Haka Redux

I've got one big finger pointed at the Brit press and the Welsh right now. Isn't it a bit rich for a Brit to call the All Blacks' haka performance "pompous"? Britain, the home of pasty-faced morris dancing hoity-toity slack-jawed stiff-lipped whinging twats. God Save the Queen is a terrible dirge which keeps me wondering what stops ERII from slashing her wrists every time she hears it.

Perhaps all this Brit vitriol is a bit over the top. It seems the Herald might have had to dig deep to such a negative vibe. The Telegraph's sports blogger, Mick Cleary, doesn't even mention the incident, although he does draw attention to Wales being dubbed the village idiots of world rugby. James Corrigan at the Independent:

Alas, this game will not be remembered so much for Sitiveni Sivivatu's hat-trick or Jerry Collins' campaign of terror, or simply as the 80 minutes in which the All Blacks delivered proof that they are, indeed, world champions in waiting. No, this will forever be the day New Zealand performed the haka in the dressing room.

Why? Because the Welsh Rugby Union insisted that their anthem came after the haka and not, as the norm, before, something that Graham Henry and his All Blacks found disrespectful. Cue a stalemate that took even the Welsh team by surprise. A petty irrelevance to the game some said, although not Collins. Not only did the brilliant blindside think that the Wales players had been distracted, but that the "private" haka the All Blacks enacted for their own benefit had the right effect. "Did it fire us up?" said Collins with a sinister grin. "Take a look at the scoreboard, mate."

The All Blacks did the right thing performing the haka in the dressing rooms. I'll do my best to explain why, in terms that even a Yank could understand.

The haka does not go in between national anthems. National anthems are not replies to a challenge, unless one counts the wave of phlegm thrown at the All Blacks by the Welsh anthem's guttural utterances. No, if the WRU wants to play silly buggers, and neither the Welsh team nor the stadium audience do a thing about it, the All Blacks had little choice but to perform on the closest thing to home territory; the changing rooms. The challenge was broadened in its intent by doing so. It was extended to everyone in the stadium, the WRU, the opposition.

Do not fuck with the haka.

You're nobody til everybody in this town thinks you're a bastard

"And, lastly, thanks to my old friend and colleague, Trevor de Cleene, with whom I debated the concepts at length but to whom I still have not dared to show the text."

-Roger Douglas, Unfinished Business

It's April 1988, and the old man is giving me a lift into town, where I'm at Vic Uni and failing Legal Systems badly. He has a lot on his mind, and he vents. There has been another Lange Douglas spat and Dad truly doesn't know how much longer it can go on. By year's end, it's all over. After sending Roger a letter of commiseration, I receive an invite to the Backbone Club, which I decline.

Now it's 1998 and, as El Presidente of Prebble's Rebels, I arrange a members' talk with one of the smartest men it has been my honour to know, Dr Roderick Deane. I had fluffed the date, and the good Doctor had rescheduled to fit my aural hallucinatory Filofax. Now that's honour. He went on to tell the tale of how, as Head Honcho of the Public Service, Roger Douglas betrayed him over a union pay negotiation with Ken Douglas. It was a salient point, and a good reason why gentlemen should never go into politics.

Kiwis love a bastard for leader. The most vivid characters in living memory: Norm Kirk (Fair Bastard), Rob Muldoon (Hard Bastard), David Lange (Funny Bastard). To be a leader, one must be prepared to be a bastard. Don Brash was not that man. Don Key, on the other hand, has the potential to be a real bastard.

Think goNZo

After a Labour party meeting earlier this year, I paused outside to roll a ciggie. I got talking with an engaging Old One from the Silent Generation. She sounded like she had been a Labour member from Mickey Savage's time on. The lady had outlived Norm Kirk's Camelot, Rogernomics' Quantum Leap, and will still be signed on long after Helen Clark's Office is over.

She said, "Whatever happened to the really important things? I look at the Kelburn Viaduct or the Karori Tunnel, or the Mt Victoria Tunnel. All their commission dates are a lifetime ago. What public works are being done today, to leave something as good as our forebears gave us?"

I really didn't have an answer to give her. Moa Point seemed not quite right and the Bypass, for all its engineering, seemed too small. I knew what she meant, and extending a motorway 300 metres wasn't it. There was nothing new. No link road from Karori to Owhiro Bay, not even a Johnsonville route fit for anyone but Sunday Drivers and hoons. Transmission Gully was still not happening then (Is it now?). No extension of rail into the heart of the city.

On a bigger scale, there was no Main Trunk Line to gloat about. No bridge between the Heartland and the Mainland. Auckland still had no rail to the North Shore, or even a bridge more worthy than the 1950's clusterfuck it uses now. While the Kaikoura Roulette is finally getting fixed, we still haven't got a decent drive linking Wellington to the Wairarapa after we turned down the Yanks' tunnel offer back around WWII. The Rimutakas are a beaut to tramp on, but a cunt to drive over. Same same with Arthur's Pass, without the tramping.

So the only answer I could give this Old One was, "We pay our way." And that's us all over. It is writ big with Michael Cullen's new GAAP and Cullen Fund. We will pay and pay and pay. We will have student debt, personal debt, hire purchases, mortgages, car finance. We pay for insurance just in case any of the things we are paying for Get Cartered. Plus GST.

Little wonder then that Labour's student loan interest write-off was a vote-winner. In one fell swoop a Gordian knot is cut. The Old Ones oblige, because they know what's happening. Gen X and Y and probably Z are getting screwed. We will be picking up the tab for the Baby Boomers for a while yet.

The Boomers have had it sweet. Raised by parents who knew the value of a dollar, becoming self-made people before the laws got too complicated, or university graduates when education was still free. There is no class war in NZ. It is generational. One day, the Boomers will pay.

And this is how. Y'know that Cullen Fund, that one that all the PAYE-earners are paying for on top of the seven percent for current Super? The Super Fund throws cash into such things of negligible public good for NZ as $19 million dollars in Verizon or $44 million in Macquarie Infrastructure Group, which is "the world’s largest listed infrastructure fund, with assets in Australia, the UK, Germany and Portugal."

Instead, we should put our money where our mouth is, along with the rest of us. Just like Muldoon did in 1975, it's only a matter of time before someone cracks that piggy bank. Better now, for the right reasons. Just make sure that you gamble and win.

A Shot in the Dark

Inspired by Jeremy Greenbrook's outrage at the shooting of a machete-wielding moron at a gun shop, I present you with another Tale of Trev:

It's 1981 or thereabouts. The old man is defending a guy who did a hit and run on a mob member in Palmy. It's night, and Dad is down at the Masonic with his mates and a few beers. My brother, Randy Gonzales, is home alone. A mob guy comes up to the house in Chaytor Street, slowly driving his Harley Davidson up and down the driveway. After he's made his point, he gets bored and leaves. When Dad gets home, Randy tells him what happened.

The next night, Dad stays in. He sits up late at night in the lightless lounge in his singlet and Y-fronts waiting with a shotgun straddling his lap. Sure enough, the motorcyclist returns. Just as the mobster turns his bike to head back to the house, Trev makes his presence known. He aims and fires both barrels into the motorcycle. The rider sensibly runs off, leaving his pride and joy on the driveway.

The old man calls up Peter H____, a mate in the refuse disposal business. The next morning, a small cube of metal is dumped outside the gang headquarters. End of story.

Midnight on the Border of Science and Religion

Verb: To Be God (tr, inf)

I am God
You (s) are God
He, She, It is God
We are God
You (pl) are God
They are God

I fondly remember the day I lost my Christianity. It was February 29th 1984. Not three years ago, I had won the Divinity exam. I got to choose my prize. It was an Usborne Book of Science. Perhaps the seeds were sown then. Maybe it was just a matter of time before faith was shown to be an answer without a reason. Why are we here? God. Why do bad things happen? God. Is there life after death? Yes. An eternity of talking to God and watering pot plants.

Then there was the whole God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit thing. While the Three-in-One idea was a nice line, I had discovered that the idea was stolen off the Greek Hecateae. A closer inspection of God the Father revealed some serious flaws. All fathers are men (this was the '80s when this still held true). All men have penises. Therefore, God must have a penis. Where was God's penis? Did God get laid? Was God circumcised? Who was God's doctor? etc. Such is the level of early-pubescent philosophy. Crude but valid.

The old man presented me with a Bible when I was 12. Jesus' words were in red type, and they were the most interesting things in the whole damned book. I could dig Jesus. Let's just, y'know, get along. Jesus was a hippy, the first popular Slacker Jew. The Old Testament thundered with blood, gore, senselessness and way too many begats. The New Testament started OK but ended with what I many years later discovered was a big plate of shrooms.

The Holy Spirit was the most mysterious and therefore most interesting part of the Trinity. This force seemed so ethereal and pervasive, it rendered God the Father and God the Son altogether irrelevant. Whichever way I sliced it though, the scale was all wrong. The concept of the Judeo-Christian God was just too small. Too finite. If the Holy Spirit existed, it wasn't limited by whether someone coveted thy neighbour's ass. Wrong name.

So the search for the Holy Spirit has been replaced with a search for the This. Not that I'll ever discover what This is. I'll be content to sample some of the qualities of This. For statistical purposes, I call the pursuit Jedi. Others call it Bright. Whatever. Same thing, different name.

Intellectual masturbation aside, the whole God argument has more practical considerations. Up until Sept 11, I had considered China and America to be the most likely flashpoint, probably over Taiwan. But standing in an Airlie Beach pub in 2001 watching two dozen TVs showing the same thing at different angles, with two dozen nationalities weeping or shivering around me, the probabilities changed. And I was scared.

No wonder there are people sheltering under whatever illusory protection they can find. Only now are the Better the Devil You Know political incumbencies are starting to fall. The NZ housing market is still pumping. And the lure of a deterministic outcome through religion or bad science is seductive.

Consider the myth that underscores economic theory: ceteris paribus. Let us pretend all other things are held constant despite all evidence to the contrary. Like dividing infinities in calculus, the method is dodgy. Yet it is swallowed with the same presumptive ignorance that the Jesus freaks are accused of. Consider String Theory, which isn't strictly speaking a theory at all. A theory must be falsifiable. Science, at its heart, is the art of the falsifiable. While string theory is art, it may not be science. Even so, I can't help for wishing for it to be true.

Which is exactly the line being spun by the governmental quacks, albeit in more prosaic areas. The Anti-Science brigade isn't limited to the Yanks. The UK Telegraph has a good piece on how the Brit wonks bend science reports to fit the policy. There are sure signs that the same thing is happening here. Prof David Fergusson's longitudinal study has recently shown how evidence sharply contrasts with policy aims and public perception. And I believe it. I have anecdotal proof.

But at the end of the day, you can't ignore Bertrand Russell's warning in The Scientific Outlook back in 1933. The same pitfalls of religion blight the path of science, leading to an evolutionary cul-de-sac. I doubt, therefore I think. Or, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell from another time, there will never be a way to prove that the whole of existence didn't come into being five minutes previously. The possibility will always exist.

ShitMagnet Stadium

As far as I'm concerned, Rugby is a crock of shit since it went professional. The All Blacks haven't played a decent game since Graham Mourie retired and Sid Going went. However, I am not one to begrudge Orkland its First Church of Rugby. Wellington got Te Papa, so it is only fair that Orkland gets thrown a bone too.

Nor am I at all concerned with a waterfront setting. The stadium needs to be near a transport hub and the Britomart Train Station could do with some action (nice station, shame about the trains, the schedule, the other stations...). The CBD has so many sore thumbs, it's like auditions for Hammerhand Idol. One more won't be noticed. And it could be good. I'm not expecting anything so ambitious as China's Wonder. It's not as if there's just a bunch of shanties to knock down, but an altogether more complex beast; our own Resource Management Act.

That's the law that makes building anything bigger than a birdhouse a legal case. Under the RMA, Norm Kirk would have needed a lawyer to build his house in Kaiapoi. It'll be interesting to see how the government wrangles NZ's largest building site ever, when Joe Blow has to beg leave to build a sleepout in his backyard. Who knows? Perhaps the government will declare Bledisloe Wharf a Special Economic Zone.

It was entirely sensible of the Orkland City Councillors to propose the Carlaw Park thing. With the local bodies next year, last thing they need is a stadium shitmagnet in their faces. This way, they have plausible deniability. Let Hubbard carry the can.

Bummer for the Eden Park Trust, who must be feeling justifiably shattered. Welcome to the evil world of politics. There is little they can do to dig themselves out of the yawning debt they accumulated buying the World Cup baby. Perhaps they'll do what the Maori Tenths Trust did with Athletic Park and turn Eden Park into a retirement village.

But I have misgivings. Firstly, and this is pointed out into the virtual flyby, this thing is being built on NZ's busiest port. One way to swing this is to allow the Ports of Orkland and Tauranga to merge, thereby allowing freight to be transferred to Winston Peters' electorate. It's not as if Orklanders can tell whether their plasma screens arrive by boat there or in the Bay of Plenty. For the port company, it's a zero-summer at worst. It might also help Maersk make up its mind on what it's doing.

Secondly, the price is not right. Let's be honest and say $1 billion, then cap it.

Thirdly, there's the inevitable sponsorship thing. In light of the rush of blood to the head that produced an ambush marketing bill, chances are the stadium is going to have some serious naming rights fights. Will the stadium become NZ's largest billboard or what?

Fourthly, the cost of living in Orkland is going to go ballistic. There is a reason only Fletcher Building was big enough for the job. NZ's biggest public works, from go to woe in six years and we've barely seen the cocktail napkin sketches. You think getting builders is pricey now, just you wait til every monkey who can hold a hammer gets down to the wharves. Then there's accommodation. All those canary cage apartments may have some use yet. Commuting will, as always, continue to get worse.

You got rorted

For the many who cannot or will not buy the NBR, Gareth Morgan has kindly re-posted his vicious fisking of the $60 billion savings, retirement and insurance industry.

In Part One, GM outlines how the asymmetric information war is lorded over the novice investor by the MNCs and shows the Securities Act provides about as much consumer protection as a G-string in a gang rape. Part Two introduces the Zombie Fund, where reserves provide latent cash cows for the wunch of bankers.

If Labour want a vision thing that will assist in the uptake of Kiwisaver, a spring clean of the finance industry would benefit the middle classes whom they so desperately need to impress.

Don/Key OD

Oh for fuck's sake, John Key. Just get on and do it. You voted for Death with Dignity. Stop tilting at windmills and put us all out of our misery. Your glorious leader has had ammunition to throw at a crisis-addled Labour government. Yet, like an Abbo on a uranium mine, hasn't had the slightest clue what to do with it.

There is little sign the Nat front bench has learnt anything from last year, when Judith Collins went at DBP with a chainsaw when a scalpel was required. Old school chum Simon Power hasn't discovered a way to open his mouth without putting a foot in it. I mean, come on. You want to pour MORE money into the abysmal Corrections Department? Isn't $80k per EFTP (Equivalent Full Time Prisoner) enough?? Upping the policy initiatives and cutting taxes are oxymoronic. Your GST is out of whack.

Dear John, what National really needs is leadership. With a bit of coaxing and encouragement, you really do have a team to train in time for the big game in 2008. But to get it it to go flat tack to glory, it needs passion. And John, I don't think you have a soul. At least, I have seen no evidence of it. I understand that you're pretty whizzy with numbers, and love money the way only a childhood without it can give. We should all be stockbrokers.

You have tried, I'll give you that. You have certainly been blooded a few times by Michael Cullen in the wit pit. I'll tell you what. Get a good one over on Cullen, and I mean a GOOD one, and the leadership's yours.

Kiwis with Brazilians

Ever been in a restaurant and got the wrong meal? It was probably me. That lady at Il Casino in 1992 who ordered the pheasant and got venison? I'm sorry. I only heard your vowels. I know you had to wait half an hour for your plucked tucker when everyone else on your table was ready for dessert. If it's any consolation, Remiro Bresolin filled that long wait with loud expletives every time I Manuelled past him to the kitchen. Remiro said FUCK the way most people use the space key. eg. "What theFUCKare youFUCKINGdoing?" On arriving in the kitchen, the chef would threaten to break my legs. This one had a reputation for throwing knives at waitresses. Always speak kindly to people who use knives for a living and be prepared to duck.

But by the end of the night, while we were waiting for Winston Peters to leave, we'd sit round drinking Perrier Jouet 1979 and trade stories. Later on, Remiro would be shouting rounds of vodkas at Ecstacy Plus (sadly now the slummy Sports Cafe). I would swap gossip with the hookers and courtesans who had shut up shop for the night, although one or two were open all hours. Then a feed at The Diner and a few games of pinball (a better judge of reasonable force you are unlikely to find) before off home to bed at The House of the White Virgins in Adelaide Road.

It was with a heavy heart that I read earlier this year of Remiro's terminal lung cancer. A toast to Il Cavaliere! Forever Northern Italian, Kiwi by choice. More colourful by far than the scores of suits and black skirts who display their powerful anonymity the way a priest wears the frock and dog collar. Walking by the gutted remains of the pink finger in Tory Street is a bittersweet shiver of change. Such is the nature of nature. The vanilla people have won this round.

Before the '70s, NZ was stuck in a terrible rut of corned beef and boiled cabbage. No wonder we were a miserable people. Then Des Britten and Hudson & Halls burst onto the scene, demonstrating sophisticated dishes such as French Onion Soup with croutons. Thank Dagg for Alison Holst. It would take another ten years before our wines started to catch up. Talk about bad memories of Montana Muller Thurgau.

Although I was too late to enjoy the coke-snorting waitering days before the '87 stockmarket crash, my 12 year stint in hospitality gave me the extraordinary pleasure of working with NZ's finest chefs. If there is one quality that these epicurean artists share, some Kiwiality if you will, it is one of fusion. Italian. Brit. German. Dutch. Indian. Thai. Korean. Chinese. Samoan. Maori. Mexican. French. Indonesian. Russian. Jewish. Yanks, even if their contribution is the Peach Melba and trans-fat Trojan Horses. The NZ food artists take it all in and blend it til it's good and new. It started with Kumara and Orange Soup. I lost track after bok choy, tamarind and the Monteith's Wild Food Challenge (link not available coz DB have stupidly killed it).

I have been going quietly apeshit for the last two months over Fly My Pretties. If there was ever a couple of albums that every expat Kiwi should have it is Live at Bats and Return of Fly My Pretties. It is music to get seriously homesick by. I've had it looping on my ipod but buggered if I can stick a genre to it. It's a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. Roots album doesn't do it justice. It is what it is. Unquantifiable. I had a similar giggle of delight after witnessing Recloose during the Radio NZ gig at Bodega earlier this year. Magic.

However, I have no problem labelling Barney Weir's latest fling as definitively fusion. And I'm gagging for it. However, I'll have to wait for the gig at Indigo (aka San Francisco Bathhouse) on 7 December. Aye, it's good to have money again.

I'm off to the NORML conference in Pakipaki this weekend. Have a good weekend and don't forget to be different.

More Things to Heav'n & Earth

The three most interesting things in the universe are light, water and love. We are only starting to grasp an inkling of these miracles. Another step in the right direction is the long-anticipated movie, The Fountain by Darren Aronofsky. Wired has a good spiel on what to expect. BoingBoing highlights the deep space scenes that are entirely GE(Graphic Enhancement)-Free. What beauty.

A Site for Sore Eyes

Finally, there's a news service out there not owned by foreigners, which keeps an eye on the things that really matter:

Three Readings in One Day

If today proves nothing else, it is that MMP is no impediment to Unbridled Power.

Charity fuck

One of the hardest things I'm finding about becoming an active member of the Labour Party is working out where to fit in. The council structure doesn't have a Gonzo division. Joining the Maori or Pacific sectors would be a stretch. I might apply once the Maori test becomes available. There's the Union corner (nope), the Womens' wing (nup), the Rainbow channel. I'm prepared to support Labour and even vote for them. However, I will not suck cock for Labour. Although I'm a recent uni dropout, I'm too old for Young Labour. The grey hairs disbar me and I've always been crap at hackysack.

After my charity work up at Fraser House tomorrow night, I expect to have some serious beers with Geoff da Maori about this Charity thing. Charities Commission chief executive Trevor Garrett said "We are going to have some organisations which are set up predominantly to advocate for social change . . . Once we get information that (an organisation) is not considered to be charitable we will start looking at steps toward deregistration." If I have to choose between my two masters, Labour will lose to NORML.

If political parties think they have it tough scrounging for money, spare a thought for a volunteer society like NORML. It is a very non-profit organisation. Paid staff: none. Budget: bugger all. GST refunds play a serious role in what it does. If that goes, well... NZ would be the poorer for it. Combined with Internal Affairs' interpretation of a community, it is clear that political dissent is being crushed.

Not that the Gee Whizz private sector is coming to the party. Regardless of what market share of their target demographic is derived from people too stoned to cook, fast food franchises refuse to pony up with NORML sponsorship. There's little chance our supermarket cartels would allow our advertising. (If an ad agency is reading and wants to prove me wrong, please feel free to contact me. Pro bono work only.)

In a desperately competitive business environment, no-one wants to risk any possible side effects being blazed by a bored and shallow media crew waiting to link their product to file footage of silhouetted people rolling bad joints. A good example of this occured last year, when I tried to set up an SMS number for NORML donations.

No-one wanted to touch us. Not that that was explicitly stated. No, the terms and conditions were changed as our application sunk in. I can't name names or what happened as I don't have sufficient legal nous to avoid the 21 tonnes of shit I would be hit with by doing so. Suffice it to say that text fundraising was not an option.

I've smoked with corporate managers, lawyers, musicians, architects, restauranteurs, stand-up comedians, journalists. I have smoked with public servants on the steps of Parliament. But you won't see these people at J Day or actively campaigning for marijuana law reform. The people are scared. They have so much to lose. So NORML lives on the smell of an oily rag. We do it because others can't.

We are electric monks, believing in things while everyone else is preoccupied. We educate, as well as hassle for truth, justice and a budding economy. There is no reason for NORML to suffer the proposed sledgehammer just so Labour can crack the Exclusive Brethrens' nuts.

World Leader Pretend

"I sit at my table and wage war on myself..."

This isn't what I was expecting. I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but this isn't it. As a child, I never considered what I wanted to be when I grew up. The day at hand was dramatic enough without thinking about what tomorrow might bring. Who needs soap operas and reality shows when all one has to do for one's fill of conflict and drama is remember? And whoever thought inventing people would be so difficult? Fiction is hard. Fucking hard. Especially when reality proves hard to beat for sheer sublime improbability.

I've never been without fulltime work this long before. Four years excluding a three month stint at uni, which at least is a user-pays type unemployment option. Four loooong years, where every day is Forever Tuesday Morning. Krimsonlake's eloquent post on long term unemployment resonated. However, I suffer no guilt from my predicament. Maybe it's a chick thing, maybe it's a Catholic thing. For whatever reason, there it is. No, what really wears me out is the indescribable dread of unwantedness. I have been turned down for a wide variety of positions. Not even shortlisted for Nightfill at Te Ware Whare.

Before I could re-enrol at WINZ after I dropped out of uni, I had to attend one of those "Umemployment is Bad" lectures they hold in their offices. A quick census of my group was ninety percent male. We were informed that a heap of Case Managers had disappeared (quit or moved to other branches) and the backlog of freshly disgarded human capital would take a while to clear. I got my dole appointment four weeks later. I was promptly signed on to a course called Workstart, on pain of no rent money.

Thankfully, our facilitator ignored vast tracts of the Workstart Workbook and therefore gained kudos for not patronising the fuck out of everyone. If WINZ want to reduce the incidence of clients going apeshit, they could start by removing the activity to fill in Dream Circle. Even so, all through the meetings I couldn't erase the image of poodles jumping through hoops. All this talk of CV layout, correct use of buzzwords, appropriate body language. How to deal with the pimps in the employment agencies, how to write a suitably bland cover letter, how to sell your skill set to a prospective employer. I tell you what it smelled like. It smelled American.

Fuck "International Best Practice". Fuck plastic smiles, the fake orgasms of marketing. It is well known that NZers undersell themselves on their CVs. It is part of the culture. Instead of adapting to this though, advisors insist on making us something we aren't. Little wonder there is a plethora of Amercian accents in the public service, the most check-boxed career path imaginable. Only they know the lingo.

I had some sympathy for Waynes Mapp's Employment Bill, in much the same way I supported the axing of youth rates. Anything to level the employment field and increase my chances of a job. Anything to cut the crap and an opportunity to give it a go. However, Mapp's Bill offered no trade-off. OK, the employers get free reign. In return we get... what? Will they cease and desist with their credit checks, the MBTI exams, the unwarranted invasion into personal space? No. Well fuck you, no deal.

Anyways, the Workstart facilitator is a good bird and I've been in contact with her far more than my newbie Case Manager. I walked in to see her last Friday for a chat when the office's best Work Broker walked in suffering from Ramadan. I asked him if he had heard back from the minimum wage service station attendant job I went for. "They liked you, but-." "Yeah, I get that a lot," I replied with a head occupied with a warratah being hammered into a ceiling panel.

"Hey, there's something you might like," he said with a spark in his eye as he dialled furiously on his mobile. "Do you drive?" Fortunately, Mr Menace had lent me his car for the weekend, and within half an hour I was sitting in front of Steve Irwin's twin about a motel manager's job. Today we shook hands on it. I got the job. The pay is shit, but I don't have a girlfriend so money isn't important. The hours are civilised and the job provides a sufficient amount of drama to keep me occupied (a former resident pulled a mere on a chick last week). Most importantly, my employer doesn't give a rodent's rectum what I write as long as I fulfil my function.

Understandably, I've had a few cones and wines to celebrate. Therefore, please forgive this entry if it is unusually tangental. Just thought you'd like to know I'm back to blogging. I miss it. It's too fun to ignore.

Field Days