Fast Car

1988

One evening RTR Countdown plays the new music video of a song that will quickly gain regular radio airtime. It’s by an African American woman named Tracy Chapman who has short, spiky dreadlocks and it’s called “Fast Car”.

Something about the song strikes a chord with this scrawny pakeha kid from Napier, New Zealand, despite the singer and song appearing so very different to my life at the time.

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we’ll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

While Napier is my entire existence in 1988, I realize it is merely a small part of a much bigger planet, but It’s a good starting point. At ten years old my life and the world lie ahead of me.

That’s 10-11 year old me in yellow, middle row, second from the left.

“Fast Car” will continue to develop and deepen each time I hear it over the coming years. Every time I hear it there will be different meaning in it for me.

1993-95

“You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won’t have to drive too far
Just ‘cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
And finally see what it means to be living”

I got my first job at Onekawa New World supermarket – a “convenience store” in American parlance – in 1993 for about a year and started earning my own money.

Some time in 1994 I bought my first “Fast Car” – A ’69 (nice!) Ford Anglia, which my Dad helped me paint and get in good running order. The Anglia enabled me to “cross the border” between Napier and Hastings – the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro river bridges. Owning a car is also a really big step on the way to “adulthood”.

My first car, Circa 1994

Chorus

“So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast it felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped ’round my shoulder
And I-I had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone”

OK, my first car was nowhere near “fast”, I didn’t go very far, and I sure as hell never drove drunk, but owning a car did provide mobility – A highly intoxicating drug for any teenager.

Driving back to Napier from Hastings at night the city’s lights are gorgeous – all the house and street lights on Napier Hill (Mataruahou) look like a sparkling, multi-jeweled crown.

While I wouldn’t so much as hold hands with a girl until 1998 (not for lack of trying!), so snuggling-and-driving was out of the question, I DID feel like I belonged at home with my family.

We were a small unit, but we were tight, and we loved each other.

I wanted to be “someone”, too – A journalist with Napier’s Daily Telegraph newspaper, or a radio announcer at Bay City Radio, where I had gotten a taste of airtime as a “Co-Pilot” on their Sunday morning kids’ show.

Maybe one day I might even end up on TV?

I was a panelist on RNZ’s “The Panel” six times between 2018 & 2019.
The briefest of National Radio exposure

1996-1998

See, my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle, that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
His body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did

While my Dad wasn’t a drinker and Mum never left us, Dad did have a heart attack around 1997. As I’ve written about before, my parents had me quite late in life and Dad was nearing retirement age not long after I finished school. Not long after the heart attack he ended up taking early retirement. His work and hobbies had always been quite physical and taxing, so it wasn’t too surprising.

We still managed to live happily, never struggling financially despite Dad’s solo income or pension being far less than I would end up earning later in life.

Rather than going to university like so many of my schoolmates, I ended up working back in the same supermarket I had my first job in. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to spend three years of my life and $30-50,000 on a student loan to STILL not know, so working on the checkout and stacking shelves provided a regular, albeit reasonably small, income and kept me closer to my parents who I was now starting to worry about.

(The line about quitting school to look after a sick relative also reminds me of Toby Morris’ exquisite cartoon “On a Plate” that (very rightly) never fails to anger me.)

In December 1995 I landed my dream job as a midnight-to-dawn radio announcer on Saturday nights at Hot 93 in Hastings after doing work experience and an in-house course at the station during my last year of Tamatea High School.

I worked at the supermarket during the day, went home, had dinner and travelled out to the station around 11pm to be on air from midnight until 6am. It was physically and mentally draining. Management decisions hardly helped.

At first we were allowed to talk between every few songs, like normal radio announcers. But a few months in we were told we were only allowed to play music. It defeated the purpose of being a “radio announcer“.

Aside from manually queuing up and playing the preset lists of songs on stacks of the station’s compact discs (things were far from digital in 1995/6) we also had menial tasks like doing the dishes and vacuuming the station offices. You got pretty good at being able to do certain tasks in the three and a half minutes it took for most songs to play, then get back into the studio in time to seamlessly start the next song. I didn’t mind doing the cleaning, as it was the sort of things the youngest/newest staff members just did when they started jobs, and it helped pass the long dark hours.

But after being silenced on air us midnight-till-dawners just became some sort of “manual automation”. Taking off secondary tax it soon didn’t even pay enough to get to Hastings and back every weekend, either.

Not long after I left midway through 1996 the graveyard shift was digitally automated/simulcast and what had been the entry point for regional broadcasters for years ceased to exist.

My dream radio career had lasted six months.

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way”

2001-2004

“You got a fast car
We go cruising, entertain ourselves
You still ain’t got a job
And I work in the market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You’ll find work and I’ll get promoted
We’ll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs”

I got a job at Dymocks Booksellers in Napier in 2000. I met my future wife while working there in 2001. She ended up working there part time, too, and would go on to work in the book trade much longer than I did.

Our boss, Jeff, was very good and managed to organize it so we had our “weekends” (usually Wednesday and Thursday from memory) together. We had a fair bit of disposable income and planned to get a flat together at some stage in the near future.

In 2023 the store was bought by new owners, who interviewed us all and asked what our plans / goals were. I said after three years I’d like to move up and become some sort of manager eventually.

The new owners fired all the incumbent staff and took on new employees when they took over.

My wife got immediately head-hunted by a bookshop down the road. She would go back to working at Dymocks until its closure under even newer owners who took over after the owners who fired us failed.

I got a job as an Assistant Manager (the shop had only two staff including myself) at a video game store in the CBD a month after the bookshop let us go. This was “Big Money” in 2023: $10 per hour!

While still living at our respective homes the double income allowed us to regularly go out to the movies, have coffee and dessert on long Hawke’s Bay evenings and go for aimless drives.

We even found a flat with very good landlords who charged below market rates that allowed us to move in together in my childhood suburb of Tamatea!

There’s just something special about sunsets over Tamatea, as the big, golden orb dips below the Poraiti hills..

2004-2023

“You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I’d always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me’d find it
I got no plans, I ain’t going nowhere
Take your fast car and keep on driving”

In 2004 I was finally able to leave low-paying retail after a decade when I got a job in the same company (and office) as my (now fiancée’s) father and our income more than doubled.

I was only supposed to be for a year to cover maternity leave, but the lady who held my position previously decided not to return and I would remain in the job for the next 20 years – a massive change from what had been a natural three-year cycle in different retail jobs.

It meant job security and stability during some very unstable times in my life.

Between 2004 and 2023 my life was a rollercoaster of:

Not to mention all the interior and exterior crises of regular life, coming to grips with parenthood, and still trying to figure out how to be an adult.

I’ll certainly never be a “deadbeat dad” and have tried to be as involved as I can in our daughter’s life – Going on school trips, coaching her cricket team, doing all I can to ensure she knows she matters, is loved and can do her best.

I’ve sacrificed time, money, and opportunities for my family’s security, but that’s just what you do as a Dad. Right?

Sadly, security is no panacea for the feeling of stagnation when your own life and career goals fail to materialize after years and years of trying to effect change for yourself.

Despite two decades of loyal service and dedication to my job, doing odd hours and going above and beyond, often working solo and still meeting work targets, I still haven’t risen from the position I inherited 20 years ago.

Being unsuccessful in both internal promotions and finding a new career closer to what I actually want to do started to ulcerate some time ago.

I have had so many plans, but I’ve gone nowhere.

But there is still Hope.

Seeing people like Ke Huy Quan and Brendan Fraser win Academy Awards in 2023 showed that good guys with dreams can still get there in middle age, despite decades of feeling redundant or inadequate.

In 2023 Tracy Chapman became the first Black woman to have written a country music number one. She also becomes the first Black woman to win a Country Music Association award for “Fast Car”, 35 years after the song was first released, when Luke Combs’ cover of her song won “Song of the Year”.

2024

“You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way”

Throughout “Fast Car” there is a beat that ticks away like an old analogue clock, and a plinky-plonky acoustic guitar riff that repeats over and over and sounds like water dripping constantly, endlessly.

I can’t and won’t leave my family, as my daughter is the best thing I have. But I can’t keep going without catching a break.

There is a stage where the line “live and die this way” stops being a way of life and becomes an imminent threat.

The snare and high-hat tick away like a clock. The plinky-plonky acoustic guitar riff repeats over and over, like water dripping constantly, endlessly.

A City in the Dark

The following is the 6,100-word (very long) original draft of my piece that The Spinoff very professionally trimmed down to a more readable 4,000 words and printed as their Sunday Essay on 5 March 2023 as “Napier in the Dark”.

Thanks to Jolisa Gracewood and Toby Morris for the encouragement and advice to send it in and The Spinoff’s Editor, Madeleine Chapman, for agreeing to commission the piece.

Monday

The rain chases me into my car.

I left for work at 4am on the morning of what could later be called “Cyclone Eve”. It was dark and the weather was fine. I could hear the sea roaring off in the distance – not unusual, considering Cyclone Gabrielle was approaching the north-east coast of New Zealand.

But as I closed the gate with the car idling at the curb, I heard another sound.

This was closer than the sea. And getting closer still.

Then I see it – The glow of the bulb three streetlights away is suddenly blurred by a fog of heavy rain, then two lights away, then right next door.

I jump into the car, slam the door shut and buzz the windows up just as the squall hits my car broadside. Sheets of wind-driven rain lash the car as I drive to work through Marewa and Pandora, making vision difficult.

Rain is intermittent as I spend the next few hours at work. Gabrielle’s arrival was forecast weeks ago and management have engaged a cyclone action plan whereby staff at our site, just north of the Esk River, are to leave work by 4pm Monday and those who can are expected to work from home on Tuesday.

As the weather in Napier hasn’t improved and the bulk of my work is done by 8am, I leave earlier still to take my nine-year-old daughter to school in the rain.

Oddly, while all the city’s high schools have already announced over the weekend that they would be closed on Monday and Tuesday, many primary schools still run as normal on Monday.

School run done, and home to work from my couch as reasonably persistent rain falls outside. We keep a cautious eye on the creek across the road, which almost spilled over in the disastrous floods of November 2020. It’s up, but not by much.

So far, so good.

School pick-up is unremarkable in reasonably steady rain, but the wind has started picking up. It escalates even further in as Gabrielle nears.

The trees in our front yard twist and bend but remain upright and intact. Across the road on the creek reserve several branches have fallen from the willows and other trees.

We hunker down and go to bed, the falling rain barely audible over the sound of the wind.

Tuesday

I wake early and do some paperwork remotely as the rain and wind’s severity just keeps elevating outside, peaking around dawn.

I am keeping an eye on social media to see what is happening weather-wise around the region. Lots of trees are down, lots of rivers are up.

The Esk River has broken its banks, and the already rather feeble Esk River bridge, which I have written of before, is allegedly damaged.

Not long after 7am I lose working from home connectivity. Not unusual, as losing power at work would naturally cut off remote access.

I see pictures of Esk Valley on Facebook/Twitter. It’s no longer a valley, it’s ALL Esk River.   

I learn later that by the time I lost connectivity my entire work site is under about two meters of water.

Shit.

Other reports start coming in.

The Puketapu Bridge over the Tutaekuri River is damaged (we learn later that it has gone completely).

Shit!

This bridge is (WAS) about ten meters above the regular height of the river. At intermediate school, we conducted nature studies underneath it, measuring river water for clarity and speed. We measured how fast it was flowing by timing how long it took to float tennis balls downstream a given distance in a controlled situation.

But this situation is anything but controlled.

A Facebook friend posts that the Tutaekuri river has overflowed its banks near Waiohiki Bridge, by the Pettigrew Green Arena. It flows into the EIT Te Pukenga campus, the area surrounding Waiohiki Marae across the river and into the streets of Taradale.

Taradale is flooding!

SHIT!!

My In-laws, who live in Howard Road – the last cross-street between Murphy Road and Taradale’s main arterial route of Gloucester St – had become increasingly concerned about the river’s height throughout the morning watching social media updates, so they come to our place “for a visit” around 9am, just as the evacuation notice is given. They see the river water coming down Gloucester Street towards them as they head east to our house with police and buses going the opposite direction to evacuate people. 

We lose power before they arrive.

Redclyffe Substation, which provides Napier’s power from Wairaki in Taupo is underwater.

The Substation is on the banks of the Tutaekuri River, on Springfield Road out past Taradale and the EIT campus towards Napier’s Transfer Station (the city’s old rubbish tip) and Puketapu, in the foothills beyond.

When I was in primary school my dad worked for the NZED (New Zealand Electricity Department) before Rogernomics filleted, gutted and asset-stripped it to sell to private interests. He took us to Redclyffe on the way to or from the dump one day. We sat in the control room – it had a very 60s-70s civil servant aesthetic, even in the late 80s – and looked out through big windows at the mass of transformers and power lines corralled in meters-high chain-link and barbed wire beyond.

The defensive fences are there for a reason – millions of volts buzz just outside the window. Dad’s friend, who was the operator on duty, warned that anyone who went outside into the caged area risked being “instantly fried”.

But millions of litres of water flooding down the Tutaekuri river don’t care about fences of electric volts.

Power goes out and a city goes dark. 

It’s not just power that leaves Napier in the dark.

About four hours after losing mains power, the city’s cell towers, running on back-up batteries, start dropping out – and a society so inseparable from its cell phones and internet access loses connection with itself and the rest of the world. 

With the networks down and cellular devices straining to get a signal, phone batteries start running dry and dying across the city by the end of the day.

Napier started life on and around what was at the time an island: Mataruahou, later known as Napier Hill, where the settlement grew into a town and then a city.

In February 2023, it reverts to being an island again. The flooding Esk River to the north and Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro Rivers to the south cut off all state highway access to the city, and almost all communication links are broken.

Along with Coromandel, Tairāwhiti and a number of other regions where Gabrielle’s force is being felt the worst, Hawke’s Bay declares a State of Emergency midmorning on Tuesday, and soon afterwards, a National State of Emergency is also declared, but many of those under the state of emergency only learn of this on transistor radios and car stereos, listening to RNZ National Radio and some, but not all, of the region’s many commercial radio stations.  

Media watch:

RNZ: The National Broadcaster does its national duty. The Morning Report presenters and Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon are across the flooding coverage speaking with reporters and officials where and when they can contact them.

The Hits HB: Based in Napier, local breakfast pair “Adam and Megan” are on air thanks to generator power for an extended period, not just the usual few hours of their breakfast show.

The Breeze HB: The Breeze’s breakfast pair of “Martin and Jacquie” and on-air boss Justin Rae (apparently, they have no other on-air staff either?) are also on extended hours providing updates, information and interviews when and how they can.

A very “civil” Civil Emergency

With my in-laws temporary evacuees at our house, we hear from neighbours that Pak n Save Napier is open with generator power, so my mother-in-law, her sister (who happens to be visiting form Australia) and I gingerly make our way there – no power equals no traffic lights and Hawke’s Bay drivers are far from the best in optimal conditions, let alone emergencies – to acquire some supplies,

It appears around a quarter of Napier are doing the same.

It’s organised chaos.

The bare minimum is understandably operating – Lights, checkouts and, thankfully in a cashless society, Eftpos.

Freezers and chillers are no longer freezing or chilling and have largely been emptied or shuttered.

Everyone is stressed, but this is also a very “civil” Civil Emergency.

Queues are very long, but orderly. People say please and thank you and are helping each other.

Tension and stress are evident, but everyone seems to realise we are all in this together.

Along with the queue for the checkouts there is also a queue for Lotto, just not as extensive.

We make it home safely in time for lunch with a hint of blue sky between occasional showers the in-laws go back to see if they can access to residential Taradale.

They set off and due to the communications black-out we don’t hear from them immediately. We assume they made it home safely. They confirm the next day they did, though Civil Defence’s text notification for the all-clear doesn’t reach them until hours after the actual all clear is given.

We go over to our neighbours’ house to utilise their gas bottle and hob to boil up some two-minute noodles and broccoli for dinner.

They are fostering two puppies, whom my daughter absolutely adores and spends the time playing and running around with them.

There is some light in dark times.

From early evening news reports on the radio, it appears most of urban Napier has gotten off relatively lightly. While still without power or communications, our drinking water is safe and secure, and remains so for the duration of the emergency. To our north, Wairoa and Gisborne aren’t so lucky. Due to damage to their water system Gisborne’s supply will almost completely run out just as the Navy arrives with filtration equipment and suppliers a few days later.

We move our mattress into the living room, so all three of us can sleep close together in the powerless dark.

Our day of disaster ends with the setting of the sun.

Wednesday:

I am up just before the sun and into the car to listen to our one guaranteed source of information – the radio. I periodically turn the car on and leave it running in the driveway to refresh the battery and occasionally get some charge in my phone.

Media watch:

Newstalk ZB: has taken over Radio Hauraki’s Hawke’s Bay FM frequency. A smart, informative move. But when I tune in, Mike Hosking is moaning from his Auckland studio about unemployed people in Bay of Plenty. Seriously?

There will be more Hawke’s Bay coverage later in the day when the actual talkback part of the network opens to callers and texters, but for now, Napier’s lack of power and coverage still make for a giant black hole of information.

The Hits HB: Is off the air. According to ZB the station’s generator has run out of diesel and finding supply/fuel pumping capabilities is obviously very difficult.

The Breeze HB: The breakfast pair and “J-Rae” are still on air. Martin and Justin will be on air for 13 hours today – a mammoth effort in such conditions! Not that they have anywhere else to go – Both live in Napier and, with all bridges currently closed, they are trapped in Hastings, unable to return home.

RNZ: The forces of nature that are Kim Hill and Kathryn Ryan are raging like Tuesday’s winds. When a spokesperson from Transpower, New Zealand’s national electricity infrastructure company, says that Redclyffe is still underwater and restoring power to Napier could take two weeks, Ryan’s shocked response is like the crack of a lightning bolt. Kim Hill’s pen clicks with the speed of an anemometer in a tornado as she grills officials.

The Rock: Simulcast Auckland jocks are jockulating obliviously.

With such limited communications and no power, the repeated phrase “check out our Facebook page / this website for more information” on radio becomes torturous.

WE CAN’T!

The effects of Gabrielle’s flooding have yet to cease causing damage a day later. The rain has stopped but the sheer volume of water still coming down the regions rivers hasn’t, causing residents of the low-lying Napier suburb of Te Awa to be ordered to evacuate when there is another breach of the Tutaekuri river, closer to the sea this time, inundating the Awatoto industrial area, Napier’s sewage treatment plant, and golf course before heading towards the neighbouring suburb where our daughter’s best friend lives. Her family safely evacuate to a centre at Napier’s McLean Park.

I see pictures of Te Awa streets later that look almost identical in almost identical parts of Napier South to the scenes after the 2020 floods.

We go to check on my in-laws in Taradale mid-morning and we just miss them as they have gone to check on my sister-in-law.

No comms means all cars.

The sheer volume of urban traffic is quite amazing, but also concerning. With no power there are few to no petrol stations open, meaning fuel tanks will start running as dry as cell phone batteries if people don’t limit travel.

Despite Hawke’s Bay drivers not being the most diligent at the best of times, and lots of traffic combined with no traffic lights, we see the aftermath of only one intersection crash. Most of Napier’s main arterial route intersections normally governed by traffic lights are quickly transformed into roundabouts once road crews have been out with cones. There is more giving way and indicator use in these days of blackout than entire previous years.     

Taradale’s western suburban side looks like footage of Christchurch’s post-quake liquefaction in 2011.

The Tutaekuri’s overflow is everywhere and unmissable, with several centimeters of silt and mud across the streets, clogging gutters and evidently in some homes.

The smell of wet carpet is unmistakable.

We venture to Greenmeadows New World for supplies on the way home. There appear to be long queues outside, but they are all people just trying to connect to the store’s free Wi-Fi.

Access to the supermarket is easy, but the queue for the checkouts goes around the entire shop and then some. While those outside @ others on social media, those inside form the same symbol in a giant, orderly human-and-trolley conga line.

Everyone is still so calm and civil. No panic buying. Politely giving access to others and moral support to the staff, who must wonder just what the hell is happening. They too smile, but there is a look of tiredness and shock in many eyes.

A staff member stacking produce says “there is always someone out there worse off than you are” – a concept I am all too familiar with.  

Despite some essential products already being sold out (eggs, toilet paper, tinned baked beans and spaghetti) and the freezer/chiller sections blocked off and being emptied a day after their power was lost, we manage to get everything we need.

While we treat ourselves to a block of Whittakers chocolate, many trolleys appear to contain dozens of cans or bottles of beer. Can’t really blame them, to be honest.  

Later in the day, we reconnect with the in-laws for dinner. They need yet more supplies, so I go to Pak n Save in my old neighborhood of Tamatea.

Again, there are rows of people seeking Wi-Fi access outside.

Inside the shop it’s like Christmas Eve – not celebratory, of course, but that same level of urgency. The supermarket’s generators provide light, electricity, and working chillers.

For a moment you could have forgotten it was the modern Dark Ages outside.   

The first deaths are confirmed on the radio during dinner, including a child in Eskdale, which my daughter overhears. You naturally want to shelter your children from death, doom and destruction, but I also think she needs at least a little exposure to it to acclimatize to life’s perils.   

Inspired by those alcohol-laden New World trolleys, I liberate a few short-dated beers from my father-in-law’s now room temperature beer fridge with his permission.

Others won’t be so polite. On the way home we pass a local liquor store, using its delivery vans to barricade the big glass windows at the front of the shop. It won’t work: that night they are broken into and burgled.

It won’t be the last occasion of burglary or looting, with security systems down due to the power outage. Police presence will ramp up in the city and we will have the “Eagle” helicopter circling over our city regularly for the next few evenings and nights.

The shine is coming off the Civil Emergency’s civility.

THURSDAY

We empty the contents of our fridge into the bin.

The coastal route between Napier and Hastings via Clive along State Highway 51 reopened late yesterday to emergency traffic and essential travel, but with speed restrictions and stop-go points along the way. It closes for a time again amidst safety checks to the bridges.

Many Napier people have self-evacuated to Hastings to be with friends, family, or just to get fuel and power for charging devices. Some are trapped there overnight when the road temporarily closes again.

The queue of vehicles attempting to head out of Napier stretches along Marine Parade and George’s Drive, but they’re not getting very far.

We’re staying put despite some anxiety starting to creep in about fuel and food supply levels. 

Morning Media watch:

If every media network had to donate $5 for every time I hear the grammatical ulceration of “the Hawke’s Bay” (it’s “Hawke’s Bay”, no “the”) during this emergency, recovery efforts would be flooded with cash, not water and silt.

Newstalk ZB: Hosking is celebrating the resignation of Scottish PM Nicola Sturgeon and playing political soundbites of some US Republican presidential hopeful decrying the evils of socialism.

Not for the first time I wonder how could any media network allow itself to be cuckolded by a handful of opinionated announcers radicalised by conservative capitalistic cant?

The Hits HB: Is back on the air. Content is much the same as The Breeze. Spark supplies their communications, so they have better phone / text coverage and access to the internet than the majority of Napier it appears. They don’t seem to get that, no, we still can’t check your Facebook post, or link to that website.

The Breeze HB: Martin, Jacquie and Justin are still doing the mahi. Martin and Justin managed to get back to Napier and see their families last night. The emotional toll is understandably starting to show. We hear that full power connectivity for Napier could still be up to two weeks away. The news hits hard.

RNZ: Corrin Dann and Kim Hill are still doing what Morning Report does best – asking hard questions and getting answers. While Transpower still says full power could be weeks away for Napier the spokesman for Hawke’s Bay power provider Unison’s back-pedalling of the statement could just about generate enough power to light a small suburb. Unison is already working on a way to essentially hotwire Napier’s power grid to Hastings’ which is more secure and fed from the south.  

The Rock: The Auckland jocks are still jockulating obliviously <Click!> There’s some power saved!

I crack one of my father-in-law’s beers while listening to updates not long after lunch.

We don’t need the radio to know there’s a lot going on today – sirens are constant throughout the day.

We live one of the main access roads to the Civil Defence centre based at the Napier Fire Station and see some, but not all the emergency vehicles going past. Fire engines mainly, but other rescue vehicles as well. A convoy of four-wheel-drives pass our house towing trailers stacked with Surf Rescue IRBs (Inflatable Rescue Boats) heading AWAY from the beaches. It’s all we need to know that things haven’t improved much.

Helicopters have been droning back and forth overhead for the last few days, too. The big RNZAF NH90s make a notably deeper “thud-thud-thud” as they fly overhead.

I give an excited “whoop!” when an Air Force C-130 Hercules passes over Napier, as I’ve been hoping airlifted supplies would start streaming in soon. It’s just doing reconnaissance and the bulk of defence force emergency supplies will, in fact, come via sea on board Royal New Zealand Navy vessels that start arriving on Saturday later news bulletins tell us.

There is even a privately-owned Sikorsky Blackhawk – a rare sight in New Zealand. We later learn it’s here to help re-establish power with its heavy-lift capabilities. 

We spend most of our day at home, go for the occasional walk around the block, and visit the puppies next door.

I establish some degree of communication by borrowing a Spark cell phone from our neighbour. I text a friend in Christchurch to get updates and let people know we’re OK.

Vodafone is going to lose a region of customers after this.

We help our neighbours clear out their freezer by going over for a BBQ that evening. Our typically finicky nine-year-old daughter discovers a new favourite food in honey soy chicken kebabs.

Small bits of normality in abnormal times.

We listen to damage reports and updates on the radio during dinner.

We still have no real idea of the extent of this disaster three days after it began – and we’re at the centre of it!

With the speed the media world cycles through news, there will be events and images from the worst of the initial flooding that some Napier people will likely never see or know about.

We read in the twilight and go to bed with the sun again, but I wake up at 1am and lie there wide awake for some time. This will be something that continues over the next few days.

Friday

Is it Friday? Who can tell?!

Up before dawn. Still no power.

But after going social media cold-turkey for three days, I finally have limited data connectivity on my phone again!

I scroll and scroll in the early morning darkness as my daughter and wife sleep and the load on local cell towers isn’t high enough to lose signal or drain my chronically low battery.

Looks like I inadvertently caused a bit of panic yesterday: The last tweet I sent, about Taradale flooding on Tuesday morning, was stuck in the ether when the networks went down and wasn’t posted… until data coverage was restored on Thursday afternoon. Luckily several people quickly picked up on the glitch, assuring everyone it was old news.  

I also have an email from a TVNZ Breakfast producer (from Tuesday) and a Twitter direct message from an Australian New York Times reporter (from yesterday), both requesting insight into the situation in Napier. But the cyclone’s news cycle is spinning so fast that when I finally have sufficient phone coverage to see their messages and send a reply, I never hear back from them.

Lots of messages of support flow in, but we don’t need it – those in the areas surrounding Napier do.

I finally get to see some of the pictures of devastation.

Quite possibly the only thing that saved the Esk River bridge, was the Esk River went everywhere AROUND it.

Geez.

It looks like the entire Esk Valley is buried under one to two metres of silt and mud. From aerial photos, my workplace appears to be a big, wet, muddy mess. We won’t be going back there any time soon.

Bridges are out everywhere – Puketapu, Waiohiki, Brookfields Bridge, linking Meeanee with Pakowhai in between the Tutaekuri and Ngaruroro rivers. All gone.

The Waiohiki Bridge

Aside from the wholesale destruction in Esk Valley, State Highway 5 – the Napier-Taupo Road that runs through the valley – looks to be wiped off the map and hillsides in several places further up towards Te Pohue and Taupo

The rail bridge at Awatoto – the main East Coast line – is gone.

This is going to require engineering and construction on a national scale. Reinstating the Ministry of Works really looks to be a valid concept. Formally reconnecting Hawke’s Bay to the rest of New Zealand is just too much for one region, or one contracting company, to achieve.

Media watch:

I don’t listen to the radio as much today. We play family games and go for walks, getting weary of news while we’re still in the dark.

Newspaper: A special, free edition of local paper Hawke’s Bay Today is delivered to dairies and other sites around the region. We walk down to our nearest dairy to get a copy and see the queue of cars for our nearest service station, now open on generator power for the first time since Tuesday, is nearing a kilometer long down Taradale Road.   

Newstalk ZB: Reverts to Radio Hauraki sometime during the day. When I flick through the channels trying to find new information in the afternoon, their regular “matey-mate-mate-mates” on the afternoon show are blathering away as arrogantly and irrelevantly as ever. 

The Hits HB: Are doing good mahi, but with phone coverage still so bleak it is hard going. Their interview with visiting Prime Minister Chris Hipkins cuts in and out and eventually drops out altogether. Local coverage gives way in the afternoon to the Auckland-simulcast drive time show, so I don’t bother listening to that.

Both The Hits and The Breeze are playing various versions of “Your official /number one Civil Defence radio station” self-promotional ads. Their networks’ execs in Auckland HQ, never attentive to the regions at the best of times, apparently think disasters are another great opportunity for some sort of ratings war.

The Breeze HB: These guys have set the standard, but boss Justin Rae is the star.

He has been venturing out to get information in the mornings and hosting most of the afternoons. Authorities have finally twigged that everyone is getting their information through radio (it has been the most reliable, least interrupted source all week), so they start funnelling more information out through it.

Rae is finally joined by an additional on-air voice – Max, a younger member of staff is providing updates and information.

Justin breaks down a bit on air, saying he “feels guilty” he can go home and be with his family when they finally get out to visit him at the station in Hastings from Napier.

The Breeze opens their land line phones up for information in and out – This is taking me back to the awesome days of 90s regional radio where stations had local staff on-air 24/7 and were a real community hub!

I do hope these events trigger some sort of longer format, live and local, relevant regional radio renascence in Hawke’s Bay at the very least.

We hear on an afternoon news report that power has started being restored to Napier via Hastings. The CBD and Napier Hill have electricity again. Hopefully the rest of us can’t be far off.

In the evening a police car passes our house at barely subsonic speed. There is a major, armed incident on the other side of our suburb. Eagle circles the scene. The police are not messing around. 

Saturday

I am awake again at 2am.

After half an hour of darkened doom-scrolling I go back to bed and get a few more hours’ sleep, but not without lying awake again for some time.

As the Saturday sun rises, I go out to the car to pass an hour listening to the radio.

Newstalk ZB / Hauraki: I simply don’t bother.

RNZ: Corin Dann is hosting a special Saturday edition Morning Report, but there isn’t anything new or crucial to report. The rescue aspect of the emergency has been largely completed and now it’s into recovery mode. The confirmed death toll is slowly rising.

The Hits and The Breeze HB: The local hosts appear to be having the weekend off (I only listen around 7am, so they could have been on later), which is reasonable given their recent workload.

But with most of the hour being largely uninterrupted music and ads, this feels like the commercial media’s news cycle has turned and passed us by after their ever-present updates during the week.

To make things worse The Hits are playing the oxymoronic “Best of Jono and Ben”. <Click!>

We finish cleaning and clearing out the refrigerator, leave the door open to dry it out, and go visit the puppies next door.

We need petrol and some more food so, with power now on in town, I head to Countdown.

No, not THAT Countdown, the Countdown across the road from it.

But first I go into the CBD.

It’s been almost a whole week in our state of powerless lock-down and I need space and sea air. I wrote some time ago that Napier’s CBD revitalises me. Even when it’s almost completely deserted and most of the shops are closed like today, just being in town lifts my mood.

I park on Marine Parade and take a short walk along the seaside Rotary Pathway, from Tom Parker Fountain to the Veronica Sun Bay and Soundshell.

There is storm-washed driftwood on the high tide mark and most of the way down to the waterline. Nowhere near the volume seen in Tairāwhiti, but it still goes on for as far as the eye can see.

This is also different to the wood clogging Tolaga Bay and other East Coast beaches. Rather than cut radiata logs and forestry slash, these appear to be whole and shattered willow and poplar trees and other riparian plantings. Knotty branches and root balls torn from riverbanks and hillsides by Gabrielle’s deluge and raging rivers.    

As I walk towards the Soundshell a completely different sight catches my eye: two women fully dressed in 1930s “flapper” dresses are sitting on a blanket having a picnic.

With everything else going on (and off) I’d completely forgotten it was supposed to be Art Deco Weekend!

The event was understandably canceled on Wednesday when the practicality of receiving and hosting tens of thousands of tourists in the city looked as likely as instantaneous power restoration and bridge repairs.

The weekend usually includes the New Zealand Defense Force in a ceremonial capacity because when the 1931 earthquake struck the navy’s HMS Veronica was in port. Sailors from the ship were key participants in immediate rescue and recovery and humanitarian efforts. Neither Napier, nor the Navy have forgotten this partnership. The Royal New Zealand Air Force Display Team is also usually present doing aerobatics and fly pasts, along with privately owned vintage aircraft.

This weekend all three branches of the New Zealand Defense Force are back, just in a more practical format, providing aid, assistance, and supplies to a region recovering from disaster, just like the crew of the Veronica 92 years ago.

My intended short supply trip stretches into over two hours. Not because of supermarket and service station queues – there is next to no waiting for either – but because I keep meeting people I know, and every time we spend about ten minutes each filling each other in on the week’s events that we haven’t been able to share the (up until Tuesday) “regular way”.

I am in trouble with my wife for my unnotified tardiness when I get home, but the criticism is cut short when there is a beep and a buzz.

Power has come back on!

We use it sparingly, lest its return only be temporary – and it is on Sunday, with power dropping out a few times, most likely as other areas had their supplies safely switched back on.

Power won’t be fully restored to all of Napier until Tuesday afternoon – over seven days since it was lost!

My In-laws’ house is one of the last areas to get power back, by which time some people have already returned to work, while many others continue to work to help friends, loved ones and strangers recover from the floods.

For some of us at least, life will quickly return to a relative “normal”. For others it will take a longer time, and for others it will never be the same.

Aftermath

Thousands of cubic meters of mud, silt and debris will be removed over the coming weeks around the region. As Hawke’s Bay’s weather returns to its more traditional summer settings after Gabrielle departs, all the silt, mud and entombed particulates will start to dry, harden and blow away as dust when moved.

By the following Tuesday you can already smell, taste and even see it in the air around Napier. The immediate health threats of flooding may have passed, but others will remain for some time.

Hawke’s Bay schools start reopening on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I go back to work remotely and sparingly on Sunday, catching up to where I should have been mid-morning last Tuesday a week later.

I see aerial photos of my work. It’s a mess. I am told our office is flooded and likely little will be recoverable. But they are fully insured, and our company’s Japanese owners have pledged full support for rebuild and recovery. The site suffered a similar fate during Cyclone Bola in 1998, and the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami wrought even greater levels of destruction to facilities over there, so the owners have experience with this. Their support also gives job security and income stability to those working for one of Hawke’s Bay’s biggest employers.

It won’t be the same for everyone.

I feel guilty having gotten off so lightly. We were only powerless, but I have friends whose houses are a mess, uninhabitable, or gone completely. Others whose businesses are wrecked, or jobs and income no longer secure.

We go to an appliance store on the Tuesday to get something our daughter needs for her return to school on Wednesday, and see an old acquaintance leaving. They are there to replace their fridge, washing machines, and more after being flooded out. Unsurprisingly, even while we are still in a National State of Emergency, there already aren’t any left in stock in Hawke’s Bay.

Restocking and relacing all these key household appliances for all those households will take some time, with basic household tasks potentially remaining as if the power was still off for months.

Building products like plaster board, already having run out in New Zealand last year due to staffing and logistical issues brought on by Covid-19, will be in high demand and short supply.

New Zealand doesn’t have enough builders and tradespeople for new builds and repairs as it is. What will this do to that situation?

I hear from friends who usually commute between Napier and Hastings that the usually 15-20 minute trip along the SH2 Expressway now takes a minimum of 40 minutes with speed restrictions, detours and congestion, and a maximum of over two hours!

Travelling north by road from Napier to Taupo and Auckland will have to be done via a major southern detour through Palmerston North and the Central Plateau.

We aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.

With numerous stretches of rail and bridges out, no Kiwirail freight will be going to or from Napier or its port for some time.

Freight logistics will be a nightmare.   

While many of us weren’t overly affected by Cyclone Gabrielle, the after-effects could well have  many long-term detriments for the region and its inhabitants.        

Hawke’s Bay will be tested.     

Leaving Narnia

 
Like C.S. Lewis’ Pevensie children most Napier people find ourselves emerging unscathed from the wardrobe seemingly just an instant after we entered. We have power, internet, work to do, school runs to make, just like any other day.


Yet we are older, wearier, and more jaded having gone through so much, and not quite sure what to make of ourselves. A week of our lives has both vanished and been burned into our memories.


We feel guilty for not being as badly affected as so many surrounding us, but also feel thankful for the exact same reason.


I would like to think we are more tolerant, kind, and considerate having looked after each other for that week – Smiles and elevated levels of politeness are still evident some days after. But tensions, trauma and nerves are starting to crack cheery facades.   

We look forward hopefully to the future, but also realize that this severe weather is likely only one of the first such events we will witness or be impacted by as our climate changes.

But it may take a while to fully process and understand what a week in the dark meant to our region and ourselves.

Old Pain, Financial Gain!

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

Nostalgia has been getting the better of me of late.

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

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

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

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

It was very cool and very popular!

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

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

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

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

And finally, the biggest and best:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that is a tale for another post...

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

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.

Bay in May

Two months ago Biodiversity Hawke’s Bay promoted an initiative to get the region’s population out and about, interacting with, and enjoying, their region’s natural features called #BayinMay.

It was a great idea, and one that our family took part in on multiple occasions across the month, often several times on weekends!

It helped that the first of May was a sunny, warm Sunday, so we headed up to Marine Parade, just along the beach from the National Aquarium of New Zealand to start ticking off tasks.

For our first task we decided to get creative, making a driftwood sculpture.

We gathered armfuls of driftwood, kelp and shells, setting a dining table suitable for Tangaroa!

While we were within arms-reach of a more than plentiful supply of greywacke (for those who are unaware, Napier’s Marine Parade beach is notoriously un-sandy) we made stone sculptures, too – I managed to get mine to defy gravity long enough to get photographic proof – With a triangular base it was more Stone-Hinge than Stonehenge.

We were on a roll(ing stone?)!

Next we went around the other side of Mataruahou – Napier Hill to Hardinge Road, Ahuriri, known locally as “Rocky Shore” because it’s a shore that’s, well, rocky:

There we studied the tidal pools and all the aquatic creatures that exist within, spotting chitons, crabs and sea slugs.

Throughout the following weeks we went from the heights of Taradale’s Sugarloaf hill to watch the sun set:

To walking around Hawke’s Bay Trails like that around Pandora Pond (Ahuriri Lagoon):

Some tasks were closer to home, like admiring “tree corridors” in places like Marewa’s Tom Parker Avenue.

Even just playing in autumnal leaves:

On a couple of occasions we went for walks up Dolbel Reserve, also in Taradale – It’s Kauri Trail is full of newly planted and established native flora.

It was a fantastic way for our family to spend our weekends together, while also learning more about nature and getting to appreciate the little local details that are so often overlooked.

And just because it was called “Bay in May” doesn’t mean you have missed your chance to experience some environmentally friendly and diverse parts of Hawke’s Bay – these are things that can be done any time of the year!

So get out and enjoy our region’s bio diversity and natural surroundings!

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.

A Pint-Sized Display

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

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

So I decided to make something.

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

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

This may be just the beginning!

Come On, The Bay!

The Ranfurly Shield is the Hawke’s Bay Magpies’ for the summer again!

It really seems that when our provincial rugby team do well (especially holding “The Shield”), Hawke’s Bay as a whole do well (and vice versa)!

This is another great boost for our region that is already on the path to great things post Covid 19 lockdown and recovery this year!

I go on about Hawke’s Bay lots, but it’s because I believe in it & it believes in me!

It has been my life-long home, has allowed me to grow, live and raise a family.

It has given me an income, a home, and security in uncertain financial times, and wonderful friends!

It has a gorgeous climate, central location AND ULTRA-FAST BROADBAND!

I’m vocal because I feel we’re often ignored and looked down on because we’re not a cliquey Auckland corporate, or the Wellington “beltway”.

A new news website boss recently said nothing newsworthy happens in regional NZ.

Then his newsroom won an award for a story they did on the Oranga Tamariki child uplifts here in Hastings!

Our horticultural sector is world-leading, our wines, beers and coffees, restaurants and cafes national award winning.

The quality of our produce is only matched by the quality of the people we produce, hence one of our regional taglines: “Great Things Grow Here!

We work well with others:

We launch rockets into space in conjunction with Auckland-based Rocket Lab, which still amazes me 15 launches later:

We provide Tech hub support bases for Kiwibank, Xero and the home of Hawke’s Bay’s own award winning ISP: Now! 

Which is why I think the Magpies are such a great allegory for the region:

We punch way above our weight.

We are in the game for the full 80+ minutes.

If others drop the ball you’d better believe we’ll be there to pick it up and be over the try line before they’ve even noticed!

So please come to Hawke’s Bay!

Visit, stay, relocate!

After the Covid lockdown, even Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s first domestic holiday destination was a #Baycation!

You’ll be amazed at just how diverse & wonderful we are!

With international travel currently off limits I know many social media friends who have only just visited Hawke’s Bay for the first time recently and loved it!

We may even let you have your photo taken with the Ranfurly Shield! 😉

The Bird Was the Word

Caroll Spinney died on Sunday
You might not recognise the name, but you will certainly recognise his alter-egos:
An eight-foot-tall, bright yellow bird, and a green, furry Grouch who lived in a trash can.
Caroll was the pupeteer behind two of Sesame Street’s first, and most iconic characters – Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch.
Named “Caroll” by his mum, because he was born on Boxing Day 1933, Spinney first met Jim Henson at a puppeting festival in 1962.
They met again at the next festival, but due to a technical hitch with the lighting his performance did not go according to plan and Caroll was very dissappointed, but Henson saw potential and asked if he would like to “talk about the Muppets“.
Spinney joined the puppeting cast of Sesame Street for their first season in 1969 and  officially retired after voicing a few pieces earlier this year after being part of Sesame Street for FIFTY YEARS!
While still “Big”, Big Bird’s head was not so full-some of feathers in the first season and Oscar the Grouch was actually orange, not green! These features would change soon afterwards.

Launched in 1969 by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett one of the things that made so many people love Sesame Street has been its cast centrally featuring Jim Henson’s Muppets, puppets and Monsters.

Often zany and silly but never condescending to its young audience, Sesame Street has become the inspiration and benchmark by which many people judge not only children’s television, but all television since.

While teaching pre-school basics like the alphabet, counting, colours and opposites, it also deals with making friends, manners, feelings and other important social and personal issues.

Spinney’s Big Bird acted as the viewers conduit into the world of Sesame Street – While 8′ tall and feathered he still had the eyes, inquisitiveness and wonderment of a child – the show’s target audience.

Big Bird was often the one dealing with big issues – One particular Sesame Street piece has burned itself into my memory (have a box of tissues handy):

When Will Lee, who played shopkeeper “Mr Hooper” (“Hooper’s Store” still bears his name as a memorial) died in 1982, rather than recasting the role, or saying Hooper moved away or retired, Sesame Street’s producers decided to deal with the issue head-on and created an episode that taught their young audience about the difficult topic of death in an honest and straightforward way.

I would have been five when the episode originally aired and some of my earliest memories are of going to the funerals of elderly grandparents and relatives, while not fully understanding what was going on.

That episode made things much clearer and easier to understand.

I cried watching it.

I still cry watching it today.

I wasn’t the only one – Legend has it the piece was shot in one take and there wasn’t a dry eye in the entire studio, in front of or behind the cameras, once it was done.

The antithesis to Big Bird’s wide-eyed Pollyanna, was Oscar the Grouch.

Always grumpy, curmudgeony and liking the opposite of everything everyone else on Sesame Street liked, it was fitting that Spinney played him, too – the tragedy to the comedy, the cloud to every silver lining.

But what Oscar did was show it was OK to be different – everyone accepted him, despite his grouchyness.

One of the first gifts my now wife got for me when we started dating was Spinney’s book The Wisdom of Big Bird (and the Dark Genius of Oscar the Grouch): Lessons from a Life in Feathers. I read the entire book the night she gave it to me.

Jim Henson’s work and his creations blossomed from Sesame Street, as did the world’s love for them.

When Henson died in 1990, leaving behind a legacy of Muppets, movies, Fraggles, Sesame Street and many other beloved shows all his creations got together for one last show called “The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson”.

Whilst the special centred around Henson’s other most well-known creation – “The Muppet Show” for the finale – a song called “Just One Person” almost all his creations appeared to sing a gorgeous eulogy to the great man, the amazing talent from where they came.

I cried watching that too, because being an only child, television had been one of my biggest inspirations and windows on the world before I started school.

The Muppets, Fraggles and Sesame Street characters had become more than just puppets to me – they were MY FRIENDS.

I saw what Henson  and his Muppeteers could do on multiple levels – Not just cute, fluffy, talking toys, but almost sentient beings with a drive behind them – to teach, to care, to love.

I believed in them.

I saw myself in Big Bird, too – I was that same tall, gangly, wide-eyed kid with that same enthusiasm and inquisitiveness for everything, always asking questions – albeit thousands of miles away from a street in New York.

Like me, he was taller than everyone else, but they accepted him for who he was, and he accepted them.

In a roundabout way it made utter sense that Spinney, as Big Bird, sang “(It’s Not Easy) Bein’ Green” at Henson’s memorial service:

I never had the Bird’s penchant for rollerskating, though.

This feat was made ever more impressive / crazy, by the fact that Spinney COULDN’T SEE OUT OF THE BIG BIRD COSTUME!

Image result for big bird rollerskating gif

While he had one hand stuck straight up in the air to operate the bird’s head, mouth and eyes, Spinney got his vision from a small TV monitor strapped to his chest and got his references from the TV cameras viewing him’s perspective – working blind and/or backwards effectively!

Image result for big bird suit.

Big Bird almost didn’t make it to Sesame Street’s 50th season – He was initially meant to be on the disasterous 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle mission!
NASA had been in talks with Sesame Street to have Spinney record some segments on board the shuttle to teach children about space, but the costume’s sheer bulk in the small confines of the space ship inevitably, and fortunately, saw the idea canned.
Big Bird and Oscar will, naturally, continue to exist on Sesame Street, played by Matt Vogel and Eric Jacobson respectively (Vogel was Spinney’s understudy for the bird for almost 20 years!), but today is a sad day for generations of youngsters-at-heart around the world who grew up with Big Bird and Oscar, as another original member of The Muppets passes on.
Thank you Caroll.
You taught me it was OK to be tall and different, and inquisitive. But it was also important to be kind and caring. 
And that it was OK to be grumpy, and cantankerous sometimes, too.
I hope I can live my life to the standards your feathered and furry personas set.
AF