In Stuff they ask the big question: is it time for a Cook Strait bridge or tunnel?
What a grand idea! Imagine being able to drive all the way from Cape Reinga to Bluff. Even if there exists no reason for any sensible person to ever visit Bluff. No, I don’t like oysters, thank you for asking.
When you ride on an Auckland bus, there’s no such thing as a typical ride – not if you’re looking.
The entertainment is not so much in the city’s sport – that never-ending version of upmarket stock cars. A U-turn perhaps – just in front of the car speeding towards them? No worries. Drivers career backwards out of driveways into busy traffic lanes, or exit out of entrance ways to shopping centres. Quite a few fancy they can beat traffic lights too, often with predictable results. It’s Auckland.
9 a.m. and the mercury is racing up to 30 degrees. “Better watch out” locals tell us. “It’s going to be a ripper”. They’re right, so we retreat into the air conditioned world which reminds us of home and what temperatures at Christmas should be.
But then we’re on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland and it’s a cloudless Christmas Eve. Still, Christmas is Christmas and though the Mooloolaba Beach is scattered with bodies, the radio station plays – rather incongruously – White Christmas.
I started my cycle circuit of Northern Southland’s Eyre Mountains from Cromwell at 7am on a Saturday morning. But traffic around these parts has increased markedly and 7am was at least an hour too late for a quiet road. It was not until just past the Nevis Bluff in the Kawarau Gorge that a cycle path allowed me to get off the road.I put my tent up in the Arrowtown motor camp. $20.
Somebody said my computer was old, they did, they did.
Then another blessed with a pronounced sense of humour, asked what Windows I used. And as if this was overheard somewhere out there in some cyber conspiracy, website after website wanted to know my computer’s credentials – then turned it away…
I don’t know what other boomers expected from this election but here’s what one, not a million miles from this keyboard hopes for:
Hope. In the arid landscape of ideology over the past 30 odd years it was as precious as water – but there’s an oasis ahead and room for hope. Just look at what’s happened abroad, as Martin Jacques wrote in the Guardian recently:
Man starts to shave. Sees his reading glasses on the basin shelf. Wonders why. Wife tells him breakfast is getting cold. Hurries to the table. Spoons down porridge. She gives him a peck on the cheek (when did they stop kissing the way they used to? ) and rushes off to work the way he once did.
Say what you will about Jacinda Ardern but we’ve rarely seen a polly who slips so easily into disarming self- deprecation. It’s part of the appeal of the new Labour Leader who can rally supporters to come to the Labour launch at the Auckland Town Hall while adding: “There’ll be a special musical guest – and I’ll be laying out my relentlessly positive vision (is this getting annoying yet?”)
And then after a PS urging supporters to volunteer, a PPS saying: “Hey Mum… this is me checking you’re reading all of my messages!”
This morning my sister sent me a copy of my 6-year-old nephew’s report. It was a surprisingly good read!
Writing school reports is a dying art. Please don’t get me wrong. I have been a teacher for much of my life and I completely understand that it is no longer possible or acceptable to say just what you think about your students. As teachers drown under mountains of paperwork, face rising class sizes and exacting standards of political correctness there is little option but to follow carefully set guidelines.