who actually sell their sponsors products are about as rare as a contemporary NZ voter extolling the virtues of MMP.

With a bit of a nudge and some soundly thought-out dialogue I might well have walked out of the shop with a new pair of shoes and two state-of-the art polo shirts. I say two because the deal was $79.95 for one, or two for $140 - and I can’t resist a bargain.

But it’s not just menswear shops. I have noticed the same lack of interest in marketing to diners in restaurants.

When you go straight to the main course no effort is made to entice you to try an entree first. The main course menu often offers up extras like wedges, onion rings or mushrooms, but the waiter person never suggests you add these. And often you have to badger the individual attending your table to actually see the dessert menu.

At a local restaurant recently I had to leave the table to get my guests a drink from the bar having failed to attract anyone in the dining room to come and refill empty glasses. And what about getting offered coffee or a liqueur at the meals end. In fact when did you last see any restaurant serving liqueurs to round off the evening?

On the other hand it can be overdone. I went into McDonald's last week and said, “I’d like some fries.” The young lady at the counter said, “Would you like fries with that?”


“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be boss and work twelve hours a day.” - Robert Frost

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Saturday 7 October 2017

A thoroughly modern navy

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It was pleasing to note that the far-sighted New Zealand navy has finally pulled the plug on Morse code as a means of communication, 155 years after its invention. How thoroughly modern. What will they do next? Abandon keel hauling and walking the plank as a form of punishment? Samuel Morse came up with his amazing system where dots and dashes became dits and dahs in the middle of last century; he would have been somewhat gratified to know that it survived almost to the 21st century; at least in the antipodes.

Morse was, surprisingly, a portrait painter and the first words he transmitted were: “what hath God wrought.” It was never considered that there was any particular prophetic meaning in this, but back in 1845 the Bible would have been one of the few books in widespread circulation so a scriptural passage would be almost mandatory. Our illustrious navy was apparently a lot less poetic. “Close down this circuit. Out.” it said last week, as it ended a major division in its repertoire of communication systems. Morse would be turning in his grave at their lack of imagination. I gather for the navy, (and you’re going to love this,) there was no remorse.


I used to be dab hand at Morse myself; nearly fifty years ago, and I can still pretty well remember the whole alphabet in dits and dahs. This is amazing if you think about it because I can scarcely recall the name of someone I met half an hour ago. Fellow Lansdowne scouter Ken Wilton and I were the best in our troop and won the much sought after signals trophy at a regional scout competition held at the Solway showgrounds in the early 1950’s. Ken’s forte was reading semaphore flags which the New Zealand navy probably still use to alert sailors that it is time me for their daily tot of rum.

We used to practice our craft by me climbing up on the woodshed roof at our house at the bottom of Opaki Road and Ken getting up on top of his parents wash-house (we call them laundry’s now) in Third Street and we would flash messages to each other using our Eveready torches. We honed our communication skills this way, but I doubt that the messages we transmitted were earth shattering in content. Sounds like a pretty dull pastime compared to today’s high tech recreational activities but this was back in the days when Tom Sawyer was still our consummate hero, and the Ginger Spice equivalent was Becky Thatcher.

My Morse-code reputation must have proceeded me and at Wairarapa College I was assigned to the coveted signals corps during barracks week. My commanding cadet was one Neville Jaine. Neville was a year ahead of me at college and was even skinnier than I was (and still is, darn it) so it fell to me to have to carry the cumbersome and extremely heavy radio sets that were state of the art back then. We spent most of the week roaming the streets of Masterton communicating quintessential information back to the College. Neville wore the earphones perched over the ridiculous khaki soft hats we used to wear, while my growth was seriously stumped carrying the massive radio set on my back. We were sort of a juvenile equivalent of Dad’s Army.

But all this training prepared us perfectly for world war three where I imagined we might have been parachuted behind enemy lines to transmit intelligence back to our troops. Ken and I would have looked for the nearest wash-house or woodshed roof and Neville, who was a wonderful orator, could have done an impression of Puck from Midsummer Nights Dream to avert the enemy’s attention. In the event world war three was canceled; or maybe just postponed. Born in the lucky generation we were too young for Korea and too old for Vietnam. Ken went on to be an accountant, Neville and lawyer and then a judge and I followed in the footsteps of my ancestors and pedaled meat in a sacristy of sausages and soup bones.

For all that, Morse’s invention was an incredible breakthrough for its time and initiated a new phase in world history. Never before could a message be sent without someone going somewhere to carry it. But around thirty years ago the first satellite was launched and today hundreds of them encircle the globe and allow us to communicate instantly from one side of the world to the other. Cables under the sea enable instantaneous telephone contact; these cables are capable of holding a million voice messages and make worldwide usage of the internet possible.

Amidst all this technology, now well entrenched, our cautious navy has decided in its wisdom that Morse may be unnecessary. No one could accuse them of rushing into things.

The end result of all this explosion in international contact is what we call globalisation; a term hardly used as little as ten years ago. Commentators are even suggesting that because of globalisation nations are losing their borders and the sovereignty they once had. Politicians have lost their capability to influence events. Its not surprising that no one respects our political leaders like we once did. Multi-national companies now rule the waves, some of these with gross national products considerably higher than many nations. Word has it that they abandoned the Morse system of message transference eons ago.

The era of the nation state may be over. Countries, according to Japanese business writer Keniche Ohmae, have become mere “fictions.” and he cites the Asian economic crisis, which has affected us all, as a demonstration of this. This might well have meant that nations fighting nations would become a thing of the past but Kosovo and now the India/Pakistan conflict have somewhat defused this optimism.

It is possible then that one day we will again need a well equipped fighting force to ensure our own survival and reassert our nationhood. Colleges don’t have barracks weeks any more and the citizenry are probably are ill-prepared to fight a war. Ken Wilton and I will gladly clamber on to our shed roofs but it is no good calling on Neville Jaine to help out. As head of the police complaints authority he presently has his work cut out adjudicating as to whether or not the police acted hastily in shooting a car converter who brandished a fake gun at them. For some, world war three has already started.

Meanwhile the New Zealand navy is probably contemplating what to do with its carrier pigeons.

(First published in July 1999)

“No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned…a man in jail has more room, better food and commonly better company” - Samuel Johnson

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Sunday 1 October 2017

The idle teenager

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Before television was introduced to this country in the early 1960’s, music held sway.

Drugs were unheard of, beer taps were turned off sharp at six, and in the evening radio was king. Apart from the “pictures” the only other form of entertainment, for the non-betrothed anyway, was dancing.

In the mid-fifties a new form of dance swept the world and in 1957 some friends and I formed a rock’n’roll band called The Drifters which saw us gainfully employed most Friday and Saturday nights in various dance halls around the Wairarapa.

In the South Island an entrepreneur named Joe Brown was making his fame and fortune with a dance every Saturday night in Dunedin’s vast Town Hall. Two halls actually, one for traditional dancing and one for rock’n’roll. Being New Zealand’s main university town at the time, these dances were packed with our brightest and whitest.

Joe Brown had another string to his bow. Every year he would travel up and down the country staging talent quests in the cities and major towns. “Joe Brown’s Search for Stars” was the proprietary name and the winners of each contest were invited to Dunedin for the annual grand final in the Town Hall, and then taken on tour. In 1960 Joe Brown’s Search for Stars came to Masterton.

The Drifters opted to compete; and in not just one item. We entered in the instrumental section as well as the vocal section and I was the band’s vocalist. We had an occasional female singer with a glorious voice named Lois Hatfield and we agreed to back her as well. Also local chemist Wayne Snowsill and I fancied ourselves as Everley Brothers imitators and so we proffered a separate entry. The winner was chosen by audience vote and they wisely selected local boy soprano Joseph Anderson for his splendid rendition of Sixteen Candles. Our items came second, third, fourth and fifth.

Joseph Anderson performed with great credit in Dunedin, but the grand final was won by a young Maori man from Palmerston North named Joe Nathan who received a standing ovation, I gather, with a stirring rendition of Old Man River.

The bean counters in Joe Brown’s back rooms in Dunedin, however, must have misread the Masterton results and saw my name featuring regularly, concluding I was a jack of all trades but, fortunately for me, not bothering to complete the proverb. I was offered the tour of New Zealand as a rock’n’roll singer and in doing so became part of the exceptionally talented Dunedin rock group, The Golden Aces.

I was flown to Dunedin in a creaky old DC3 one mid-winter’s Saturday morning where I was to join the troupers and rehearse for a few days before we took the show on the road. That afternoon I met the band and that night I sang at the Town Hall dance which was broadcast live to a New Zealand-wide audience on the YA network. There were lots of telegrams from friends and family back home saying that I came across well, but I knew the static from Wellington to Wairarapa was endemic and that I would have sounded less appealing to anyone with a half-decent reception.

On Sunday we met the rest of our fellow travellers and were shown the printed programmes. I nearly flipped. Beneath my photo I was described as New Zealand’s number One Teenage Idol. The band members were more circumspect. Having heard me the night before they decided a more appropriate title was New Zealand’s number one idle teenager.


This was a variety show typical of the era. Besides Joe Nathan, The Golden Aces and the idle teenager we had another Maori tenor from Christchurch named Charles Hikana, a ventriloquist from Wellington, Ray Anderson with his doll Benny P. Baker, Gary Chadwick, an harmonica player from New Plymouth, and last but certainly not least, New Zealand’s foremost pianist at the time, the irrepressible Jack Thompson from Invercargill.

Manager and compere was tall, charming, ex-Dunedin policeman, Ian Dawson. Dawson had an unusual impediment; he stuttered badly off stage, but in front of a microphone and an audience, his speech was unhindered.

We spent three days rehearsing the show in Dunedin and then took off for our opening night in the Palmerston North Opera House. We arrived with a blaze of publicity given that this was Joe Nathan’s home town and the city was particularly proud of him.

At around seven o’clock in the evening we made our way to the venue where Jack Thompson insisted that he had a dressing room to himself. There were only two dressing rooms in the complex so the rest of us had to share the one other. It was interesting to note that those of us of European descent put make-up on our faces to make ourselves browner under the spotlights, while those with the Maori ancestry put powder on to make themselves whiter. There’s a message here somewhere, but I’m not quite sure what it is.

A sell-out crowd greeted us warmly. Earlier we had sussed out the nearest coffee lounge to the theatre - it was to here that we intended to casually saunter after the show in order to accept the adulation of the crowds, imagining, particularly, a generous number of nubile young women craving autographs.

We made one major mistake in Dunedin. We had omitted to time the show. At intermission, which came earlier than we expected, we had pretty well run out of items. Such was the panic that Ian Dawson was now stuttering both on stage and off and Charles Hikana agreed to take over the role of compere. We sat down backstage and wondered what we would do for the remainder of the evening.

The final item on the programme was listed as The Sensational Trio - this was Joe Nathan, Charles and me. We harmonised such songs as ‘Heart of my Heart’ and ‘It’s a Sin to tell a Lie’ backed by Jack Thompson on the grand piano and The Golden Aces. Prior to that, Joe Nathan sang ‘Old Man River.’ These items were the only ones we so far hadn’t performed.

The 15 minute intermission stretched to 30 minutes as we agonised over how we would produce a creditable second half. I agreed to sing some songs the band and I had never rehearsed together, Ray Anderson said he would create further humorous patter between himself and Benny P. Baker and Gary Chadwick allowed he knew one or two other tunes he could belt out on his mouth organ. Golden Aces drummer Johnny Berryman, who also had a speech defect, caused I think by a cleft palate, said he could sing ‘Susannah’s a Funicle Man’ and when he did, the audience, assuming he was feigning the funny voice, demanded an encore.

So we managed a second half of sorts until it was time for the grand finale - Old Man River followed by The Sensational Trio. It was here we discovered why Jack Thompson wanted his own dressing room. It seemed he enjoyed a whisky during the show; on this occasion, a whole bottle of it.

Halfway though ‘Old Man River’ he got up from the piano stool, resplendent in white bow tie and tails, and whispered in Joe’s ear. The band stopped and Joe had to tell the audience that Jack wanted them to know that he had accompanied him when he won the final in Dunedin. The audience, as embarrassed as we were, clapped politely; the song restarted and was eventually well received.

It was now time for Charles and me to come on from different sides of the stage and burst into ‘Heart of my Heart’ in harmony with Joe. About half way through the song the entire audience broke up and started to laugh uproariously. Some were bent over double. We wondered: “What on earth have we done?”

I remember thinking perhaps my fly was unzipped but a quick glance ascertained that it wasn’t. I turned round and found the source of the uproar. Jack had fallen backwards off the piano stool and was lying on the stage his legs still on the seat and was grinning at Joe, Charles and me with the smile of someone well into his cups.

At this stage the trio looked anything but sensational and Ian Dawson, the poor man, was now stuttering incessantly and hastily lowered the curtain.

We gave the coffee lounge visit a miss. We could hear the crowds still laughing as they walked home past the stage doors and we waited until the coast was clear and then crept back to our hotel and ashamedly crawled into our beds.

The paper the next morning said it all. “Smoke concert air about Joe Brown’s Search for Stars” screamed the headline and started out: “The term ‘star’ is a much overworked word in the theatre, and certainly none of those on stage at the Opera House last night could lay claim to it.” Further on it stated: “Ricky Long from Masterton, described as New Zealand’s number one teenage idol, was unimpressive in an over-amplified performance” and went on, “What he and his band lacked in talent they made up for in volume.” This latter remark was a tad unfair; the band was not “mine” and was made up of exceptional musicians, except perhaps for their rhythm guitarist, me.

The critic managed to find fault with most of the items but saved the greatest vitriol for the unfortunate Jack Thompson. Surprisingly Palmerston North’s afternoon paper was kinder - their reviewer said the show was entertaining and merely complained of a few first night jitters. The morning paper however was more accurate.

In fact the show did improve; it could only get better and at the end of the six week tour it was being well received.


                                                                             Epilogue.

After the tour I convinced the superb Golden Aces saxophonist Barry Gray that he ought to leave Dunedin and come and play for the Drifters. I was best man at his wedding when he married our female vocalist Lois Hatfield. Fifty years on Barry and I found ourselves playing in a band called The Golden Oldies who performed regularly for old time dancers at Masterton’s Cosmopolitan Club. Barry has since passed on; so too has the Cossie Club and we now play for the same audience at the aptly named Old Folks Hall in Cole Street. Amazingly, after the tour Ian Dawson also came to Masterton. He promoted a Joe Brown style Saturday night dance in the Masterton Town Hall. The Drifters were his resident band. Joe Brown gave up the Search for Stars talent quests and took on The Miss New Zealand shows; Ian Dawson held the franchise for Miss Wairarapa. Later he moved to Wellington to take up ownership of the Sorrento Coffee Bar in Ghuznee Street and was to become the manager of the much celebrated Wellington pop group, The Librettos.

Midway through the tour, in August 1960, I had lost my teenage status; I turned twenty and the prospect of being an idle adult didn’t appeal. Except for my place in The Drifters I sensibly abandoned show business for more certain employment in the meat trade.

Which just goes to prove the universal adage: “Old rockers never die, they simply resort to selling sausages and writing tripe.”

(First published in January 2004)

"Tis strange - but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction." - Lord Byron






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