Through rose-coloured glasses

To those of you who are mildly interested I was born in 1940. Not long after the event Churchill was to announce to the world: “This was their finest hour” - and I thought he was talking about my parents. When I was born Mum and Dad tried to collect on their accident insurance. They kept me hidden during most of the war due to my Jewish nose. Mind you, if my father hadn’t been so shy and retiring I’d be two years older than I am now.

I’m so old I can remember when it used to take seven hours to drive to Auckland. Now you can fly there in less than an hour. Mind you it takes two hours to drive to Wellington, an hour getting checked through airport security, an hour to find your luggage at Mangere, another hour to find a taxi driver in Auckland who can speak English; then it takes him two hours crawling in gridlocked traffic to get you to your final destination.

The progress has been fantastic.

It’s the same with cars. I note that people are lovingly restoring the forties and fifties models like Zephyr Sixes, Morris Oxfords and Rovers and getting admiring glances as these graceful and solid autos glide by. Their Japanese successors are stacked meters high at a scrap metal yard in Ngaumutawa Road.

When I was a youngster we had three grocer’s shops within spitting distance of where we lived at the bottom of Opaki Road. There was one on each corner of Opaki Road and First Street and another one on the corner of First and Cooper Streets. Amongst these there was Tommy Newland’s butcher’s shop. In each store you were personally served by the attentive owner or a member of the family. How dreadfully inconvenient. It’s much better now to be able to drive into town, fight for a carpark, navigate your way around a crowded supermarket and queue up at the checkout.

My first chore in the morning was to bike down to the Lansdowne bakery situated in the building that now houses the A1 fish shop, Bodymind Pilates and the Trust House rental housing division and get us that day our daily bread. I tried not to be led unto temptation and scoff chunks of it on the way home. The aroma from the warm crust was potentially evil delivering.

Before I set off I’d take a flour bag out of the hot water cupboard where they sat in a neat pile having been washed and ironed and available for a myriad of uses. Our folks used them to carry groceries and other parcels. They also made great cleaning cloths and could even be shaped into undergarments.

Now we have the wonderful plastic carry bags that litter our streets and strangle our dolphins. How much better they are. I’m told that worldwide the plastics industry uses more oil in its manufacturing process’s than all the petrol and oil used in cars.

I read a headline last week that said after Trump’s inauguration the world will never be the same.

Well it never has been.

“I was born in very sorry circumstances. My mother was sorry and my father was sorry as well.” - Norman Wisdom.

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Be wary of the doomsayers

The famous American satirist and cultural critic H. L. Mencken reckoned that: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populous alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Perhaps inevitable then that back in 2008 Green Party demigod Russel Norman would proclaim that petrol would be $10 a litre within a decade. “Petrol at that price would make the Government’s entire motorway building project a white elephant - modern day Easter Island statues. Our new motorways would be monuments to short-sightedness and profligate waste of resources,” Dr Norman said.

In 2008 the average price of petrol was $1.82 a litre.

I like keeping records of these typical hobgoblin-style statements to look back on. I have for instance a copy of an article dated the 12th of July 1988 printed in the once-popular Wellington daily The Evening Post which informs its intrepid readers that global warming has arrived.

It says in part: “The severe four-day southerly storms which traditionally smashed the capital three or four times a year have become a thing of the past as Wellington bathes in almost permanently year-round balmy weather. Spring flowers are appearing up to two months earlier than usual and heating bills are way down.”

The article goes on to caution that sea levels were rising and sea walls in Lower Hutt and Wanganui would need to be built. The author however thought some smaller towns such as Raglan were probably doomed as they were not of sufficient size and importance to justify the expense of saving.

A year before this, in 1987, the engineers on the Wairarapa Catchment Board warned that the sea at Riversdale was encroaching landward at the rate of a metre a year. They told the Masterton District Council that a hazard zone should be put in place as a large number of dwellings were under threat. I was chairman of the Riversdale Ratepayers Association at the time and we were determined to fight the council over this zoning bye-law given that it would lower the value of many properties and possibly even make them unsaleable.

We engaged legal counsel at considerable cost, but lost the case when the hazard zone was eventually put in place in 1996. By then I wasn’t on the ratepayers association, but was a district councillor - voting against the proposal of course, but to no avail.

I was a member of the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club in 1957 when the original clubhouse was opened and I viewed the glorious vista from the balcony. Last week I stood on the balcony of the splendid new clubrooms built on the same site and I have to report, surprise, surprise, that sixty years on the sea is still lapping the shores in exactly the same place.

At the time of writing this column Gull’s Masterton service station was selling petrol for $1.88 a litre and the beachfront homeowners at Riversdale and the 3000 people who live and love in Raglan all still had their heads above water.

“When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened.” - Sir Winston Churchill

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My predictions for 2017

The three Wairarapa Councils will continue to have talks re amalgamation. Nothing will happen.

Just as many celebrities will die in 2017 as in 2016.

A massive magnitude 8 earthquake will occur, centred on Masterton. The Town Hall will remain intact.

Bill English will call a snap-election and Winston Peters will be elected Prime Minister. English will plead for a role in cabinet and Winston will hold up a card saying NO.

Jacinda Adern will win the NZ Dental Association’s award for model of the year.

Donald Trump will admit at a Bruce Springsteen Concert that he wasn’t born in the U.S.A. and is actually a half-brother to Vladimir Putin.

In a new poll Britain will vote to remain in the European Union and the rest of Europe will decide to leave.

The price of petrol will go up and the road toll will go down.

All those people in America who reckoned they would come and live in New Zealand if Trump was elected President will remain where they are with the exception of Serena and Venus Williams who will both buy permanent homes in windy Wellington.

Peter Leitch and Michelle Boag will ask Bear Grylls to locate them on some remote island.

John Key will replace Benjamin Netanyahu as prime Minister of Israel (son Max will win Israel’s Got Talent and daughter Stephanie will be in the centrefold of the Jerusalem edition of Playboy.)

Murray McCully will become our ambassador in Venezuela.

Kim Dot Com will fly voluntarily to America.

Gareth Morgan will open a cattery in Kandallah.

Lyn Paterson will dye her hair blonde and Bob Francis will go bald.

The publishers of the Wairarapa News will be presented with a long-overdue, well-supported petition pleading with the editor to ensure the long-suffering readers will no longer have to put up with the long-winded views of the author of the Long View.

“If you can look into the seeds of time and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then to me, who neither beg nor fear your favours nor your hate.” - William Shakespeare

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