2023: The Year I Gave Up

Well, 2023 was interesting, wasn’t it?

I start each year with a list of ten things I want to do or achieve in the following 12 months. Reviewing my list for 2023 it turned out my year was reasonably successful, but it still felt like a massive failure, and I couldn’t quite pinpoint why.

The year started out all innocent and full of hope like so many others (not looking at you, 2020…), but there were early portents of unusual and unstable times ahead.

On the same day Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced her resignation in Napier, I witnessed a tornado / funnel cloud on my home from work – a sight I have only seen once before in my 46 years here in Hawke’s Bay.

Then in February Cyclone Gabrielle hit Hawke’s Bay and Tairawhiti and threw everything into disarray.

People lost homes, livelihoods and lives. Parts of Hastings and all of Napier, collectively New Zealand’s sixth largest urban area by population lost power for up to and over a week.

The fact that so much ruined infrastructure like many of the bridges that were taken out in the flooding Gabrielle caused have been repaired and trains and vehicles are using them again within 10 months of their destruction is remarkable.

Groups of people got together in the aftermath of the disaster and helped clear out properties, remove cubic kilometers of silt and help get others back on their feet as soon as possible speaks volumes of the care and compassion Hawke’s Bay people have for their neighbors and communities.

While things were getting back on their feet, I wrote a rather extensive piece covering the days of darkness that Napier endured and, at the suggestion of Twitter friend Jolisa Gracewood, I sent it to The Spinoff. Editor Mad Chapman graciously published it as their “Sunday Essay” the following weekend and it was very well received. In my last email to Chapman, I optimistically (deludedly?) wrote “see you at the 2024 Voyager Awards!” (We’ll come to that bit later.)

I think having gone through the Covid lockdowns so recently was a major factor in this – Everyone knew they were in the same boat, so help where you can and don’t be a dick.

Sadly, not everyone learned from that experience.

During the blackout perhaps one of the biggest ulcerations and indications of bad things to come that year was the breadth and scale of rumor and conspiracy bullshit that spread around the region and seeped into social media and news feeds.

Authorities hiding the fact hundreds had died, refrigerated containers at the port full of bodies, mass looting, even political parties ACT and NZ First stoked fears of lawlessness running rampant which were gobbled up by and readily regurgitated by commercial radio opinionists, far detached from the realities of the actual situation.

All utter horseshit. The same “cooker” mis- and disinformation crap perpetuated since Covid that would slowly suck empathy and intelligence from so many in the lead up to the election later in the year..

As our region recovered, I faced more conflicting communication.

Once things were running (comparatively) smoothly I had an interview for a job I had applied for before the cyclone.

I felt the interview went well and, after doing literally the exact same tasks every day, week and month for the past almost 20 years, I’m more than ready for a change.

But I didn’t get this new job because they felt “I was too negative about my current job”?! If I was perfectly happy doing what I do I wouldn’t be applying for other positions, would I? They said there was no question I had the skills and talent, and if anything else came up they would call me.

Similar positions have come up there and they haven’t called me.

When asked why I was applying for their job I had expressed frustration at a lack of development and progression in my current role, while others with less experienced had shot up the ladder. No vitriol, not knocking my employers just facts. The interviewers even said that was not how things were done there and I took that as a good sign.

But not good enough.

How would you feel being trapped in an occupational Groundhog Day for 20 years? Like so many people I’m not doing what I WANT to do, but it supports my family, so I do it for them.

I’m clearly not failing at my job, otherwise I wouldn’t have lasted this long, but there’s no incentive to excel, because doing that has gotten me nowhere either.

Yet, when an opportunity arose for me to be able to leave that situation, those with the power to help me escape and utilize my recognized skills and talents choose to keep me trapped in my current situation?!

I gave up.

I also gave up my childhood home this year.

Well “SOLD” my childhood home.

But clearing it out for sale felt like a loss.

As an only child it was a task and burden I had to shoulder alone in 2023, too.

Desecrating the sacred place that was my Dad’s shed resulted in me manually loading one and a quarter tonnes of scrap metal that I took to the recyclers.

It did wonders for my bulking up my arm muscles, if only I’d had feeling in them afterwards…

Between selling the scrap metal, tools and other trinkets we made over $2100, which would have been a great little financial bonus, but taking off the cost of the general and green waste disposal and our wonderful tenants having found a new place and moving out only a couple of weeks into their 90 days’ notice, we were losing around $1000 a month for around half of 2023 before final settlement happened in October.

That just added onto general pressures and worries.

I got commissioned to write a couple pieces during the year and, true to my word to buy a Tamiya Lunchbox with the proceeds of my next writing gig, I realized a childhood dream of securing one of the big, bright yellow RC monster vans! (I even managed to get it on sale, making it more affordable under the circumstances).

While I do enjoy writing and especially getting paid to write, this year has been a hard one for wordcraft.

I had little free time to write. The commissioned pieces I completed were slotted into busy schedules that all somehow worked out in time for their deadlines. But the pressure to complete amidst the congestion of everything else took the fun out of it for me – I didn’t learn as much as I usually do researching the topics, which is something I really enjoy.

When I had the free time to write for myself, I seldom had the drive or confidence to set words down in type. With everything else going on – Disaster recovery, AI technology taking over print, lies and conspiracy running rampant and the media that I aspired to be a part of continuing to circle the drain the drive just wasn’t there.

My optimistic / deluded dream to be nominated for a 2024 Voyager Media Award for my “Napier in the Dark” essay also came crashing down in December when I learned the News Publishers Association, who run the Voyager Awards, have absolutely eviscerated the number of categories for the 2024 Awards. 2024’s awards will have 10 “Print/Text” and 16 “All Media” categories, whereas 2023 had 19 “Print/Text” and 28 “All Media” categories.

“Best First Person Essay or Feature”, the one I had my hopes set on, was one of far too many being scrapped.

In a time when media, news, reporting and even just the truth is under incredible pressure to prove its credibility, worth and quality slashing the ways the best of the industry can be displayed and celebrated is completely counterintuitive!

In 2023 I was giving up on a dream I had only started to get a foothold in over the last decade. As my creative output ascended, the goal I wanted to reach was sliding off towards a nadir on the other side of the peak I had yet to reach.

When we saw a general election like the one we had this year with one party that had essentially no policies, other than tax cuts for their already rich mates, for the majority of the campaign still come to power, supported by minor parties whose sole tricks are racial division and bug-eyed conspiracy peddling things do not look hopeful for our country!

Our media networks’ political editors and reporters can’t even seem to be bothered to investigate and reveal faults, frauds and failings like they used to. The current batch appear happier to applaud the theatrics of election promises gussied up to appeal to masses they know will never benefit from them.

When they do go on the attack it’s like some sort of demented political opinionista’s version of Mean Girls.

How many chances at how many different networks is too many for some bitter hacks?

Phillip Sherry would never have put up with that sort of shit.

I think I crafted more wood than words in 2023.

I tinkered away making a case for the Kane Williamson signed bat I won late in 2022.

I took me a bit to believe in myself and trust my own skills, but I like to think enough of my father’s innate craft and woodworking expertise eventually osmosed down to me like some sort of neural slow-release fertilizer and I was really proud of the job I did, especially when it came to cutting the plywood for the case.

Speaking of Kane Williamson, I made a second version of the customized Kane Williamson Pop from the Virat Kohii figure a workmate rescued from my Cyclone Gabrielle-flooded office with the intention of giving it to the New Zealand Cricket captain the next time they played in Napier.

Unfortunately I’ve been unable to give it to him yet, as Williamson was unavailable for the games against Bangladesh held at Napier’s McLean Park over and the Christmas break.

We managed to travel in late October and early November as, over Hawke’s Bay Anniversary / Labour Weekend we took our daughter on her first flight(s) to Wellington and went to the zoo.

Even that wasn’t without some drama, as our original flight was canceled with engineering issues a couple of hours before it was due to depart. Fortunately, we were able to re-book almost instantaneously and went to Wellington via Auckland – Two first flights (on a prop plane to Auckland, and then a jet to Wellington) for the price of one!

The view of the cyclone damaged Esk Valley as we climbed heading north out of Napier was very sobering, though.

We stayed in Newtown and walked to and from the zoo. The weather and food was lovely and I happened to meet a few online friends in real life by chance on the trip.

A little over a week later I got to go away on camp with my daughter and her class in early November, which was terrific.

The camp was for three days at Tutira, between Napier and Wairoa, and evidence of the damage caused by Gabrielle was still very visible, with loads of roadworks repairing the numerous dropouts, landslides and road undermining despite months of monumental work to get the vital arterial link open again.

The camp was great, the weather was lovely, and the kids were cool, and we all had a great time away from sub/urban life.

My daughter says she “only cried five times because she missed her Mum” (she counted?!) despite her loving, caring Dad being RIGHT THERE…

Our daughter was the star of my year. While hopes for myself dwindled, my hopes for her continue to soar.

She was awarded a “School Values Medal” for Excellence during the year and got an end of year award, too, which was a fantastic surprise to finish on.

She had been in a mixed class of her and about six other Year 5 students with around 25 older Year 6 students and ended up making friends with so many of the Year Sixes that she was really sad to see them go off to Intermediate at the end of the year.

Her and another Year 5 classmate took out two of the three end of year awards for their class, with her best Year 6 friend taking out the remaining one.

She is such a loving, compassionate girl.

It’s this hope for her future that also worries me so much about her future in a world already beset by blatant political corruption and interference in democratic process, the imminent threat of irreparable climate change disaster, the invasion of sovereign nations, and genocide/ethnic cleansing in an age where everyone on Earth is supposed to be happily working together to reach for the stars and travel the galaxies like on Star Trek!

It’s all a bit overwhelming! But, as David Slack so brilliantly wrote about stoicism in 2020:

“Concentrate on what is within your power to do. Disregard the hysteria and wrongness around you. Preoccupy yourself with doing what is in your power to be done.”

For me external depressants were hard to suppress in 2023 when for almost every good thing there were just as many, if not more, bad things – A cloud for every silver lining, death of positivity from a thousand newspaper cuts (and don’t even get me started on how Elon Must utterly fucked up Twitter…)

Above the arches that lead from Napier’s Marine Parade to the Soundshell and Veronica Sunbay is an inscription that reads:

“Courage is the Thing. All Goes if Courage Goes.” [The Rectoral Address Delivered by James M. Barrie at St. Andrew’s University May 3, 1922

I would tweak that slightly to read HOPE is the Thing. All Goes if HOPE Goes”. [Andrew Frame, just now]

This year I hoped I could possibly be nominated for a Voyager Award, I hoped to meet Kane Williamson and Kyle Jamieson, I hoped I was worthy of a new job…

But none of those hopes were, or will, be realized.

But I can’t give up on Hope.

Hope was my Grandfather’s first and Dad’s middle name. I was born the same year as Star Wars: A New Hope.

Hope is what drives me forward and the most powerful force (other than love) that I can offer and support my daughter with.

Hope just needs to be realized, otherwise there is nothing to look forward to in 2024.

Cricket, Cricket, Cricket, Cricket, BAT CASE!!

Last year I was very fortunate to win a Gray-Nicolls cricket bat autographed by NZ Cricket captain Kane Williamson from Players Sports.

I’ve been reasonably crafty and creative recently, so decided I would make a special case for this special bat.

After much planning, sketching, measuring and staring into the void I settled on a design I was happy with and headed to Mitre 10 to get the plywood that would make up the majority of the case.

I took it over to my father-in-law’s workshop and cut it to length, put grooves in the sides for the Perspex top I intended to slide in and, not having a router, I used the saw bench to make the ends plug in, while seamlessly continuing the lid groove.

I was pretty damn chuffed with the result:

We glued three out of four sides to the base and left it to dry.

The next weekend I cut and drilled out some spare pieces of ply that would hold the bat in place.

A few months passed and I was finally able to get out to Spotlight in Hastings to buy some adhesive-backed green felt to go into the case to resemble the green grass of a cricket pitch and protect the bat from knocks and scrapes.

It was like Durasealing the inside of the exercise book from hell, but I managed to get it done, with the worst of only a few ripples hidden by the bat when it was set in place.

Last was the Perspex lid. This would keep the case sealed and the bat dust free.

Once again I went to Classique Plastics in Napier who had the clear tube for my Top Gun diorama, and they cut a piece of thin, clear plastic to fit perfectly!

The result looks pretty professional if I do say so myself!

Now I just need an office, or regal study / leather armchair furnished library to mount it in…

Topsy-Turvy AF

I’ve had a topsy-turvy time of it recently.

Bottle Rocket

While we avoided any damage or loss from Cyclone Gabrielle at home I did lose my Rocket Lab drink bottle, along with some other personal mementos when my office flooded with silt, mud and water.

I’d received the bottle in a “Thank You” package from the kiwi aerospace pioneers after writing a piece praising their efforts helping Hawke’s Bay reach for the stars that appeared in Hawke’s Bay Today years ago. I loved it and used it regularly.

I sent a message on social media to the comms person who sent me the original package asking if they had any more bottles to replace my lost one. I would be happy to pay for it.

They said they would send me one free of charge and the next week a box much larger than just a drink bottle arrived containing a coffee mug, tote bag, mission patch T-shirt, stickers, medallion… and new steel drink bottle!

It was a very cool, unexpected lift after a few wibbly-wobbly working-from-home weeks.

Napier in Frame in Print and Online

My piece about Napier’s Cyclone Gabrielle blackout and isolation was published in The Spinoff as their Sunday Essay on the 5th of March and was well received with good feedback online and in person (but I’ll have to wait until 2024 to see if the essay is nominated for a Voyager Award..).

I wasn’t immediately flooded with offers of employment or writing commissions, but I did coincidently get asked to write my first piece in a while for Baybuzz on Wairoa’s post Cyclone Gabrielle recovery for their May print edition.

There were some difficulties getting the article written, as finding the wide range of people we initially wanted to cover proved harder than expected. Some didn’t want to take part, others proved hard to contact (for many in Hawke’s Bay affected by the cyclone “Business as Usual” is still far, far away) and receiving responses on deadline day resulted in an article re-write while I was in the middle of a week’s leave from my day job in the first week of school holidays.

I got there in the end and my editor liked it, but for me it wasn’t accompanied with the usual sense of completion or satisfaction. 

I’ve been struggling for positivity recently.

Do not Pass Go 

I applied for a new job earlier this year. I had a basic screening interview for it, and a week later Cyclone Gabrielle hit.

Naturally plans and hopes of the new job went out the window.

My workplace was flooded and wrecked.

Fortunately, we had been told to prepare to work from home on the Tuesday the storm hit, so I had all the gear I needed to work from home with me. In the flooding’s aftermath our company’s owners said they were dedicated to continuing and rebuilding, so my job and income was safe.

I was back working remotely before some of my colleagues even had power restored. A little over six weeks after the cyclone we had new, temporary, offices to work out of. Some semblances of work normality, but a different location, different surroundings, different processes and habits to form. Familiar and unfamiliar. All just slightly unbalancing.     

A fortnight or so after Gabrielle my phone rang.

I got an interview for the new job I had applied for weeks earlier.

I felt the interview went well.

When they asked why I was looking at leaving my current job I answered honestly – Despite 18+ years of my dedication and service there was a lack of opportunity. I had been overlooked for a promotion recently and outright ignored for internal positions I had applied for previously.

They thanked me for my honesty and providing context and said treating established staff that way was not their company policy.

I though “Great – I’ll get a chance here!” 

I left feeling positive about the opportunity that was potentially before me.

But I also felt guilty to be potentially leaving my colleagues in these uncertain and unstable times.

I needn’t have worried.

A couple weeks later I received a call to say my application was unsuccessful.

When I asked why, or how I could improve my chances last time they said I had the skills and talent, but it was because I was “too negative” about my current job.

“Too negative”? 

If I was completely positive and happy about my current position why would I be applying for a job elsewhere?

During the interview they had said they understood why I would tell them my reasons for wanting to move on and that how I had been treated didn’t seem fair.

But now that was “too negative”?

I was being honest!

I was sick of being undermined, ignored or micromanaged by people who benefitted from my work more than I did – That’s why people change jobs!

This wasn’t just stopping me finally getting the sort of job I had been after for years, where talents I don’t currently get a chance to use enough could be recognised, developed and rewarded, It was basically saying I wasn’t allowed to feel aggrieved or call it out unfair treatment.

I somehow DESERVE to be denied career development or progress and spend almost 20 years doing the same thing every day, every week, every month, every year.

But I’m not allowed to be or feel “negative” about it?!

I give up!  

House Keeping

For the past year we have been negotiating to sell my childhood home to my in-laws, who want to subdivide the section and build themselves a new, smaller retirement house down the back of what must be one of the last (almost) quarter-acre sections on its street.

Selling my old home will pay off our mortgage (and every other debt, loan, credit card etc. we have) several times over (we bought our house almost ten years ago before real estate succumbed to surreal prices) and free us up financially – Something not many people can do these days. 

My in-laws plan to live in my old home while construction goes on down the back, and then sell it off to recoup some costs upon completion. With Cyclone Gabrielle reconstruction already pushing builders and building supplies to local limits, it might be quite a task!  

Nevertheless, they decided to go ahead with the plan a few weeks after the cyclone hit.

As part of the deal, we had to give our long-term tenants notice of end of tenancy.

I felt guilty as hell.

They had been our tenants since we’d had to move mum into care years ago and looked after the place wonderfully. They tidied the house and section up after mum had been incapable of doing so, even improving bits and pieces like replacing old kitchen benches and bedroom carpets.

It was our house, but it was their home.

Renting out the house was never about money for us and because they looked after it so well, we charged them about half what market rents apparently were.

But I still felt horrible giving them their 90 days’ notice – Especially having even just a general idea of Napier’s rental market and how much more rents were likely to be.

As it happened, they found a place in Havelock North (Napier was just too expensive) only about a fortnight later, so my overdramatized fears of them being out on the street were, thankfully, unfounded.

It did mean, however, that I had to get back in and totally clear out the last of Mum and Dad’s things that I had left stored in the garage and shed on the property, as they would all be coming down as part of the subdivision.

Dad’s shed and garage are still sacred ground that I hadn’t had the heart, nerve, or storage space to strip of their contents when we first rented my old home out. The tenants had been able to use these sheds, but so much of Dad’s stuff remained I didn’t (and to a degree still don’t) know how or where to start.

I started making slow in-roads over recent afternoons and weekends, initially muttering “Sorry, Dad! Sorry, Dad!” guiltily as I went.

I can already see the piles going to the tip, metal recyclers and auction house / charity will be immense. Never mind all the ancient paints, cleaners, varnishes and weedkillers that will need to be taken away by hazardous waste removal.

Always the tallest kid in class, I was also always at the back, in the middle for school photos.

First Star to the Left and on till Mourning

It’s not just the waste that’s hazardous – As I go through all the stuff I’m flooded with memories.

Memories of Dad and Mum, memories directly related to certain items and just memories of my first home.

Some memories clear and present, others foggy and indistinct.

Also, a fear of losing memories.

The former house of one of my Dad’s closest friends down the road from their place went up for sale recently. The people who bought it off him are moving on. I went to say “Goldfinch’s’ house is for sale!” out loud but stopped. Realising I’m the only living member of my family who would know what I was talking about.

My childhood was caring, loving, secure and fun. As an only child I was quite lonely, but I made up for it with creativity and imagination playing by myself and with my toys (and, probably, an unhealthy dose of 80s television, too..).

Now, at the age of 45 I realize it no longer just seems so far away now. It is far, far away.

Between plagues, floods and whatever the hell else we get thrown at us next that reassuring feeling of loving security our parents provided when we were young may as well be as far away as the stars.    

Reliving History

Recently I went to Onekawa New World, the supermarket I had my first job at. I go there reasonably often – it’s not far from (either) home. It has markedly changed since I worked there off and on between 1993 and 1998.

I had stopped outside the shop’s stockroom doors to check my list and was just idly looking through the door at the space beyond when a staff member inquired if I needed assistance. I explained that I used to work there (before they were born, it turned out) and asked if it was possible to have a look out the back to see what had changed.

They kindly obliged and for the next 15 minutes or so I gave them a run-down of what the space was like a quarter of a century ago (yes, I had to do the maths on that, too). Removed walls, doors, offices and toilets, but new shelving, walk-in chillers and freezers.

I walked both past and present tense simultaneously, occasionally going back and forth to ensure my memory was in the right spot. The two staff who ended up accompanying me on my modern historic tour seemed quite fascinated.

I felt both incredibly present and temporally displaced.

Many of the dreams and goals I had when I worked there and lived with my folks have changed so much. So many never eventuated at all (never mind recent career goals…).

So much has happened in all those years. So much life, love, marriage, (doing the same bloody job over and over..), fatherhood, activities and events all packed into them.

But there also feels like so much wasted opportunity and time that I’ll never get back.

I don’t feel (or look, apparently) as old as I am, but when I do it’s enough to instantaneously add even more grey hairs to my head.

Selling my childhood home makes me feel just that bit older and more distant still.

The fact it’s going to the in-laws will keep it in my extended family, but it will no longer be “mine”. Knowing they intend to sell the existing house upon completion of the subdivision and new house build adds a drawn-out sense of inevitability.

Other inevitable things have been distracting me this year, too.

RIP Eddie

When I had my tachycardia issues seven years ago I struck up a camaraderie with a fellow patient named Eddie.

While no one initially knew what was wrong with me, Eddie, who was 15-20 years older than me was waiting in Hawke’s Bay Hospital Coronary Care Unit to be sent down to Wellington for a stent to help clear a narrowed artery. It turned out he needed more than that and ended up down in Wellington briefly with me to receive a multiple bypass – a significantly more severe procedure than the mere tests, scans, pokes, prods and eventual biopsy that I was exposed to.

Being in coronary care has been compared to being in battle. You’re isolated from the outside world and are neither alive nor dead, but can be very close to being either during the time you are there. You can never know what it’s like unless you’ve gone through it, so you connect with others who have been through it with you.

I saw Eddie a few times over the years since our time in “Six South”. We would catch up and chat occasionally. I discovered he lived just around the corner from Mum and Dad’s house.

After doing some clearing out one weekend after our tenants had moved out, I drove home past Eddie’s place and noticed a lot of cars and people at his house. I had texted our tenant about something that day and he had replied he was at a funeral. He happened to work for the same organisation as Eddie and when I saw the congregation of people, I put one and one together and texted out tenant back.

Eddie had died suddenly earlier that week.

I was shocked.

“Suddenly” to me usually denotes a coronary incident, although the recent pandemic has also claimed many lives in similar sudden circumstances and symptoms.

If I wasn’t already feeling old, tired and useless enough, Eddie’s sudden passing just ramped up the downward spiral being so close to (figurative and literal) home.

Eddie was older and, back then, obviously far worse off heart-wise than I was. Losing Dad taught me that heart attacks seldom happen as unique, single occurrences and the first one is seldom the worst.

What happened to Eddie was unlikely to happen to me, as we were two completely different cases, but losing a comrade I had been through an experience like that with was shocking and unsettling in already unsettled times.

It didn’t ease my stress levels that around this period my cardiac fibroma happened to be front of mind, because Eddie’s passing happened just when I’d been scheduled for my annual echocardiogram to make sure the lump hasn’t changed or grown drastically – A fear that has been ever-present since its discovery years ago.

The scan came back unchanged in size, and my cardiologist decided we could move to two-yearly scans due to the continued lack of change, which eased heightened tensions.

But the quiet concern leading up to the appointment had just added fatigue upon fatigue, upon fatigue.    

Wibbly-Wobbly, Timey-Wimey,,, Stuff!

So there you go. Yet again we have somehow managed to fit about a year’s worth of issues, stresses, worries and natural disasters into a mere four months.

All perfectly normal and healthy, right?

So often in recent years there has been so much going on all at once and it all needs doing “Now!

Somehow, I always get it all done “now” (but have stopped bothering to hope for a reward, promotion, or new job out of my consistent, reliable performances) mainly by compartmentalising tasks – I’ll do this before lunch, and this in the afternoon. Or spend three days targeting three tasks – one task per day.

But the repetition, fatigue and detachment required to keep on keeping this up is taking its toll. 

I’m losing big bits of my past, presently stuck in an endlessly repetitious work cycle and having to be the one clearing out parts of my own history in the present, while unsympathetic job rejections and front row seats to drastic climate change don’t exactly put a silver lining on the cloudy future!

Here’s to You, 2022!

2022.

Of all the years we’ve had, it was one of them!

I DIDN’T travel outside of Hawke’s Bay, win Lotto, or change jobs to something higher paying and more in line with my skills and dreams, and I only ticked off 6/10 of my goals for the year.

I DID catch Covid, albeit thankfully all but asymptomatically, made more money here and there, and did some things I wanted to do and bought some things I wanted to get.

It wasn’t a fantastic year, but it wasn’t terrible either.

So here are some of my highlights, events and thoughts from 2022:

Loveliest moment of 2022: Planting Harakeke with my daughter.

As part of my job I’ve gotten to volunteer to go out once a year with a primary school for Conservation Week. We go on a bushwalk at Hawke’s Bay’s White Pine Bush, then do a tour of the Guthrie Smith Arboretum at Tutira and plant some native flora there.

I’ve done this with my old school, Tamatea Primary and, this year, when I saw my daughter’s school on the list I offered to go with them. A week later (without telling her what I was doing at work) my daughter said we had to give permission for her to go on a field trip. “Oh, where?” we asked. “To White Pine Bush and Tutira” she replied. 

She seemed happy that I was coming along, but I was expressly “forbidden from embarrassing her on the trip”! (she still has a lot to learn about parenting) and on the day I sat on a different part of the bus to her and her friends, but I was allowed to help chaperone her group on the bushwalks.

The penultimate event before heading home is the plantings, and she wanted me to help her plant her harakeke – NZ Flax, which I did, then we planted another spare flax and I took a selfie of us to commemorate the occasion. I loved it!

 A Year of Constructive Confidence…

I got to make lots of stuff this year, stuff I had wanted to make for a while, stuff I’d only dreamed of making, and other stuff I just did to prove to myself that I could.

A long-held vision of recreating the Tomcat vs. MiG 28 “Inverted” scene from the movie Top Gun was finally realised. After a few production delays I decided to go DIY and the multi-media (plastic, wood and metal) result I came up with was even better than I’d expected.

 After only being able to dream of owning one as a kid, I finally got to buy, build and run my own Tamiya radio-controlled car! I even bought and decorated up a second body shell just to prove I could do it!

Finally, a-semi spur-of-the-moment idea resulted in a fantastic looking “Beached Spitfire” diorama and involved my first experience using clear casting resin and making gel waves.

I was fortunate that (almost) all the models I built this year went together so well – It was a boost to my confidence in using known and new skills in creating cool stuff!

..But a Writing and Wireless Wasteland.  

After being commissioned to write two or three items a year over the past few years for local magazine Bay Buzz, I had just one commission this year – focusing on the local music scene and how it was dealing with Covid and event restrictions. I really enjoyed writing it and the finished product looked really great, but that was it.

Bay Buzz has been able to employ a number of journalists in the last few years under the Public Interest Journalism fund, which is great for keeping multiple sets of investigative eyes regularly focusing on and writing about Hawke’s Bay regional issues which NZ’s commercial media networks have failed to do over recent decades. But I have still missed being involved and getting commissioned to write more.

I still appear to be persona non grata with Radio NZ and still don’t know why and, as for local commercial network media, it can’t be long before our regional paper becomes a couple Hawke’s Bay pages in the NZ Herald and local airwaves regurgitate Jono and Ben 24/7 across the country. Spare us!

This year I did rediscover that even “almost seven years old, Still a bit six” me on Bay City Radio in 1984 could do a better job on local radio than those cronyism clowns can on any of their many simulcast shows across multiple commercial networks.

I do still hold out a faint hope for the TVNZ/RNZ merger, despite commercial networks’ and executives’ worst, self-interested lobbying efforts to scuttle the bill.

I have kept writing, too. If for no other reason than my own entertainment, or to keep myself sane and not feel like I’m just completely, continually screaming into the void.

And I do still seem to be pretty good and capable at it:

A piece I wrote on the sorry state of Hawke’s Bay roading infrastructure, and the State Highway 2 bridge over the Esk River apparently being suddenly unfit for purpose garnered over 1700 views since publishing in August.

Movie of the Year: Top Gun: Maverick

I think I only saw three movies at the cinema this year – Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, Top Gun: Maverick and Thor: Love and Thunder.

Doctor Strange and Thor both had their good points – I got to see Love and Thunder in a cinema all to myself, after taking an afternoon off work to see it, and the Guns n’ Roses soundtrack throughout was gloriously nostalgic – But were reasonably cookie-cutter Marvel fare overall.

Sitting in the darkening cinema as the opening credits started rolling for Top Gun I wondered for a second if the whole movie was just going to be the 1986 original remastered and played in full as the Top Gun Anthem again crescendoed into Kenny Loggins’ epic and timeless “Danger Zone”.. Until F/A-18 Hornets and F-35 Lightning IIs rolled through the carrier deck steam.

The movie was great, and packed with yet more nostalgia, but also more emotionally mature themes – Pete “Maverick” Mitchell had grown, as had his original audience, but still held some old scars and memories, as did his audience.

A scene I loved was where Pete and his old flame and love interest in the movie, Jennifer Connelly’s ‘Penny Benjamin’ are getting intimate when Penny’s teenaged daughter (from a previous, non-Maverick, relationship) comes home unexpectedly.

Pete and Penny are nervous and embarrassed, not wanting her daughter to learn about the rekindling of their relationship, Penny makes Maverick sneak out her first-floor window like a teenager, comically slipping and falling off the roof. He stands up, dusts himself off and come’s face to face with Penny’s daughter – The audience laughs – Busted!

The daughter, stone faced, tells Mitchell “don’t break her heart again” and the laughing stops dead because the audience has been there, too, since 1986.

But, yes, awesome flying scenes, CGI, explosions and a fair chunk of heart also helped make Top Gun: Maverick my movie of the 2022.

Mood of the Year: S.A.D.

Hawke’s Bay saw one of its wettest winters on record in 2022.

Not that it was completely a bad thing – I remember “proper” wet winters growing up in the 80s and, by comparison we’ve had insanely dry years over the past decade where it rained in April and that was it until October, turning Central Hawke’s Bay hills peroxide blonde by November, and outright dead and dirt brown by February, so rain wasn’t altogether unwelcome.

But rain for days and weeks on end made many people sad, or even S.A.D.

Not to be confused with “Unhappy”, though the two can go hand-in-hand, Seasonal Affective Disorder is a form of depression that is often triggered by a change of the seasons, usually in, or towards the winter months.

And in 2022 the winter months just seemed to go on, and on, and on.

Days and weeks of persistent (rather than heavy) rain disrupted events, canceled sports and ruined thousands of plans.

It was the last thing we needed after thinking we had recovered sufficiently from Covid for normal life and events to largely recommence.

All the while the skies remained a morose overcast grey and rain continued to drizzle and drip, dragging the “winter blues” into spring and summer as well.

Score of the year: A Kane Williamson Signed Cricket Bat!

I bought myself a Funko Pop! figure of Indian cricketer Virat Kohli for my birthday this year.

Well, I actually bought TWO.

They were on special at EB Games in Napier for only $15 each, and one’s box was a bit smushed so, in the spirit of my “Year of Creativity” I bought a second one intending to put it into a cricketing diorama of some sort, like I’d done with a Marty McFly Pop! recreating a scene from Back to the Future a couple years ago:

But before I even did the diorama, I made another creative change.

Looking at the figure I realised it wouldn’t take too much to change India’s cricket captain into New Zealand’s captain, Kane Williamson!

They both have similar hairstyles and beards and are both renowned batsmen, so it wouldn’t take much to change one to the other with some paint and finer details.

So that’s exactly what I did!

Other than repainting the head, hair and body the other changes I made were adding Gray-Nicolls stickers to Kane’s bat to make it look like his current NOVA blade and using 1/72 scale model aircraft decals for his shirt number (22) and “New Zealand” branding.

I was happy with the prototype and hoped to show it to and get it signed by the man himself when Napier got its sole men’s international game for the season but, sadly, captain Kane had other plans.

Never mind. I ended up being busy with work and other projects, and the Pop! went on display in my house.

Coincidently I entered a competition to win a signed Kane Williamson bat through Auckland’s Players’ Sports on Instagram a few weeks later..

AND WON IT!

It was a great, fortuitous way to finish off the year!

Now I just have to figure out what sort of display case I’m going to design and make for this full-sized cricket bat in 2023!

Here’s hoping your 2023 is creative, fortuitous and supportive, and thanks for reading Napier in Frame in 2022!

AF

Because I Was Inverted

Do you feel the need?

The need for SPEED?!

Ever since the 1986 blockbuster Top Gun catapulted Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw and their Grumman F14 Tomcat off the deck of an aircraft carrier and into action film folklore with Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone blaring through the speakers I have loved the movie and, especially, the F-14 Tomcat.

With twin engines, twin seats, and variable-sweep wings (they move – “Swing” in and out: Out-stretched for slower and more stable take-offs and landings; Swept back, like an arrow for getting places faster than the speed of sound), in my opinion, the Tomcat remains one of the sexiest pieces of aeronautical jet engineering ever.

Undeniably the coolest scene in Top Gun is in the opening minutes when Tom Cruise’s Maverick flips his F14 Tomcat upside down and flies very close to scare off the newly discovered “MiG 28” enemy fighter jet that is locked onto, and has spooked, his wing-man Cougar.

Maverick says “Greetings!” and flips the bird (gives the finger) to the enemy pilot, while Goose takes a close-up polaroid photo of the enemy aircraft from his RIO’s back seat (for military intelligence purposes).

The plan works, and the MiG “bugs out”, leaving the American jets to return to their Aircraft carrier, the USS Enterprise.

I have long dreamed of recreating that “inverted” scene as a model diorama, but there were several hurdles in the way.

I had made a number of model Tomcats over the years in different scales (1/72, 1/48 and 1/144), but had never been able to find one with Top Gun markings until I was on my way home from my last trip to Auckland and stopped for breakfast in Taupo.

With the sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” on the horizon Airfix had re-released their original 1/72 scale movie kits and I grabbed this kit the moment I saw it in Taupo Hobbies.

I took my time building it slowly and carefully, not wanting to make any errors. It came together really easily and well! There were no problems from construction to painting.

I even masked and painted canopy lines for the first time ever, with the results far better than I had expected!

The decals went on without issue and, again for the first time, I sprayed clear coat over the plane to seal them and stop the decal insignia from eventually flaking off like has happened on a few of my older kits.

I even painted the figures with colored helmets to resemble Mav’ and Goose, tilting their heads back with pliers to look like they are looking (up/) down on the MiG’s pilot.

Aircraft anoraks will readily tell you that the “MiG 28s” in the original Top Gun weren’t MiGs, or even Russian at all – They were American Northrop F-5E (single seat) and F-5F (twin seat) Tiger IIs.

The continuity in Top Gun’s opening dog fight scene flips and flops a bit – The plane that Maverick sneaks up on is rather clearly a single-seat E variant from the distant shots:

But then, seconds later, as the inverted Tomcat and the “MiG” are almost canopy-to-canopy, the MiG has miraculously morphed into a twin-seat F-5F!

(We’ll forgive them – It was the 80s and lots of movies that tried to replicate Top Gun’s aesthetic made far worse errors – At least Tony Scott had the same model of plane…)

Try as I might, I was unable to find an Italeri F-5F – the ideal twin-seat kit for what I wanted, but I was able to get a single-seat “MiG 28” from Twitter friend Justin Ryan who had ordered some kits from Japan and kindly added a Hobby Boss F-5E kit to his order for me.

Once again, an easy uncomplicated build, paint and marking job had two elements of my dream diorama all set.

Now for the diorama itself!

I had seen a couple model recreations of the “inverted” scene online that used clear plastic rods as the supports for the planes, with the rods drilled into a wooden base and heated and curved up and around before slotting into the planes’ jet exhausts to give them a near-horizontal (the rods inevitably drooped under the weight of the planes along the long length of the acrylic rods), mid-air appearance.

But these displays were all open and uncovered – A disaster waiting to happen when it came to dusting, which they would inevitably need in short order.

So I started thinking of covered alternatives.

Boxes were too cumbersome and framing could block some angles of view or wreck the illusion of flight that in was trying to replicate.

So I considered a clear plastic tube, or perhaps the whole thing in clear plastic!

In Napier we have a plastic fabricating company called Classique Plastics who I previously used for the clear sheet on the front of my recycled Rimu Pint Sized Hero display case.

When I went to scope my.plans out they happened to have a cut-off of the exact diameter and length of clear tube I was after already in their stocks!

I asked for them to make an all-acrylic display I had planned amd sketched out, but they ended up being very busy with commercial jobs and after a few weeks I decided I wanted to try something different, as i was uncertain the plastic rods would hold the weight of the planes as I had imagined.

So I designed something more multi-media.

I bought a slightly longer than originally planned length of clear plastic tube from Classique (this alone was over $100, so I dread to think how much the whole thing in clear acrylic would have cost!) and went in search of some round Rimu and stainless steel rods.

The rods I couldn’t source locally, but found and ordered from Bay Hobbies in Tauranga.

I got recycled Rimu floorboard “plug” ends made to fit on a CNC machine by local woodworkers Stim Craftmanship.

I had one edge of the round Rimu trimmed flat so the display could stand by itself without rolling everywhere.

Then I took one of the plug ends to my father-in-law’s workshop and very carefully measured and drilled holes for the stainless steel support rods to fit into, making sure they would be close enough together to replicate the inverted scene from the movie, but not so close that the planes touched.

The results were pretty neat perfect:

I’ve been fortunate this year to have a very successful streak of crafty creations.

Aside from a few speed bumps along the way with this project everything went exceptionally well and i am really happy with the result!

Radio (Controlled) Car-Car!

When I was younger, I dreamed of owning a Tamiya radio-controlled car.

At the time they were far too expensive and technical for my pocket money, or engineering ability.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more confident in my creative capabilities.

I also earn slightly more pocket money now than I used to when I was ten…

So, when I was able to cash in on some of my favorite childhood toys I took the opportunity to fulfill my Tamiya target!

As usual, I went to my local hobby shop, Cool Toys, who have a fantastic range of radio-controlled kits and ready-to-run vehicles.

After watching far too many YouTube videos I decided to get a Tamiya TT-02 kit, as it is very adaptable to different forms of bodies and on-road and off-road formats.

I must say I was still quite intimidated when I opened the box and was confronted with numerous bags of screws, multiple sprues of parts and an instruction manual the size of a novella.

The first part of the kit I made were the shock absorbers.

I had been tempted to get oil-filled performance shocks but decided to start off easily (and cheaply – Oil-filled shocks are over $100 for a set of four). They were also an easy part of the kit to build and give a sense of the kit’s construction being well under way.

(This wouldn’t ACTUALLY be the case until I started on the drivetrain.)

Gears, grease, screws and repeat, gears, grease, screws and repeat!

This is one of the parts of the build I feared stuffing up the most, as it appeared so fiddly.

As we know, however, appearances can be deceiving, and everything seemed to fit together without too much hassle, stress, blood or hair loss.

Next the motor went in (and out a couple times later on testing out the wheels), and the gear housings covered up all the greased-up bits.

The shocks I made up first off were no longer held in suspension (see what I did there?) as they were finally attached to the wheel assemblies on either end.

Universal joints and drive shafts will also provide power to all four corners of my RC beastie!

Giving the car some direction was next.

Steering set up was another rather intimidatingly technical bit, not least because I had heard and read several times about over-tightening screws de-threading softer plastic parts, so there was some added caution in this part of construction.

I think I got it all Goldilocks – I.e. not too loose, not too tight, JUST RIGHT!

On went the wheels (the smell of Tamiya rubber tyres has always been intoxicating!) and we were pretty much done! (after disassembling and reassembling half the bloody drive assembly because I unknowingly had the driveshaft and wheel bearings around the wrong way until trying, unsuccessfully, to fit the rims on..)

With the steering servo connected up It was time to give the chassis some cover and curves.

The kit I chose came with a 1998 Ford Escort shell.

The early 90s WRC Escort Cosworth was one of my favorite rally cars of all time. I made the scale model of the 1994 Cosworth RS many years ago, so this was an easy choice.

After buying the special curved polycarbonate scissors from Cool Toys I carefully cut around the exterior of the body shell to get it the right shape.

This body came with the wheel arches pre-cut, which made life easier, and the kit look smoother than my later work on the other body I bought.

After masking up the windows (also one of the more stressful parts of the build – you don’t want to get this far then ruin its appearance!) I sprayed the body (you spray the INSIDE of these models – the plastic body helps shield the finished paintwork) in four coats of Tamiya PS16 Metallic Blue giving it a similar color to the Subaru Impreza WRC rally car of the same era.

I managed to avoid any paint bleed under the masking and once that and the outer coating were peeled off and decals were added to the outside of the body the results were STUNNING!

I sprayed the windows in Tamiya PS31 Smoke to help hide the electronics inside the car.

One of the underlying reasons I chose the Escort and painted it in metallic blue is that my first long-term car (my very first car was a Ford Anglia that Dad and I partially restored in my last year of high school until it died of rear crossmember rust about a year later) was a metallic blue 1983 Ford Laser – kind of the Escort’s Mum/Dad.

It was an awesome, incredibly reliable car that served me really well, so I built this kit as a homage to that Laser.

I even used a label maker to recreate its number plate!

Is it a Bird? Is it a Plane? Not it’s V8 Supercar!

While scoping out my RC car purchase, I noted that Glen at Cool Toys had a Tamiya TT-02 Ford Mustang body shell and an after-market sticker sheet with the livery for Dick Johnson Racing modern Kiwi legend Scott McLaughlin‘s Australian V8 Supercar:

Despite being a fan of DJR arch-rivals Holden Racing Team from back in the Peter Brock and Mark Skaife days I couldn’t resist – I had to have a go at replicating the awesome looking DJR Mustang!

So, once I had completed the Escort, I moved onto the more complex task of cutting out, masking and painting (, and masking and painting, and masking and painting) Tamiya PS1 White, PS2 Red, PS6 Yellow and PS31 Smoke onto the Mustang to give it DJR’s iconic three-tone paint scheme.

With several coats, different colors, respraying, decalling and a few whoopsies I was finally able to make a realistic recreation that looked pretty bloody awesome if I do say so myself (just don’t look at the back of it..)!

Final Thoughts

Over-all this was a really easy, enjoyable experience with almost everything going right!

If anything the one big downside of the build is that I’m really annoyed at and disappointed in myself that my fear of inability kept me from building one of these kits a lot earlier in life!

(This is probably moot, though, as it wasn’t until recently that I had anywhere near the disposable income to afford making one.)

My Twitter friend Justin Ryan very kindly donated a hand controller and receiver he had spare to help get me going, so now I just have to get a nickel metal hydride battery, and I can start burning RC rubber!

Old Pain, Financial Gain!

MASK produced a series of children’s books which I collected. These were bought by a guy from Philidelphia, USA last year!

Nostalgia has been getting the better of me of late.

Whether it’s appearing on radio as a child, or dreams of building radio-controlled cars I could never afford, the past has been a bit of a focus for me recently

I had a bit of a clean out a few months ago.

I’ve slowly been whittling down the stockpile of 80s toys I grew up with and the most recent collection I divested myself of was my MASK toys.

MASK, or “Mobile Armored Strike Kommand” (sic) was an American toy line and kids’ cartoon series that began in 1985 and featured regular-looking vehicles that transformed into fighter planes, helicopters, boats, submarines and other types of offensive and defensive mobile weapon platforms.

It was very cool and very popular!

I was fortunate enough to collect several of them over the years, mainly on birthdays and Christmases (I got Rhino for Christmas in 1985 or 86), eventually holding onto four that I liked the most:

Condor – The smallest, cheapest and first MASK toy I got turns from a cool green motorcycle into an even cooler mini helicopter!

Thunderhawk – Quite possibly the coolest, Thunderhawk was the “hero vehicle” of the series and the prime vehicle of MASK leader Matt Trakker

Jackhammer – The only VENOM (Vicious Evil Network of Mayhem), “baddie” vehicle I got, but also one of the coolest looking, being a black Ford Bronco 4X4. I got this for my 8th birthday.

And finally, the biggest and best:

Rhino – MASK’s big-rig mobile command vehicle. Huge, with lots of chrome, buttons and spring-loaded features!

While they were very cool and I loved them, they had also spent the better part of 30 years in boxes in various wardrobes, seldom seeing the light of day, which was a shame because they should be out being appreciated and enjoyed.

YouTube is full of videos of toy collectors’ hordes in brightly lit glass display cases.

I decided my MASK toys deserved that and, maybe, the money I made from selling them could help finance my new radio-controlled car goal, so I shared some pictures of them on an 80s Toys Facebook group I belong to and, from the reactions listed all four of them on Trademe.

With starting prices amounting to around $250 (not unreasonable given their age, rarity and great condition – I loved and looked after my toys) I was stunned to earn over double that when the auctions ended!

All the toys were ultimately bought by the same bidder, so it was good to be able to keep them all together in their new home.

With the money raised I had enough to buy the Tamiya RC car I desired!

But that is a tale for another post...

Spit in the Sea

I love making models.

It reminds me of fun times with my Dad, and is one creative pursuit I’m not rubbish at!

I’ve been doing it since I was a kid, but more seriously in the last 15 or so years, getting more detailed and technical, but still never to the level of a “rivet-counter“, or “anorak“.

I thought it was making a post out of this build, though, because it’s one of the most technical builds I’ve ever done.

Picture and excerpts from the book “A History of the Mediterranean Air War, 1940–1945: Sicily and Italy to the Fall of Rome 14 May, 1943–5 June” by Christopher Shores et al

Background

The picture above is of a Mk.Vc Supermarine Spitfire that had been forced to crash-land / “ditch” on the beach of Salerno, southern Italy in 1943 after being hit in the engine during the allied landings as part of their invasion of the country in World War 2.

I’d been wanting to built an American Spitfire for some time and this picture caught my eye.

It was an American squadron – The big white star surrounded by a blue circle was one of the US Air Force’s insignia during WWII – and the subject matter looked cool: it was partly submerged / beached.

Being beached I could do something new I had never done before – use clear resin to cast water as a base!

Get Your Kit On

I found the ideal kit – An Airfix 1/72 Mk.Vc Spitfire which happened to have the exact “MX P” markings at my local model shop, Cool Toys, in Napier and got it on sale with another Airfix kit of a German Focke-Wulf Fw 190 over the Christmas / New Year holiday last year.

During my summer break I built them with another model I had in my stash – an American P-51D Mustang.

I tend to make models in batches of two or three, so you can do parts of one while waiting for glue or paint to dry on the others.

I also have a thing where for every Spitfire I build, I have to do a Mustang, too – I currently have eight of each in 1/72 scale. I have to keep my display balanced!

It helps that these two planes are some of the most prevralent model subjects out there and, particularly the Mustang, are a fantastic chrome canvas for so many different squadron paint schemes and types of nose art.

I did a bit of “kit-bashing” by cutting out the drop-down pilot’s door, which was just cast as part of the fuselage.

The kit came together really easily and was a pleasure to build.

It looked pretty cool once painted and decaled, too!

(Don’t) Drop the Base.

By father-in-law had some scrap 10mm plywood lying around his workshop that happened to be just the right dimensions for the diorama’s base.

I squared it up, then used his bench saw to rout out 3/4 of the ply to form the part where the sea would be, with the higher section being the beach.

I knew I wanted to use clear epoxy resin for the sea, but wasn’t sure if I wanted it all to be a freestanding block, or contained somehow.

As this was my first attempt at casting resin I decided that using a base with a frame would be easier, so I cut four additional 1cm thick strips to surround the base, nailed and glued them in place and gave it a quick squirt of varnish.

Next, for the beach I used model railway ballast – a course sand that is spread over model train tracks and scenery to simulate gravel.

The two 1/72 figures were given to me by my Twitter friend and fellow modeler, Phil Tanner.

Unlike the original scene where it appears the men are a soldier and a Military Policeman (hence the arm band), I used a pilot figure and another airman. It gave more of a “Well, you stuffed that up!” vibe.

I slathered the base in PVA glue, before liberally shaking a capful of the ballast over top and shaking off the excess sand.

Voila! A beach worthy of Napier’s Marine Parade!

Resin to the Challenge

Time to make the sea!

After some online research and emailing the retailer with some questions I ordered Easy Cast clear casting epoxy from Resincraft in Auckland. I also got some blue dye to give the resin a more aquatic tinge, but when finished I don’t think I put enough in, as it still looks pretty clear.

The mixing and pouring only takes a few minutes, but I took my time getting the measurements right so I didn’t have too little, and the plane would look like it was sitting in a mere puddle, or too much and I waste resin, or it overflowed everywhere.

Once mixed and poured I spent some time getting rid of the tiny bubbles that float to the surface through the mixing process, but they dissipated quickly and 24 hours later “the sea” looked glossy, clear and solid!

The resin set perfectly, but very smoothly. Some ocean motion was required.

Final Flourish

Lastly I got gel medium to make some waves.

While the resin looks fantastic, it also looks like flat glass, not the ideal facsimile of an Italian seaside).

There are a bunch of YouTube videos on how to make waves with gel medium, though they’re normally part of bigger videos of casting resin as water / sea. They give good demonstrations of the best application techniques for getting general oceanic surface disturbance.

Even with the gel medium still wet (it dries clear) it looks.like a blustery day on Hawke Bay!

I got another Twitter friend, Steve Blade of Davy Engravers Hamilton, to make a little name plate for the scene.

As the soldiers in the original photo were looking quite bemusedly at the beached plane, and I had heard the term several times in jest recently I thought what better title than “You Can’t Park There, Mate!”.

I’m super happy with the finished product!

Some builds fight you every step of the way – this was not one of them.

Everything just went right, making this a really fun, enjoyable build and an educational extension of my modeling skills.

I think Dad would be pretty proud!

A Pint-Sized Display

A while ago I wrote about my collection of Funko Pint Sized Heroes (“PSH”), Pop! figures and other pop-culture toys.

Over the last few years I amassed quite a collection and, rather than keeping them in a plastic bag in a draw, I wanted to display them, but had nowhere appropriate to do it.

So I decided to make something.

Cleaning up our woodshed one day I came across a pile of old, native Rimu wood floorboards:

 

There were enough, and of sufficient size, to make a display case for my PSH!

I measured them out, cut them to length and cut off the tongue and groove edges: 

 

I put a call out on Facebook for some kind of planer to tidy up the boards, and my old Tamatea Primary School friend, Mike Wyatt, put them through his thicknesser.

The gorgeous results had me moaning “Grains, GRAINS!” all zombie-like:

 

More cutting for plywood shelves to slide in and the potential for a Perspex front got us to the framing level:

 

A thin plywood back gave it some solidity and rigidity, too:

Now, to sort out what went where – Easier said than done with a rather diverse collection and several shelves. Do I dare mix DC and Marvel characters?

Do I organize via height, colour, or the order in which they were purchased?:

We had some left-over Resene Test Pots from rock painting and other art projects with my daughter, and one left-over pot was just enough to paint the interior of the display case:

 

A top coat of some metallic paint we used for highlight stripes in my daughter’s room a few years ago added some comic book pizazz to the finish:

 

A sheet of clear plastic from Napier’s Classique Plastics slid perfectly into place (after a little bit of extra chiseling – my carpentry is still far from perfect..) to keep dust off my collection:

 

And I glued each figure onto the shelves to avoid them all rolling about at the slightest bump:

 

The final result looks pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself:

 

As with my model tank and medal memorial display for Dad, I said I’m not the most handy of handymen, so I used to avoid doing stuff like this.

But after having a few little successes like these my confidence is growing and I have begun to genuinely enjoy working on them.

This may be just the beginning!

A Medal Memorial for Dad

This is a 1/48 scale Valentine tank I built earlier this year.
My Dad drove them as part of his Compulsory Military Training in the 1950’s, so I built it to honor his memory and service.

I love making models. 

A few years ago I found a rare 1/48 scale model of a Valentine Tank – the type my Dad told me he drove when he was doing his Compulsory Military Training years ago.

While clearing out one of their sheds I even found the pennants from his intake!

I discovered a few years ago that he might be eligible for the New Zealand Defense Service Medal, as the government had opened the criteria to include those who did CMT.

Dad was never much of a medal person, but he was a hero to me and he spent a lot of time serving others – having been a public servant for various central and local government departments for years of his working life.

So I applied to get his military records and then applied for and, in turn, received his medal last year.

Dad always spoke favorably of doing his CMT and it was heartening to discover he got promoted from Trooper to Lance Corporal during his CMT service!

So with the tank and his medal as well as his old beret badges and a glass case I repurposed from a diecast model I had recently sold I wanted to make some form of memorial plaque, or diorama to honor him.

I headed onto social media to see if any of my friends had a piece of native timber that I could use as a base and Ben Keehan provided the woody goodies!

I’ve never been the most tool-crafty person (this was Dad’s department), but I wanted to make an exception with this project and, with the hardware of my father-in-law’s garage and some supervision from him, I was able to cut, drill and sand the rough piece of timber into a gorgeous, grainy goodie!

With the glass case seated nicely I made a few fine-tunings (including using our neighbor’s mitre saw to angle the front of the base in the middle of cutting posts for the new fence we were building between our properties) I gave it a couple spray coats of varnish and glued on some model train ballast to give a more realistic base for the tank.

The results were just what I wanted:

Dad’s medal memorial will take pride of place wherever it is placed.

A great reminder of my Dad, his service, commitment, and even a homage to his fine carpentry skills that may have not been completely lost on me after all.

It is a wonderful wee thing to look at now, knowing that I was able to do it.

For him.