“The Saddle Road” linking Hawke’s Bay (via Tararua District) with Manawatū ever since the 2017 closure of the Manawatū Gorge in a constant state of repair
Slowing access to our region from the south, north and west (approaching from the east you would likely flood the carburetor.. and the rest of the car.. in the Pacific Ocean.)
“Wasn’t designed to carry the frequency and weights of modern-day trucks and other heavy transport”
Well, naturally!
81 years ago (1941, for those playing at home) we didn’t have multi-wheeled, thousand-horsepower, 60-tonne trucks hauling cargo across the country.
But in more recent decades we DID have a New Zealand Transport Agency whose job it was to monitor issues like the integrity of state highway bridges and fix them before they became an issue.
“The “temporary” limit will be put in place on Monday and apply until further notice”.” the release said.
Quotation marks around “temporary” give a sense of insincerity, and the fact it’s “until further notice”, with no indication of how long that could actually be don’t fill you with confidence for a quick resolution, or one at all.
Because other wording in the release was quite concerning:
“”While we understand this will be an inconvenience for road users, it is critical everyone complies with the temporary 30km/h speed limit to keep vibrations to a minimum to reduce the impact on the bridge structure and prevent further deterioration.””
30km/h is very slow, considering this is a 100km/hr zone, but it is standard practice and a safer speed for vehicles passing sites where road workers are active.
But saying it’s critical for the hundreds of light and heavy vehicles that travel across the Esk River bridge every day to slow down by over half the regular speed limit there to “reduce the impact on the bridge structure and prevent further deterioration“?
This makes it sound like this bridge, which has done a great, solid, bridgey job over the last 81 years, could now suddenly give way at any minute – Which is extremely concerning!
A Vital Link
It’s concerning because a kilometer or so up the road is one of Hawke’s Bay’s biggest industries, Pan Pac Forest Products, also one of the region’s largest employers, which relies on a fleet of around 100 trucks of different configurations (mainly logging trucks) each crossing the Esk River bridge several times a day carrying thousands of tonnes of products vital for the mill’s operations, as well as the mill site’s staff, who number in the hundreds, commuting to work each day.
But more importantly the bridge is the only sealed route north of Napier towards Wairoa, popular holiday spot Māhia (home of Rocket Lab’s Launch Complex 1) and Gisborne with a combined population in excess of 60,000.
For the most part if you want to get to Wairoa and Gisborne you have to get there via Napier, SH2 and this bridge.
The North Island’s East Coast region, north of Gisborne is accessible by road from south eastern Bay of Plenty, but it would be a hell of a detour to get to Wairoa that way.
A Long-Standing Problem
Issues with his section of road aren’t new.
For decades the intersection of State Highways 2 and 5 just south of the Esk River has been considered a dangerous spot.
An angled approach for those coming from Taupò limits clear visibility for crossing onto SH2 continuing south towards Napier.
A sandstone hill on the right limits views of north-bound traffic, while the heightened, curved Esk Railway Bridge, which leads onto the troubled river bridge cuts visibility to the northeast to less than 50 meters. Far from ideal when 50 tonne logging trucks stream over it towards the intersection.
There have been numerous crashes at the intersection but, apparently, not enough serious crashes to warrant drastic remediation by Waka Kotahi.
The rail bridge climbs quickly to get over the East Coast railway line and Esk River stopbanks and it is curved – nerve-wracking at the best of times, let alone when you are trying to share the narrow curved bridge with fully loaded 18 wheelers coming the other way.
The bridges are even less than ideal when you are not driving over them.
Cycling over these bridges is dangerous enough sharing the narrow concrete walled spaces with cars and trucks, but especially so just after dawn when crossing the river bridge north-bound faces drivers straight into the rising sun all but cutting off visibility at times.
Walking over the bridges doesn’t even bear thinking about.
This section of road has been like this for decades and successive transport agencies have known about it for decades, but chosen not to fix it.
Now it may be too late.
A Civil Engineering Emergency
Mid-morning on March 8 2018 all non-operstional staff at Pan Pac Forest Products’ Whirinaki site were told to leave as a storm had flooded the neighboring Esk River valley and the water level was getting dangerously high. It was decided that staff should leave before high tide, as the river getting any higher could threaten travel across the Esk River bridge.
Flash forward four years and who will now feel safe or secure crossing this potentially structurally compromised bridge the next time there is significant rainfall in the nearby hills?
Recent severe weather events have proven that Napier’s infrastructure is not up to handling even current standards. It’s not too surprising sadly though, given years of successive council administrations being hell-bent on keeping rates down at the expense of repairing and replacing their beloved city “assets”, turned major liabilities.
But when it comes to roads Hawke’s Bay pays its’ share.
Fuel tax, income tax, Goods and Services Tax.
Hawke’s Bay truck owners pay Road User Charges.
So why doesn’t Hawke’s Bay get a fair return on our regional roading infrastructure for the taxes and charges we pay for using it?
The numerous drop-outs on our under-invested high country regional highways is bad enough. Losing such a crucial bridge will literally be the straw that breaks State Highway 2.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
A few years ago there was word that the SH5/2 intersection was going to get a massive upgrade and redevelopment.
It never occurred.
With such a dire situation now upon this section of road why not revisit those plans and make then a reality now?
“Roads of National Significance” were a big deal under the last National government when the Waikato Expressway section of State Highway 1 was redeveloped.
Surely State Highway 2 must be the nation’s second most significant road by numerical order at the very least.
I believe the canceled concept involved an over/under pass for access to / from SH 5 and one big bridge spanning both the rail line and Esk River, rather than the current two inferior smaller bridges.
Lining this new, longer bridge up with matching bends that already exist north and south of the river would make the section of road straighter and give motorists better, safer vision along this area.
The slight change of angle would also lessen the chance of sunstrike for those traveling north across the bridge as the sun rises.
Pedestrian / cycling lanes on this new bridge would also be extremely advantageous.
Having a bigger, better, newer bridge will also go some way to future proofing this section of road to imminent climate change, sea level rise (Hawke Bay is only few hundred meters downstream of the current bridge) and the ever-present threat of flooding from upstream and the Hikurangi Subduction Zone off the east coast of the North Island
As it currently (barely, according to Waka Kotahi) stands the Esk River bridge won’t withstand too many more trucks going faster than the suburban speed limit over it.
That is simply not good enough.
Rebuild the Bridge and Get Over It
I am a passionate advocate for all things Hawke’s Bay.
I’ve seen my region ignored and undermined for years and I’ve been writing about it, trying to get these inequalities fixed for almost ten years now.
It’s just so sad that a government agency like Waka Kotahi lags so far behind in recognizing regions like Hawke’s Bay need far better roads and transport infrastructure than what they have.
If it really is critical that traffic traversing the Esk River bridge must now travel over it at 30km per hour to prevent further deterioration of the structure as Waka Kotahi said in their statement, then we can assume it’s too late and the bridge is doomed.
State Highway 2 is a nationally significant road.
To allow such a major, important structural part of it to degrade to this level is inexcusable.
This is a Civil Engineering Emergency.
Hawke’s Bay deserves better!
Footnote (Nov 2022):
Since writing this piece Waka Kotahi has limited the speed and weight limits on YET ANOTHER Hawke’s Bay State Highway bridge!
Mayoral aspirant Nigel Simpson a first term, Taradale ward councilor declared in his running for the mayoralty ‘I entered local politics last election because I couldn’t figure out what was wrong in Napier City Council, after a short period inside I figured it out alright, that’s why I’m running for Mayor.”
“Taking major items in and out of the long-term plan and having a considerable number of unbudgeted items is simply poor leadership and inappropriate governance of Napier, it’s time for change.” he said.
“A significant number of opportunities have been missed by the current Council, it’s time to get Napier back on track.”
If that’s the “Mayor Dalton and CEO Jack Track” he’s referring to getting back on then I think his train is going in the wrong direction, and voters with a memory longer than three years will likely leave him at the station.
And thoughout all those issues this council term you may have forgotten about the global pandemic that closed borders and workplaces, disrupted workflow and supply chains and killed and incapacitated millions.
The Jack / Dalton administration also saw a number of high-level managers and experts leave, or be made redundant, but Councilor Simpson chooses to ignore this in his “serious culture issue” claim.
His urging the council to leave selecting a new CEO until after the local body elections is also disingenuous, as he, the council and even the Hawke’s Bay Today know “July is the start of a three-month hiatus in which councils cannot make major decisions in the three months leading up to the local elections”as reported in another council article in HBT barely a month earlier at the end of June.
Sometimes it takes a shot of penicillin to cure a bad culture, other times a new broom to sweep out all the dead wood, or clear a new path.
Chris Hyde, who had formerly been Hawke’s Bay Today news director before moving over to Stuff in Hawke’s Bay for a few months will return to take over the local newspaper’s reigns.
Recently the paper has not only been “burying the lede”, but burying local opinions under not necessarily as relevant reckons from outside the region.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…)
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.
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.
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.
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, 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! 😉
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.
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 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”.
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.
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’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).
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.
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).
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.
“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 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.
I have joked that the traditional version contains enough birdlife (partridges, turtle doves, french hens, calling birds..) that it could almost warrant a “Twelve Days of KFC”.
That gave me an idea:
Hawke’s Bay is blessed with some of the finest food producers and hospitality venues in New Zealand. The regularity with which we win big national and international awards give a general idea of just how great they are.
In recent years the number and range of these businesses has exploded. Gone are the days of Fish & Chips being the sole variety of takeaways available in the region – A multicultural smorgasbord is now available in your city, your suburb, or just at the tips of your fingers care of apps and smart devices ordering online.
So I thought, “Hey, why not do a “12 Days of HB Takeaways” and try and see just how much of a range of pre-prepared food can be sourced in the region?!”.
Now, I am based in Napier, as my brand suggests, so the majority of these will likely be Napier-based, simply because these are the takeaways I am most familiar with / have already brought from.
This isn’t sponsored content.
None of the companies listed have paid or given me free food to do this – It’s just something that I thought would be a cool idea and I thought they would be the most appropriate fit for their day / theme.
I believe in local Hawke’s Bay businesses and love seeing them succeed!
While it was intended to be a “12 Days of Christmas” list (did you know the 12 Days traditionally starts on Christmas Day, and isn’t actually a countdown to Christmas?) our regular annual “12 Days” list had a few hiccups and ran late, and with public holidays and different opening hours post-Christmas many of the places on my list weren’t open on some of the 12 Days after, so while I’m keeping the Christmas listing format, It’s essentially a 12 Days of Hawke’s Bay HOLIDAY Takeaways.
I have mixed up the Traditional and Kiwi 12 days of Christmas themes to give some variety, make it a bit easier, and diverse. There’s a good chance I may expand the list as other options arise, so come back and check it again at some later time.
So let’s take it away, with 12 Days of Hawke’s Bay Takeaways:
A Partridge in a Pear Tree / A Pukeko in a Ponga Tree = Hapi
In our usual “12 Days” menus day one almost always involves some for of vegetation or foliage – just like the Pear, or Ponga Tree.
Hapī Clean Kai Co-op is Napier’s award winning, premiere venue when it comes to healthy and vegetarian food.
Recently relocated from their original takeaway bar site down the road to Chantal’s shop on Hastings Street in Napier Hapī has gone from strength to strength and continues to gain in popularity with locals and visitors alike.
With healthy juices, vegetarian and vegan sandwiches and dishes, as well as sweet slices and, of course, coffee Hapī has become a go-to with those who want local “green” cuisine.
Two Turtle Doves / Two Kumera = Mamacita
A visit to Mamacita, located on Havelock Road in Havelock North and Tennyson Street, Napier on the second day of the week will be auspicious, as it’s Taco Tuesday (*Available for Dine-In Only)!
Nachos, Quesadillas (“Quesadilla Thursday” is also available only for Dine-in), vegetarian and carnivore options with Ceviche, Camarones and Calamares seafood dishes available on their “Small Bites” menu.
Three French Hens / Three Flax Kete = Rock My Belly
“Chicken and Waffles” was something I had heard of repeatedly (mainly in American movies), but never tried. That was until we went to Rock My Belly, upstairs on the northern side of upper Emerson Street, Napier.
We are able to tick both theme boxes here with the French Hens AND the latticed Kete basket look of the waffles!
Southern Fried Chicken Waffles are a hit with Miss in Frame and I love the Chicken Curry Waffles.
The waffles themselves aren’t as sweet as regular dessert waffles, the thought of which was initially a bit of a put-off, making a nice flavor and texture mix overall.
Rock My Belly’s focus on great “comfort food” like this has proved very popular in the short time they have been open.
The chef’s name is Andrew, too, so you know it must be good! 😉
Four Calling Birds / Four Huhu grubs = Tu Meke Don
Again with the poultry!
Tu Meke Don, in Napier’s Ocean Boulevard (between upper Emerson and Dickens Streets) is run by Tim, Junko and their son Tane. It has been our go-to for Sushi for a number of years and a favorite for inner city workers and shoppers.
Their Karage Chicken in sushi, donburi, curries and just straight out fried is a personal favorite.
Five Gold Rings / Five Big Fat Pigs = Donut Robot
If five gold rings is what you’re after you can’t go past the delicious, crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, chocolate or berry-iced, custard filled, or just cinamon sugar dusted American-style donuts made fresh by Steve in his little “Toy Caravan”!
Donut Robot has been regularly stationed in the car park of St Paul’s Church on the corner of Tennyson and Dalton Streets, Napier for a number of years and has garnered quite a cult status and large fan base. Not only a master donut slinger, Steve is also good for a chat about the day’s local and inter/national events.
The pic above is actually of some Gua Bao I tried on a visit to Auckland a few years ago, but I intend to go to Funbuns VERY soon!
Six Geese a-Laying / Six Poi a-Twirling = Funbuns Pork Buns
A few years ago in our family 12 Days of Christmas Deliciousness we featured Tu Meke Don’s Rice Balls as Poi a-Twirling, on a similar Asian food theme here I’m nominating Gua Bao (Steamed Buns) from Funbuns to represent the Poi on this list.
Funbuns, on the corner of Heretaunga Street East and Warren Street Hastings, is a place I have yet to get to, but really want to, as I have heard lots of great stuff about!
“Can recommend pretty much everything on the menu (cocktails are frisky-fresh too). Barman is a multi award winner at HB Hospo awards. Their 12hr beef shin sharing plate & Chinese fried chicken with black tea mayo are yum!”Yvonne Lorkin c/o Twitter
Seven Swans / Eels a-Swimming = Thai Lotus
Thai Lotus can be found right in the centre of the Taradale Shopping Centre. The building used to house the Taradale Library many years ago. Now it is home to delicious Thai cuisine!
With a wide range of stir fries, curries, satay, soups and more you’re sure to find the perfect dish – it might even be eel-like noodles swimming in a delicious curry or cashew sauce!
Eight maids a-Milking / Eight Plants of Puha = Lick This
One of the best ways to cool down on a hot Hawke’s Bay day is with something Maids a-Milking can directly contribute to: Ice cream!
Lick This, in the old Marineland grandstand building makes their own ice cream on site in a massive, regularly changing range of flavors. From standards like Chocolate and Hokey Pokey, to seasonal and special flavors like Christmas Cake, Unicorn and Bacon, Banana and Maple.
They also sell gelato and, local legends, Rush Munro ice cream.
Nine Ladies Dancing / Nine Sacks of Pipis = Six Sisters
There aren’t quite nine of them, but they are all girls – Six Sisters Coffee House is in one Napier’s most iconic non-Art Deco buildings on Marine Parade, just towards the hill from Lick This.
The story goes Napier’s Harbor Master had six daughters, whom he had houses built next to each other for between Albion and Vautier Steets. These half dozen, two storey weather board buildings have become known as “The Six Sisters” and Napier’s best Bacon, Egg and Pesto Bagels (in my humble opinion) can be found at the sister second from the left when looking at the houses from the sea side.
Lucy and her team of lovely ladies (there’s about six of them all up, but they’re not sisters) serve bagels, Napier’s best coffee (again IMHO), scones, slices, biscuits, and smoothies looking out across Marine Parade to the stunning vista of Hawke Bay!
Ten Lords a-Leaping / Ten Juicy Fish Heads = Fish & Chips
It wouldn’t be a list of Kiwi takeaways without featuring Fish and Chips! (I prefer fish fillets to fish heads, personally, but won’t judge).
Napier is certainly not bereft of choice on this front, as I can think of at least three options within walking distance of my house alone!
Thank God its Fryday is my local in Marewa, but others like The Pirimai Chippy, Frying Dutchman and Charles Street Takeaway all have loyal followings.
It’s not Highland bagpipes and single malt whisky, but Brave’ Brewing’s iconic trumpet does involve pipe work!
Fast becoming one of Hawke’s Bay’s preferred craft breweries, Brave Brewing opened their new tap room and beer bar in the former Herald Tribune newspaper precinct site on Queen Street East, Hastings in 2020, after the nationwide Covid lockdown to promote and compliment their onsite brewing operation.
During 2020 and 2021’s Level 4 lockdowns Brave also took the initiative of delivering their beer direct to their customers around Hawke’s Bay and New Zealand (as you can see in the pic above). Cheers for that!
One of Napier’s newer, and certainly most popular takeaway joints is Vinci’s Pizza at the cathedral / hill end of Hastings Street along from Hapi and Chantal.
What has made it so popular is that you can buy a single hot slice of their fantastic pizzas he perfect size for a snack or lunch, or buy a whole pizza which is about the size of a large snare drum! You can even mix it up and get a whole pizza’s worth of individual slices
Each pizza is hand-made by Vincent and his team 9nsite and, as with the personal touch of the other hospitality providers on this list, the range regularly changes with seasonal specialty pizzas along with the traditional stylea of Margherita and Quatro Fromagio.
Just before Santa went on his rounds last week I bought a slice of Christmas Glazed Ham pizza -It was fantastic!
So there you go – just a slice of the potential ideas to take away from 12 Days of Hawke’s Bay Takeaways – enjoy!
Perhaps it could be a New Year resolution to try thelist in the early days of 2022?!
If there are any local takeaways I have egregiously forgotten that fit into the 12 Days categories, please let me know and I can add them in.
This year it was the turn of the traditional “Partridge” version.
Wherever possible she tries to tie in part of the carol lyrics to the dish – i.e. “Partridge in a Pear Tree” will usually contain pears or some kind of bird reference to some degree.
Due to the rather prolific recurrence of birds in the traditional carol (Partridges, Turtle Doves, French Hens, Swans, Geese..), there may also be some sort of alliteration or similar tie-in, otherwise we might as well have the “Twelve Days of KFC”….
When all else fails, a fair chunk of artistic license is brought in. It really takes a fair bit of dedication and imagination to pull off!
I’ll do my best to explain the theory behind each dish as we go.
So sit back and have some fun as I reveal what my true love made for me over the Twelve Days of Christmas Deliciousness for 2021:
Day 1 – A Partridge in a Pear Tree: Part-ridged Pear Tart
Pretty straight forward – as stated above we usually kick off with something involving pears, this pear tart is “part-ridged” – see what we did there?
Day 2 – Two Turtle Doves: Hard shell Tacos / Nachos
Tacos come in hard and soft-shells – just like turtles!
Day 3 – Three French Hens: Ratatouille
Ratatouille is a well known French dish. My wife has been vegetarian/pescatarian for a number of years now, so the hen aspect was off the menu, until…
Day 4 – Four Calling Birds: Karage Chicken Sushi from Tu Meke Don
Tim, Junko and Tane have been our go-to for Sushi for a number of years. and their karage chicken in sushi, donburi and just straight out fried is a favorite. (While I and Miss in Frame had the chicken, Mrs in Frame had Salmon.)
Day 5 – Five Gold Rings: 5 Golden Pasties
Pretty straight forward again – Golden rings of pastry filled with: Roast Carrot & Carrot Pesto, Mushroom & Broccoli, Asparagus & Onion, Roast Capsicum Dip & Feta, and Chocolate Ganache Tarts!
Day 6 – Six Geese a-Laying: Home-made Vanilla Ice Cream
I had to ask how she figured this one, too, but it’s because the vanilla pods’ contents give the ice cream a speckled appearance like the geese at our local park (she obviously spends more time there than I do).
Day 7 – Seven Swans Swimming: Squid Ink Pasta with Garlic and Lemon
Alliteration (using a number of words starting with the same letters / sounds / syllables) is a common trick we use when doing out 12 Days of Christmas. #FunFact: When the alliteration uses “S” sounds it’s called “sibilance” like in “Seven Swans Swimming”. The only swans I am aware of locally are the Black Swans down at the park and they are outright psychotic, so we’re not going anywhere near them. This Squid Ink Pasta is black, like the swans, starts with an “S”, and is far less homicidal.
Day 8 – Eight Maids a-Milking: Mac & Cheese
The predominant percentage of ingredients in Macaroni and Cheese are produced from what the titular maids have been extracting – Milk! (bonus points for it being such a glorious staple comfort food).
Day 9 – Nine Ladies Dancing: Chickpea Carrot Sauté with Homemade Focaccia Bread
While I initially thought the reasoning here was that the Chickpeas dance around the pan as they are sautéed, like the Ladies (“Chicks”), it was actually because most of the ingredients (sans Chickpeas) came from our garden and Mrs in Frame tells me her garden makes her happy enough to dance.
This was also the first time Mrs in Frame made Focaccia Bread by hand – and absolutely nailed it!
Day 10 – Ten Lords a-Leaping: Big English Breakfast for Dinner
To keep in theme with Scottish pipers piping I suggested a bottle of good single malt whisky. But apparently that’s “irresponsible parenting”, so shortbread – another Scottish staple it was.
In related Scottish news – Miss in Frame took up Highland dancing this year and in her first competitive dance WON FIRST PLACE! All the more reason for a celebratory bottle, but I digress… #ProudDadMoment
Day 12 – Twelve Drummers Drumming: Pumpkin Cake
Ending on another sweet note we aligned pumpkins with their drum-like appearance to create Pumpkin Cake with cream cheese icing. Pumpkins and their gourd relatives have been used as many things aside from food for centuries, including basic drums for Twelve Drummers!
So there you go – another Twelve Days of Christmas Deliciousness completed for another year. Sorry for the delay I usually try and get these out on Christmas Eve, but 2021 has been, well, 2021.
All the very best to you and your family for 2022 – May it be more fun and fortuitous than this year, and I’ll catch you in my next post – here’s a hint – the “12 Days of Takeaways” gave me an idea!
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.
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 “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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
Years of typing, texting & tweeting eviscerated what was already terrible handwriting…
I’ve never been one for self-help books or schemes.
My chakras are constantly out of alignment, and I’m more into Nasi Goreng than Feng Shui.
Though there is one thing I picked up from one of these sorts of books years ago that I have stuck with:
Each year one of the first things I write in my diary is a list of ten goals I want to achieve that year and ten “materialistic” things I want to do or get.
My goals for this year, 2021, can be seen above.
It’s a good little guide, or set of targets, for the year to come.
“Win Lotto” is never one of those things.
Until this year “Get a new job” was usually at the top, or near the top, of the list. This year I left it off out of sheer frustration. That turned out to be a portent of things to come.
“Effect positive change for Napier / Hawke’s Bay” has been another consistent goal that I like to think I have achieved throughout the years through my writing and social media advocacy.
But this year I feel I failed in that goal, as I got little chance to write or be published and certainly no chance of being broadcast other than social media.
I was, however, able to spend more quality time with my daughter, and that is certainly a great goal to have.
I was also recognised / rewarded for doing something I enjoy earlier this year when I was made a Life Member of NOBMCC – something I have loved doing for 15 years.
Given Covid restrictions “Travel Somewhere Nice” was something remarkable to achieve, especially as one of the places I traveled was Auckland – managing to squeeze in a visit between different stages of lockdown.
I probably would have enjoyed the overnight stay in Taupo the following Saturday more if I wasn’t still exhausted from the 10-ish hour return drive through the early morning darkness on the way to and from NZ’s biggest city..
I was also fortunate to meet more of my online friends in person, several of whom took the inability to travel overseas as an opportunity to see more of New Zealand, including my home town and region!
While I value the bigger goals more, the materialistic goals are also enjoyable – I’ve been fortunate enough to afford some luxuries this year – and helping our regional economy by buying from local businesses is a great way of helping everyone thrive.
The pile of books I have bought from Hawke’s Bay’s award winning Wardini Books this year has grown exponentially faster than I could ever hope to read them!
And there are more to come at Christmas…
Enjoying local hospitality businesses and the produce from local food and drink artisans has also been a highlight.
I still managed to achieve one of my other goals of losing a bit of weight throughout! (Only 5kg, but given the comfort eating I had been doing over the year, a rather miraculous goal…)
As we wind down 2021 and look forward to 2022 (dare we even look forward, or speculate on what could be?!) what are some of the things you would like to achieve, or buy, or do in 2022?
When Covid 19 landed in New Zealand last year I was due to go for my final appointment, but I was too busy working solo, so it was delayed. Until the first week of the country’s month-long lockdown! Unsurprisingly that didn’t happen, either.
Earlier this year I finally got a call for that appointment again, so early one morning I once again got in my car (our new one, this time, as you will remember the previous vehicle had issues when I got to Auckland, which led to us trading it in last year) and heading north long before the sun had stretched, yawned and scratched.
Once again I hit thick fog (or cloud in some places) from the Rangitaiki Plains all the way to Tokoroa, which made driving just that bit more nerve-wracking, but made it safely and smoothly to Auckland by morning tea time.
I fuddled around Mount Eden Village before meeting a Facebook contact who was buying some of my vintage toys – primarily my old GI Joe Tomahawk helicopter and completing the deal, which have me some spending money for the trip.
After that it was time to check into my motel for the night and walk next door to Greenlane Hospital for my appointment.
The check-up went fine, I got the all clear, though the doctor chose to snip a bit of scar tissue inside my nose there and then which involved some sharp objects going where they usually don’t go on Monday afternoons.
After a bit of recovery time I ventured out again to investigate more of Auckland than I had been able to previously. My new car’s GPS proving invaluable in guiding me around the suburban streets.
I visited and had coffee with Jeremy Dillon, creator of The Moe Show, that I have written of previously. Jeremy showed me his company’s latest iideas and nnovations. It really is a cool company with a real “Muppet” spirit.
After that I headed out to St Luke’s Mall – somewhere I haven’t been for 30+ years to get a gift for my daughter and some clothes on special for myself (I am apparently now old enough to rank this as a genuine trip highlight?!).
After sourcing dinner via Twitter recommendations from a Thai restaurant near Potter’s Park, and its giant Wally, I headed back to my motel, via an elongated and delayed route care of Auckland’s “rush hour” (a truly oxymoronic term in Auckland, as the mass of vehicular congestion prevents anyone from rushing anywhere) traffic.
With a near-constsnt stream of traffic outside my accommodation I decided that was it for the day and stayed in, staying up surprisingly late, given the level of exertion I had exerted that day.
I woke just as early the next morning as I had the previous and, rather than face more congestion hit the highway heading south, skirting Hamilton and Waikato University due to the fact I had missed a turn on State Highway 1B in the darkness.
The final stage back over SH5, the Napier-Taupo road was much easier in daylight and I was back home before lunch.
In total I had traveled a little over 1,000km in around 30 hours. An I would he travelling even more that week, as we had a family weekend back in Taupo the following Saturday – quite a paradoxically exhausting experience for me overall.
It was fun and interesting to be able to get out and see more of Auckland than on previous trips. It was also a bit odd, as the city was just coming out of a localized Covid lockdown, and perhaps a bit of nervousness or paranoia accompanied the journey – scanning and sanitizing were common practices on the trip.
Hopefully I might get to take my family back there on a holiday that doesn’t involve poking, prodding, or doctors sometime soon as, while Napier is a fantastic place and our home, it’s good to be a Visitor From Hawke’s Bay every once in a while!
Over the last few years I amassed quite a collection and, rather than keeping them in a plastic bag in a draw, I wanted to display them, but had nowhere appropriate to do it.
So I decided to make something.
Cleaning up our woodshed one day I came across a pile of old, native Rimu wood floorboards:
There were enough, and of sufficient size, to make a display case for my PSH!
I measured them out, cut them to length and cut off the tongue and groove edges:
I put a call out on Facebook for some kind of planer to tidy up the boards, and my old Tamatea Primary School friend, Mike Wyatt, put them through his thicknesser.
The gorgeous results had me moaning “Grains, GRAINS!” all zombie-like:
More cutting for plywood shelves to slide in and the potential for a Perspex front got us to the framing level:
A thin plywood back gave it some solidity and rigidity, too:
Now, to sort out what went where – Easier said than done with a rather diverse collection and several shelves. Do I dare mix DC and Marvel characters?
We had some left-over Resene Test Pots from rock painting and other art projects with my daughter, and one left-over pot was just enough to paint the interior of the display case:
A top coat of some metallic paint we used for highlight stripes in my daughter’s room a few years ago added some comic book pizazz to the finish:
A sheet of clear plastic from Napier’s Classique Plastics slid perfectly into place (after a little bit of extra chiseling – my carpentry is still far from perfect..) to keep dust off my collection:
And I glued each figure onto the shelves to avoid them all rolling about at the slightest bump:
The final result looks pretty fantastic, if I do say so myself:
