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.

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

A Blast From the Radio Past!

Napier’s “Broadcasting House”, now renamed for current tenants NZME. Bay City Radio occupied the top floor. The studio I did the kids’ show in was the windows directly above the main ground floor door.

Years and years and years ago I was on the radio.

This is before appearing on RNZ’s The Panel a mere six times in 2018-19.

Or doing midnight-till-dawns for six months on Hot 93 in Hastings in the dying days of local radio in the mid 90s.

Or even volunteering at Radio Kidnappers Access Radio while in high school.

In August 1984 I got to be the “Co-Pilot” on Bay City Radio’s Sunday morning kids’ show.

Bay City Radio 1278AM was THE local radio station for Hawke’s Bay for years and years. This is back when radio was broadcast locally, the announcers were locals (and some became minor local celebrities) and its constant focus was the local community.

There was a weekday breakfast show, talkback radio from about 9am until midday, with music in the afternoon and evenings.

On Saturday mornings all the upcoming local sporting fixtures for the weekend were promoted or dissected and commentary of big games, like the HB Magpies playing at McLean Park were often broadcast live in the afternoons.

On Sunday mornings there was a kids’ show, which had a local kid as co-host, or “Co-Pilot” (I don’t remember pressing any buttons, or taking charge of any controls, though.)

The Tamatea Hawks! I’m middle, back row (as always) Robert Stewart is to the left of me with the rounded collar. That’s his Dad, the radio announcer who coached us that year.

My friend Robert Stewart’s dad worked at Bay City Radio for a bit (they moved away not long after) and I though radio was pretty cool – I listened to the kids’ show every week, so must have written in, like so many others, asking to be part of it and I got selected.

I remember excitedly reading the letter we received confirming my selection in the driveway of our home one Saturday morning.

There was a few weeks’ notice of my appearance on the show, but I don’t remember much more than that, or the events of the big day itself.

Dad took me to the station early on Sunday morning (it was after dawn, but not by much), while Mum stayed at home and recorded the event on a cassette tape (kids, if you don’t know what one of these is, ask your parents…. Actually, you might be best asking your grandparents.)

I had found the tape when I was clearing out things at Mum and Dad’s place years ago but more recently looking through the mementos in my shed, I couldn’t find it and thought the tape was lost to the ages.

A couple weeks ago we gave away a large pinboard we had been given by a friend, but never got around to using. It had been leaning up against some garage cupboards that I had limited access to.

In one of these cupboards I found the metal cash box I wrote about originally finding amongst my folks’ possessions.

I looked inside the cash box AND FOUND THE CASSETTE TAPE!

However, I didn’t know if it would even still work – We no longer had any cassette players in the house, the tape itself was close to 40 years old, and I remember it got tangled up at least once or twice during replays years ago, so I wasn’t certain if any audio was recoverable.

I took the tape into Dean Mardon at Electric City Music in Napier, just down Dalton Street from Bay City Radio’s old studio, now “NZME House” (see top picture, ECM is down the road to the left in the picture) to see if he could digitize whatever was on there for me.

The condition of the tape wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared and there was almost a full hour of recording!

I gave the file to a work colleague, who happens to be a former TVNZ audio man to clean up and, to avoid copyright infringements, remove any songs so I could upload it to YouTube.

For those playing at home the songs removed are: The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, “Flick the Little Fire Engine”, “You’re a Pink Toothbrush “, Rolf Harris’ “Two Little Boys” (hindsight is 20/20 etc…), “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” from Mary Poppins and the show closes out with, quite prophetically, Kermit the Frog singing “Rainbow Connection”.

You can listen to the edited version of it here:

I cried listening to it for the first time in over 35 years.

It’s a bit funny, a bit cringey, certainly nostalgic and, today, a bit sad, because I can hear my Mum’s voice, or rather her speech patterns in how I talked back then, and I can remember Dad sitting quietly in the corner of the studio, over my right shoulder, pleased as Punch.

For years I remembered it as my friend Robert’s dad as the host of the show, but it was a man named Colin Harris.

We talk about my school, Tamatea Primary, my apparent bus driving career aspirations (??), what I was doing in the school holidays (my studio stint was in the middle of the second and third term of the year – there were only three school terms back then), I say “Hi!” to my friends and <Gasp!> girlfriends (I was only six, OK?!)

I even got to do the weather!

Time has sadly robbed my memory of some of the finer details – I have no recollection whatsoever of a couple of my friends and one apparent “love interest” mentioned, and the fact I had to Google the movie “Sword of the Valiant“, which I say I wanted to see (most likely at the State Cinema diagonally across the Dickens / Dalton Streets intersection from the station) probably indicates I never got to see it.

Mrs Unwin’s class, 1984. I, back row, middle, look like a serial killer in waiting because the photographer kept telling me to “look down” so I would fit in the picture. I took stage instruction seriously.

My first foray in front of a microphone probably wouldn’t win many awards with several long, thought-filled pauses (dreaded “dead air” as it’s called in the industry), but there are still some moments of brilliance for an almost seven-year-old that make the likes of today’s simulcast announcers sound like a pack of un-funny men-children (#SpoilerAlert: That’s not hard to do, but sadly no one better is given the chance to!)

It was, however, the start of a lifelong dream for me to be on radio. A dream that has mostly only seen failure over the last three decades, as local radio in Hawke’s Bay has been cut back and cut back, undermined and undermined.

I have said that I don’t suffer from the “old pain” of nostalgia, but some recent events do poke at old wounds, gnawing “what-ifs” irritate and sometimes you just miss your Mum and Dad who did lots of little things like taking you to a radio station, and recording you on a cassette tape years ago.

I would be “almost seven, still a bit six” in this photo

Ra Whanau Ki a Koe, Breakfast!

Next week on August 11 TVNZ’s Breakfast show turns 25 – a quarter of a century on air!

Prior to 1997 live weekday morning news television in New Zealand was pretty much non-existent. We were aware places like America and Australia had it, but it wasn’t on the NZ public, or media radar.

The only similar programme I can think of in terms of live production in the mornings with such a long legacy is What Now! which has been going on Sunday mornings (originally on Saturdays) for almost 40 years.

1997 was long before the 24 hour news cycle, the spread of the internet (we still had dial-up at our house until the late 2000s) and social media, so if there was live television on New Zealand televisions in the morning it was either an All Blacks game / the Olympics on the other side of the world, or something very bad had happened locally.

Today breakfast news often sets the televisual tone and topic for the day – Covering what has happened at home and overseas during the night, outlining important events that are expected to occur locally that day and interviewing those involved. The lunchtime bulletin at midday acts as a progress report and the traditional 6pm news – the pinnacle of New Zealand’s news landscape for generations almost acting more as a roundup and post-mortem of the day’s events.

Breakfast’s first of many hosts in 1997 were Mike Hosking and Susan Wood.

Breakfast felt cool and new. It was off the cuff, like local breakfast radio, but larger, more dynamic and on screen. Live filming made it feel more genuine, original and informal than the polished, rehearsed news bulletins.

This was also before Hosking’s career and ego made the Fourth Circle of Dante’s Inferno look like broad daylight. He was more down to earth and even, dare I say it, “cool”(?) then, to the point where he was (good naturedly) parodied on What Now and the local comedy skit shows of the time.

I had dreamed of being part of TVNZ, or just TV IN NZ, ever since I was a kid growing up watching What Now, After School, Telethon, Town & Around, Children of the Dog Star and the plethora of fantastic, locally produced shows that were created in that golden era of NZ television production – the 1980s.

Watching Breakfast brought this dream into adulthood. I remember seeing a Christmas “Behind the scenes” segment at the end of the first or second season that made me want to get into television again (and develop a brief televisual crush on a bespeckled reporter named Pippa).

I’d been working in radio only a year or two before and this looked like the next logical, aspirational goal.

I never got near that goal.

I did, however, soon get a job that would see me doing breakfast television hours, just without the cameras, fame, or fortune for the next 18 years.

And now as a parent the chances of watching Breakfast much on my mornings off are few and far between, as my daughter usually wields the remote and The Moe Show, Bluey, or more recently YouTube and Disney+ rule our sole television screen, so I seldom get to see much of the show past 7am.

Missing out on a large chunk of Breakfast’s mid to late 2000s and 2010s wasn’t all bad – I did miss out the majority of the supernovaing of Hosking and Henry as hosts and their cults of “(TV) personality”.

But Breakfast did at least go where many other TV shows had never gone before – Regional New Zealand!

On the Road

With it’s early morning hours Breakfast is unlike many NZ television shows, and unlike most New Zealand media networks simulcasting across New Zealand, it actually gets out there amongst the locals and different locations across the country on a regular basis.

Breakfast has made it to Napier on a couple of occasions, broadcasting live from the Soundshell on Marine Parade, showing off our region and stunning live sunrises over Hawke Bay.

TVNZ Breakfast broadcasting live from Napier’s Sound Shell February 2020

These shows usually had one of their cast inevitably be dressed up in Art Deco attire, or some similar interactive performative element. It’s certainly something associated with the city due to the architectural style at the time of rebuilding after the 1931 earthquake, but for us locals it began to feel a bit forced, twee and repetitive, after a couple decades of being ever-present and ever-pushed by the city council’s promoters, Art Deco devotees and local tourism organizations.

Their roving reporters and weather people often get out and about, too.

The morning after the deluge of Napier’s November 2020 floods Breakfast’s Matty McLean was reporting live from a semi-submerged Whitmore Park in Marewa – the suburb hardest hit by the flooding as well as visiting and interviewing those whose homes were effected or damaged by the flooding.

This provides an important, tangible connection with viewers as it proves (at least some of) “these Auckland media people” are actually real, and not just some disembodied and disenfranchised voice or face that only exist in the form of broadcast media.

During the nation-wide Covid 19 lockdown of 2020 the show helped provide a steady stream of news, information and, most importantly, personal connection at a time when we were all quarantined at home.

During that period Breakfast even had viewers Zoom, or Skype in to be “guest weather presenters” and do the forecasts for the show.

My Twitter friend, and fellow tall, hairy Andrew F, Andrew Feldon, who runs Mouthwater Coffee in Palmerston North was one of these Sky Soothsaying Skypers. It was like l’d almost fulfilled my dream vicariously!

The Dream Team

I had a recurring dream last year in which I got to meet John Campbell in person. I’ve interacted with him on social media several times, but never “IRL” (“In Real Life”, #Hashtag, YOLO GST, PhD etc…)

In the dream I meet John on set or behind the scenes at Breakfast and he promises to get me on television, either Breakfast, or my own show. It’s unclear how, or why as the dream ends about this point and the details disappear with conciousness.

Many in TVNZ’s news and current affairs talent pool have gotten their big television break, or at least worked on Breakfast at some stage in the past quarter century.

From fame to infamy and, in some cases later on in their lives or careers, being enabled to be purposefully inflammatory and even outright conspiracy misinformationy a number of people have presented and been involved in the show, but my favorite core presenters over the last 25 years has been the most recent lineup of Indira Stewart, Jenny-May Clarkson, Matty McLean, Melissa Stokes and John Campbell.

They were almost certainly the most diverse group to host the show and together represented a wider cross-section of New Zealand than ever before.

When he left the show to pursue more in-depth journalism with TVNZ, John gave a marvelous parting monologue pointing out the diversity of the show and his fellow presenters – Te Reo now being an integral part of the show’s vocabulary, the advancement of LGBTQI+ rights, recognizing the wrongs of racial discrimination and actions like the dawn raids of the 70s, and the importance of inclusiveness and multiculturalism to modern New Zealand society and media.

The more readily outraged out there would call this “woke”, or “PC gone mad!”.

It’s not.

It’s recognizing injustice. It’s being sympathetic, empathetic and supportive. It’s shining a light into dark places that need illumination for the wrongs there to be exposed and righted.

It’s human, it’s New Zealand, and it’s beautiful.

Not a dry eye in the house.

Love your work, team!

NZ’s Next Top Breakfast Presenter

The presenter they brought in to fill John Campbell’s immense shoes (and incredibly stylie socks) didn’t last long and the fallout of that is still ongoing.

Other media networks gleefully trumpeted imminent doom for Breakfast on the eve of it’s anniversary, but that was simply never going to happen.

One fewer host does not a Breakfast show un-make.

It may be worth remembering that the stars of some of these networks had significant roles on Breakfast or with TVNZ in the past, which aided them getting where they are today. Crying “nepotism!” now may not be the stable moral high ground they think they are on.

But it did expose something that had been quite obvious to outsiders for a while now: That, like other NZ media networks, TVNZ’s talent selection processes, in this case at least, had been less than open or diverse.

The chances of Andrew from Palmy and/or Andrew from Napier getting any full-time job in television despite their best weather presenting, writing, or Tweeting efforts are microscopic compared to a favored few who somehow seem to get multiple hosting rolls across multiple networks and multiple media formats without the amateur meteorological, journalistic and social media skills, or talent.

Here’s to Another 25 Years!

Here are my suggestions for how Breakfast can keep going for another 25 years:

1/ Keep Broadening the Talent Pool:

The show has proven how reflecting a wide cross-section of New Zealand society and cultures is an important part of a truly representative media.

We constantly hear the term “a plurality of voice” bandied about in terms of goals for New Zealand media.

To me that means voices (plural) from all walks of life, from all across New Zealand on the airwaves.

To media executives in recent decades it means the same few voices simulcast across the country on a plurality of stations and frequencies who used to have their own individual voices, or the same people who host a nationally broadcast radio show in the morning being given another platform on national television in the evening, or vice versa.

This isn’t a true “plurality of voice”, and it certainly isn’t fair on all the voices we don’t get to hear.

2/ Keep Getting Out There!

The world is a much smaller place than it used to be.

Television shows that “had” to be produced in Auckland no longer do. Providing you have a good internet or satellite connection you can record and broadcast from anywhere – Even Hawke’s Bay!

Imagine getting your morning news fix with this as the live background!

Spreading assets across the country also means less chance of disruption if unforeseen circumstances cause one centralized studio to be out of action.

Despite their slogan in a recent ad campaign this is one assumption TVNZ got badly wrong.

The rapid advancement of technology also means it is far cheaper to run and maintain small-scale broadcast facilities in multiple locations. Imagine what a difference to our viewing and listening landscape reinstating teams of TVNZ and RNZ reporters across the country (not just in the main centers) would make to the diversity of news coverage!

These ideas are particularly relevant given the upcoming merger of Television New Zealand and Radio New Zealand has a strong emphasis on public broadcasting and Public Interest Journalism. There is more impetus than ever before for more NZ media to spread their wings like Breakfast has done and rove across the country telling locals’ stories.

If they need someone extra in Napier I know a guy… Even if he has a voice for television and a face for radio…

So happy 25th birthday, TVNZ Breakfast!

Here’s to another 25 years of informing, entertaining and exploring Aotearoa!

Whoa, We’re Half Way There!

Well, we’ve crossed the half-way mark of 2022!

This year has been a bit of a test of stamina and fortitude and has certainly made a lot of people feel a lot older than they are.

Personally I’ve been feeling much older, tireder and sadder than usual, and that was before I tested positive for Covid a few weeks ago.

I was fortunate to be almost completely asymptomatic while testing positive, which is great health-wise (I would have gladly felt sicker if it meant those who have suffered through their symptoms could have some relief), but it was frustrating to be stuck in quarantine while feeling fine – Much like my Adventures in Tachycardia years ago.

It’s gave me some time to write, which was great after months of being too busy, or too demoralized to do it.

It also gave me some time to think, which wasn’t such a great thing.

Because I’ve been going through a bit of a mid-life crisis recently.

Feeling My Age

After all the carry-on of recent years, like everyone else, I was looking forward to a bit of a break this year – a silver lining after a couple years of cloud.

At Christmas I got Dave Grohl’s autobiographical “The Storyteller”

I love the Foo Fighters.

I have all their albums and the last concert I went to before the “proper adulthood” of becoming a parent was their show at Western Springs in 2011. So when then the band announced they would be touring Australasia later this year I was looking forward to going and seeing. them in Wellington.

But then their drummer, Taylor Hawkins, died suddenly, and all tours were understandably canceled.

More pressingly it potentially meant the imminent end of the Foo Fighters.

They have had a fantastic run: 28 years, over 10 albums, millions of fans and a permanent place at the alter of Rock & Roll.

But the threat of losing a cultural cornerstone in my life suddenly made me feel really old.

It occurred to me that to my daughter the Foo Fighters are what The Eagles were to me – Memorable, good music, but old.

Like me.

Because this year I’ll be turning 45.

Where Did the Years Go?

Last year I applied for a promotion at the company I have been working at for almost two decades. I have been in what is essentially an entry-level position for the duration. I’ve requested training or transfer during this time, but have been constantly overlooked while my supervisors have move onward, upward, or outward with triennial regularity.

One manager even told me my position “wasn’t worth (external) training” during the “austerity years” of the Global Financial Crisis.

So when one of these supervisor positions came up I applied. It was shortlisted to myself and the office’s new university graduate, who had been with us for one year. The graduate started primary school the year I started with the company (literally – we worked it out).

Naturally the graduate got the promotion and I missed out.

I felt massively disappointed and let down, but I wasn’t surprised.

Almost 20 years is a very long time to dedicate yourself to a job with unsociable hours, doing almost exactly the same things every day, week, month and year.

It felt like I have wasted a huge chunk of my working life.

These years have also seen a lot of upheavals in and effecting my life:

Understandably it’s hard to gain or maintain momentum in such choppy seas.

While it’s been an ungrateful job not letting me develop something resembling a career, it has at least been a stable job and income, allowing us to somehow live comfortably as a single-income family making just over the average wage in a time when many multiple-income families seriously struggle to make ends meet.

It feels like I’ve already lived several lifetimes in less than two decades, while, due to the unrelenting repetition of my job it simultaneously feels like I blinked in 2013 and suddenly find myself here in 2022.

Worse still, a couple years ago my my daughter’s primary school had a Kapa Haka performance. Her school hall was too small, so they used the auditorium at my old secondary school – Tamatea High.

I sat in my old school auditorium where I did lighting, theater and orchestra, had assemblies, dances and prizegivings, in the same chairs, in the same row as three women who all went to that school with me (our daughters all happen to be friends) it occurred to me it was 25 years to the day since we last all sat there at our final assembly and prizegiving in 1995.

A quarter of a century!

Where had my life gone?!

Parental Guidance Required

Losing both parents before the age of 40 hasn’t helped.

Most of my friends still have at least one, often both parents still alive. I no longer have that moral, financial, or physical support there any more.

And sometimes all you need is your Mum or Dad just being there to tell you it’s OK, you are valued by someone.

Being a parent, my morals and values have created a bit of a paradox for me.

As I’ve written multiple time before, all I wanted to be in life (other than a radio announcer – and those aspirations have been shafted on multiple occasions) was as good a father as mine was to me.

I have gone to work for the last nine years, not for myself, but to provide a safe, warm, loving home and to ensure there is always food on the table for my wife and daughter.

(That sounds terribly clichéd, but it’s an honorable, old-school trait I got from my Dad – That said, an enjoyable job where I’m allow to develop and get to be creative wouldn’t go amiss. I continue to write in the hope that lightning might strike multiple times…)

The Saving Private Ryan scene where the old man asks his wife to “Tell me I’m a good man” breaks my heart every time, because that’s what I try to be – a good man, and a good father.

It appears that I’ve been pretty successful so far:

But that’s where the paradox comes in.

I’m succeeding at the paternal part of life, but failing miserably to get anywhere in the career side of things, and I need a change.

I can’t keep wearing myself down where “appreciation” never equals advancement, because that makes me feel un(der)valued and will make me depressed, grumpy and what I would consider to be a bad parent at home.

I also can’t just give the job up, because that erases our income, support and it will feel like I really have wasted the last 18 years of my life.

All of this as I approach 45 – Half way through my working life and a shade over half the current life expectancy for a male New Zealander.

No wonder I’ve really started going grey in the past two years.

The Portrait of Dorian Frame

Man in the Mirror

One of the main problems with aging is you can never really tell how old you look.

I have no idea what 45 year old me looks like.

When you look in the mirror you still basically see the same face you’ve always seen staring back at you.

New lines and wrinkles, perhaps a few more grey hairs, even a few scars that weren’t always there, but those are still your eyes and that is still your face.

Looking online for celebrity comparison is seldom helpful.

If you have grown up with certain stars or starlets they too look not greatly different from years before, as you are aging in parallel. For others, as their careers can rely to a large degree on their looks, the amount of care and work that has been put into maintaining a level of youth or vitality through out the years can somewhat skew any accurate visual age auditability.

All these famous faces also turn 45 this year. Yes, even Shakira!.
#Funfact: John Oliver and John Cena (top middle & right) were born the exact same day – April 23, 1977!

At the other end of the scale, trailer-wreck television shows like Jeremy Kyle often showed the ages of people who hadn’t looked after themselves so well, making those in their 20s look closer to 60.

While nowhere near as petro-chemical an intake as those on such shows, some parts of my diet haven’t changed in 30 years – I still eat like a teenager whenever I can.

Chocolate, chips and double-coated Tim-Tams are still treat staples in my diet.

I try to justify with my wife that a $1 chocolate bar is a fair courier fee when I’m sent to the supermarket to get groceries. She never seems to agree.

Illicit snacks are probably the only food I eat that hasn’t changed over the years, though.

In recent times, with rising food prices(/supermarket profits) and differing nutritional needs our family’s diet has become largely “flexitarian”, often vegetarian for us adults, with favored frankfurters or oven-baked chicken nuggets for our daughter.

The influx of such a diverse range of cultures into Hawke’s Bay over the past decade has also ensured a vastly different spectrum of food is now available with tastes and flavors so far removed from what we grew up with.

Cabbage boiled until tasteless and translucent has happily been consigned to the depths of history.

But with so many other things from our youth making comebacks, the allure of a “second childhood” midlife crisis can be hard to resist.

Many model catalogues and video game magazines gave their pages for this and other collages I made in my teenage years.

Let’s do the Timewarp

I’ve been told I “suffer from nostalgia”.

I don’t consider it suffering.

I enjoy the link with the past – fond memories of good times and those no longer with us.

The recent revival of so many pop culture icons, movie franchises and toy ranges from my childhood hasn’t helped.

Star Wars sequels, streaming series and retro toy lines, Top Gun: Maverick, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Masters of the Universe figurines and cartoon reboots.

I sold my original MotU collection after rediscovering it while clearing out my parents’ place several years ago.

With a bit more disposable income recently I started reliving a bit of my youth – returning to making models, and collecting cool pop culture items.

And then I discovered the rabbit hole of classic Tamiya radio controlled cars on YouTube.

Growing up in the 80s and the 90s was a fantastic time for tech toys, as RC cars were just coming into their element.

Japanese model making giant Tamiya were the pinnacle of those cars. Tamiya made the most amazing scale models – Tanks, cars, motorcycles, boats, planes.

Each year they released a stunning new, full color catalogue the thickness of a magazine. They were chock-full of pictures of their range of kits, fully built, painted and decaled. Sometimes there were sections dedicated to exquisite dioramas featuring their kits.

My collection of 1/35 scale Tamiya model tanks,
(Except for the Sherman (second from the left) which is italeri)

What I distinctly remember about these catalogues was their smell.

They were so big and so packed full of glossy pictures that the smell of the print would just about knock you backwards the first time you opened the latest issue (and for weeks after).

It was INTOXICATING! (or a gateway drug to substance abuse given the similar levels of paint an glue fumes modelers are exposed to on a regular basis – It’s truly amazing I never got into drinking spirits until my 30s…)

But the crème de la crème of Tamiya production was radio controlled cars.

Hot Shot, Bigwig, Boomerang and Lunchbox were the names given to some of the most fantastic “Toys” anyone in the 80s or 90s could have.

These cars were so advanced and different that the first Tamiya RC kits I saw in Hawke’s Bay weren’t even even available from hobby shops, but from a service station in St Aubyn Street, Hastings! (This is more likely just because the station owner had imported the kits themselves, but it certainly added to the kits’ advanced, “mechanical” allure!)

We never had the money for Tamiya radio controlled car kits, which were worth $200-$300 back in the 80s – a substantial amount of money!

I still have two of my original Tamiya Mini 4WD:
Super Sabre (L) and Hot Shot (R)

I was able to get a few Tamiya “Mini4WD” cars – small, vastly cheaper facsimiles of the bigger RC body styles, but twin AA battery powered, and only able to drive in straight lines.

I did get a relatively cheap Nikko radio controlled car called a Thunderbolt for a birthday or Christmas present once, and a I think Dad bought a similar one off a work colleague when the Thunderbolt lost its zap.

“Frame Buggy”. No relation.

But Tamiya cars were still the Holy Grail of autonomous off-roading. I can still picture in my mind going to an air show and seeing someone running their Lunchbox – a big, bright yellow “Monster Truck” van. It was iconic then and it still is now.

So when I saw one in my local hobby shop “Cool Toys” in Napier I fell in love all over again!

Amazingly the price tags for these cars have remained largely the same as 30+ years ago, mainly thanks to the advancement of technology making the formerly expensive parts much cheaper and more prevalent as time has gone by.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve started to build and tinker with more things too, something that my Dad exceled at, but I never had the confidence to, so these advanced kits that always looked so complex and intimidating when I was younger aren’t so scary any more.

If I get commissioned to write something again this year I know where that money is going to!

But in the meantime I’m still stuck in a rut.

Needing Traction

Having something to strive for is often often a good plan. We all have goals or targets we want to reach. Even I have a list of things I’d like to achieve each year.

But, like i said, I’m a bit lost at sea at the moment.

Static

My fatherly goal is going well, but my dreams of media domination, or at least employed participation, seem further and further away as the years go by.

I had such high hopes as a “Co-Pilot” on Bay City Radio’s Sunday morning kids show one day back in 1985, or doing Saturday “Midnight to Dawns” at Hot93 in Hastings over the summer and autumn of 1996 …

But while I would still love to be on radio, I’m at least able to recognize that it is, or rather used to be, a young person’s game.

There are young people out there who want a career in NZ media and who are better and more deserving of a shot than I am, and certainly better than many currently being broadcast who have been there for far too long.

In the 90s regional commercial radio was the domain of those in their 20s. Three to five years on air was considered a “career” then you moved on to programming, management sales, or left the station and got a “real job”.

I wish this was a new problem, but it has been going on for as long as I’ve been a curmudgeon! 😉

But thanks to simulcast networking, as well as a big dose of cronyism and favoritism a handful of those 90s 20-somethings went on to rule radio airwaves across the country for 20 or more years.

Younger talent never got a look in or an opportunity on air and what could barely be considered average regional radio at best was nationally broadcast, claiming to be “the best” the networks could offer.

The industry has suffered for this ever since, but still to this day fails to recognize or try and rectify their own systemic errors.

I say radio “used to be” a young person’s game because I wonder if it still is?

So many have been turned off radio by the same tired old voices and shtick for years and years that they now get their audio entertainment from podcasts and music streaming services.

It has become a generational shift and seen radio listenership plummet. Not that the commercial networks have ever had the self-awareness to acknowledge why people no longer listen to a favored few broadcasters who are no longer relevant to anyone but themselves and their management mates.

Traditional broadcast radio may still have a market amongst us older types who grew up with it, but I still think there are more than enough middle aged white men in the industry.

Perhaps that dream will just have to fade away.

Invisible Ink

I like writing and am told I’m quite good at it. I even get paid to write very occasionally but, as I’ve said, nowhere near enough to make a living out of it. So it’s more of a hobby, or a side hustle to relieve me of the repetitive monotony of my actual job.

I was inspired from an early age by great local newspaper journalists like Roger Moroney of what was Napier’s Daily Telegraph back then who had a real way with words and the public. He was Hawke’s Bay’s print version of a radio announcer – well respected and liked by many. When I started writing in my teens I sent my work to him for appraisal and feedback which he constructively gave.

I never went to university, or got a journalism diploma or degree, as it was a craft I was still perfecting and it seemed like such a waste to spend years and thousands of dollars I didn’t have studying how to write, research and interview like I already could.

Sadly at the time there was an obsession amongst employers of all types for applicants requiring qualifications. It didn’t seem to matter that you could do the job, you didn’t have a piece of paper to prove you’d learned about it, so no job here, sunshine!

Even today this is a stumbling block for entry into a media career with most media outlets, even if my “unqualified” writing is still better than a lot of the “officially sanctioned” stuff that gets published.

I have been fortunate to get to write for Hawke’s Bay’s premium thought-provoking glossy magazine Baybuzz on several occasions.

There are, at least, some cadetship programs being brought back after decades of dormancy.

Cadetships are essentially earn-as-you-learn-on-the-job apprenticeships in media.

John Campbell was a cadet reporter in Wellington many years ago and look at the years of marvelous work he has produced!

The cadetships I have seen promoted are tied in with Local Government Reporting or Public Interest Journalism funding and predominantly aim to increase the cultural diversity of newsrooms and coverage across the country – something that has been lacking and deserving of more coverage.

Sadly they don’t really apply to middle aged men in regional New Zealand, so my chances of becoming New Zealand’s oldest Cadet Reporter are looking decidedly slim.

Were I to get the opportunity, where would I do it, though? Locally, naturally.

I live, love, breathe, and bleed Hawke’s Bay.

In high school I would have said “The Daily Telegraph” in a heartbeat.

But what was The Daily Telegraph became Hawke’s Bay Today in the 1990s, as APN, the forebear of NZME, combined Napier’s newspaper with Hastings’ Herald Tribune.

As you may already know, the story or regional newspapers around New Zealand and the world takes a bit of a dive from not long after that time as the internet, social media and the like took off and newspaper publishers struggled to keep up.

Costs were cut and newsrooms gutted, which meant less local news, which meant less local readership and advertising, which meant more cost cutting and loss of staff covering local news… and so it spiraled – You get the idea.

Sadly the media executives (often the same or similar ones who gutted local radio) haven’t.

A friend of mine told me in 2019 that I’d “picked the worst time to be this good at writing”.

This was before Covid hit and corporate media culled hundreds of staff numbers to protect their profits during those uncertain months in 2020.

More and more content in New Zealand’s regional newspapers is now imported from other sources, locations around the country like Auckland HQ, or other branches of the network with no relevance to the regions they are being published in, or even the realities of life for most of its readers.

I can’t morally justify working for a media network than shuns investment in local comment and content, but seems happy to pay its already over-incentivised radio announcers for large, irrelevant opinion pieces.

The propensity with which their editors and executives allow what look like hack-eyed hit jobs to be repeatedly multi-platformed across their networks undermines the credibility of all the hard working journalists, and media in New Zealand as a whole.

The same tabloid-format trolls then have the gall to project the blame for a growing lack of public trust in the media and the reason for their own faults and failures on social media!

It must be a tough life working on both commercial television and state radio…

Were Hawke’s Bay Today to make a clean break from their current corporate overlords and return to their local roots, like the Wairarapa Times Age, then we could talk.

I’m not holding my breath, though.

Pro-Promotion

If you’re not from Hawke’s Bay chances are you’ve “met me” via social media.

Of all the tweets about Napier and Hawke’s Bay on Twitter I’ve probably been responsible for about 120 percent of them (*citation required).

I also, on occasion, write about places like Auckland!

I love my hometown and region and want as many people as possible to enjoy its wonders, so I spend a lot of my spare time promoting and singing its praises.

I do this for free.

I’ve always liked promotion / sales and have always had a pretty decent knack for it but that, like radio, never blossomed into a career (minimum wage retail in the 90s/00s doesn’t count).

The promotional work I did voluntarily out of high school probably did me more harm than good, and I a result I now I seldom volunteer for anything as I value my time and skills far more now than i did then.

Little has changed since.

While my social media exploits have led to meeting a lot of great people and some unique experiences, over 12 years on it still hasn’t been the doorway to opportunity and career change that I dreamed and worked towards it being.

Yet I still do it.

Professionally promoting Napier appears to be a closed shop, as I’ve applied for numerous roles and seldom even heard back that I’d been unsuccessfull. When I ask what I can do to improve.my chances next opportunity the silence is deafening.

My visions for Napier and the future of Hawke’s Bay extend far beyond just temporary tourism, and the foibles of recent Napier City Council administrations act as more of a sign of long term, systemic bureaucratic failure than encouragement to stand for election.

Over the past decades I have done my best to effect change from the outside and I’ve been reasonably successful.

But it’s been tiring and ultimately hasn’t gotten me anywhere.

“I could’a been a contender!”

What If?

How much of your life would you change if you could?

There have been a multiverse of movies, stories and shows about alternative realities in recent years.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe currently leads the pack on screens, but from way back at H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine, to The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.and the recent, brilliant The Midnight Library by Matt Haig time travel and being able to change your past or future has been a literary staple and a moral mental conundrum.

In Richard Curtis’ movie “About Time” Tim learns the men in his family can go back in time and relive certain events, or fix certain things. At one point in the movie he goes back in time to help his sister who has hit rough times. He does so, and when he returns to the present his sister is much better off, but he finds his daughter is now (and always has been on this timeline) his son. He decides to go back again and let events occur as they were for his sister, who eventually comes out all right, and his family is as it always was.

One theme that continues throughout many of the time travel / multiverse movies and books I have read or watched is love and sacrifice. Especially paternal love and sacrifice.

There is a scene later on with the dad, played by the superlative Bill Nighy, which I won’t spoil for you, other than to say it’s perfect and heart-breaking and really struck home with me, as I saw the movie not long after losing my own father.

If my timeline had been different i could have been Guy Williams.

Seriously!

And not just because we both wear glasses and are about the same height…(he is ten years younger than me, though)

Guy got his big break on a show called “Dai’s Protege“, where media darling Dai Henwood mentored a bunch of prospective comedians, whittling them down to a winner.

I was working on my comedy and stand-up here in Hawke’s Bay at the time and seriously thought of entering, but didn’t because it would mean leaving my job at the time, moving to Auckland (prohibitively expensive at the best of times) with no income or place to stay, and being the “protege” of someone whose schtick I couldn’t stand let alone want to carry on as their “apprentice” (one of the only times I haven’t supported apprenticeships).

No Frame fame in this reality, but no playing third banana to Jono and Ben, or continuing on the same Pulp Comedy / 7 Days legacy of talent that has only been broken up in recent series after 20+ years of the same few people hogging the spotlight in another NZ media format.

Photographic proof of my eventual, one-off stand-up comedy career Photo courtesy of Raybon Kan

If you prescribe to the multiverse theory there are realities out there where I have had nothing but success, and others with nothing but failure.

I have experienced a reasonably health balance.

I could do without a lot of the pain I have endured in my life to date.

The disappointments, the heartbreaks, the scars, the lack of faith, the micromanagement by people with no idea of what I do or am capable of, and missed opportunities.

But those things all make me the person I am – The good, the bad and the ugly.

Ouch.

As someone once said to me:

“Life is like a heart rate – It has its ups and downs. If it’s a flat line, you’re dead!”

In the Eric Bana starring movie adaptation of The Time Traveler’s Wife (#FunFact: Rachel McAdams plays the titular wife of time traveler in both this movie AND About Time) Bana and McAdams’ characters have difficulty conceiving a baby because of Henry’s (Bana’s) time-fluid genetics. On one of his blips forward in time Henry is greeted and embraced by a girl of about 10 years old – his daughter! But she is also sad, because her father died not long after she was born.

The confliction of achieving a long held goal, but at great, or even the ultimate cost.

To be fair I wasn’t Halfway Down, more like A Quarter Up…

Half Way There

So much of what I’ve been and done seems so far away in the past, and so much of what I’ve wanted to do for a long time has always been constantly just out of reach.

My Tūrangawaewae: Tamatea, Napier!

My greatest goal in life and my greatest happiness had been being a father and a lot of time, effort and pain has gone into me becoming a dad like mine.

But now my daughter is older and amazing and inspiring I feel like i need to do something for myself, but that comes with a load of guilt.

I am so proud of her, but not proud of myself, and time certainly doesn’t feel like it is on my side any more.

I’m lacking traction and direction and I desperately need it.

I’ll continue writing because, if nothing else, I enjoy it and it is an outlet. The motivation and time to continue it is getting harder to find, though.

Woah, I’m half way there, but I’m stuck in the middle.

I don’t know what I wil do, but I know that, 35 years ago or now, giving up is something I’m never gonna do.

Hello My Name is Human

“What is wrong with me”?

It’s a question we have all asked ourselves from time to time.

“Did I say that out loud, or just think it?” “Did I say that in a normal speaking voice, or yell it and everyone is just being polite?”

Such little queries are often a constant companion. Some people ignore them, while for others these insecurities can consume them.

For the most part I am happy with who and what I am, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have the occasional self-audit, or review / revision.

Image

Fortunate Son

My Mum and Dad had me quite late in life – Dad was 42, Mum was 37.

Spinster” was what was written in the “occupation” section of Mum’s section of their marriage certificate the year before I was born.

“Spinster”?!

Try calling a 30-something woman that today and see how many stitches you end up with!

Dowager Countess” must have already been taken in 1976.

This was the late 70s and a lot of the old attitudes and medical practices were still forefront. With my mother being an “older woman” there was a heightened chance I would be born with some form of disability, like Down Syndrome. Except they didn’t use that correct, technical name back then, they used the term “Mongol”.

I apologize for using that expression – I despise it, but I only used it to illustrate that it was something I was reminded of rather frequently for some odd reason. “You could have been a Mongol Child”.

My mother made a friend in the maternity home who had twins the day after I was born. One of those twins happened to be born with Downs Syndrome (and would later attend the Special Education unit at the same high school I went to), so maybe that was just some sort of constant reminder, or little voice of “what could have been” in my Mum’s head.

There were some worried moments when, as a child, I appeared to have a larger than normal head that required a trip or two up to Auckland Hospital for scans. But, as it turned out, it was just aware of how big I would be later in life and was getting a head start (ba-doom-tish!) on proceedings.

I grew up what generally qualifies as “normally” for an only child in the 80s – a time I remember very fondly, if not being quite lonely.

As I’ve written before television and my toys were my main friends early in life.

Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch influenced the levels of light and darkness in my world outlooks and the level and range of NZ-made television in the 80s inspired me to want to do it myself one day. It declared “We are New Zealand! We are stunning and capable of awesome things!”

School brought new challenges, but also new outlets.

As an only child you can become quite independent (you generally have to be) and very creative thanks to using your imagination to keep yourself busy or entertained most of the time.

It also meant I was a sponge for knowledge – I read and watched and listened to anything I could to keep myself amused, informed, or busy. I was a bit of a swot. It would pay off later in life when it came to quizzes, though.

My creativity took the form of writing (does it show?) and performance (mainly pretending to be presenting my own TV shows), things I excelled at until I discovered girls and those little queries started to speak up, making me think there might be something “wrong” with me.

Achey, Breaky Heart

I was a hopeless romantic when I was younger.

Well, “useless” would be a more accurate description.

I wouldn’t so much as hold a girl’s hand (other than when they had to in “social dancing” sessions of PE in high school..) until I was 21 and it was not for lack of trying!.

I shed numerous tears wondering why I was “unlovable” from Tamatea Primary School, right through to Tamatea High where I was sweet on several girls who had no interest whatsoever in this rather odd, tall, gangly young fellow.

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

Perhaps the loneliness of only child-ness had just had enough, or maybe all the reading, watching and imagining had set too high a bar?

I’d read many books and watched many shows and movies about “true love” and “star-crossed lovers”.

I adored the romanticism of movies like “Four Weddings and a Funeral”, but was also somehow convinced I would be the one who “loved and lost” like Tom Hank’s character’s back story in “Sleepless in Seattle”.

John Hannah’s recital of W. H. Auden’s “Funeral Blues” in Four Weddings was just so accurate and so heartbreaking. I included it as a reading at my Dad’s funeral.

I “tried too hard”, apparently, or “didn’t try hard enough”, or maybe it was just different mindsets? With having older parents and values perhaps things just wouldn’t align.

I’ve used the expression that “I think I was 35 for about 25 years” because it wasn’t until that age, by which time I was married and a new father that women seemed interested in me at all.

By then it was too late, of course, because my heart belonged to one lady and my soul to another tiny, new lady.

 

It just so happened that my engagement ring was The One Ring from the Lord of The Rings movie trilogy, but rather than putting it on making the wearer invisible, mine made me finally visible to the female populace.

Foreskin’s Lament 

“Unique” is probably the best word to describe me throughout my schooling.

“Tall” was another.

“Awkward” and “Dorky” would rate up there too. Basically any John Hughes era movie stereotype that wasn’t “Preppy”, or “Jock”.

My 90s New Zealand high school experience was nothing like those movie stereotypes, thankfully.

I was discussing the experience with a fellow old classmate a few months ago and we decided than, while there were still the general “Sporty” kids, the “Munters” and “Cool / 90210” kids at Tamatea High School from 1991-1995, there was nowhere near the level of extremity or tribalism you stereo-typically see in most (American) media of the time.

There was no hatred of different types. We all, by and large, got on and accepted each other, because these were still the same people you had spent the last 5-12 years going through school with.

I don’t think I ever fitted into any of the specific stereotypes, though, just floated around the periphery, occasionally temporarily osmosing into one cell or the other.

And I liked that uniqueness.

Maybe it was the only child thing – independence, or one’s self was the only thing I could totally rely on.

But it led to a moral conundrum: What am I?

Who am I?

What sort of person do I want to be?

I wanted to be my Dad. He was (and still is, even though he’s gone) my hero.

I was never the outdoorsy, or jack-of-all-trades type of person he was, but his moral compass always pointed true north and that’s what I aspired to.

In fifth or sixth form we did a school play (see, STILL love performing!) called “Masquerade” –  A big, song, drama and dance production about the masks we put on in life (just add teenage angst, stand back, cover your ears and brace for the shock wave).

One of the older students (It must have been 5th form, because I’m sure he was a couple years older than me) named Christopher Dann did a rendition of “Foreskin’s Lament” that was just captivating.

Chris was one of the students (I think he was Dux of his year) who was bound for great, oratory things – Either a lawyer, or investigative journalist / breakfast television host.

I still hear him delivering those last lines:

“What are ya?

What are ya?

WHAT ARE YA?!

<lights cut to black>”

I find myself asking myself that same question time and time again.

A self-audit.

So.

“What are ya?!”

What Am I?

Tall. There is certainly no denying that. 6’8″, or 2.04 meters in metric terms.

Image

This can make some things difficult: Legroom in cars and planes, long pants and big shoes can be difficult to come by.

While jeans that only come part way down your shins may be all the style at the moment they were the ultimate clothing faux pas when my growth spurts kicked into hyperdrive in the 80s and 90s.

Most people think doorways are my natural enemy and whacking my forehead on lower lintels is a concern. Not so!

As you get taller you learn to go through doors on the down-step, so if you do hit your head, it’s right on the crown and snaps the head backwards with a bright flash of stars.

Shorter people will never know the struggle.

My height also means being an asshole is never really an option. (not that it was ever in my disposition to begin with) – it’s not like I can easily hide away.

I prefer to be a BFG – a Big, Friendly Giant!

I smile at people in the street, help old ladies get stuff off the top shelves at the supermarket, that sort of thing.

“It’s better to be “always remembered” than “never forgotten”.”

Dad. The only thing I wanted to be in life was a good a father and husband as my Dad was. He was kind and caring. He never swore at, or abused me, even when he was angry with me. He was calm, measured and understanding.

We struggled to become parents, having to go through IVF and certain things, like having a “Testicular Biopsy”, were far from pleasant, but we got there in the end, and my daughter is the most wonderful girl and it constantly amazes me that she shares half my genes.

Maybe it’s the idol-status I have for my Dad, but it does lead to a level of insecurity that I’m not doing a good enough job.

Losing my Dad soon after our daughter was born was a massive hit for me. He was my biggest, most constant supporter. When I lost him I lost a lot of my confidence, self belief and motivation.

I’ve had the positivity of our wonderful growing daughter to spur me on and focus upon, but I lost my safety net, my support network. That has been very hard.

I’ve made sacrifices for my daughter and family (more on that later, but that’s just what a dad does, right?

I think my daughter gets a bit sick of me asking her if I do a good job, but the other day she said I was “the best Dad” when we were playing (no bribe or purchases required) so I guess I must be doing something right.

I can’t go past a good #DadJoke, either!

O

Loyal and Dedicated. I look after my family, friends and those who do the same for me. I love my hometown and region – it’s somewhere I’ve lived all my life, I love to see it thrive and succeed and want as many people as possible to know about it, so they can share the experience too. I do everything to the highest standard I can and see tasks through to completion.

While my cricket club recognized that this year, it’s been sadly lacking for a long time in other places.

Fair. I’ve always had a strong sense of right and wrong, fair and unjust and always railed against things I thought weren’t right. It has been a backbone of much of my writing and advocacy. I also believe everyone’s story deserves telling, not just a select few.

Creative. Writing, pictures, videos, models, dioramas, and occasionally woodwork are all things I enjoy. To make, or recreate something is really fun and something I love doing.

A Would-be Hawke’s Bay Media Magnate. I love writing. I love telling my own, others’ and Hawke’s Bay’s stories, be in in a blog, a video, or radio/audio format.

I also have the voice (and face) for radio.

So What’s Wrong With Me?

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”

Despite all those positives why can’t I seem to be happy, or feel fulfilled recently?

I haven’t had the easiest decade:

IVF, the birth of our daughter, the death of my Dad, buying our own house, a Global Financial Crisis, getting Mum into a care home, a month in hospital with a peculiar heart issue, Mum passing away, a world-wide pandemic, a growing child… Hardly a flat, calm sea!

Though, as someone pointed out to me years ago, life is like a heartbeat monitor – it’s supposed to have ups and downs. If it’s flat, you’re dead!

Gallows humor, certainly, but clinically correct.

I like writing and promoting my region and, by general consensus I am reasonably good at it.

My writing has achieved me some minor local renown over recent years, though as a PR friend told me a couple years ago “You picked the worst time to be good at it” given how many in NZ’s commercial news networks have preferred to gut local newsrooms and copy and paste irrelevant reckons from Auckland talkback radio hosts into regional mastheads as rage-click inducing “editorials”.

“Premium” is not the word for the constant enabling, monetization and multi-platforming of terrible, regionally irrelevant takes like these.

Despite my best efforts over the years, I have yet to gain promotional employment here in Hawke’s Bay, and whether it’s just the pandemic, or current direction of content, but I’ve only been commissioned for one piece of local writing this year, not that I’ve had a whole lot of spare time, or motivation to write.

I’m taking what chance I have now to get some thoughts on the page, as I’m having a week off before the run into Christmas and am working the few days between then and the New Year holidays.

My broadcasting aspirations were dashed early last year with the loss of local cricket commentary opportunities and yet more centralized personnel resourcing, with the same people who do the rugby, Olympics, America’s Cup, and all the other events out of Auckland given yet more opportunities to the detriment of everyone everywhere else.

What little exposure I had been very grateful to receive on Radio New Zealand’s The Panel also quietly ceased last year.

As far as I’m aware I never said or did anything wrong on-air, or off air.

It’s not like I used the platform to tout Covid conspiracy, or was eventually let go for leaking private patient details like one of their far more regular guests who was still on multiple times after I was given the heave-ho after only a few appearances.

I was told my removal from the Panelist lineup was because the broadcasting equipment from the Napier studio was redeployed so the network’s presenters could work from home during the Covid lockdown in 2020 (and, no doubt, further extended lockdowns throughout 2021 in Auckland where many of them are now based). Water damage and repairs from Napier’s flood in November 2020 also temporarily put their office out of action not long after.

However that didn’t stop other Panelists from being on the show via phone, Skype, or other means.

While I am fully aware Hawke’s Bay has some of the best internet coverage in New Zealand, it must have escaped their attention, until they had Janet Wilson beaming in across the broadband from Haumoana on the shores of Hawke Bay a few weeks ago.

Man, they must feel so silly…

But it’s not just my creative aspirations, or dreams of local media stardom failing me this year.

After over 17 years of doing my day job, despite requests for advancement or training across multiple bosses going unheeded, I finally had the chance to apply for the position myself.

I was short-listed with the new office graduate, who has been with us for about a yearm for an interview.

Management chose the graduate, because they have a relevant university qualification – Something I have never been given the opportunity to do through work, nor the time with odd and early hours of employment, or money with a family and mortgage to do of my own accord outside of work.

All my writing and media-ing is something I have been able to do after-hours of my day job due to its odd and often early hours.

I call it “Breakfast Radio / TV hours, but without the fame or fortune.”

It has provided a constant, secure income (throughout very insecure times) that has enabled me to support my family, buy a house, pay a mortgage and raise our daughter.

But now that she is getting older and more independent I feel like I can finally do something for myself.

The inability to realise my dreams, or even gain advancement where I have dedicated myself for years has made me feel like a failure, or that I’m being selfish or don’t deserve to do what I want to do.

It’s like the rejections and disappointments of my volunteering days coming back again, and they were devastating enough the first time.

I really am done with being constantly overlooked and undermined.

So what IS wrong with me?

It’s not a lack of talent, or skill, dedication, or work ethic.

I’m tired and sad, but I am doing what I can.

I’m only human.

From “All of Us” to “Us vs. Them”?

It’s America’s Cup time in New Zealand, but I’m just not feeling it.Aside from all the global pandemic problems taking focus and fans away it’s just not the same any more.

Whether it’s simply that these sailing boats no longer “sail”, but rather “fly” on hydrofoils;

Or that the billions of dollars involved in a single competitor’s campaign would make any Auckland real estate agent’s commission look like loose change;

Or that Team New Zealand’s funding was allegedly caught up in some sort of online scam (Do charming Nigerian princes even sail?).

Or the childish squabbling between billionaire backers makes school-yard squabbles look civil and mature.

It’s just not what it used to be.

Set Sail for Nostalgia!

Cast your mind back to 1986-87 in Freemantle, Western Australia and how it seemed our entire nation got behind KZ7, made of fiberglass & Kiwi innovation – “The Plastic Fantastic”!

“Dirty” Dennis Conner saying “You’re a loser, now get off the stage” to NZ designer Bruce Farr.

Conner storming off the set of the first ever episode of “Holmes” – A set up, sure, but what drama! “Dirty Dennis”, a vaudeville villain of international sailing if ever there was one!

In the vein of Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and USA for Africa’s “We are the World” New Zealand icons, TV and music stars even came together under the name “All of Us” to sing “Sailing Away” (I still have the vinyl record) – The only true New Zealand America’s Cup song. Listening to it 35 years later still brings a bit of a proud tear to the eye.

The New York Yacht Squadron could stick their Manhattan millionaires where the sun didn’t shine – We’ve had Barry bloody Crump SINGING A SONG!!

(Special musical mention goes to Dave Dobbyn’s “Loyal” for the 2003 America’s Cup campaign but, from memory, I think it got hijacked into a Lotto advert, sadly).

Even I got into the spirit of things – I would put my bike upside down on the deck of our trailer in the back yard.

The front wheel, turned side on, was KZ7’s steering wheel; The up-turned pedals were the grinders’ cranks.

The trailer’s triangular draw bar was the bow and the jockey wheel handle at its end cranked the sails up and down.

I raced for nautical miles and miles never leaving our grassy backyard in suburban Napier.

KZ7, of course, didn’t win.

Core samples, cries of bad sportsmanship and a yacht race that became billionaire backers racing lawyers.

Then came big boats, catamarans and bow sprits. The yachts may have floated on top of the water, but the tactics and mood would have given Davy Jones vertigo.

Fast forward to Peter Blake on NZL32, “Black Magic”

A nation of feet in red socks! 

The America’s Cup, is now NEW ZEALAND’S Cup!“, and three years later “The America’s Cup, is STILL New Zealand’s Cup!”
Great, patriotic times (even if still today most New Zealanders couldn’t tell their spinnaker from their forestay and think that a “Grinder” is a dating app on their phone)!

 

 

“All of Us” to “Us vs. Them”?

 

New Zealand last won The America’s Cup in 2017 after snatching defeat from the jaws of victory in San Francisco in 2013. But something just didn’t feel the same.

The races were held in Bermuda, and the coverage and time difference meant it wasn’t as wall-to-wall as it had been in previous years.

There were even indications that our team, Team New Zealand, the ingenious kiwi battlers of the 80s were becoming.more and more like the rest of the syndicates and focused on money and power.

So was it becoming a case of “All of Us” becoming “Us vs. Them”? 

Perhaps.

In times of Global Financial Crisis and austerity the NZ government and Auckland City Council together granted the 2021 America’s Cup tournament around $250 million in funding.

In a time when the country was facing up to profound levels of inequality and housing unaffordability so much being spent on something so unrelatable to average New Zealanders, or seemingly frivolous given the overarching societal circumstances rankled with lots of people.

Even the fact the race seemed preordained to be hosted in Auckland no matter what riled a few.

Imagine the benefits it could have had for regional centers like Tauranga, or Napier – both sea-side cities with strong marine cultures and industry. 

But no. Like everything else over the past 20+ years it was sucked in by Auckaland’s grandiose gravitational pull.

Shame.

Imagine America’s Cup races on Hawke Bay, with the starting signal being a Rocket Lab launch from Mahia!

Possibly the greatest indication of how distant we are from those heady days of KZ7 and “All of Us” (history showed us that perhaps Barry Crump probably wasn’t such a heroic icon after all) rather than remix, or revitalize “Sailing Away”, or create another nationally-backed sailing anthem 2021 America’s Cup organizers are apparently atrenpting to target the “Boomer” market by streaming in Rod Stewart in some demented attempt at a nation-wide karaoke sing-along of his hit “Sailing” to somehow support Team New Zealand?

This isn’t the bloody Mission Concert, people!

Like so many of New Zealand’s sports since the dawn of professionalism, it has become far more about the money than the mana. And that really sucks.

I haven’t seen any of the races in this years competition and don’t plan to.

I don’t really care if the billionaires go Sailing Away with Rod Stewart, or the America’s Cup.

I’d much prefer to watch youngsters learning to sail Optimist Class yachts on Napier’s Ahuriri Estuary.

It actually looks like sailing and is far more relatable – something for “All of Us”!

2020: A Pain in the Annus!

2020 – It’s been a year and ah half, hasn’t it?

From plagues, to floods it has been an interesting 12 months. For me it’s been tiring and painful, but we’ve made it and I still feel like I have some fuel left in the tank, unlike 2019 which couldn’t have gone on for a week longer.

The year started off simply enough: Jokes about “2020 vision”, looking forward to an extra day tagged onto the end of February thanks to it being a leap year, Oh and Australian bush fire smoke turning our skies all shades of yellow and brown and almost blotting out the summer sun!

(We really should have taken than as an indicator!)

Over the space of one January weekend our neighbor and I drastically changed the landscaping of our properties’ border, cutting down several trees and clearing a ton of dirt and green waste in anticipation of building a new border fence (due to 2020 in general we hope to get around to STARTING this fence in January 2021..).

It was one of those very hard, manual jobs that you sit back and admire once completed with a real sense of satisfaction of a job well done!

When not using big, brutal tools, I also made a couple of delicate 1/72 scale models that had been sitting in my garage for too long: A Bristol Beaufighter and a North American Sabre. I had only built one kit in 2019, almost as an after-thought and really fancied making more, as my stash of kits was surpassing “sizeable” and heading into “hoarding” territory, so decided I’d better keep building while the flame was lit (possibly not the best metaphor for a hobby that involves flammable paints and glue..).

I commentated double-header Supersmash T20 games at McLean Park on the second of January – The Central Hinds and Central Stags played the Otago Sparks and Volts respectively in back-to-back matches. I got to go out to the central block and watch the coin toss for the Stags’ game – a bit of a dream come true.

As I’ve written before, I enjoyed the commentating – It was a great new, unexpected broadcasting opportunity that arose for me. Then it sadly evaporated even more quickly when, a month or so later, NZ Cricket announced it was not continuing with Radiosport as its radio broadcast partner and then, as if to plunge the dagger in even further NZME closed down Radiosport altogether as the wider effects of Covid 19 took their toll on gatherings, including team sports.

This wouldn’t be my only media let-down of the year.

After being invited onto Radio New Zealand National’s The Panel three times each year in 2018 and 2019 I didn’t get invited on at all in 2020.

I don’t know what I did, or didn’t do, to deserve this snub, as they never replied to my tweets enquiring why. But given they had Michelle Boag on three times in almost as many months in the early part of the year (and look how that ended up) it might have been a bullet best dodged after all.

I played my one and only game of cricket for the 2019/20 season in February and took two catches – A new personal best!

Then along came Covid 19

There had been stories in the news since late 2019 about a respiratory disease that had started spreading across the globe after ravaging China, Iran, Italy and a number of other countries. With the nature of international travel it was only a matter of time before it reached us here. On March 26th New Zealand went into a nation-wide isolation Lockdown.

The lead-up to Lockdown, for me, was madness.

For the last sixteen years I have worked in the same office as my father-in-law, splitting 5am starts between the two of us on alternating weeks. But my FiL has chronic asthma issues and has been sick off and on for elongated periods over recent years. He had gotten sick after returning from a trip to Australia in February (non-Covid related despite it involving a cruise too!), So I was on early starts, working solo for almost a month at the start of the year. 

I was still tired and worn out from 2019 and covering this February holiday when the Covid lockdown levels were announced. With his health issues putting him in one of the at-risk categories, he had to work from home from level 3, which meant I was working solo then, too. But with the added impending doom of a looming pandemic, in a job that involved interacting with hundreds of people each day (either personally, or via documents others had handled, so having to wear masks and gloves) I ended up having what turned out to be an anxiety attack one evening (I only realised this the next day when, using a work bathroom, a aptly-placed mental well being poster just happened to list all the things I had felt the night before).

The stress of getting everything ready for lockdown didn’t abate until the lockdown itself took effect. I wasn’t given a work computer or phone, so couldn’t work from home giving me, essentially, an enforced four week holiday.      

For the month of Marpril 2020 (yes, I do consider that a viable month) New Zealand stayed at home, in our bubbles.

We shopped sparingly for food, keeping personal distances at all times. Our children learned via the internet and “Zoom”, while adults primarily used the internet for social media and ordering alcohol for home delivery.

While I would have loved to have written more during lockdown I only managed to write one thing:

A Tale of Two Countdowns

Explaining the mystery of why Napier has two Countdown supermarkets across the road from each other.

Amazingly it has had over 4,000 views since then – By far the most viewed thing I have written on Napier in Frame!

Otherwise, we read lots, played games with our family, tweeted lots, I made some more models and, as a nation, we made a metric $hit-tonne of sourdough and other baked goods (because those 20kg bags of flour that were the only available purchasing option weren’t going to bake themselves!).

Personally, I got to sleep in more often than I ever had in the past decade and a half, and have more concurrent time with my family (and snuggles with my daughter) than in a long, long time.

By and large we survived!

I describe my lockdown as “the eye of the storm”.

Just like tropical hurricanes in the Caribbean the storm builds and builds, until you get to the “Eye Wall” – where the wind and rain are at their strongest and the worst.

Then you get into “the eye of the storm”. The sky is clear – often blue, calm and sunny. But with the worst part still on every horizon.

That is what lockdown was like for our family. The weather was warm and summery (despite it being Autumn) and things were quiet and calm, yet we knew there was danger all around.

Then, as the country went down to level three, I went back to work (still sans father in law), and the other side of the hurricane’s eye wall hit in the OPPOSITE direction as we played catch-up.

All up I worked solo for about three whole months this year. It pretty well buggered me. It took up lots of my time that would otherwise have been “spare” and, when I did have “spare time” I didn’t have the energy, or the motivation to do anything!

The day after it was announced we were going down to level two and I could relax a bit with father in law and others returning to work I got a call from the hospital asking to operate on me.

Late last year I had been in for a check-up on my BCCs (Basal Cell Carcinomas) and they had identified some more that needed removal. Covid and the lockdown had put any work on hold, so at the first opportunity I was one of the first people they called and a week later I was in getting seven BCCs removed in one fell swoop (more than on my previous trips down to Lower Hutt) at the Napier Health Centre.

Maybe it was the sheer scale of the procedure (I ended up with at least one significant scar from where one BCC which hadn’t been fully removed the first time years ago had grown back and needed removing again), or the overarching stress of the year, but my recovery was longer, and felt more physically and psychologically painful than any of those that preceded this year’s surgery and a few minor complications did not help matters.

I had only just recovered from the first round when a second lot of surgery removed some more BCCs a month later.

I felt ugly.

That didn’t seem like a regular thing for a kiwi guy to say or think, but I did. And I was annoyed at myself for feeling like that.

It was what had done so much psychological damage to my mum after her surgery over a decade ago and I had sworn to never fall into that trap myself.

I didn’t hide away like she did, but I still felt it.

Fortunately around the same time, as we headed into winter, I managed to get some new clothes, either on sale, or from vouchers I had earned from online Nielsen surveys and the like.

After months of nothing but fluro hi-viz, polar fleece and bandages I was able to treat myself to new jeans, a new shirt and a merino jersey. I felt like I looked better and at least one of my sartorial superheroes agreed.

After lockdown and surgery issues had abated I had some time to write, which was good, because Bay Buzz magazine would end up commissioning me to write three 1,500+ word pieces this year – another personal best!

One of the things I love about writing (other than getting paid occasionally) is all the new stuff you get to learn. This year I learned about Hawke’s Bay’s tourism sector recovery, council online communications, and those lesser known companies who help produce, provide and present our local foods to HB, New Zealand, and the world. All of which makes me even prouder of my home!

Rocket Lab’s continued launches from Mahia provided a regular reminder of how awesome our region can be.

Also making me proud of Hawke’s Bay was our local NPC team the Hawke’s Bay Magpies!

After last holding the Ranfurly Shield six years ago they beat Otago to reclaim it again this year, and successfully defended it throughout the rest of the season, with Hawke’s Bay now holding it over the summer months (and almost every single person in the region who hasn’t already had their photo taken with it pretty well guaranteed of the opportunity now)!

The Magpies also won the Championship title to cap off a great season.

There’s Something About those Magpies. It’s not just a rugby thing, either. When Hawke’s Bay’s rugby team do well it seems to lift the mood and spirit of the region.

We needed to recover from the lockdown economically, commercially, and socially and by most indications it looks like Hawke’s Bay is recovering better than other regions. It just so happened to be at the same time as the Magpies were collecting all the silverware!

I know.. “correlation does not imply causation blah, blah, blah…” but it’s worked for us so far, so there!

Although, perhaps it was more “pride coming before a fall”, because just before the end of the rugby season 2020 had another go at us.

On the 9th of November Napier, and in particular the city’s CBD and suburb of Marewa suffered significant flooding and related rain damage after one of the longest, most contunually persistent downpours in an afternoon than most locals had ever experienced.

We were caught on the edge of events, getting drenched picking our daughter up from school, then coming home via main roads that would soon be impassable to watch our front and back yards get slowly inundated with rainfall and yanking out our downpipes from the roof gutters as they had begun to overflow.

We stood at the window watching the creek we live across the road from rise and rise (about 15 meters across for every one meter up, just to give you an idea of just how much water this event involved.) The next day a “high tide mark” of leaves, sticks and so on would reveal the creek was a mere meter away from breaching its bank opposite us and overflowing into the street!

A kilometer or so down the same road from us people were not so lucky. Streets, and almost the entirety of Whitmore Park (the big, rectangular lake in the aerial shots of the area) were inundated, houses flooded, possessions lost and people displaced. Many have still yet to return to their homes, which still require repair as I write this on New Year’s Eve.

I must thank Alex Braae for giving an article I wrote about Napier’s drainage problems the last time we had similar issues a few years ago a boost when reviewing the November downpour. Getting a shout-out in The Spinoff was another unexpected turn that 2020 took!

With all the craziness going on, perhaps the best move for 2020 might have been taking the advice of David Slack, who wrote about stoicism on Stuff in early January:

“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.”

It’s just what David did, too, as Stuff (still under Australian ownership at the time) let him and several other womderful wordsmiths go around the same time other NZ media were being closed down or severely cut back by their owners in the face of Covid’s financial fallout.

David “preoccupied himself with what was in his power to be done” and started his own page “More Than a Feilding“. It has gone gangbusters!

He is a lovely, literarly inspirational man!

I needed stoicism for one of my new ventures this year, too: I became a Hawke’s Bay Cricket Umpire!

After about 15 years of playing and player-umpiring I was invited to join and have spent the first half of this season umpiring T20 matches, including two weekends of HB’s famous Kilbirnie T20 tournament.

It’s a lot easier and more enjoyable than player-umpiring I must say. As, rather than having to worry about what the score is, who is batting next and do I need to go and pad up, all I have to be concerned with is counting to six and deciding if the ball that just hit the batsman on the pads would have hit the stumps if their leg wasn’t there. Plus you occasionally get lunch and beer!

It has been a tough year. Lots of ups and downs, with lots of unexpected twists and turns, but we’ve survived!

For now.

New Zealand’s “Tyranny of Distance” turned out to be quite beneficial in some respects. But it will also provide lots of challenges in the coming months – just look at the backlog of cargo ships waiting to unload out off most of New Zealand’s ports right now.

I am, as always, thankful for my friends (online and real life) and family this year.

I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given this year (does that mean I get to be UNgrateful for those I wasn’t given?).

And I am most inspired, humbled and amazed by my wife, and my daughter who turned seven this year and completing her second year at primary school.

The care, compassion, intelligence and love she shows continually amazes me.

On her end of year school report her teacher closed it out with the phrase:

I had to Google what that line was and I have to say I teared up a bit because:

I hope your 2020 wasn’t too disturbed, wet, or worrisome and your 2021 will be steadier and more illuminated.

As always, thanks for reading and all the best for next year!

AF

A Tale of Two Countdowns

Napier’s twin Countdowns across the road from each other: Countdown Napier (Left) and Countdown Carlyle (Right)

Two Countdowns, both alike in vicinity.
In fair Napier, where we lay our scene.
From Russian fudge, break to new Dilmah tea,
Where hand sanitizer on special ensures covid-cautious hands remain clean…

Napier’s two Countdown supermarkets across the road from each other have long been a source of confusion and mirth for out-of-towners.

In the shadow of Napier Hill (literally in winter – it can get bloody cold when the sun is low or its overcast/foggy), on Carlyle Street lies Countdown Carlyle (“Flash Countdown”).

Diagonally across Tennyson Street from Countdown Carlyle and opposite KFC, Burger King and Shell Kennedy Road which, as I have revealed before, isn’t actually on Kennedy Road is the rather more generically-branded “Countdown Napier” (as this one borders several roads – Tennyson, Dickens and Station Streets, it’s just called.. erm.. “Countdown”).

But why are they there?

Many have questioned, but few have been able to adequately answer.

Until now.

Back to parodying Mr Spokeshave to close out this prologue:

The existence of this Countdown mirror-image,
Which, by article’s end, sought to solve,
Is now the traffic of this digital page.

 

Quirky, or Smirky?

Napier’s twin Countdowns are not a unique coexistence – Johnsonville and Upper Hutt in Wellington both apparently have similar set-ups and until recently so did Glenfield on Auckland’s North Shore.

So why do people seem to think Napier is so different or unique?

Maybe it’s because the other two are in big cities?

The bigger population justifies having two supermarkets in closer proximity.

Napier’s population is around 65,000 (Combined with Hastings’ 75,000-plus population the two cities have a combined total of around 140,000, making us NZ’s fifth most populous urban area, just ahead of Tauranga), so perhaps not THAT big.

So maybe it’s just parochialism?

Another excuse for the big city mice to mock their “country hick” cousins?

We have certainly been exposed to more than our fare share of that over the years, be it the “A Visitor From Hawke’s Bay” stereotype, or those who insist on adding the prefix “The” to our region’s name.

New Zealand’s rather Auckland-centric television networks creating and airing shows about “quirky” regional New Zealand things probably hasn’t helped, either.

Rather than “Quirky” meaning interesting, they often tend to put more of a sardonic twist on things.

A reasonably well known example is 90s TVNZ series Heartland introducing “Chloe from Wainuiomata” to the country. Negative reactions to the show eventuated in Chloe having to leave Wainuiomata.

She has actually been living here in Napier for the past 13 years, though her preference of Countdown is unknown…

More recently TVNZ’s rival, Mediaworks, attempted a “Heartland-esque” show called “New Zealand Today”.

With tongue planted firmly in cheek host Guy Williams ventured to Napier’s twin Countdowns where he tried, and failed rather miserably, to shed any light on the phenomenon.

Rather sad, really.

Yet another chance to positively promote part of regional New Zealand lost.

All they had to do was ask a local!

A rare photo looking in the opposite direction to the cover pic. This photo was taken looking from Napier Railway Station yards back towards the hill at Easter 1988. The multi story building is NZR offices and train control.
Woolworths can be seen in the back left, and Station Court is far right.  Photo C/o Michael Kemp, Old Napier Facebook page

 

History Lesson

So have there always been two Countdowns in Napier?

No.

Countdown Carlyle has always been a supermarket, but Countdown Napier has always been a Countdown.

Before rebranding as Countdown in the early 2000s, Countdown Carlyle was a Woolworths and then a Big Fresh (complete with singing vegetables and swinging monkey (a la Hayden Donnell’s documentary).

WAY before the supermarket was even there my Dad and Granddad apparently lived in a house on Carlyle Street which was where the supermarket’s car park is now, opposite Dominos, but I digress..

While Countdown Carlyle was a Woolworths, the site of Countdown Napier had several lives in a reasonably short space of time.

Most recently it was a car sales yard and a group of shops called “Station Court”, as it was opposite Napier’s railway station (when we still had one).

Around the same time there was a bus station for Intercity or Newmans Coachlines at Station Court (I can’t remember which – the other had a depot further down Dickens Street in what is now Civic Court across from the currently empty Napier Public Library).

“Station Court” shops, Circa mid-late 1980s on the site Countdown Napier currently occupies. Photo C/o Trevor Cook Old Napier Facebook Page

In the late 80s/ early 90s Station Court was demolished and Countdown Napier was built on its site, with Countdown Carlyle still in its Big Fresh phase.

This is probably where Countdown Carlyle gets its “flash” reputation – If you wanted swanky cheeses, or “more refined” (i.e.. expensive) groceries, you went to Big Fresh (and to push the buttons and make the vegetables sing and the monkey swing – Geez, it must have been tortuous for the staff..).

Whereas, if you wanted cheaper groceries and generic family brands, you went to Countdown Napier (and to buy cheap snacks and lollies to sneak into the cinema across Station Street whose candy counter charged like a wounded bull..).

An important strategic commercial note is that at this time there was a very large area of vacant land opposite Countdown Napier, and behind the newly constructed Reading Cinema. It was abandoned NZ Railway land where Napier’s train station and railway yards had been for many years. But after NZR was filleted, gutted and sold by the governments of the day it lay dormant, as part of a Waitangi settlement, I believe.

Around the year 2000 a deal was struck and the land was sold to Woolworths/Progressive Enterprises’ (Countdown’s owners) arch NZ nemesis, Foodstuffs, who promptly built a rather giant Pak ‘n Save supermarket on it.

Not too long after Progressive went through a massive re-branding exercise and changed all their Foodtown and Big Fresh supermarkets to Countdowns.

So now this is where we find ourselves.

Napier’s twin Countdowns as seen from the Station Street entrance to Napier Pak n Save earlier this year – Roughly the same place as the right hand photo above was taken!

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret

To put it bluntly: The existence of Napier’s twin Countdowns is purely commercial.

:To put it more technically, according to Reddit user “AGVann”:

“This phenomenon is known as Hotelling’s Law/Game. This video explains the concept excellently. For those that don’t want to watch the video, the short answer is that in industries where goods are essentially the same form and cost, the only difference for consumers is the location – people usually just go to the closest supermarket. If there was only one supermarket in all of Napier, a second strategically placed supermarket from a competitor would immediately cut the ‘catchment’ of potential customers in half. Countdown is essentially competing with itself to ensure that it is never financially viable for a competitor to set up shop in Napier. This is a tactic that Countdown corporate is known for doing over in Australia, so it’s not that surprising to see it here.”

If owners Progressive Enterprises closed one of Napier’s twin Countdowns, their competitors Foodstuffs, with the neighbouring Pak n Save supermarket, would swoop in and probably put a New World on the site, reversing the current 2-1 Countdown/Progressive majority.

While Napier’s public library future is in limbo, I suggested recently that if Progressive could be convinced to sell Countdown Napier’s site to Napier City Council it could make a great location for a new Library. 

The extensive site borders Clive Square on one side and tree-lined Munroe Street, opposite St Patrick’s Church, on the other – very calming and reflective. There is ample, much needed public car parking on site that the council could meter or lease for income and Progressive wouldn’t have to worry about the encroachment of competition.

Fortunately for Napier ratepayers it appears the council is strongly considering returning the library to its former site, once earthquake strengthening is completed – a far cheaper option than turning over a new page and building from scratch..

Unfortunately for television shows making places like Napier look “Quirky” because they’re not as big as Auckland or Wellington, it also means the existence of twin Countdowns isn’t Napier’s fault at all – It’s a corporate move from those same big cities!

Mystery solved – And all it took was a little bit of local knowledge!

Epilogue

A glowing piece, this supermarket article brings

The sun still shines, you can buy bread:

Go forth and spread the truth this blog rings,

Some mystery solved, some cynicism punished 

For never was there a story so profound

Than of Napier and its twin Countdowns!