Juice

Finally hopping on my bike today for the first time this year, on a perfect summer morning, on the ride to work this song came up on my mp3. It was just right.


I was playing that song on another perfect summer morning in 1995 when it was only a couple of years old. Some friends and I were on a roadtrip heading up to a music festival, and stopped in Waitarere Beach for a few days. Back then I was often an early riser on the road (by choice even), and one morning I woke before dawn, and headed to the beach while the rest of the camp slept.

I had made a couple of mix tapes for the roadtrip, and I walked out onto the sand just as "Juice" was playing on my walkman. It was a calm and clear sky and the sun hadn't yet crept over the distant Tararua range to the east. In the pre dawn twilight I could look out to sea where it was still night, look inland at the brightening sky where the new day was approaching, and look up the beach and clearly see Mount Ruapehu looming in the distance, more than 140 kilometres away. There was no-one around, just me, the beach and the scenery. It was a cool moment, and I'm reminded of it whenever I hear that song. The next morning I took my camera with me on my walk, but I was a bit later and the sun was already up when I got out there, rendering the mountain invisible. It's still one of my favourite old photos though. And it's still a great song.

Waitarere Beach, January 1995

This Old House

Maybe "Burning Down The House" would have been a better song to nick a post title from:

(Pic credit Stuff.co.nz) 

The old house in Allenby Terrace has burned again, this time probably terminally. The fact of a house fire isn't particularly significant, but this house in particular seems to have been some kind of hub amongst my circle of friends. Fi and I know at least half a dozen or more people who have flatted within its walls in the last decade or so, not always in the same flat, and not always known to each other even. I never lived there but remember it well from many visits and the occasional crash.

The building was over a hundred years old; for one flat the toilet and bathroom was outside across the yard in the old servants quarters. Originally one elegant house, by the time we got to know it there were separate flats across it's three floors, and the building was utterly dilapidated in true low-rent student accommodation tradition. I recall a particularly memorable pyjama party in one flat in mid 1999. At the end of the year we gathered there to use it as a launch pad for heading into town to see in the new millennium. 

In the mid-2000's I helped repaint a room in another part of the building; there were pieces of cardboard blocking holes in the floor and ceiling. A fire in 2009 (link) saw the place condemned, and a friend of mine living in the redecorated room below the fire forced to relocate (which I blogged about here ). 

I have fond memories of this place, and even though it's demise was inevitable, it is still a bit sad to see it go. That said, and the danger to neighbouring properties notwithstanding, maybe a Viking Funeral was a fitting end for a multi-storeyed and multi-storied abode. 

Time Flies

Hard to believe this was more than twenty years ago now. Along with the Cardno disappearance and murder at around the same time (which cut a little closer to home as she was my age and from my town), this was one of the bigger stories of my early teens. With the insensitivity that only high school kids could muster, a standing joke during roll call in class at the time was to answer 'two swedish tourists' when the teacher asked if anyone was missing. It is sad to think that one of them is still out there somewhere waiting to be found.

A Day Away

I was listening to this album today in my car, in the bright sunshine and thinking of times gone by. And this video which is one of my all time favourites. Starting from some well known Wellington locales, the boys and their trusty Ford Escort road trip it up to Cape Reinga. From 1996:

Back in the day

I was trawling through some old photos (looking for some particular old photos funnily enough), and came across this sequence. It is an RNZAF A-4K Skyhawk doing a solo display over Wellington, turning hard over the innercity and blasting over our heads at the summit of Mt Victoria (and in hindsight clearing a pair of large radio masts by not very much. There is only one mast up there now, but back then there were two identical masts about 100 feet high). Click to enlarge.

I shot this on my dad’s mid seventies vintage and completely manual SLR with a 135mm zoom lens, on 200 ASA film. 400 would have been much better, but I wouldn’t figure that out for another few years.

It remains one of my favourite sequences, not only because I really like the middle shot as an image, but because of the potential of the first shot. Its under exposed, and blurry and grainy, but with better equipment and technique it would have been awesome. You’ll have to use your imagination a little :)

A tight turning jet, trailing smoke, wings covered in vapour, with a blurry city backdrop would have been a great action shot. I wonder if anyone else on the summit that day got it.

Its from 1990 (yeah, twenty freaking years ago), back when Wellington hosted an annual international endurance street race around the waterfront. As part of the pre race entertainment, there was usually an air display over the city and inner harbour of some kind. The hills and harbour provide a nice natural ampitheatre for this kind of thing. I figured the top of Mt Victoria would be a great place to watch from (as well as most of the good spots on the waterfront being restricted for the race). It was one of those dark cloudy northerly days we get often here, and Dad helpfully suggested I leave the camera at home since it would be too dark to photograph anything. He was pretty much right, since most of the shots on the roll are a mess.

An RNZAF Orion also displayed, and this shows how dark it was. It also dates the image, since they haven't been painted in those colours for more than ten years.

After the display was done I went down to the city to watch some of the racing. This being twenty years ago, there were still plenty of places were you could walk up to or sit on a fence and watch for free. As evidence, here are a couple of blurry BMW M3’s heading down Cable Street at about three times the normal speed limit

For locals, the building in the background is where the brewery bar is now located.

Then and now

The house we lived in when we lived in Rotorua, ca. early 1982. (click to enlarge)

The HQ Holden Kingswood (wiki) on the forecourt wasn't ours (it belonged to a family friend). The white XD Falcon (wiki) and the brown Mazda 929 (wiki) on the left were our cars. The Falcon was dad's company car (I think, I was 5 at the time), and had spotlights on the mounted on the front. This made it the coolest car ever (so cool not even having its windscreen shattered on a trip to Tauranga (again I think; I remembered the road it happened on when I traveled it last year) could dent its aura. It was a cool house. Very modern (the house on the left was built while we lived there), and spacious and fun for a kid to live in. Having a farm across the road to play on helped as well. I remember it being topdressed once by one of these (link). We were at the end of one of its passes and I thought it was going to hit our roof. The letterbox was an enormous and sturdy consruction of stained driftwood, sturdy enough for me to sit on with no problems except for my parents telling me to get down.

And the same house in February 2009. The cars have changed, the letterbox is long gone, the farm was subdivided years ago and is now covered in houses. It's still my house though.

Random Pic #3

Click to enlarge
Eiffel Tower from the Palais de Chaillot on a cold, damp and grey afternoon in mid December of 1989. The Sacre Coeur Basilica is visible in the distance on the left. Taken by a much younger me on my first trip overseas, with my first proper camera, a very simple fixed focus point and shoot. We only spent a couple of days in Paris, but my memories of the place are still vivid two decades later. We had just been to the top of the tower, and headed toward the Palais in search of lunch (which we found in a nice cafe nearby, featuring both a cute waitress and a resident alsatian). The tower was celebrating its centenary, hence the "100 Ans" sign above the second level.
I forgot about this photo for many years before rediscovering it recently. I like the way the cloud is sweeping across the frame, enveloping the upper reaches of the tower but leaving some blue sky for contrast. I like that I took this when I was thirteen, but would be happy with the image if I had taken it yesterday.

A Dog's Show

Listening to: Curve - Come Clean. Not mine I confess, but an arrival from the great Fish-Sam CD collection unification of last year. I've never really listened to it. It's interesting in a late 90's crossover electro fuzz sort of way. Sounds a bit like Garbage crossed with the Prodigy. Make of that what you will.

I randomly caught a 1982 episode of 'A Dog's Show' (link with video here) on TVNZ 6 (one of the freeview digital channels) and found it unexpectedly awesome, better than I remembered it at any rate.

Screening at 6pm on Saturdays before the news at 6:30 (our news bulletins were only half an hour long then), 'A Dog's Show' was a NZ staple during the 1980's. I'm totally of the wrong demographic to make a call on if it was a cult viewing back then (I was one year old when it first screened, and sixteen when it finished), but if it screened to a wider audience now I suspect it would be. I remember it from fireside 1980's winter evenings well.

*Those locals familiar with the show can skip this paragraph of exposition*
Long the fodder for jokes about New Zealand's obsession with sheep, and cultural unsophistication (a programme about sheepdogs occupying a primetime national television slot!), each season of the show consisted of a series of competition sheepdog trials (link) from various locations around the country, culminating in run-offs, finals and champion dog and handler combinations being crowned for that year.

Its a wee nostalgic gem, with long dead dogs chasing long dead sheep guided by now much older if not long dead stoic New Zealand farmers. The hills still look the same though, and the vivid red and white pens still stand out. It is surprisingly riveting viewing if you let it. The obstacles can be tricky, the sheep often wilful and nowhere near as docile as you'd think. And all the obstacles are run for points against a time limit with little margin for mistakes, which is almost perfect 'made for TV' tension.

The sheepdogs are really the stars of the show (well, hence the title), and the amount of control and discipline exhibited between them and their handlers is both amazing and fascinating, much more of a partnership than simple 'fetch' and 'heel' stuff. Its common enough that it gets taken for granted, but being the focus of a half hour TV show makes you appreciate how sophisticated and skillful working dog handling can be.

The commentary though is true gold. I'm not sure if the host was being mock serious in a "I went to broadcasting school for this?" sort of way, or genuinely passionate in his almost shakespearean thespianic (is that even a word?) intonations (watch the clips and decide for yourself), but some of the output, most especially in withering put downs of the hapless sheep being herded, was classic. For example:

"That hurdle's a bit wet, the sheep won't want to go up there. They're not entirely dumb"
"This is tricky he [the handler] has three highly mobile morons [the sheep] to deal with"
"This sheep is getting a bit toey, arrogance all over his ignorant face"
"Here he comes, he's got a great score and two fine bitches at his side"

Etc. I was laughing out loud (yeah LOL, no really), which I don't often do when watching TV alone. I guess I never really listened to it when I was a pre teen.

Ah nostalgia. Warm fuzzy nostalgia. Plus the theme music was in Pulp Fiction.

20 years ago

Listening to: A mix comp still on the hard drive. Currently playing 'Progress' by Midnight Oil.

I'm also listening to Charlotte coughing and spluttering as she deals with her first cold. Given that her lungs put together equate to less than half of one of mine, this is no easy thing. She only has little lungs.

I realised a little while ago that it is now twenty years since I started secondary school (high school for you foreign readers). The eighties seem a long long way away now.

The summer of 1988-89 is one I remember as lots of sunny days, which sounds silly but I don't remember the rainy ones. For Christmas I had received my first proper point and shoot autofocus camera (which I still have, and is still functional), in preparation for my first overseas trip at the end of 1989. I would see in the new decade at a house party in Sunderland in the northeast of England. A lot of time was spent at the beach or at the river, or just messing around as you do when you are in your teens. It was the last summer we had the use of the bach at Raumati South which we had frequented for the last five years. I hated to leave it behind, since the place and location were awesome. We would go up there for a week at a time during the holidays and basically do nothing but swim and play boardgames, occasionally going up to Coastlands or Waikanae. The last day I was there there was a high overcast with no wind and no swell. It was grey and still and matched my mood perfectly.

I had a paper run delivering the Evening Post six nights a week, which earned me about $30 per month in pocket money, which was reasonable money for a tween at the time.

Fluoro was definitely king, with pastel a close queen. David Lange was still Prime Minister. Walkmans were still a relative novelty, as were pushbutton phones. Cellphones were the preserve of the wealthy only. Def Leppard had released 'Hysteria' a year earlier, GnR's 'Sweet Child of Mine' was similarly only a year old, and together they were the summer soundtrack. The last dance at the intermediate Form Two disco was the number one cover of 'Sweet Lovers' by local band The Holidaymakers. On the night after the last day of intermediate there was a Blue Light Disco (dances for underage kids organised and promoted by the police) at the town hall, which I remember taking a break from to watch a bushfire on the hills near where I lived. Bushfires on the eastern hills used to be a regular occurrence, and this one in particular was comparatively large. You can still see where the burn was today. The Blue Light is a fun memory now, lots of early teen boys and girls thrown together with not real idea of what to do with each other. I was looking forward to seeing the first decade change I would remember, and being able to say I was in the last class of the 80's at my new school.

Its probably got a lot to do with changing schools, but 1989 doesn't feel like part of the 1980's at all.

I was in the top part of the school academically at my intermediate, to the point where myself and a few others can been considered worthy enough to try out for a scholarship exam at college. I remember the exam, but not exactly when it was, but late 1988 sometime.

After attending St Bernards intermediate, my preference was to move on to the college located across the playing field, most of my friends were going there, and I liked being a ten minute walk from school. Having been reserved a place at St Patricks Silverstream at the age of four however, remaining local was never an option.

I think the first day was late January of 1989. My parents have a picture of me at the front gate setting off for the train station, on a sunny summer morning. Being all of 12, and not turning 13 until the latter part of the year, I was the youngest of the 600 odd roll by a long way. I don't remember the first day. Catching the train would have been no big deal, since I had been doing that to get to primary school anyway, and was a seasoned train traveller. I remember hot summer afternoons in a new (and surprisingly comfortable) uniform, being indoctrinated into the lore and ways of a new school (like learning the haka and school song), and the vastness of the playing fields in the sunlight.

I soon found a like minded niche, collectively known as the 'Nerd Herd', and got settled, as much as you ever get settled at high school. Mixing with boarders from other parts of the country was a novel experience. Third form camp was fun, marred only by one guy breaking his pelvis falling from a positively dangerous variation on a flying fox mechanism. I encountered for-real exams at the end of the year, accompanied by my first experience of stress induced indigestion. I played soccer in the winter, and enjoyed that too, despite being forced to play for my school instead of the club I had previously played for. I met friends who I still make time for today.

I also tried to get my head around the fact that I would spend the next five years of my life at this institution. Back then it seemed like forever.

A Day In the Life

Listening to: So-Peter Gabriel

I have been busy lately, more so than usual, so haven't been blogging or facebooking as much.

Update:

-I am sick of watching the sunset from work, so I am officially job hunting again. Not enjoying the 'new' job anymore and want to do something else. Suggestions and offers welcome....

-None of my netball teams have won games for ages it seems. Close games, just not winning ones.

-I am too busy to ride to work at the moment. I like riding to work.

-I am buying the new Shihad album tomorrow (well actually today since it is after midnight).

-I am still looking for a Homegrown ticket.

-I am a lot more interested in holding babies than I ever used to be.

-Our new houseguests are working out well, and very pleasant company.

-Damn if it doesn't feel like winter all of a sudden.


Right then, on to the thing I was going to post about.

I should have posted this about a month ago, but I have been busy.

March 18 2008 marked the 25th anniversary of A Day in the life of New Zealand.

The 'day in the life' concept was essentially send a bunch of photographers to various points around the country, and have them shoot anything that took their fancy, all on the same day.

The results were collated, edited, and published in a book later that year:
1983 doesn't seem that long ago, but twenty five years before 1983 it was 1958, which puts the gap into perspective. I've always liked big style picture books, but this one has always been the king, because it offered a perspective of my own country, and I have always been interested in that. My aunt and uncle had a copy, and I leafed through it countless times. All of the images are now familiar.

Its an interesting book, because it is a snapshot of a time I can remember, with some things that are still familiar, but others that are long gone. I wonder what happened to the people in the photos, if being in the book was significant to them. Some are undoubtedly now dead, children have become adults. I tried googling the names of the newborns featured, but didn't find much.

18 March 1983 was a Friday, so on the day these pictures were taken I was at school at St Michaels Catholic Primary in Taita. We had only moved to Lower Hutt four months previously, so I was a few weeks into a new school. Fortuitously we were doing a class project on aviation, which no doubt helped the settling in process.

I had a look and tried to pick out a few favourites. This one on Mt Aspiring has always stood out.
And this dustie in Newtown leaping from his truck. I vaguely remember the tills on the back of the rubbish trucks, but can't remember why they were there. The dusties are long gone now, replaced by kerbside collection. I love all the incidental details; the guy fixing the window, the 'Big Red' bus visible on the right, the cars. I wonder who 'Don Cortina' was.

At the time I gravitated to the images of kids my age, or close to it.
I remember this mural quite well. I think it survived the Pigeon Park/Te Aro Park transition, but it is gone now. The XA Falcon in the background would not have been a new car even then. It would be a classic now.


The effort was repeated in 2000 for the dawn of the millennium, but it is an inferior work, and doesn't cover as much ground.

I picked up a copy of the original at a book fair last year, and still take the time to lovingly peruse it every now and then.

End of an Era

Listening to: Wild One-The Best of Thin Lizzy.
Drinking: A slightly open too long chardonnay. "Chardon?" "Eh?". Old joke.

First some housekeeping. No computero over the weekendo. Henco, no bloggo. Like I'm the worlds most prolific blogger or something. I will try to make it less than a week before my next post.

The Hoyts Cinema at the South end of High street has finally called it a day. The Judge has more than adequately and very eloquently covered the subject here (linky), but I feel I can't let the passing of a Hutt institution pass without comment, so here we are.

I hate to see a cinema close. It seems strange to refer to it as an institution. It is certainly nothing to look at, inside or out. Generic urban mall architecture, bland and dated to the late 80's when it was designed, and an interior that could pass for any multiplex in the country.
With a place like this, it is the associated memories that make character, not the place itself.
The Hoyts 5 complex with five screens opened in 1992, replacing the single screen Odeon cinema that previously occupied the site. The old Odeon was pretty cool, but getting way past its prime (ironically if it was still extant I expect it would doing great business in the Lighthouse/Empire mould). The entrance to the cinema was in the middle, meaning that the best seats were right above the door, so you had no-one in front of you, could put your feet up, and drop jaffas down the staircase into the foyer. I don't remember the first movie I saw at the Odeon, but I remember the last was The Commitments in 1991.

The first movie I can definitely recall seeing in the new complex was Unforgiven in 1992. In the ensuing 15 or so years, I have probably sat down in one of its cinema seats at least 150 times (or more). Its heyday in the mid to late nineties coincided with my late teens and my own movie renaissance (is that the right word?). In those days I would see at least one movie a week, often two. Good or bad, I was prolific.

Any night of the week would do. Thursdays for the new releases, Fridays and Saturdays for the night out, Sunday nights after church with the youth group cohorts.

No visit would be complete without hitting the attached video arcade beforehand. I got very, very good at Daytona and Sega Rally. Slushy coke and popcorn were also mandatory accessories.

Occasionally Mcdonalds would be smuggled in (avoiding the 'No Hot Food' dictum by being neither hot nor food we reasoned). I remember a hip flask of Khalua being passed up and down the row during a screening of The Three Musketeers, and booking out a couple of rows for the opening night of Independence Day. Going to countless free movies with D3vo, due to his obtaining some super duper pass from somewhere. Saw lots of good stuff for free, saw a lot of rubbish too. Example: Walking out of Timecop, agreeing with each other that it sucked, we checked the board and walked right back in to a late session of Dragon:The Bruce Lee story, which didn't. Going to see The Crow twice in the space of a week, the first time on the night my first girlfriend and I broke up, and the second to exorcise the first so I could get on with enjoying the film. Having a ticket to The Nutty Professor bought for me after I flatly refused to pay to see such tripe. Many good memories.

I remember well the session of Starship Troopers Judge mentions. We were the only ones laughing, and got lots of strange looks from the audience. I also remember going to Last Action Hero with D3vo and also being the only ones laughing.

I miss the late sessions. You could avoid the crowd, and it gave you a really good late night option if whatever else you had planned didn't work out. Plus it was cool having the security guard open the front door for you on the way out.

By the turn of the century though (wow does it feel weird writing that), the good times were slowing, and by halfway through the new decade, they were gone. The shops in the surrounding arcade, never bustling, got even quieter. I always got the feeling the complex was under invested. The decor was alright for 1993, but wasn't updated. Everything got run down, and dare I say it, a little shabby.

When the Skycity complex opened in the refurbished Queensgate Mall in 2006, the axe was being sharpened, if not actually swinging. At the risk of pretension, I'll admit that as soon as I heard about the new mall complex, I said something like "That'll kill Hoyts stone dead".

And so it has come to pass. Rundown and neglected, in feel if not in fact, Hoyts 5 never stood a chance once the shiny newcomer opened up.

And so, while you were ugly and utilitarian, and never cool like hipsters The Paramount, Rialto and Embassy, and unmemorable and uninspiring in your decor and ambience, you were reliable, predictable, and always there if necessary, and because of this I salute you.

The last movies on the marquee: Jumper, Walk Hard, I am Legend, Cloverfield, P.S. I love you, 27 Dresses, Rogue Assassin.

Snow

Listening to: "10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1", Midnight Oil
All this snow down south has reminded me lately about the first (and until 2003 the only) time I remember playing in snow. I had played in snow before this, but don't remember it. It was probably 1981, when my family lived in Rotorua. I suspect on a whim it was decided we would go visit Whakapapa. I remember the Chateau. I remember we didn't get any further up the mountain because we couldn't get chains to fit the car. So we played around on the golf course in front of the Chateau. I remember wondering how they could play golf with a foot of snow on the ground (I was four or five). I remember how the snow would almost support you before collapsing. I remember the snow piled up on the side of the road and being surprised you walked through it rather than over it. It was a grey overcast day. The sun was not shining. My sisters and I made snow angels. It was cool fun. It is a nice little memory.

Surprising how relevant the above Midnight Oil album still is, 24 years after it was released. Sample lyric: "US forces give the nod. Its a setback for your country...". Things change and then they don't.