Category Archives: Events

London streets are paved with gold

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I was really into the Olympics this year. The last time I did that was in 1984 when I made a commemorative cushion to celebrate New Zealand’s Olympics successes. And not just medals – I even included non-medallists like Anthony Mosse coming fifth in the Men’s 200m Butterfly, and so I eventually ran out of room and aborted the project.

My experience with subsequent Olympics was less enthusiastic. It was always a thing happening and maybe I’d pay attention to it. The last three Games coincided with me having media jobs involving a telly in the office, so at certain times work would stop and the office would crowd around the TV to cheer on various athletes either doing New Zealand proud and/or oh well, at least they tried.

But this year was different. I really got into the Games. The opening ceremony lured me in, as it’s essentially entertainment and not sport, but I soon found myself getting really obsessed with the competitions. How obsessed? Wikipedia-updating obsessed.

I knew things weren’t going well for the New Zealand swim team when I started to hear “gutted” used frequently in the poolside interviews. And yeah, only one swimmer made it to the finals in her heats. Surely someone in charge is going to have to explain why all the funding only produced a lingering sense of rool-guttedness.

I started to pay close attention to the uniforms of the athletes. There was a continuum of neatness, with the judo players’ floppy ponytails and loose robes at one end, and the tightly ponytailed gymnasts all wearing perfectly fitted leotards at the other end. But I’m not sure where Eric Murray’s comedy facial hair fits onto this scale. Probably off in the “don’t give a damn cos I got a gold medal” space.

My favourite moment – at the medal ceremony for the women’s 200m kayak, the European recipients of the silver and bronze medals did the double cheek kiss with the medal presenter. But gold medalist Lisa Carrington just shook his hand. Why? Because she is a New Zealander and we don’t do that sort of carry on.

Outside the stadium, there were reports of Kiwi House, a venue run by the New Zealand Olympic Committee, which seemed to be a holding pen for homesick expats. It was a bit weird, going heavy on a kind of exaggerated New Zealandness that only really exists in the imagination of expats. But Kiwi House did manage to explode some barbecue gas bottles, which is a pretty authentic slice of kiwiana.

But after about a week of putting scores in boxes, I started to get all existentialist. Like, why is winning medals such a big deal? I can see the benefit to an individual athlete (improved game, raised profile, better sponsorship), but what’s the benefit to New Zealand? The government pours millions of dollars into supporting high-performance sport, but why? Does the Olympics exist to unite countries of the world, only to send them home feeling better than everyone else?

As awesome as it feels to throw a parade for New Zealand’s returning athletes, there are similar parades happening in countries all over the world. Ireland is going mad for its five medallists (matched only by 1956′s lot), and Trinidad and Tobago rewarded its second ever gold medallist with a lighthouse.

New Zealand’s tally of 13 medals puts it at a very respectable number 15 on the medal table, which is high enough to avoid having to drag out the medals-per-capita table in order to prove that somehow New Zealand is better at the Olympics than the raw data would suggest. The notion that “New Zealand punches above its weight” only works if you don’t consider sports that involve actual punching in weight classes. The last New Zealand boxing medal was heavyweight David Tua’s bronze 20 years ago.

But yet the Olympics seem like fun – there are plenty of athletes saying “What happens in the Village, stays in the Village” (which I always translate as meaning “I got real pissed and pashed a lady who is not my wife”). The whole experience seems like a giant party (apart from the intense training and competing parts of it). So I was trying to figure out if there was some sort of Olympic sport I could partake in. Sadly I’m too old for most, leaving just things like equestrian events or shooting and archery. Or perhaps I could set my sights on the Commonwealth Games. They have lawn bowls.

Mix and Mash and Maurice

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I recently gave a talk at the Webstock Mix and Mash Mini on the topic of my fave new book, The Shell Guide to New Zealand.

To celebrate the launch of Digital NZ’s Mix and Mash competition, the theme of the evening was mashups and remixes, so my talk focused on the idea of a travel guide from the 1968 being recontextualised in 2010. Yeah, that’s right – recontextualised.

So first, the text of my speech:

Time, Travel with Maurice

The Shell Guide to New Zealand

Last year, I came across a copy of Maurice Shadbolt’s 1968 travel book, The Shell Guide to New Zealand. And I thought, “Ha ha! A fruity old travel guide. This will be hilarious!”

But when I started to read it, I realised that not only was it a well-written and interesting book, but it might actually still work as a travel guide. Little did I know how it would change my perspective on New Zealand.

But first, I had to take it on the road, starting with a local exploration.

Amongst Wellington’s sights, Maurice notes that the Carter Observatory of 1968 is “occasionally open to the public through the week”.

I like to think this meant having to convince the codger astronomer on duty to let you in, and if you bribed him with a steak and kidney pie, he’d let you have a look through a telescope.

Compare that with the extravagance of today, with the interactive exhibitions, light, colour and the planetarium with its rool-trippy-as domed ceiling projection. And it’s open seven days.

Let’s go further afield.

When I was in Gisborne earlier this year, Maurice pointed me in the direction of the waterfront monument to Captain Cook’s first landing in New Zealand.

He wrote, “Beside the monument is a ship’s cannon reputedly from the Endeavour.”

The old monument was there, but there was no sign of the cannon. What had happened to this noteworthy historic artefact? Had it been deemed culturally offensive, a reminder of colonial oppression?

Well, it turns out that the cannon was proven to have not actually come from the Endeavour. The now non-famous weapon has since been moved to the local museum where it’s been hilariously renamed “Not Cook’s Cannon”.

But there was something else missing from the Captain Cook Memorial – the waterfront had mysteriously vanished.

Yeah, the historic beachfront by the monument has been reclaimed to make space for storing logs. This historic New Zealand site has been casually destroyed, now making the monument honour Captain Cook’s remarkable ability to go for an inland hoon in the Endeavour.

And the book is full of other glimpses into “New Zealandness”.

Describing Auckland, Maurice notes that its mild climate means that fruits such as the “Chinese gooseberry” can be grown. He adds that, in Asia the Chinese gooseberry is known as a “kiwi fruit”.

This suggests that in 1968, the term kiwifruit was yet to catch on in New Zealand, and was probably still viewed suspiciously as a marketing term, much like we consider Zespri today.

And – as my friend Giovanni discovered – this is the only use of the word “kiwi” in the book. We’re still – quite elegantly – New Zealanders.

I like to think that when we dropped “Chinese gooseberry” and started calling that small brown furry treat a “kiwifruit”, we’d progressed a bit with our national identity. “Hey, we have a fruit named after us!… even though it’s native to Southern China…”

One of the most curious things I found in the book was Maurice’s recommendation that visitors to Auckland should check out the Building Centre, with its “comprehensive displays of building materials”.

Yep, that’s one of those places where homeowners go to check out Formica samples and insulation options, and he’s recommending it in the same list as the museum, art gallery and library.

So I paid a visit to the modern equivalent – the Home Ideas Centre in Petone – to see if the magic was still there.

I really enjoyed it! And I don’t even own a house. A wonderland of doors that open to nowhere, porno bathtubs, and kitchen benchtops available in a huge range of beiges, creams and greys – like a suburban funhouse that just happens to also reveal truths of middle New Zealand. Yeah, Maurice knew what he was recommending.

And that’s what I’ve gained the most from the Shell Guide to New Zealand – an old book for motoring tourists has given me the ability to find intriguing places to visit, things to do and new perspectives on both the New Zealand of 40 years ago and of today. A way to turn a holiday into time travel. The kind of adventures that wouldn’t normally be found in a travel guide.

And Maurice seems to agree. He concludes:

Today the traveller through New Zealand will, if observant, find a land of fascinating if sometimes enigmatic and ambiguous signposts, pointing into the past as much as towards the future. In the end, perhaps, no guide book will truly help him. It can indicate where signposts may be found, but it is up to the traveller to read the signposts for himself.

The signposts are there, all around this country. Get out and read them.

Extra for experts

So, you’ve read that and you’re all fired up and want to hit the open road. The  first thing people want to know is where they can get a copy of the Shell Guide to New Zealand.

Well, they’re always coming up for sale on Trade Me, so that’s the best place to look. Try this search – you should be able to get one on a Buy Now for under $10. But if you like it IRL, just have look in the New Zealand section of your local second-hand bookshop.

There are three editions of the book – 1968, 1973 and 1976, and I recommend them in order of oldest to newest. The biggest difference is that the 1976 edition has had all the original art (including work by Colin McCahon) replaced with colour  scenic photos, so go for the ’68 or ’73 for the art. The ’68 seems the most common, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding a copy.

But, of course, you don’t have to do exactly what I did. Maybe you’ll use a different old travel guide or perhaps a novel will inspire you.

My general philosophy is to not be reliant on the modern guidebooks, and by using an old travel guide, the reader/traveller is forced to pay more attention to their surroundings. The book  becomes a springboard to great adventures and discoveries.

The All Whites have ruined sport forever

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I was happily doing my year of live sporting events – a bit of cricket, a Phoenix game, a dash of roller derby – when my football-loving workmate said she was organising a group outing for the All Whites versus Bahrain FIFA World Cup qualifier match.

I have a vague memory of the last time the All Whites made it to the World Cup, in 1982. I was seven years old, and I remember being aware that this New Zealand sports team was doing quite well in some sort of international sports event, sort of like the Olympics, but only with soccer.

It took me a few years before I realised that rugby union was actually the sport that New Zealand was (then) really good at, and that its football prowess was just an early ’80s one-time special.

In “Heading For the Top”, one of the two ’82 World Cup anthems, Ray Woolf sang “We’re heading for the top and aiming for the future and we won’t ever stop while we are in control.”

Evidently control slipped away and the World Cup became something that Brazilians and Argentina were really good at (and England wanted to be really good at) but not something that New Zealand could do.

But somehow, a generation later, the All Whites were doing all right and had ended up with this magical match scheduled against Bahrain.

Hang on – let me just look at up Bahrain on Wikipedia. Ok, Middle East, constitutional monarchy, small island nation (OMG! Same!!!), largely Muslim, “many tall skyscrapers”, oil.

A planeload of Bahraini supporters came to town, with the curious sight of a young fellow in Cuba Mall decked out in a chavtastic red tracksuit, phat trainers and a white keffiyeh. Yeah, life’s pretty sweet when you have oil.

I figured that if Bahrain had supporters decked top to toe in team colours, it was the least I could do to dress in a bit of white. A look inside my wardrobe revealed two white tops (one “I work in an office and I hate my life” the other “I am wearing a tuxedo but I am a lady. Is this not outrageous?”), and also a white Teletext branded skivvie, which just deserves to die.

So I went off to the Warehouse and picked up a white tee for $9, and teamed that with some white sneakers. But I didn’t wear any more white because I’m like a vampire and would probably burn up. (The top and sneakers just let me sparkle, like vampire Edward.)

With my pale threads, I headed off to the Cake Tin, where I found myself surrounded by people in white Afro wigs, white sheets, white industrial coveralls, fake sheiks in white robes, as well as those donning official garb.

I joined my group in the stands, cheered on the ’82 All Whites, and found myself getting all emotional during the singing of the national anthem. Then suddenly the game began.

I found it easier to follow than I did during the Phoenix game, but our seats were low and almost behind a goal and so it was sometimes hard to see what was going on. But the reaction of the crowd – cheering, booing – was a good indication of what had happened.

Near the end of the first half, the stadium suddenly erupted in massive, massive cheers. It was goal, an absolutely necessary goal. I yelled. I jumped up and down.

The second half was a great big bucket of tension. Oh God – a whole 45 minutes in which the All Whites had to ensure that Bahrain did not score. The tension was racked up to an almost intolerable level with a Bahrain penalty shot that goalie Mark Paston – yes! – saved.

Somehow after that, the time flew by. The last 10 minutes of the game (so marked by the White Noise supporters’ top removal ritual) were a mix of impending euphoria and more of that deliciously sickening tension.

The three minutes of overtime felt like the entire stadium was balanced on a knife edge. But then it happened. The game ended with a score of one-nil to New Zealand.

The entire stadium (except for the now sullen red corner) erupted in a mass of cheering and smiling and yelling and stranger-hugging. I found myself jumping for joy – and I can’t actually think when the last time I jumped for joy was.

I decided to walk home instead of taking the bus. The streets were filled with happy, happy, happy people celebrating their arses off. After 27 years, New Zealand was going to the World Cup.

But I realised that as far as my life of sport goes, there’s never really going to be another sporting event like this. Pretty much everything else will pale in comparison – not even New Zealand in the 2011 Rugby World Cup grand final could even come close.

Well, the All Whites World Cup qualifier of ’09 may have ruined all other live sport for me, but it was worth it.

Adulation ruling the nation

Obscene and pornographic art

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I’m in a darkened room, sitting on a wooden bench, watching a film. It’s a psychedelic, experimental short from the late 1960s. Shapes and colours flicker around the screen. Soon the shapes make way to reveal humans – lovely young hippies. They’re naked and painting their bodies with abstract shapes, writhing together in a joyful painty mess.

When this image become obvious, a middle-aged woman in the room exclaims, “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!”

On screen, a man is standing with a stocking on his genitals.

“That’s a lady’s pantihose!”, the woman’s husband observes.

“Yes,” the she confirms, sounding relieved that it wasn’t her knee-highs on that man’s dangly bits.

Meanwhile, the fellow on screen has started humping a naked lady’s bottom with his manhosiery.

“Oh my godfathers,” the woman says.

“It’s like an orgy gone wrong,” the man says, rhyming ‘orgy’ with ‘corgi’, suggesting he’s never known an orgy gone right let alone wrong.

Soon they leave, almost as if their uncomfortable silence has booted them out like a bouncer.

This scene took place in one of the areas of Yayoi Kusama’s “Mirrored Years” exhibition at the refurbished City Gallery Wellington. (But that’s the room you don’t take your kids into.)

Downstairs, the new Adam Auditorium in the gallery was screening the documentary “Yayoi Kusama: I Adore Myself”.

You know what I don’t like about films played in art galleries? When they’re played on loop, with no indication of what time the film starts, leaving audiences to wander in halfway through, like it’s the 1950s. “I Adore Myself” was a fully-fledged feature-length documentary, not some video art that audiences can just dip in and out of.

The Adam Auditorium has one flaw that makes film screenings difficult – the blinds that block out the external light extend between two layers of glass, meaning the glass surface ends up clearly reflecting the film. This is annoying and distracting (much more than the ladder propped up in the wings at the Paramount) and quite strange to find in an otherwise nicely designed, brand new structure.

There’s a theme here – dark rooms. Amongst the rest of the Kusama exhibition I most enjoyed the pieces that were in dark settings. Specifically the firefly room – lines of LED lights with mirrored walls and over a reflecting pond – and the living room covered in fluorescent dots, violently glowing in the ultraviolet light.

The pieces that were more brightly lit annoyed me and left me feeling like I was being obscenely sucked into their world of yellow and black and giant blobby shapes, an unwilling Alice in Blunderland. Those ones had me uncomfortably fleeing room like the middle-aged couple had done at the short film.

But I like how the City Gallery has, for its reopening exhibiton, been transformed into a series of magical rooms, but with just enough rough edges and dangly bits to not leave audiences feeling too comfortable.

Take your sweetie along and gaze at the pretty lights, but just watch out that your honey doesn’t push you in the water.

Wind, rain, Phoenix

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Football or fußball or soccer is a game that’s always lingered in a distant corner of my life with really being anything that I’ve paid much attention to.

In fact, my knowledge of football can be summed up thusly:

  • Manchester United.
  • David Beckham.
  • “Fever Pitch” by Nick Hornby.
  • The Hillsborough tragedy.
  • Hooligans.
  • That time in the early ’80s when the All Whites did quite well.
  • Gary Lineker.
  • Sven Goran Erikson.
  • Ulrika Jonsson. (That’s enough – Ed)

I’ve had a vague New Year’s resolution this year to watch more sport. So far all this has meant was seeing a cricket game back in April, but when one of my workmates announced she was organising a group outing to a Wellington Phoenix game, I jumped at the chance to get more sport in my life.

So I showed up to Westpac Stadium with the group and we quickly moved from our allocated seats over to aisle 22, for this is where the rowdy Yellow Fever supporters sat. This was, I was told, where all the fun happens.

Spectators

I soon learned that football is reasonably easy game to follow: you have the ball and you need to get it in your goal and also stop the other team getting the ball in their goal.

It’s also quite hard to score a goal, and I like this. Not that I know anything about rugby, but it seems that in that game, you can score points by hurling the ball over pretty much anything. But because it’s harder in football, when a goal is scored it’s just that much sweeter.

And football is about crowd chants; proper chants, not just Exponents lyrics.

There’s the “Wellington is wonderful” chant (“We’ve got the wind, the rain and the Phoenix”) to buoy the spirits of the team, and then things like the mysterious “She fell over! She fell over!” chant to diss the South Australian visitors.

Actually, on the subject of Wellington being wonderful, it really is great that not only does Wellington have a professional football team, but the stadium it plays at is conveniently in the city, right next to the train station.

The big highlight of the game was The Goal. Yes, there was only one (the final score – one-all) but it was just a brilliant moment. Everyone got up and yelled and cheered and waved their scarves in the air. I also waved my newly purchased Phoenix scarf, and discovered that my voice goes all squeaky when I yell.

Goal

But in between the goal and the near-misses, I was surprised at how graceful football is. The way the ball sometimes flows between the players, bouncing from head to head, shooting from leg to leg. Oh right, that is why they call it the beautiful game.

I left the stadium, wandering off into the cold spring night, no longer a stranger to the appeal of football, and indeed feeling seduced by its charms.

Scarf-wearing

The Cricket

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1984, the playing field of Matangi School, Waikato. My class was playing cricket for PE. (Ugh, I hate PE!) and I was doing that thing with throwing the ball. What’s it called? Oh yeah, bowling. And I threw the ball at my classmate who was holding the bat and somehow I did something good, a sophisticated move in the world of cricket. And then I did it again. Yet I didn’t actually know what I did that was so great. “Whoa, watch out for Robyn – she’s good,” my teacher said. So I bowled again, attempting to replicate my killer move, but just ended up hurtling the ball vaguely in the direction of the batter (which, I swear, is all I’d done the first couple of times) but this time it was a bad bowl and I was never able to replicate my supposed quite-good bowling technique.

1996, Mike’s flat, Hillcrest, Hamilton. I was hanging out with Mike and he was talking about cricket, particularly some young whippersnapper from around the way named Daniel Batory or something. I was getting bit sick of all the cricket talk so I sang my cricket song. It’s a bit like 10CC’s “Dreadlock Holiday“, and it goes like this: I don’t like cricket / Oh no. And that’s the end of the song. Many people have heard me sing this song over the years.

2009, the Basin Reserve, Wellington. So, I’m sitting up on the grass at the Basin Reserve watching New Zealand and India play a test match cricket game thing. I’m sitting with Hadyn (who writes about sport), Richard (who also writes about sport), Dan (who writes about movies, but has a season pass to the cricket) and various other people who actually know what’s going on.

Run, run, run!

Despite my general view of cricket as an annoying, confusing game, I’d decided to come along just to see if it was really as annoying and confusing as I thought.

For a start, I didn’t really know what was going on, so I asked questions such as:

They’re all wearing white – how do you tell which team is batting and which team is fielding?

You look at the scoreboard thing and it tells you. Also, the New Zealand team have wider stripes on their uniform.

Where do the non-batting players go when they’re not batting?

There’s a lean-to tiki shack thing next to the main grandstand. They go and hang out there and make toasted sandwiches.

What’s an over?

A unit of something cricket related? Um, I can’t actually remember, but Dan did explain it quite well at the time.

So, um, when does it end today? Because I know the game thing goes over multiple days, and it’s all a bit complicated with the runs and overs and shit, but I was just wondering when there was an approximate time for it to end because, well, it’s getting a bit cold and windy up here.

Soon, little Smurf. Soon.

I slowly began to piece together the basics of the game, and learned about the strategic move where India could have made New Zealand bat again. (Or was it field again?)

At one stage Chris Martin was batting. This is not the same Chris Martin from Coldplay who is married to Gwyneth Paltrow (lolz!!!). Not that I could tell, given that he was a distant white-clad figure. Apparently Mr Martin is not typically an awesome batter, but he managed to hit a four (what?) which is quite good and everyone yelled and cheered.

Mate 

After a while I realised that going to a cricket game isn’t necessarily about the sport. It’s more like going on a picnic with your mates, but with the option of being entertained by some fellows in white woollen vests running around in the distance.

And that is something I don’t mind at all.

The needles and the damage undone

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I showed up to Cuba Mall on Saturday. It was packed with people, but I found a small oasis of calm in the form of the Outdoor Knit area. It was manned by Knitsch and stiX who were hard at work knitting.

Outdoor Knit is the local variant of that international scene (also known as guerrilla knitting) where, well, people knit things and sew them around urban objects such as lampposts, park bench slats, rails and trees.

The little grove of trees outside the Bristol was getting well covered with colourful bits of knitting. One of the knitters asked me if I wanted to join in. “Oh, I can’t knit,” I said. I’d sort of learned back in the mid ’90s, but hadn’t touched a pair of needles for almost 15 years.

But the knitter wouldn’t accept that as an answer, cast on for me, reminded me of the basic stitch and – must to my surprise – I started knitting. I did a few rows before wandering off to explore the rest of the carnival.

Later in the noon I returned and thought it would be a really good idea to do some knitting. I was given a piece that someone else had started – a long skinny grey bit, about 10 stitches wide. I sat down and merrily started knitting.

null

It’s rather satisfying to do. It’s one of those activities where you can just let your mind wander and start making up raps about public transport while you work.

As I was sitting there, lots of carnivalgoers passed by, including those who saw the knitting and wanted to join in. Quite a few older ladies were lured by the needles and quickly started firing off complicated patterns. One girl even started plotting out letters in her knitting, which seems to me like a very advanced move. And lots of people just wandered over and thought it would be fun to have a go, including a lovely young man who’d never knitted before, but soon he was churning out an orange strip, courtesy of some expert tuition from the crew.

Quite a few people stopped to take photos of the knitters and knitting. Seriously, everyone has a DLSR camera these days and everyone feels like they’re taking serious documentary photos that will capture a certain moment in the history of the early 20st century or something. But isn’t it a bit more fun to be most than a passive observer? Isn’t it just a bit more fun for your experience to be something you did, rather than just a photo of something someone else did?

Other people did stop to ask what was going on. I’d tell them it was knitted graffiti, which some people had trouble understanding. A lot of people thought it was some sort of organised knitting group and didn’t seem to realise that most of us had literally just walked in off the street. And the idea of knitting something that had no practical use also seemed to perplex people.

As I continued knitting my piece, it seemed to be getting wider. My 10-stitch-wide knitting had somehow become 30 stitches wide. Say what? Turns out I was stabbing my needle through the loosely twisted wool. But I as quite happy to have made a triangle. Soon enough I had finished off the small ball and sewed it around a tree.

I eyed my wonky grey triangle with a certain sense of satisfaction. It feels good to create something, and thanks to Knitsch and stiX, I did! Now all I need to do is learn to cast on and off, then if civilisation crumbles, I’ll at least be able to knit wonky grey trousers for trees.

Photo from Outdoor Knit’s Flickr stream.