Farewell to an old friend

A couple of weeks ago I received a letter from the editor of the Dominion-Post. In the first paragraph she thanked me for my ongoing support as a subscriber - and so I have been, for more than fifty years - and then went on to inform me that the price was increasing and I needed to change my automatic payment - upwards.

In a fit of pique I emailed back and cancelled my subscription.

It wasn’t really a fit of pique; I have been contemplating doing this for some time. The price rise in low-inflationary times when interest rates are understandably going down just triggered a decision already made.

My reasoning was valid. My day starts when I wake at around 6 am and I grope in the dark for the iPad on my bedside table. I go to settings and tone down “display and brightness” in the predawn room and then proceed to read the NZ Herald online. Once absorbed, I then go to the Dominion-Post app which for some curious reason calls itself “Stuff.”

Ironically, by just adding “ed”, this is what I have told them to get, in respect of their price rise.

Next I go over to Twitter and read the front page of the Wall Street Journal which has loaded overnight.

I then spring out of bed - that’s an exaggeration - and go into the spare bedroom and jump on the treadmill, and in between monitoring my heart-rate and adjusting the speed and slope I watch my old friend Paul Henry strut his stuff (there’s that word again) on the strategically-placed television set in front of the exercise machine. By the time I have showered and dressed and presented myself at the breakfast table I’m full to the brim with news; much of it bad.

Mr Henry even has a segment called “Five things you don’t need to know today.”

So the trip to the front gate to pick up my Dominion-Post is really superfluous. In inclement weather it is sopping wet even though it arrives each day bound in a plastic bag that is obviously porous. On these occasions I have to set up a drying rack in front of the gas fire and by the time it dries out I have lost my appetite for reading it. I generally just it fold it up and put it in the recycle bin.

And so I fear for the future of the daily newspaper, something I have looked forward to all my adult life. I can’t imagine why the publishers have allowed me to read it for nothing on a variety of devices. But it’s too late to draw back; no good locking the stable door once the horse has bolted.

I’m aware that there is a school of thought that believe there’s nothing quite like the look and feel of a real newspaper. I suspect this group were once closely aligned with the Fish and Chip Shop Owners Association. Now that nanny state has insisted on plain paper wrapping I regard this assertion as null and void.

“A newspaper is lumber made malleable, it is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.” - Jim Bishop

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Multicultural hotel comes good

A few weeks ago we ventured north to attend a significant birthday of a close relative and we decided to break the journey with an overnight stay at a resort town equidistant between the starting point and our destination. I looked up the internet to select a resting place and resolved to throw caution to the wind and go more upmarket than I would normally do. A five star hotel was offering a special at $199 a night and I decided it was past time when the heirs to Conrad Hilton’s empire could become partners in my credit card’s debit balance.

We arrived at the imposing establishment and entered the expansive reception area where an exceptionally wide desk offered the choice of three receptionists. An Indian man, an attractive young Asian woman and a more mature lady whom I was later to discover was of South African extraction and was, I gather, the assistant manager.

I can’t for the life of me think why I opted for the young Asian lady, but she was most welcoming and having taken an impression of my credit card proceeded to tell me that the room I had booked online was at the back of the hotel and did not afford the sort of scenery that I might I have expected from such a picturesque province. There was an available room she allowed in the recently upgraded heritage section of the hotel that was larger, better appointed and had a balcony with glorious views over the scenery that the area is noted for.

She then disclosed that this particular room would cost me a mere $55 extra. So $199 had now become $254, but how could I in all conscious turn down this goddess’s offer and so after the final flutter of her false eyelashes I agreed to the upgrade.

It was that weekend when New Zealand’s weather was most inclement and unaccounted-for road closures due to flooding meant the journey took more than an hour longer than we expected. So first up, once we had settled in to our superb room, was a cup of tea. No sign though of tea bags or coffee sachets, so we rang housekeeping and complained. The condiments were in a black box next to the hot water jug, said the disbelieving supervisor, but given that the shelving unit was black these are often hard to find, she conceded.

“Feel around”, I was advised, “They are sure to be there.” So I felt around - it was a bit like looking for missing Mayalasian flight MH370 - but I assured the doubting housekeeper that there was no black box in sight or even out of sight.

Eventually a statuesque Fijian lady arrived at our door with a black box chock full of a variety of teas and coffee options and after a careful search herself, reluctantly admitted that indeed no black box had been in the room.

Later, while waiting for a lift, the South African assistant manager approached us and apologised for the lack of tea and coffee and wanted to know did we have any other complaints?

I walked in where angels fear to tread and said there was. The bathroom door into the bedroom’s ensuite was made of solid glass. Frosted certainly, but the opaqueness dissipated somewhat when the light in the bathroom was turned on. Attending to ones ablutions was a private affair, I said, and given that the toilet was situated next to the door I didn’t think this was a particularly good architectural feature.

She was mortified; she could fix the beverage lack, but replacing all the bathroom doors was a little more than even a room charge of $254 could stand. She fled back to her desk.

Just before retiring that night the Fijian housekeeper knocked at our door and presented us with a bottle of wine, and some chocolates. This, she said, was an extenuation for the lack of tea bags and coffee sachets.

The next morning we woke to an envelope that had been pushed under our door with a letter from the assistant manager enclosed apologising for the inconveniences we had encountered. To compensate she offered my wife and me two fully-cooked breakfasts at no charge in their award-winning restaurant whose supervising chef was none other than MasterChef judge Simon Gault.

I don’t know what the breakfasts would have cost had we actually paid for them, but I suspect they would have more than covered the $55 extra we were charged for the room with the view.

And the moral of the story?

If you’re going to complain at a hotel, make sure it’s an expensive one.

“Do Not Disturb” signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids. -Tim Bedore

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The NZ Greek connection

When I was in my early twenties I went to live and work in Sydney. In a butcher’s shop obviously and the first culture shock was how hard my colleagues laboured. I thought we worked hard in our shop back home, but I had to step up a notch to keep up with the Aussies. We started work at 7 each morning finishing at 5 Monday to Friday. The shop was open Saturday mornings from 7.30 to 12.30 but not everyone needed to work Saturdays as much of the preparation had been done.

In fact the bosses reward for working hard Monday to Friday was to offer you Saturday morning employment. We were all keen, but only the hardest workers were taken on. Eventually I got up to speed and was invited to do the Saturday morning shift which, wage-wise, was at time and a half.

Once we’d cleaned up on a Saturday we would repair to the pub for a few beers and a counter lunch; then we were off to the footy. Unlike New Zealand where the pubs closed at six, back then in Oz they stayed open till ten. So it was a night out on Saturday, usually at one of the well-appointed rugby league clubs and often a barbecue on Sunday after playing golf on a public course.

I soon came to the conclusion that the Aussies worked hard and played hard.

It was decades later that kiwi retailers decided they too would like to open on Saturday mornings, but the Shop Assistants Union wouldn’t have a bar of it. Strikes were held all over the country; even my own staff went out on strike and were only placated when I promised I would never force any of them to work on a Saturday.

This meant that for the rest of my retail life I mostly manned the shop on a Saturday with help from my family.

Aussie was subsequently to become a haven for New Zealand workers wanting to seek a new life and they moved across the Tasman in their tens of thousands. Most caught the Australian work ethic, but a disproportionate number found that the Aussie climate, in Queensland particularly, was conducive to living on the dole and going surfing and the name “Kiwi bludger” entered the vernacular.

The Australian government eventually decided enough was enough and cut out all welfare payments for New Zealand migrants, even though they still had to pay full taxes on their earnings. Entry was tightened up and passports were re-introduced.

There was often talk of an economic union with a single currency between the two countries, but the Australians were too canny to agree to that. The Australian dollar has always been worth more than its kiwi equivalent and I have generally considered this discrepancy was in direct relationship to how hard people toiled in each country.

So I see parallels with the situation in Europe. I could never fathom how the one currency, the Euro, could apply when work attitudes of varying countries are so diverse. For the dour hard-working Germans to have the same value currency as the Greeks or other questionable European nations seemed an implausible concept.

Although it was response to their socialist Prime Minister’s clear instructions I was shocked to see the Greeks dancing in the streets after overwhelmingly voting “No” to austerity measures that would allow them to pay back the debts they owed.

I imagine they will pay a high price for this moment of mad frivolity; it’s as if the realities of lending and borrowing between nations are just a grand fiction which can be written off without repercussions.

The handsome yet delusional Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras blames the European Union for Greece’s problems, but the voters and their spendthrift ways and their addiction to an unaffordable lifestyle is the real culprit.

What we are witnessing is not just a struggle about repaying money owed, or regional power or even democratic accountability. This must surely be the endgame for the mistaken belief that socialism can actually work. This failed Marxist theology is being continually promoted by sadly misguided left-wing fantasists, some of whom are now leading Greece and its hapless inhabitants into economic ruin and political chaos unless Europe’s hard working economies bail them out once again. No one seems to want to reassess the last fifty years and own up to the fact that to tax the rich and redistribute money that does not exist is never going to work and it never has.

The internet humourists have come up with their own answer. The new Euro they reckon will be printed on Greece-proof paper.

"Voters have some responsibility for the choices they make. That is what distinguishes mature democracy from the students union." - Janet Daly

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Have we squandered our freedom?

I recently ventured south for the day to see the sobering exhibitions at Te Papa and the old Dominion Museum commemorating a century since New Zealand’s entry in the First World War in 1915. Man’s inhumanity to man was clearly on display in these brilliantly assembled exhibits, one by Sir Peter Jackson and the other by Weta workshops.

World War One was supposed to be the war to end all wars. The expression was no doubt a sincere belief that the horrors of this disastrous conflict - so graphically exposed in these two cleverly contrived expositions - were of such magnitude that no nation would challenge another nation ever again. It was also considered that the defeat of Germany, whose citizens were seen as the heirs of Prussian militarism and therefore inherent warmongers, would herald the end of expansionism in the centre of Europe.

After the war, measures were taken to ensure everlasting peace, the most important being the formation of the League of Nations, plus a number of treaties that sought to limit military power.

World peace was of course to be a pipe dream, especially in the constant utterances of beauty contestants.

I remember in the TV series Head of the Class when history teacher Mr Moore tells his pupils that they will conclude their study on World War I, the “war to end all wars” and begin their study on World War II, “the war to end that theory.” American sitcom writers often expressed the situation perfectly. There was an episode of M*A*S*H where Colonel Potter remembers his fallen friends who died in “the war to end all wars” and one who died “in the war after that,” while Hawkeye Pierce describes the Korean conflict as “the latest war to end all wars.”

There were tumultuous times between the two world wars. The roaring twenties were followed by the great depression which ended when America’s wheelchair-bound president introduced the New Deal programme and in so doing heralded a new era of government interference in our lives that continues to this day. Roosevelt then changed the course of the Second World War by committing his country to fight in all theatres after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.

Masterton was full of American servicemen from about 1942 onwards. They camped at Memorial Park and the Solway Showgrounds and danced the night away with the local lasses in their canteen situated about where Bullick-Blackmore trades today. They were then shipped off to fight at Guadalcanal where huge numbers of them perished.

Post-1945 was like the calm after the storm. I recall reading where it was considered that the horror of the death and destruction the planet had suffered had brought people to their senses and there was now going to be goodwill towards citizens of all nations and that we would never see another world war. Peace it was thought might rein forever.

And there was a sort of surreal serenity after the war. The 1950’s on reflection were idyllic. Full employment and wages were such that mums didn’t have to work; one income sustained a family. A modest house on a quarter acre section was in reach of almost all and workers had Saturday and Sunday off.

In this country rapes and murders were few and far between, drug-taking was unheard of, and we didn’t need to lock the doors of our houses or our cars. A small coterie of affable policemen kept law and order in a confined police station on the corner of Lincoln Road and Chapel Street in between having cups of tea and reading the newspaper.

The film industry in Los Angeles kept us entertained and it seemed the Americans were living the good life too, with their idyllic nuclear families and their picket fenced homes, driving their flashy new cars and enjoying a whole new range of household appliances. To cement this image Bing Crosby crooned about those dear hearts and gentle people who lived and loved in his home town.

Years later this era was recreated in a television series aptly named  Happy Days.

All of this freedom of course came at the expense of the young men who had sacrificed their lives so that we could enjoy the post-war prosperity. In New Zealand those who did return came home as heroes and were well-received and well-treated. Many of the rural returned servicemen were granted re-hab farms and another war, this time in Korea, caused wool prices to reach record heights which meant the country prospered and we were able to maintain a very high standard of living.

But I fear we have let it all slip away. The happy days were perhaps only conferred on a few privileged countries in the world and a frighteningly fundamental group of people called jihadists saw what we did as a form of decadence and resolved that our way of life should be stopped dead in its tracks, literally.

Indeed there were excesses that inevitably came with freedom and perhaps we should have more rigidly adhered to the standards of the past and firmly re-directed those who chose to stray from the moral absolutes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we might also have been more altruistic to those in the world who could only look on our affluence from a distance with hatred and envy.

The two Wellington exhibitions are a stark reminder that we have learnt nothing from history. 

More than 150 wars have been fought since the end of “the war to end all wars,” and the carnage continues.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I know World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein

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Wairarapa enchants Auckland

It’s not often that Wairarapa is accused of punching above its weight, but I suspect that might have been the impression given to a glittering array of Aucklander’s a couple of weeks ago when Wairarapa connections staged a charity night at the SkyCity convention centre.

The glamourous guest of honour was the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips, but I suspect the real accolades belong to Catriona Williams founder of the CatWalk Trust for which the glitzy evening was held. Catriona, who became a tetraplegic after a horse riding accident, founded the trust in 2005. The full name of the trust is the CatWalk Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Trust and it exists to raise funds to support the body of scientific opinion which says a cure for SCI will be found.

The list of patrons Catriona has managed to assemble for her trust looks like a who’s who of New Zealand’s most admired sports men and women. They include Richie McCaw, Sir Brian Lochore, Aaron Slight, Sir Mark Todd, Sarah Walker, Dion Nash, Toni Street and Lance O’Sullivan. Ms Phillips is also a patron and a personal friend of Catriona’s. On the evening the royal visitor wore a floor-length black silk gown with sequined detail, paired with black heels and her short blonde hair was loose. Crikey, now I’ve become a fashion editor! But if Zara is so chic I’d like to talk to her and ask why she hasn’t spoken to her mother about experimenting with a new hairstyle.

Champion Masterton superbike rider Aaron Slight set the evening alight when he roared into the convention centre astride an electric motor cycle with Seven Sharp presenter Toni Street riding pillion. Ms Street and TV One breakfast host Rawdon Christie were the celebrity MC’s.

800 people attended, mostly prominent Aucklander’s, but Wairarapa, Hawkes Bay and Waikato were also represented.

$420,000 was raised for the Trust on the night, most of it from an auction of donated goods and services.

First up was Zara Phillips’ buzzy bee which opened at $1000 and sold for $6000. At this stage Auckland’s houses are looking comparatively cheap.

Another sought-after auction item was a gliding outing with Richie McCaw which after spirited bidding sold for $15,000. McCaw was an apology on the night; a rugby game the next day was given priority and a video link to the function had to be canned as it was well past his bedtime when the hook-up was eventually established.

One interesting auction object was called “The CatWalk Cooker.”

Catriona designed it and a neighbouring farmer agreed to make it up. Local firms came to the party. Firestone provided the truck tyre rims, Tulloch Contracts the important wheel and Agtech some scrap metal. Master Blaster did the sand blasting, the Heat Shop provided the paint, and neighbouring horses the shoes.

The farmer described it thus: “The cooker consists of a matching pair of truck tyre rims. One has three lugs on the narrow side, and forms the bottom; lying on its wider end. The other rim sits with the narrow end placed on top of the other, within the retaining lugs. A conical disk forms the grate, sitting inside the top rim, with the pipe acting as a chimney. It collects the ash and needs to be reasonably clean, both to collect the ash and ensure it allows air flow. The wheel then goes on top, with the side with lugs attached lying downwards to keep it in place.”

Confused? Well the bidder’s weren’t. An Australian happily paid $2000 for it!

During the evening a debate was held with the moot “If you’re not first, you’re last.” Three with local connections Viv Fauvel, Charlie Meyer and Mark Chittick were up against Grant Sharman, Dion Nash and Heather du Plessis-Allan. The local team won and Viv Fauvel was said to be the standout comedienne on the night.

The evening did have its serious moments. Two specialists on spinal injuries spoke. Dr Rick Acland is a former Catwalk board member and is now the Trusts medical patron. Rick was previously the director of the Burwood spinal unit and is internationally sought-after SCI consultant whose focus is on pain management. Simon O’Carroll is a director of the Catwalk funded SCI Research Facility at the University of Auckland. Dr O’Carroll is the principal investigator of a research project which aims to ‘block’ the transfer of neurotoxins at the time of injury using small protein molecules in order to significantly reduce the damage spread and therefore decrease the consequences of SCI.

They told the audience that spinal cord injuries were costing the country countless millions annually, but both were confident that it is not a question of if, but when there will be a cure. Catwalk chairman Scott Malcolm said he hoped in ten years’ time we will all be trying to remember what wheelchairs looked like.

This was the tenth anniversary bash of a trust that had its genesis in the Wairarapa and has grown to the stage where it is hugely admired both nationally and internationally. Catriona and a group of friends competed in the 2010 New York marathon and in 2013 they cycled up to Base Camp at Mount Everest. In the ten years since its inception the Trust has raised over 5 million dollars for spinal cord injury research.

No wonder the Aucklander’s were spellbound.

“Your body is not who you are. The mind and spirit transcend the body.” - Christopher Reeve.

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