Island Life by David Slack

You can generally rely on Brian Rudman to smoke out a secret and get it to hang its sorrowful head in front of us all. So what a surprise to see him baldly declare last week that he knows an especially good one and won't tell.

The Aotea Centre, he says, despite its compromised acoustics, has a few sweet spots dotted around the auditorium. He knows where they are, he says, but he ain't sharing.

If you happen to be that infamously loyal Ticketek staffer who spends a lot of time surfing the net, and you're reading this, here's a tip: "Rudman, B". Next time he books, get out your pencil and take careful note of the seat numbers. That should get you a few bucks on TradeMe.

I'm lowbrow enough to concede that I have frankly no idea whether this soprano or that is making a hash of things or not. Also, my hearing has already been substantially compromised by not-quite-so-civilised habits of music-listening. When I read about theoretical auditory sweet spots in the Aotea centre, I think of the cartoon of the silver service waiter telling the guy at the table that the wine bottle he's brandishing has an audacious nose with a subtle blend of peach and vanilla, a sublime aftertaste and, best of all, won't fuck up the flavour of your cheeseburger.

Highbrow or lowbrow, there was plenty to like last night at the theatre in question. Nick Cave wasn't there in the flesh, but he was most certainly there in spirit. The Sydney Dance Company has had the pleasure of working with twenty years' worth of Nick Cave master tapes - and their producer - to create Underland. The results are impressive, and the music sounds good in any seat. Working on the principle that I don't know much about dance but I know what I like, I'll tell you that it's as wry, and suitably foreboding, as you'd expect. It's engaging, it's powerful and it was just what the critics promised. Nick Cave fan of Petone should make every effort to see this if she hasn't already.

And seeing I'm taking the liberty of organising other people's diaries for them, let me suggest one other interesting night out. This Monday, the fifth annual Bruce Jesson lecture will be delivered at the Maidment Theatre. You can read all about it here, but in short the topic is one that is especially interesting to people who write books about Great Race Rows.

If you read what David Lange had to say in the inaugural lecture about, among other things, the Treaty, you'll see that he canvasses a number of the arguments later traversed by Don Brash. He considers them in a manner that is equally as frank about the inherent contradictions and difficulties that beset Treaty issues but, crucially, without the cynical language of the Orewa speech that was as divisive as the policies of division it purported to find fault with.

This year's lecturer will be Ani Mikaere: Are we all New Zealanders now? A Maori response to the Pakeha quest for indigeneity.

The Pakeha quest for indigeneity and legitimacy in Aotearoa, it is argued, is ultimately contingent upon Maori acceptance of the Pakeha presence here. How then, from a Maori perspective, might such acceptance be gained?

It will be fascinating. Maidment Theatre at Auckland University at 6.30pm on Monday 15 November.

Finally, seeing I'm treating this as a kind of noticeboard today, here's an opening of sorts. A law firm for whom I used to teach workshops on plain-language drafting is looking for someone to take a couple of them next month in Auckland and Wellington. I don't have the time, which is a shame, because it's an interesting exercise. If you have some expertise in writing, and the law, and training, this is absolutely your gig. Let me know, and I'll put you in touch with them.

Are you worried you're about to go broke? Before you pull the pin, you might want to drop in to the Ministry of Economic Development's web site. Even in your hour of darkness, it turns out you can depend on the kindness strangers. They're just full of encouraging suggestions.

For starters they ask: have you thought of selling some of your assets? They even tell you how to do it. You can advertise in the local paper, or have a garage sale, or sell at an auction, for example. (Assuming your ISP hasn't cut you off, you could even click over to TradeMe.)

Maybe you're just spending too much. Helpfully they ask if you've had a good hard look at your situation. Is there any expenditure you can reduce or eliminate? (While you're at it, let's not forget the possibility that you're actually flush and don't know it. Why not have a look down the back of the couch before they repossess it and see how many loose coins you can dredge up.)

There's plenty more of this on their web site and an impressive selection of options to choose from: budgeting, creditors' pool, refinancing, compromise with creditors, summary installment order and even: continue trading.

But if you think the hard men and women at MED have gone all soft and romantic, let me disabuse you. Their last word is clear, direct, and ominous. When all fails, there's bankruptcy.

This option clearly isn't to everyone's taste though, and the papers over the last few days suggest that Matthew Ridge doesn't much like the look of it.

I only know what they newspapers tell me about this story, which is, according to the Herald, that

David Worley, chief executive of Placemakers, said yesterday that a last-minute $25,000 payment arrived just before bankruptcy court action against Ridge to recover the money.

Meanwhile, some of his property development companies aren't looking that flash. It's enough, apparently, to put you off property development for life.

One of the companies, M3, of which he is the sole director, was registered in May 2002 and went into liquidation in April this year owing $1.3 million. Another company in which he has an interest and which was developing an apartment project in Remuera went into liquidation on Thursday. The property's been sold, but the builders and subcontractors are still looking for a fair whack of money.

The part of the story that's hardest to untangle is this:

His company developing the units, Basset Rd, "failed to obtain primary funding as a result of financiers' reservations" about builder Freemont Design and Construction, [Ridge] said.

But what does that mean exactly? Does it mean he had funding lined up and then it fell over? Does it mean he was part way through the project and then funding was halted? Does it mean there was some doubt about the validity of some of the bills? We just don't know, and without knowing that, it's impossible to know exactly where the fault lies. Perhaps he's blameless. I have no idea, and neither, unless he's planning to be more forthcoming about this, will anyone else who might one day be doing business with him.

When I was working for DB, I met quite a few property developers. I still meet the odd one, but for the most part, the nearest I get to them these days is when I pay ten dollars for a half hour downtown carpark.

The occasional one is an inspired individual. They can look at a building or a piece of dirt and see something being put there that would never occur to anyone else. Build it, and they do, indeed, come.

But for every one of that kind, you get a few dozen who only know how to take your watch and then rent you a short stay in a time-telling kiosk. I remember a guy telling me years ago - after I'd had the unpleasant job of concluding his career with the company - that he was now going to become a property developer. By this, he meant that his brother and he were going to sell their late father's house in Ellerslie and put a couple of units on it. Thanks to a few thousand visionaries like that, Auckland has street after street of in-filled ugliness.

That's unlovely enough, but when you see developers setting up deals where the risk seems to be dropping onto just about any shoulder but theirs, you wonder what exactly it is that they're contributing. I have no idea whether that characterisation applies to Mr Ridge or not, but I do know that in all the years I've been watching developers go about their business, the story that impressed me most was this one.

This guy was a builder, I think, and his name was Tom. He built this tourist hotel in a town in Northland. They did not come. So he, and his business, went through. Bankruptcy or company liquidation, I'm not sure. The whole idea of that arrangement is of course, that you can walk away and, with some limitations, start again. But he didn't just look at it from a legal point of view. It was a matter of honour to him. So he got going again, and as he got back underway, he started paying off everyone who'd been left out of pocket.

In the end, he paid out everyone. Then he built another hotel.

If you look at the origins of the limited liability company, you see some entirely sensible economic thinking: risk-sharing can be good for enterprise, and enterprise can be good for growth. The trouble is, like many legal constructs, it also enables undertakings of more dubious merit.

A couple of generations ago, the notion of bankruptcy or failure was inhibiting, as much as anything, because of the shame it might attract. That may have been an undue impediment, but today, I don't know that it counts for very much at all. Mate, I don't know about you, but I don't go for that.

The first thing you do after an election like that one is buy something handy from cafepress. They have all the usual in-your-face T-shirts; redneck victory whoop-ass caps and what have you, but I quite like the messenger bag that declares this:

Once you've done your online consumer's duty, maybe it might be time to do a little long-range contemplation. Greil Marcus is especially good at it with this obituary of George W Bush who expires from heart failure, it turns out, in October 2018. My money's actually on another pretzel, but the rest of the piece looks spookily prescient.

America has produced some remarkable presidents, often in times of greatest adversity. You never know - the first great one in half a century might now be only four years away from entering office.

But enough already. The net is full of this stuff. Let's talk some more about getting locked up for not paying your parking tickets. I wrote last week that I wasn't sure if anyone had ever actually gone to jail for it. Well, it turns out that at least one person has. I got a somewhat abashed email telling me this cautionary tale, and my correspondent is happy for me to share it with you, albeit anonymously:

I did go to jail for a parking infringement back in the early 1980s.

The original $3 ticket was issued in about 1972 and had been unpaid since. My habit of moving flats from time to time without informing the authorities probably had something to do with it.

A young and somewhat embarrassed constable knocked on my door at about 7am on a Monday morning and proferred a document known as a committal warrant -- go straight to jail, do not pass go, do not call your lawyer.

I could get out of that bind by immediately producing $145 in cash, an enormous sum then, and unavailable in those days before ATMs.

Having been strip searched (cheeks apart please) given a number and made aware by the prison officers that I was a worthless individual, I fetched up in a cell in Mt Eden with a murderer. A middle class chap like me in there! I did in fact pinch myself.

The whole thing was made more bizarre by that prison's almost joke-gothic-halloweenish architecture.

I had no legal right to a phone call and thus was incarcerated, as I understood, for two and a half weeks. Fortunately a kindly screw conceded to allow me a consultation with the prison social worker who in turn conceded to make a phone call on my behalf at about 11.30am.

A friend fronted with the required cash, now more like $156 for some reason, at about midday. It took three hours, while he waited at the gates, for the paperwork to be undone and my release to be achieved.

I was then required immediately at an urgent client meeting but apparently my concentration was lacking and my whole demeanour less than satisfactory. We didn't lose the client but it was a damn close run thing.

Terrible what can happen, but character-building I suppose.

There you go. If the election weren't proof enough, bad things do happen to good people.

Discouraging things also happen to middle aged people who try to keep fit and healthy. I had a most excellent time in the Auckland Half Marathon on Sunday. Marvellous morning for a run. Went out at a careful early pace, poured on the petrol through the middle 6 or so k's and then settled down to a solid pace for the last ten. I got home in 1.35.58, which was a four minute improvement on last year. I fully intend to make 1.30 next year, and declaring so here is a good way to start.

I was walking around comfortably for the first few minutes after the race, but then I gradually sensed that the foot was a bit tender. Blisters from the newish shoes. They gradually got more uncomfortable so I made my way over to a St Johns station and asked them if they might have a couple of spare band aids. No trouble, come and sit over here.

As I peeled on the plasters, the nice woman in the St John's uniform began filling out her incident record - name injury, address, and age. 44, she said brightly, that's the same as my Dad. Damn straight. And I'll still be running that marathon when her own daughter is on the St John station.

I'll lay you any money you like that by then there won't be a Bush in the White House.

I'm not sure if anyone's ever actually gone to jail for not paying parking tickets, but I once told someone (who hadn't seen me for a while and wondered what I'd been up to) that I'd been banged up in Mt Crawford for just such a crime.

That's about the only time I've made up a story about my personal adventures for entertainment purposes. (Hope that answers the question I got from an anonymous correspondent a couple of weeks ago. If I was making this stuff up to fill an empty page, do you really think it would be a broken rib?)

Anyway, I made up the prison story one day at the Trentham races. Back in the days when the country would more or less shut down for the weekend, we made our own fun. I told Janey the story because I thought she was shrewd enough to know it was bullshit. When she and her friend seemed to go along with it, I just assumed we were all in on the joke, and the story got embroidered over the next five races.

No-one came to see me because my crooked lawyer was taking liberties, that kind of thing.

In the middle of this elaborate dance (which eventually played out over two days, took four of us on a trip to Ruapehu and ended up in a Chinese Restaurant in Palmerston North the following evening when I finally came clean and got a large amount of liquor chucked in my face by Janey) I also described the ordeal to Heather Glengarry.

It was just an aside really: Janey this is Heather, she's John Glengarry's mother. Heather, this is Janey. Yes, it's been a while hasn't it? I was just explaining to Janey about my recent custodial experience. Etc.

This is not something you would usually joke about with one of your friend's parents. But the thing about Heather and her husband Jack was that they were quite unlike any other parents I'd known. The day I first met them, they were on holiday at a motel in Peka Peka. They pulled out a wine bottle, and we sat down to talk and drink and joke in a way that I'd never really encountered before. They were exuberant, they were genial, they were relaxed. They were fun.

They also had a bit to do with horses, which impressed me. Jack had been a racing journalist and they had made an entire living out of books about the business. Also: if you ever want to impress people with your sporting trivia knowledge, Mr Jack Glengarry has run around every racing track in New Zealand.

You could always spot Heather at the races from several hundred metres away. She was nearly six feet tall, and a good deal taller when she wore her hats. Big sweeping affairs. She was always pleased to see you and always ready to swap a joke. So naturally I knew she'd like the Mt Crawford one. I only discovered this week that I'd done an inexpert job of telling it. Jack told me she'd been aghast until she found out it was just a stunt.

If you've ever known someone's parents who would welcome you into their house at any hour of the day or night, and were always glad to see you, then you know why everyone liked Heather and Jack so much. They lived in big old houses on the edge of Wanganui and everything about them was a just a bit larger than life.

I was back in Wanganui this week for Heather's funeral. She was 66.

John had a nice thing to say in his eulogy about age. He was describing a holiday they'd taken to Australia in 1975, Heather and the two boys. They were enjoying the excitement of exploring Sydney on their first trip outside New Zealand, and he talked about the sheer enjoyment she had at places like Luna Park. She was the mother of two teenagers, he said, but she was also a 36 year old.

The service was at the chapel in Wanganui Collegiate. I'd never been there before, and I have to say I was impressed. The buildings are beautiful.

As to the quality of education, well, the league tables have plenty to say about that in an academic sense. But these schools also influence character, they say. Playing grounds of Eton and all that.

It strikes me that there are two personality types in particular that emerge at the end of the private school experience.

You get the personality that seems conscious of the advantage they've had and feels some kind of social responsibility.

But there's another kind that I can't warm to. This the personality that seems equally conscious of their advantage, but more or less absent of any sense of consideration for anyone else. Their one burning question seems to be: what else can I get? I get the feeling I see that personality when the camera fixes on the blinded-possum eyes of George W Bush.

I don't care for people who swagger in their position of advantage and don't seem to register the extent to which they are the beneficiaries of enormous good fortune. Typically they're not especially smart, but they more than compensate for that with a blend of shrewd and mean.

Talk about your good fortune. He gets into Andover and Yale and graduates with a mediocre academic record. He gets himself leapfrogged up the queue of privilege and gets to make his contribution to the Vietnam War in the Texas National Guard. He tries to be an oilman, but never quite gets it right, and has to be bailed out by his father's friends and business contacts, winding up with $300,000 profit by selling stock two months before it tanks.

And on it goes.

Of course there's an important point in the narrative that people will point out here. Some time after the years when he did or didn't get into trouble over something that might or might not have involved drugs, and somewhere after all the years of drinking, he got sober and got religion.

Whether he has since devoted his life to the service of God, or whether he has since devoted his life to calling on the service of God to validate his choices is a debatable question.

The way he treats the help offers some insight, perhaps.

I know that people will argue that he's given plenty in service of his country these past four years, but for the life of life of me, I can't see it. What I see is a guy who is happy to get someone else to wear the bullets while he pursues a military strategy of the most dubious and ill-considered nature.

It doesn't look to me as though it's noblesse oblige that moves him, and outside of serving as a handy tool for invoking blind faith, I'm not sure how much spirituality has to do with it either.

I think this suggests he's spurred by different impulses:

According to the Washington Post, friends and lawmakers who met with Bush just before he launched the invasion found him "upbeat," "chatty," "cocky and relaxed" and "in high spirits." The most revealing moment came when he thought the cameras were off: Before he gave his national address announcing that the war had begun, a camera caught Bush pumping his fist, as though instead of initiating a war he had kicked a winning field goal or hit a home run. "Feels good," he said.

Doesn't feel so good to me. Roll on Wednesday.

Devonport speech writer David Slack looked a picture of health when he modelled this 23 year old sweatshirt in his home for Air New Zealand Fashion Week yesterday.

Slack, who survived a life-threatening heart attack 17 years ago, broke a rib earlier this month and has a head cold he contracted on an Air New Zealand flight from Wellington last week, was selected to model the garment as he was the only person in the house at the time.

Slack's show was followed by a 40 minute run in the sweatshirt around the perimeter of Devonport, accompanied by music on his MP3 player in a moody and at times breathless performance involving artists as diverse as 16 Horsepower, Uncle Tupelo, the Rolling Stones and Big&Rich.

The one-piece collection epitomises the modern middle-aged man's approach to fashion that is best described as a collision.

The sweatshirt features 75% of the fabric of which it was initially composed. The body is a dark navy blue as specified by the J Walter Thompson advertising agency in the early 1980s. The logo of the agency is incorporated in a deftly applied screen-print in pure white by Muzzy T Shirts of Petone. Although aspects of its provenance are uncertain, Slack believes to the best of his recollection that the production was coordinated by Mr Nick Mangos, who probably took delivery of the consignment on his way in to work from Wainuiomata one morning.

Slack had no idea how many of the other sweatshirts might still be in existence today but suggested that most of the employees at Thompson Advertising seemed a bit more hooked into the fashion cycle and "would probably have ditched them by about 1984."

So why does he still own one 23 years later?

"It's still a perfectly good sweat shirt," he said.

"Also, I like the idea of having something to wear that's older than some of the fashion week designers and probably most of the models."

Asked if he thought it wasn't a bit tragic wallowing in his advancing age and deficiency in fashion sense, Slack said it was time for a bloody run.

No photographer trailed him in the hope of capturing a reprise of his recent rib-crushing failure to scale a small chain across a footpath.

Slack's finale was a startling sprint home before it rained, in the process of which small fragments of navy blue fibre detached themselves in the spring breeze, falling softly to the footpath.

The show of some other designers will be run today at various times, and likewise tomorrow and so on throughout the week, if you can't get enough of this stuff.