Island Life by David Slack

I had my first encounter with drinking liberally when I was 15. In the 1970s, Flock House was the place for a young man to come and learn to be a farmer. It was a large farm near Bulls, with a grand homestead. It once belonged to my great great grandparents, the McKenzies.

There, in 1976, we had a family reunion, and there, in 1976, I had my first Bacardi and Coke, followed by another, and another, and then another, in gathering succession as I discerned that no-one would impede my progress to the bar.

Late in the evening, my parents led me, talking boisterously to no-one in particular, from the grand house to the car, where I stretched across the back seat and regaled them with an oration of which I could recall not one word the next morning. I did not feel queasy, nor did I have a headache. But I did feel mortified. Never again, I vowed and with only a thousand or two exceptions, I have kept my word.

"My name is David and I am a liberal drinker", I will say when the gathering is called to order this evening at the London Bar. I will speak of many doomed years grappling with the dreaded social lubricant. I will speak of my liver, my heart, and my lost lamented brain cells.

No I won’t.

The Drinking Liberally movement has arrived in Auckland, and I will be saying a few words. My topic is drawn from the 1975 Muldoon battle cry: New Zealand the Way You Want It. I will begin by reminiscing about that and the origin of of the slogan, as described by Barry Gustafson, and we’ll go from there. I expect to pass through the towns of Key, Clark, Crosby, Textor, SPARC’s operating budget and the shining city on a hill called a better tomorrow. I also expect to speak the name of the hell that no Liberal dare consider: a National landslide.

The London Bar is still my favourite place to drink in all of Auckland. I’ll be the one holding a scotch on the rocks and drinking slowly.

Every day when I get home from work, my kid asks me the same thing. “What do you do at Crosby|Textor, Dad?”

I say the same thing to him I say to everyone else: “None of ya business, ya nosey mongrel”, and I give him a playful cuff under the chin. When he comes to, we play twenty minutes of Grand Theft Auto together and that’s the quality time sorted for the day.

It’s none of your business either, ya mongrels, but I’m sick of you Kiwis whining all day so here’s a bone, alright?

What do we do all day? We tidy things up. Put it this way. I like rats. You don’t. You win. Here’s what we do with our rat before we send him over to your house.

First, we fix the tail. People don’t like that skinny, greasy thing. We make it soft and fluffy.

The little claws are sinister. Fatten them out, put some nice soft hair on top and little soft pink pads underneath.

The big ears are a turnoff. We shrink those down and put more of that nice soft fur all over the bald ears. Then we make the rest of the body bigger to get the proportion right.

The pointy nose is homely. Flatten it down.

Fur on just the tail and ears and feet looks wrong. We'll cover the rest of the body as well.

That dirty grey colour isn’t working, though. We’ll change it to handsome splotches of glossy black and white. Nice.

Now clear ya throat, Rat. Give us a few bars.

That squeak is a deal-breaker. We’ll give you a new sound.

Let’s hear you now. Beautiful. You like that? Thought you would. We call that a meow.

And that's a purr.

Now go catch some rats, champ.

I come to praise Helen Clark’s government as we prepare to bury it. You may have heard Laila Harre on the radio on Monday. Evidence from a focus group suggests that people are not aware that credit for various changes is due to the present administration. You may also have read Audrey Young this morning praising Michael Cullen for his legacy work in Treaty negotiations. Add KiwiSaver and the Cullen fund to the list and it is clear that Michael did not come to Parliament just to eat the Torys’ lunch.

Ironic, then, that an administration so derided for their profligacy in spin has turned so much straw to so little gold. Consider how much more they spent than their Opposition on advertising in the last campaign, and how little it seemed to do for them. Do they have a tin ear for advertising? Consider the happy American family from stock photo land. Yes, it’s standard practice to use such things, but that doesn't mean something so anodyne is the best choice. When you create political advertising, you get to deal with the big issues. You get to do imaginative work.

If you were an advertising ‘creative’, what would you rather talk about: life's vital questions, or baked beans? Your children's future or laundry powder? Evidently this is not a straightforward choice for the professionals. Let’s see if we amateurs can do better. Should you feel inclined to throw out a life-ring, here’s your chance. Nominate a top five list: Praiseworthy Accomplishments of the Helen Clark Years. Think of it in terms that might appeal to the disenchanted voter; the one who thinks that all this administration has done is tell him he can’t smack his kids.

Dave ‘Mudcat’ Saunders knows a thing or two about getting through when the phone is off the hook.

Mudcat, who describes himself as "an old-timey Democrat: pro-gun, pro-God, pro fiscal conservatism," is tired of teaching remedial Mudcat Math to deaf ears in his own party. It can be distilled as The Twofer Strategy: If you get a rural white voter who otherwise would have voted for McCain to switch to Obama, his vote is worth twice as much as a vote from your standard "liberal pinko commie" or your MTV Rock-the-Voter, since Obama not only accrues one vote for himself, but also takes one away from McCain. Campaigns that court the base while ignoring voters who could be won over are "hunting squirrels they've already killed."

How many squirrels are left for Helen?

A crack band of Kiwi mercenaries emerges from the presidential palace with Robert Mugabe’s head on a pike. The world roars its approval. We bring them home in tickertape of a volume not seen since the Americas Cup.

Too extreme? How about if they drag him out still alive, but hogtied and wriggling?

One must consider such nice questions when one is fine-tuning an audacious plan to remedy two pressing problems.

Problem One: there is a monster in Harare.

Problem Two. We are, according to the Mayor of Wanganui, being tyrannised by petty terrorists, namely: gangs.

I cannot settle for handwringing. I am a practical man. The farm where I grew up was held together by number eight wire. I have a solution.

You may not have realised it, but as you were emptying your popcorn bucket and watching the Dirty Dozen getting shot, stabbed, and blown up by Germans, you were contemplating the meaning of individualism, collectivism, cultural relativism, racism, patriotism and duty. I am obliged to Wikipedia for enlightening me.

More crucially, however, you were witnessing an ingenious solution.

For those who have not had the benefit, the Dirty Dozen proceeds on the following basis: With the D-Day landings looming, the US army needs a diversion; a suicide mission. Regular soldiers can’t be risked, so instead they turn to twelve hard-core American prisoners doing life or facing execution. These lost causes are whipped into shape and sent in to wipe out a chateau full of Wehrmacht officers.

You can no doubt see where I’m going with this.

You take a dozen of the Mongrel Mob’s staunchest guys from Parry. Maybe a dozen Black Power as well, just to make it really interesting. A few Killer Beez for comic value.

You whip them into a crack unit, you give them all the equipment and supplies they require, legal and otherwise, and you put them on a plane to Zimbabwe. Their mission: Get Mugabe.

The training would be crucial. I nominate Ron Mark and Willie Apiata, because they are top blokes who know their stuff. We couldn’t risk them in the actual battle zone, though. Perhaps Archbishop Tamaki might volunteer. Or Chris Harder, if the Law Society should thwart him once more. Maybe a hardened coach like Grizz Wyllie or Frank Oliver. Maybe someone who’s both tough and smart enough to come back alive, like Anton.

This is just win/win all the way as far as I can see. If the first lot don’t come up trumps, you just send off another dozen. Rinse, repeat.The lowlife punks who shot Najtev Singh come to mind.

Some may quibble at the shaky legal basis. Alright, then, make it purely volunteer. How staunch are ya? you ask them. Wipe out Mugabe and his henchmen and we’ll wipe your slate clean.

Redemption is a powerful tool for rehabilitation.

More crucially, no other bastard is doing anything. Mr Unilateral Invasion seems to have stopped reading the international section of his Washington Post, if he ever was.

Afterwards, you could make a movie of it. Temuera Morrison wouldn't even have to get a new wardrobe. Cook me some fuckin’ eggs President. Antony Starr could easily play three, four, or half a dozen of the characters, and who wouldn't want to see Van and Munter on tour in Africa?

Would you include the blood and gore? It was a big step forward in 1967. Roger Ebert wrote:

I'm glad the Chicago Police Censor Board forgot about that part of the local censorship law where it says films shall not depict the burning of the human body. If you have to censor, stick to censoring sex, I say...but leave in the mutilation, leave in the sadism and by all means leave in the human beings burning to death. It's not obscene as long as they burn to death with their clothes on.

Simpler, more innocent times. These days we get to see it every night on the news.

Wendyl Nissen said to us: there is no right way to feel when someone has died; there is no correct way to react. She said: You have permission to do whatever feels right.

Once Patricia Herbert said to me: I like a good funeral. Patricia is a historian. She had a Catholic upbringing and many teenage months in a hospital bed contemplating mortality. I agree with her, but I don't mean this one and I doubt that she would either.

We sat, we stood, we crammed into the boating club at Narrow Neck beach and listened to the unsteady voices of family and friends and children. We watched video images of a little girl: first, in a cot, then taking tottering steps, then being gathered up in her beaming mother’s outstretched arms. We drank cups of tea and signed a book full of photos of a beautiful sunny-faced child who died at the age of nine from the rarest of cancers of which neither she nor her mother knew anything nine months ago.

Sandy said goodbye to Finlee by placing the lid on the coffin and blowing out a candle. The room was full of parents and their children. We watched her lean in to embrace her daughter for the longest last time and the room wept.

The other day Adrian said to me: We’ve got a Russian working with us. Those guys have a different way of looking at things; I like it. I said: more dour? He said: They're used to things working out badly. They expect it.

Wayne said: It’s the first time Wendyl has led the service at a child's funeral. Karren said: she was wonderful.

Michelle said: It felt as though it was over in a flash. She wasn’t sure if they’d done it right. I said: It was kind, it was warm, it was affecting, it showed me what Finlee had been. She said: We were working on that DVD 'til 4.00 in the morning and do you think we could get the machine to work right?

Wayne said: She’s had about four hours' sleep in the last week.

Mary-Margaret said: I said to Michelle ‘are you okay?’ Was it okay for me to say that? Mary-Margaret said: I gave Sandy a sad look. Was it okay for me to do that? Karren said: Yes that’s okay - what did Sandy say? Mary-Margaret said: she just sort of looked upset.

Sandy works at Mitre 10. So does Nat Curnow. He said the company had helped Sandy out. I said: I’ve been hearing a lot about that. He said: they gave her as much paid time off as she needed to be with Finlee. They paid for flights to Australia; Finlee was guest of honour at the Christmas party. I said: it’s nice to know a business will care that much. He said: it’s a bit of an unusual company. It's a co-op run by the owners of the stores. He said: it can be a bit hard sometimes to get something new going, but it seems to work out well. We decided that this was MMP applied to enterprise. Nat is building a house out of straw bales. I said: I'll come and visit with a microphone.

Andrea said: Sandy is going to be working with the Guardian Angels.

Guardian Angels are mothers who have been bereaved. They know what to do when the floor opens up beneath you.

Karren said: If it happened to me I would want the world to stop.