Island Life by David Slack

That’s all? No Goats? No rent-boys? Perhaps the secrets too-awful-to-reveal are yet to come. If they do, I daresay we’ll read them first on Sydney indymedia who wrote on this very day one year ago:

Rumours have been rife in the New Zealand media that National party leader and contender for the office Prime Minister, Dr Don Brash, has been having another affair, this time with the Deputy Chair of the influential right-wing think tank the Business Roundtable Diane Foreman. Although it’s common knowledge in NZ media circles, journalists have been too worried of the possible consequences to raise the matter.

I have anniversaries on my mind; on this very day fifteen years ago I became a married man. Last night I did a quick calculation. There were sixty or so couples at our wedding; all but three of them are still together today. That doesn’t quite chime with the reputation of our neighborhood, or at least the one that was retold to us. Devonport offers a choice of four primary schools, including the one in our street. We think very highly of it, but we’ve heard that an acquaintance of ours begs to differ. “You don’t want to send your kids to that school” she has reportedly said, “The mothers are all skinny blondes who have affairs.”

Which brings me to my point, namely: infidelity. It’s not unknown. For that reason, it remains to be seen whether – should the rumours be substantiated - Don Brash will have alienated himself from New Zealanders, mainstream or otherwise, to an irreparable degree.

A starting point might be to assess what women make of this, because Dr Brash won proportionately less support from them in the last election.

Weddings get a photo album, but divorces mostly have nothing but a paper trail. I remember the letters we got, in each case from the wife, after those three marriages came undone. They were documents of raw grief and bewilderment. They also described the humiliations exacted: the insistence that the errant partner be tested for STDs; the banishments; the screaming matches in public places. It can be a long and horrible business. For the most part, the husbands have ended up with the better end of the deal, and tend to be living lives not much burdened by anguish. The wives still carry clear scars.

Three marriages do not make a scientific study, but they bear out the familiar refrain: the woman is often left more damaged than the man. Every woman who stands with a marker pen in her hand will know this when she decides whether to vote for Don Brash at the next election, and that may prove to be his greatest obstacle to overcome.

My wife of fifteen years thinks this: (and again, assuming all the rumor is substantiated) Dr Brash may get an ultimatum from his wife: politics or the marriage. If it should come to that, it would be instructive indeed to know what choice he would make.

On the Internet you can see the whole world before breakfast.

Item 1.
Doesn't this photo of Coca-Cola managing director Geert Broos put you in mind of that scene where Monty Burns was running for office and Marge served him the three-eyed fish the kids had caught downstream from his nuclear plant?

Item 2.

I am not a crook, but I am one hell of a bowler. Nixon's life in pictures. Note especially the picture of his last meal before he left the White House.

On the Internet, you can just keep learning more and more about the guy. Remember the 18 and half minutes that were "accidentally' deleted from the White House tapes? It turns out Arlo Guthrie came up with the answer. Alice's Restaurant is exactly 18 and a half minutes long! They were embarrassed to be recorded listening to my song, so they deleted it! Implements of destruction indeed.

Item 3.
If it weren't for the fact that it pivots on a slightly shaky premise, this would be the best piece of oratory in criticism of the Bush administration I've seen this year. Keith Olbermann takes the President to task for conflating the media with Al Qaida and Hitler.

I think his inference is unduly sensitive. Bush and his people treat the media, at times, with the same disregard they hold for all the little people: inanimate tools. When Bush talks about Bin Laden "using the media to drive a wedge between the American people and their government" I think he simply perceives the media as involuntary conduit.

Having said that, though, the rest of it is splendid:

the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 -- without ever actually saying so

and:

Moreover, Mr. Bush, you are accomplishing in part what Osama Bin Laden and others seek-a fearful American populace, easily manipulated, and willing to throw away any measure of restraint, any loyalty to our own ideals and freedoms, for the comforting illusion of safety.

His preceding serve on Rumsfeld is equally good.

Item 4.
If you find architects' drawings easier to follow than their words, you might find this helpful.

Peter Cresswell is running something of a primer this week on what makes great architecture. Being the champion of the honest contest of ideas he is, this takes the form of a debate with Den MT, with both of them nominating five of their own architectural favourites.

You can fit everything I know about architecture onto one postcard, but that hasn't stopped me from making my own contribution to the debate in the form of a scan of a cartoon from this week's Private Eye.

Item 5.
And, finally: proof that the terrorists cannot possibly have won when guys like this are still having some entertaining sport at the expense of the airport security people.

David Farrar's monthly statistics are, as ever, a telling reflection of contemporary New Zealand life. I see that once again Public Address has kindly delivered large numbers of visitors to his site, and I daresay he will be pleased to stand us a drink in appreciation next time he's in the Auckland Koru Lounge.

Favours make the world go around. You know it, I know it, and there can't be a voter alive in New Zealand who doesn't believe that Philip Field knows it.

So I invite you to click over to Kiwiblog once more and enjoy this nice change of pace in the comments thread from the more usual sour invective. Toby 1845, it seems to me, is right on the money.

I have a theory that the Police investigation will reveal that the Thai never intended to come to NZ after all. What actually happened was that he was hired by a Samoan who need him to get access for himself (ie, the Samoan).
The whole thing was a misunderstanding. The Samoan in question went to the NZ Immigration Office in Apia wearing a lava lava, singlet and jandals, and was told: "You won't get into New Zealand without a Thai."
Or, at least, that's what he thought he heard.
In the event he got the Thai to do some work on his cousin's house while they were waiting for two seats on a flight to NZ.

I'll bet there's more. I wouldn't be surprised if we soon hear from Islam-type people who made refuge in South Auckland and discovered that their local MP was Philip Field. They will no doubt have made inquiries and learned of the local custom of offering lafo when making representations to a politician.

Language difficulties being what they are, I can imagine the awkward pause in the still of the electorate office when they conclude their imprecation to the elected representative of the poor and huddled masses of Mangere by pulling this out of their scrappy little bag.

(Ferrit.co.nz readers, if either of you fancy one for yourself, but can't find it on your favourite shopping site, just click here.)

Oh, that man is fast becoming the last, loneliest and unloveliest, isn't he? I do have a little fragment of sympathy for him all the same. Taito is a title, not a name. Jeffrey Archer's servants called him Lord Archer, his friends called him Jeffrey, Private Eye called him Archole. I don't know what Kim Hill called him, although I can hazard a reasonable guess; but no-one called him "Lord" as though it were an alternative Christian name.

So is it too much to ask that we stop calling Philip "Taito" as though it's interchangeable with "Ken"? That simply paints us to be the kind of simple folk who might get to our feet as Jim Bolger did years ago at a Goethe-Institut affair in Wellington and banged on about the prodigious talent of "Go-eth".

We were talking, my wife and I, over lunch yesterday about the words Helen Clark had chosen to convey her distaste for the Auditor General's recent forthrightness. We agreed that even a phrase as innocuous as "I was rather surprised by that", could be a bit of a scrotum-shrinker when issued by this particular Prime Minister. If she's not mightily pissed off, I'd be very surprised. However I'd also be surprised if this Auditor General felt particularly cowed.

Cojones. When we need a word to describe boldness in business we have France's entrepreneur. But when we want to speak of someone with courage in the face of imminent and palpable risk, we turn to the nation of bullfighters.

This morning, here at the world headquarters of speechesdotcom, I opened my email to a dispiriting message.

David,

Your server has failed the RAID container, we are working to bring it back
now. I'll contact you as soon as I have more information.

Thanks,

Matt

Maximumasp.com

Regular readers will grasp how perturbing this news was to me.

Mercifully, this time, the disruption was kept to a minimum, and as I write the site is humming along as it ought. But once more, the entrepreneur was reminded of the need for sturdy cojones. No matter how hard you try to eliminate the risks, you will still be in for some difficult moments.

People who have made a big fat success of their business can be quite forthcoming about hurdles they have overcome. I know of one person who has a worldwide recruitment business who likes to recall the lonely day he sat alone in his empty office contemplating the ledger of outgoings (substantial) and income (nil). The phone rang. So despondent was he that he resolved that it would be the last one; he'd shut up shop. The caller was some colossal organisation with a brief for dozens of placements. He was in business.

I also knew a woman with a flourishing PR practice. She told stories of the first fruitless pitches to clients. After one especially promising one, the polite demurral was too much for her. She walked out of the office, into the stairwell, slumped onto a step, dropped the glossy folders, buried her head in her hands and sobbed. But in the best tradition of inspirational tales, she pressed on. She dried her tears, dusted herself off and went back to her office. She kept working the phones and making the pitches and slowly but surely began to pick up the contracts. Plenty would happily settle for a small share of the money she's made since then.

The purpose of these little Of-Course-You-Can-Do-It reminiscences is to preface a little bit of a plug. Wellingtonista readers will be familiar with Martha, and her brand new contribution to the world of online commerce, babylicous.co.nz. Perfect for the little kids in your life. Sick of the same old Pumpkin Patch stuff? Want a cute designer T-shirt for your kids at a very affordable price? These garments should be in your child's wardrobe.

Our glamorous house model, Mary-Margaret, will now show you the very nice Elvis T-shirt Martha kindly made for her. She loves it. Your kids will love theirs.

Do by all means click on over to Babylicious and support local enterprise. And thanks for the T-Shirt, Martha. Back-scratching makes the blogosphere go around. Awakino's Lineman for the County was on the wire just hours after I'd posted my little paean to the well maintained roads of Taranaki - and, of course, the noble whitebait - offering me a pound of Mokau's finest. A pound! She said Ernie I'll be 'appy if it comes up to me chest.

Read that and weep, Long-Suffering Ratepayer of Sandringham. I accept there may be some who tremble at the sight of a tiny whitebait eyeball, but around here where the cojones are abundant, we stare right back as we scoff them.

And I am not alone.

Su Askwith:

Growing up in New Plymouth they have always been part of my life and each new season eagerly awaited. Whilst I too cannot go past a fritter in Mokau, I really did think I was in heaven a few years ago when I went to a meeting in Greymouth and on arrival there was a barbeque. There were buckets of whitebait being made into fritters and cooked straight away.I barely moved from the bbq spot until all were eaten!

Roy Billing reported saliva "all over" his keyboard.

The All Blacks are still winning...and the whitebait are still running. Time to come home methinks.
I picture a Saturday night in Godzone in front of the tv watching the All Blacks win yet another Bledisloe Cup, with no Wallaby supporters in hearing distance, a bottle of Marlborough Sauvugnon Blanc opened, alongside a plate of fresh, New Zealand whitebait fritters... The saliva is drooling again! Why the hell am I living in Australia???!!!

Ian Orchard:

Perhaps Graham Reid was cursed with only ever having tasted frozen whitebait, a pale imitation of the fresh delights. Sadly, it's all we Kiwis can hope for these days.
Oh for the days when my Dad would return from The Coast bearing a quart preserving jar of fresh 'bait. Sold for around 2 bob a container.

David Haywood enthused too, but that was more to do with the allure of librarians.

Everyone has their own fantasy, and I can appreciate that lying under canvas with a sultry librarian, feeding one another whitebait fritters and listening to Peaceful Easy Feeling on the Classic Hits station would not be Graham's idea of A Good Time.

Aspects of that tableau don't really work for me either, but it remains vastly preferable to waking up to an email that shrinks the cojones.

I expect you will find when you sit down for your first dinner in Heaven that whitebait fritters are what God favours for an entrée*. I yield to no man in admiring the taste and discernment of Graham Reid, but I cannot let his casual dismissal of our national treat go unchallenged:

(nope, I still don't get it. It's a just a slightly fishy omelette. Right?)

Yes, and Townes van Zandt just wrote country rhymes with a croaky voice. I don't believe I could come within 100 miles of Mokau without driving the remaining distance to get one of their whitebait fritters. The last time I was there, you could choose from three tearooms. They all proudly declared their whitebait fritter to be the specialty of the house. Special alright. Vast, they are. I have seen space saver wheels on Japanese imports that wouldn't be as large.

Not that quantity is the only thing that matters. If it did, the sorry stodge they slop onto all-too-accommodating plates at the Lone Star "restaurants" would win awards. But a whitebait fritter in Mokau, huge though it might be, is also a delicate and beautiful thing. So fresh do they taste, you know that it can have been scarcely minutes ago that some sturdy Taranaki grandmother was emptying her nets into the bucket and trundling down to the café in her dusty old Bongo van.

You can stand by your car, look out over the cold blue water and take great gulps of the wind that never stops rolling in off the Tasman Sea, or you can go inside, tuck in your napkin, cut yourself a wedge of your whitebait wheel and close your eyes as you bring the fork to your mouth. Whichever way you go about it, your taste buds will be gently teased by the taste of the sea. Don't forget the lemon wedge.

Your whitebait is a subtle understated thing, a sorbet of sorts. I like an anchovy too, but that's all slapper; a meretricious shocker of a bar-crawler. Whitebait is demure Natasha in the corner, conservative skirt and spectacles and library books. Or so you think until she murmurs something to you in a low smoky voice as she passes. The appeal of the whitebait is all in the fleeting sense of the thing, and that will stay with you long, long after the meal is paid for, and you're once more rolling down the impeccably maintained roads of rural Taranaki.

The memory may still be with you after you have crossed several time zones and at least two language barriers. Buy yourself a copy of the Ukraine Observer, and discover that one of our missing million, Mark Wright, declares Ukraine to be "opportunity, opportunity, opportunity." While pursuing the business of his research and marketing firm keeps him busy, the story tells us,

Wright does acknowledge missing a few things about New Zealand, including his children, the All Blacks rugby team and a local delicacy called Whitebait fritters, made from a minute, thread-like transparent fish.

In that order, one hopes. Footy, then fish, then the kids doesn't sound all that good.

Ukraine is a very long way from hearth, home and little ones. One of the Dads in our neighborhood is currently working in Guam for months at a time, and of course this is a navy suburb, so we see parents sail away in Te Mana for half a year or more. So much to be homesick for, including the kids, the chocolate fish and the marmite sandwiches; but so many culinary adventures, too. The world stretches a long way past the golden arches.

I remember only the good: Po'Boys in the Napoleon House in New Orleans; salt and pepper prawns on Lantau Island; a huge plate of pig suffering in Prague. I suspect Juha, on the other hand, will never entirely slough off his cloak of Finnish despondency and pessimism. Last week he devoted a small corner of his blog to a catalogue of culinary calamities.

Japanese curry. Some war crimes are allowed to continue until this day.

Australian pasta/New Zealand "fresh pasta". Dried wallpaper glue for that Mediterranean zing in your kitchen.

Click on over. His photo of wasabi mayonnaise must be seen to be believed

Yesterday morning the poor man, who lives a couple of houses down from me, emailed in anguish about the Sunday morning choir of power tools. The complete and utter lack of consideration is a shock that will never lose its high voltage for Juha. I was on the other side of the bridge at the time, doing God's work bagging Telecom on the wireless, so I could offer him no solidarity. By the time I was back home, there was still some weed whacking going on just under his window. I can understand his distress, but all I can ever offer him is a Soprano shrug of the shoulders. Whaddayagonnado?

Perhaps next time it happens I'll invite him over and break out the whitebait.

* For the main, I'm thinking crayfish or duck. It will largely depend on how much lime is in the Margaritas.