Island Life by David Slack

The most memorable scene in The Grapes of Wrath comes near the end, as the Joad family gather up their few meagre coins and treat themselves to a half hour in a motel Jacuzzi. In Southern California, it has long been the habit of stressed and unhappy people to cheer themselves up by soaking in warm bubbling water in a state of near, or entire, undress.

As the Depression grinds on, I have found myself surrendering to similar urges. What really attracts me to my gym is the Olympic-sized spa pool. It is a subterrannean marvel. It sits below a low concrete ceiling at the rear of the changing rooms; vast, blue-tiled, Roman.

You lower yourself into the water and feel indulged. You have had an hour of stomach crunches and pull-ups and trying to maintain face alongside Rob Waddell on the rowing machine; now you have your rest.

Life is good at 42 degrees, no matter what the bankers have done to it.

Always, uncannily, and within moments, Spock-like, Wallace Chapman materialises. It doesn't matter what time of day you're there, within twelve seconds of getting naked and lowering yourself into the warm waters, there he is alongside you. I sometimes wonder if he's really there for the exercise.

We canvass the political issues of the day, and compare notes of misfortune, then I get up to leave and Wallace hits the plunge pool.

As far as I know, there is nothing about this behaviour that is contrary to the terms of our gym membership. But consider the ambiguous phrasing of the sign which hangs at the entrance to the changing rooms and also in the showers:

INAPPROPRIATE BEHAVIOUR WILL NOT BE TOLERATED

Les Mills Auckland management advise instant membership cancellation if found acting inappropriately in these areas.

I'm pretty sure I know what they're talking about, but how can I be sure when they're too coy to spell it out?

I surreptitiously copied the words down on a scrap of paper in order to be sure I would faithfully quote them. I'd have taken a photograph with my cellphone, but you can no doubt understand my hesitation.

There was a time when men's changing rooms were a bastion of strong language and frankness, and I imagine that in Matamata and Timaru, they still are. But around here I sense the prissying effect of neo-Victorian sensibilities in Parnell advertising agencies and the strangulation of our language by modern management.

We want people to behave themselves in the men's changing rooms. There have been...complaints. Can you make a sign?

Many years ago, in the changing rooms at the Freyberg Pool, I was astonished to look up and see a certain National Party MP scoping my junk with a lecherous grin. But that was Wellington. I can't say I've noticed anything 'inappropriate' in any gym I've used in Auckland. I have to conclude, therefore, either that it does not take place, or that it does, but I don't know it when I see it. Might it be, for example, talking politics in the pool with your mates?

Why shrink (fnaar!) from spelling it out? I'm guessing: making unwelcome sexual advances, taking a long lingering look around the changing room, taking snapshots and, perhaps, if you're not too tired after all that Pilates, having sex.

I wouldn't feel troubled to read such things on a sign, and frankly, I think it would not hurt for modern business to grow a pair.

Has anyone been counting? What number are we up to in this 100 days of action from our new government? Where is that Pork-o-meter when you need it?

Perhaps it's day 97, I don't really care; I'm just pleased to read that something's about to happen. A rolling maul, no less! Good on you, John. We were looking for a bit of an effort and you've picked up the ball and run with it. To be fair, you were looking a bit average for a wee while, but full credit to you and the team. It's a game of two halves. Half a billion on infrastructure spending! Jobs for blokes who can swing a hammer! That's more like it. You're doing the hard yards at the business end. Now it's time to put a few between the sticks. What we need obviously is someone with imagination obviously.

Is 500 million enough? And what should you spend it on?

I got weak at the knees with revolutionary fervour the other night watching a Ken Burns documentary. It was all about about the war effort in America. The Ford motor company was rolling a new B24 bomber off the production line every 54 minutes. The nation's factories were making ships and planes faster than the enemy could sink them or shoot them down. By the end of the war, the US was turning out something like half the world's industrial production. There was scarcely a person left idle in all of the USA, and women in overalls were suddenly doing men's work with skill, care and steely determination.

What a transformation it was, from dust-bowl and soup lines, to powerhouse economy. The vast and dreadful pity of it was that it took a war to make it happen.

We don't have a war; we just a have a battlefield, cratered by exploding investment bankers. Now what? We could pick our way tentatively through the wreckage or to return to the tortured rugby metaphor, we could stick with this 'rolling maul' idea, the import of which would appear to be: do what seems sufficient to keep everyone employed, borrow plenty of money - but no more than we have to - and let's see if we can come out the other side with everything still intact.

But is that how we want this to play out? Do we want to come out the other side with all the furniture in the same place?

I have been chatting with my fellow lefty Finlay Macdonald for months now about the fiscal havoc, and we have come through the stages of grief anger denial etc to a point where we believe we have an answer to the problems. It may not surprise readers, once they have seen the following proposals, to know that we were drinking at the time.

Nonetheless we have a few ideas that we think are worth tossing about. They are not carefully honed. They are broad brush strokes. We are saying: what the hell. If we're going to spend some money on infrastructure, let's do this thing properly.

You may think them fanciful, wholly unrealistic. But don't be rushing to judgement. Like a horse-drawn carriage, like a machine that can fly, like a giant series of tubes that might permit you to send a message to a fellow pornographer in Sweden, all the most marvellous facets of life were once dopey ill-formed sketchy suggestions.

Our thesis rests on this foundation: the place is becoming a dump. It needs changing. We drive around in clapped-out cast-off cars, live in houses that are disintegrating from the inside out, are contenting ourselves with second rate crap from the Warehouse, and are working long long hours for a quality of living that seems less than it was a decade ago and the one before that. The jobs are going to thin out now, and when that happens, it will all get ugly. So yes, let's spend billions of dollars of money borrowed in the name of the taxpayers, but let's really use our imagination.

Here comes the high ball, son.

1. Move the capital from Wellington to Blenheim
Think of the vast sums of capital involved, the thousands of houses and buildings to be constructed! What a jobs engine! Germany moved their capital from Bonn to Berlin. No sweat. Consider all the advantages: a happy climate for the citizens. They can go outdoors more. Wellington, don't give us any flannel. Every night we see your weather camera getting blown about on the 6 o'clock news. You might pick grapes for a living instead of holding seminars on strategy and generally being a dead-weight bureaucrat. Not to mention the earthquake. The rest of the country fears for you all, Wellington. You saw that TV drama last year didn't you? Scary, eh? Come to Blenheim.

2. Tip over all the Leaky Homes and build them again
We know this is where it will end up. 80,000 of the houses built since the mid 1990s are poked, according to John Gray, and he ought to know. It's a colossal scandal, and no bastard wants to put their hand up for it. Meanwhile all the poor owners are spending fully as much as as they paid to build their houses to get them patched up. A friend of mine does repairs on these houses. The poor owners usually ask to have things reinstated the way they were. He says he warns them: you'll just get the same problem again. Still they press on. It's all too dismal.

Here's the capital-intensive solution I propose: the government tips all these houses over and builds their owners new homes in a style which uses none of the crap cladding from the likes of the those Hardies people, and uses eaves and all the other features of building design one usually finds in a pluvial country. You and I will pay for this largesse at - let's say - $250,000 a home. This $250,000 will get you $350,000 of value, because we will re-establish the Ministry of Works and/or the railway workshops and we will have thousands of tradesmen on the payroll, and we will squeeze the arms of the materials suppliers until their eyes water. We will do this partly because we want to get a better price and partly because we want to see the pain on their faces after all these years of price gouging.

3. No more cheap cars
We will ban second hand imports. Car owners will be compelled to spend money on cars the way they used to: on maintenance. Running good cars for longer will provide work for more tradespeople, and as if that's not reason enough, consider also that this could bring the curtain down on the boy racer sideshow.

4. Clean milk
There will be a massive dairy cleanup project to make our agri-business genuinely clean and green. Jobs. Exports. Rivers you can swim in.

5. Green zones
Down here at the bottom of the world, we love our Bob Marley. So let's honour his memory with some specially approved zones where it will be legal to smoke controlled marijuana. You would - yes - roll this into a "green tourism" deal that blends the ganja with eco-lodge backpacker accommodation. The message would be plain: come here, get wasted, commune with nature. This is just so full of benefits, it's hard to believe the MP for Maui hasn't already proposed it: vast revenue to help the government pay down its debts, massive employment possibilities, and an end to a prohibition-based criminal enterprise.

6. Sunday Paper edict
For every story they run about the value of your house, the Sunday Papers will be obliged to run one other about some other form of investment, and at least half of those must be export-related.

7. The Dunedin Line
We put all our exports on sailing ships and cargo ships which are propelled by Sky Sails. New Zealand avoids the carbon mile problem by going green and gets itself an outstanding branding opportunity. Regular listeners to Nine To Noon will know of what I speak. After I spoke of it last week, Neale Dickson emailed to let me know that these Sky Sails which can haul a conventional container ship all across the ocean are actually made right here on Auckland's North Shore. Which figures. Let us work to our strengths, as they say.

8. Also
Bill Ralston will be obliged to write his columns in the presence of a witness who will ensure that he spends at least fifteen uninterrupted minutes at the task. This may not make much difference to the economy but I suspect it would cheer up readers of Public Address.

I have every sympathy for borrowers who find themselves marooned on the desert island known as Fixed Rate.

Others can be so hard-hearted. Such cold unflinching people they are!
"You knew what you were doing" they say. "No-one made you choose a fixed rate over a floating one" they say. Oh they have no heart. They say: "You made the choice, and why? Because you thought you'd do better on this rate. You made a bet. You bet wrong. That's what can happen in grown-up land."

To those unthinking cold-hearted people I say: can't you be a bit more reasonable? Life would be much better for everyone if we could all just loosen our rules a bit. I for one would like to see the TAB get a bit more relaxed. They're so anal about who gets to collect their money after the race. At the moment, you only get to collect some money if the horse you picked was first or second or third across the line. How unreasonable. I got so disillusioned with this system, I stopped going to the races. The share market is no better. I bought shares in a company once and then when I went to sell them I only got half as much as I'd paid! What a rort.

All I can do is rail, sadly. This is one of those unhappy times when no matter what you say, it won't make people feel any better. I must congratulate our Minister of Finance though. You tell those banks, Bill! They'll listen.

I'm no politician though. I can do nothing to help. The best I can do is suggest you take yourselves out of yourselves and your indebted homes for a couple of hours and take in a movie. That might help. I hear Slumdog Millionaire is quite good.

I am not one to gossip. If I were, all you faithful readers of Woman's Day would have been in the know fully three months sooner: Lana Coc-Kroft is expecting! Old news now, though. Karren was waiting for the receptionist to look up from her desk and say: The doctor will scan you now, when there was a minor flurry. Doors opened and closed swiftly. A tall blonde figure strode quickly through the clinic. You can't even get your celebrity foetus scanned without people noticing.

The appointment was in Ponsonby, just before midday, so we met for lunch in a cafe, and Karren arrived bearing the first image of our child.

I have no idea what the quality of the images is like these days, but I watch CSI and roll down other people's streets on Google Earth when there's nothing better to do, so I would expect plenty. But all the way back in 1998, we had to squint. What we appeared to have spawned, according to the grainy black and white image, was a small fossil.

Open up your textbooks. Look at the fossil pictures. They're all the same. One spinal arc after another. A row of cylinders rising and falling in size, a ragged string of little life preservers.

This is my first and enduring image of our daughter. A little ridge of spine. Just occasionally she will lean forward and the little crest of her spine will show itself again. I will think: "I remember you."

So much of a parent's initial experiences are surprisingly alien. You pick up the image expecting...what? A tiny fist? A resemblance to your own chiselled good looks? You expect nothing, really, but all the same, this little arch of a spine is so tenuous. It looks less, or other, than human. This changes. The tiny fist appears in a later scan. In a still later one, the doctor asks us: "do you want to know?" We smile great big goofy delighted smiles. It's a girl. It's a real human.

In the delivery room, our new-born baby is slowly swimming her arms in mid-air. Her mouth moves, but she makes no noise. Her eyes are pressed tightly shut. (Against the light?) I don't notice the spine. I don't register whether it still seems alien. I am looking at the nose which seems all too familiar. I am thinking you poor little bugger. The resemblance mercifully passes; she is lovely.

A friend gave birth while we were away. She had a lovely girl and she has recounted the experience in the same wry way she recounts the rest of her life. Highly recommended new year reading.

The specialist arrives maybe about 7 days later, maybe half an hour? He has some drugs on him, but they don't really touch the sides.

This holiday we spent five days rolling down a 160-kilometre petanque course in Central Otago. Your wheels make a soft crunching sound on the gravel. It could be the surf at night. Central Otago is more or less as depicted by Grahame Sydney but greener for the irrigation and the recent rain. After five minutes on the rail trail, you realise you like it so very much because you do not have to look over your shoulder, ever, for vehicles.

And there in front of you, is your nine year old, and there is that little fossil relic.

Life comes and gathers around the tiny spine, whether you are ready or not, and it proceeds with or without your help. You can be attentive, loving, indolent, indulgent, you can be a train wreck; whatever you do or omit to do, the spine will gather an entire living human around itself. It may become your entire life, it may remain alien.

We only once felt as though we were outsiders. The pubs and cafes and lodges open their doors to the visitors on their bikes. You are made enormously welcome. At the very least you will have a choice of rib-eye steak or blue cod and chips. There was just one bar where we pushed open the swing doors and the piano-playin' stopped. A raspberry and lemonade for the girl, chardonnay for my wife and a scotch on the rocks, thanks. Three times I could have said "handle of Speights" and three times I came up empty. We took our Auckland drinks outside to the garden bar. Can't complain about the food, though. The kitchen has probably been doing the same good meals for a hundred years. I chose the Mixed Grill. It would be fully twenty years since I last had one, what with all the chardonnay. The Mixed Grill is not your Dad's one, though, not even among the Southern Men. Bean sprouts! Lettuce! If you took them out, there would be room for a second egg.

On we rode, through sun and blue skies, blue skies and sun. Also a nor'wester that nearly stopped Mary-Margaret in her tracks, and cold rain one morning that numbed the hands of my daughter and me. The determined little girl with the strong spine kept pushing. We were so proud of her.

In the Otago Museum, she was thrilled to

discover stone remnants of the giant snake she had described to us - it would stretch from our house to outside Ella Brownlees' gate, Dad - on display. It was in fossil form. There was a vast eye socket and an enormous spine. It was all that was left.

Imagine you're Paula Bennett sitting at home at 11.00 pm at night with your face turning blue as you sup your tea. $200,000 to hold one freakin' conference? Are you kidding me? Did her face really turn blue, as she told the newspapers, or did her pulse quicken as she spied a splendid opportunity to show her boss how worthy she was of the promotion?

I also wonder how things might have turned out, politically, if it had been a $200,000 conference to discuss Herceptin treatment. You get no thanks for being the cold-hearted bastard who puts the argument against funding this particular drug, and yet it's one with reason on its side. Ruth Dyson found a good way to put it yesterday: there are many people with significant illnesses who are not able to get access to government-funded medication.

"They will ask, 'Why them and not me?", she said.

Might we have money for those people too if we manage to weed out all the $200,000 conferences? This is just the tip of the iceberg proclaims David Farrar, which is brave and and selfless of him. You can't go to one of these talkfests without tripping over the little fella. I once sat behind him for three hours at a telecoms conference and watched in fascination as he read his way through fifty other websites and tapped away at his own one. The expression is 'live-blogging' but what constitutes a life, exactly?

Positively tout le monde goes to these affairs, and by tout I mean chief executives, senior public servants, highly-visible lobbyists, and enthusiastic entrepreneurs who live by the creed that if you are not networking, you are dying.

They take place in sumptuous surroundings: hotel ballrooms, convention centres.

Last holidays, as is my wont, I took Mary-Margaret out into the world to see what grown-ups do. We were walking past Sky City. I said: "let's see what happens at a conference." We admired the art in the lobby, we sat in the leather armchairs and watched Mike Lee greet some visitors from Asia. We glided up the escalators and strolled down the vast hallways. We opened a door at will and sure enough the ballroom was full.

In a whisper I pointed out the speaker, the lectern, the subdued lighting, the serried tables, the mints, the glasses, the water decanters, the deferential staff in black trousers and crisp white shirts, and the inevitable Powerpoint presentation on the large screen. After a few minutes we withdrew.

"Is that what you do when you go away to give a speech?" she asked. Yes, I told her, and no. I do not believe in Powerpoint.

I explained that there are many good reasons for people to meet with one another and share their knowledge. I also explained that it can be a bit of a racket. Those venues are not cheap. The mints and the crisp shirts and the deferential service come at a cost.

You can easily be spending 200 grand, if you're not careful.

Not to mention the airfares and the dinners at the Viaduct.

Iceberg ahoy. These conferences would not be harmed by a shake-up. They are the modern village square and they can perform a useful function. But need they be so lavish?

Two less costly alternatives come immediately to mind:

1. Video conferencing. I recommend this interview
with a good friend of Public Address, Chris McKay. He's so good at this stuff he gets to spend time at Google. Once Mr Joyce has built us that series of interconnected tubes, we'll be laughing.

2. School buildings. Kiwi Foo Camp is the best conference I've ever taken part in, and it all takes place in a high school. Just last weekend I was at the auditorium of Westlake Boys High School. Your taxes have been spent well. It gives the Bruce Mason Theatre a run for its money; their facilities would surely cost you less than a hotel ballroom.

If you take a cut lunch, it could be all but free.

By all means, get together and talk about doing good things for our families, and our brighter future, and aspirations going forward. Communication is the beginning of understanding as they used to say on Radio Windy. But how about we cut out the middle man?