New Year

If you had the opportunity to change everything, absolutely everything, even (maybe) your identity, would you? And what would you do?

Medal winning dancer.

He was clad all in black: black shirt, black belt, black pants, black socks, black shades, black soul...

He swooped up the steps to the church hall as if in slow motion. He swept through the double doors of an adjoining room, they flapped closed elegantly behind him, in his mind's eye, a pigeon launched itself from the rafters, over his shoulder and out through the doors before they closed. "Whatever happens next", he thought, "This part's choreographed by John Woo."

Shit was about to go down.

Without pause he crossed the room in slow motion, surveying the occupants, a circle of seated men, all looking at the apparition that had just burst in. "Hey", he thought to himself, "there's that guy Pete from ....." He nodded. Then he wondered, not for the first time in his life "Where are all the women?"

A young man stood up from the circle, gave an unsure smile and said "Welcome to our erectile dysfunction workshop."

The man in black didn't flinch. Inwardly, he wondered if anyone could make out his eyes behind the shades. Looking only at the young man, he squeaked "Um... the social dancing medals?"

The young man looked deflated and only said "Next door."

"Sorry." The man in black spun around, and in glorious slow motion, swept back out of the room, knowing that he would never, ever visit ..... again.


And so last weekend, I danced foxtrot & cha cha for my first 2 Dance, Social Medal. My allocated time was 9.30am. I turned up at 9.00am so that I could sort out my partner for the dance (one of the very advanced women), and run through so that I didn't fluff up my steps.

When I got there I found they were already 50 minutes behind time. And so that gave me the chance to check out the others. These ranged from beginners like me, dressed in (black) "smart casual", to the highly advanced, and highly glitzed up mega-dancers.

First up was a young guy doing his 2 Dance Social too. I thought I could do better quite frankly. Then came a young woman in a gown, dancing her 4 Dance Social. I definitely could not do better than that.

There were the elegant, the stompers, the simply beautiful, the cool, the nervous, and the enthusiastic.

The judge spent most of the time chatting to the lady next to her, rather than watching the dancers, so I figured there was scope for improvisation.

There is a ritual to these things it turns out, when my turn came, Shona, my designated dancer & I held hands, walked to the lady doing the music, introduced ourselves & made very small talk. Then we approached the judge, introduced ourselves again & she made small talk about how to pronounce my name (like it's spelt: Llewjoihowicz), told her what we were doing - 2 Dance Social, foxtrot & cha cha.

And then we were up. Approximately one minute of each dance. I cannot remember what music was played.

My foxtrot was pretty good in my opinion, I didn't fall over, nor did I step on anyone's toes. My cha cha was OK. The audience clapped & cheered, but then, they did that for everyone.

Oh, and at the end, Shona & I curtsied & bowed to the judge.

I presume I got the medal, I find out whether with distinction or whatever, next week.

And yes, all sorts of diverse meetings do take place in other rooms of the community building in question.

Was Sobran based on me?

I think a while ago I read or heard someplace that the Kapiti Coast author Linda Niccol was heartily sick of people approaching her & saying "You know so-and-so, from your short story Thingamibob? Was she by any chance based on my great aunt Mildred who lives down the road from you?"

At the time, I thought this was a bit precious, if it were me I'd be grateful anyone had read the story at all.

So anyway, I was at an old mate's 50th recently, and who should be there? I bounded over:

"Hey Linda"

"Hey Llew"

"Hey Linda, you know the fireman character in your story the Waterbores?"

"Yes", she said suspiciously.

"Of course you do, heh. Anyway, I was wondering if he was based on my brother-in-law Richard who lives down the road from you."

"No." (Very curtly.)

I'd have followed up with small talk, or possibly even confessed I did it on purpose (although I had always wondered), but across the room, who should I spot but Elizabeth Knox, and I was suddenly curious to find out if the angel Xas was based on Bill Manhire.

The Ballad of Rodney (and Yoko)

Standing in the airport in Auckland,
Trying to get to London first class
The man from the press said, you'll make such a mess
We'll let you off if you will give us a dance.

Christ you know it aint easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.

Finally made the plane into London,
Shacked up in a 5 star hotel
The PM called to say
You can make it o.k.,
If you both move to a fleapit motel

Christ you know it aint easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.

Flew from London to the Toronto Hilton,
Just been in our bed for a week.
The newspapers said, say what you doing in there?
I said, We're only trying to make our ends meet.

Christ you know it aint easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.

Spending up your money on a holiday,
Business class hilarity.
Last night the squeeze said,
Oh boy, when all's said
You'll put those seven hundred
On the dole - SHIT!

Made a lightning trip to Los Angeles,
Drinking protein shake from a boot
The newspapers said, she's gone to his head,
He looks like a baked bean in a suit.

Christ you know it aint easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.

Caught a recent plane into to Christchurch.
Told some folk the PM's a sloth
The men from the press said, we got to report this,
And now I get to face JK's wrath!

Christ you know it aint easy,
You know how hard it can be.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.
The way things are going
They're going to crucify me.

Mt Vic Lookout

Been years since I visited there. But recently, after attending the wake for a guy called Laurie Langston, I drove up & took a look at the city. Pretty cool eh?

Two things I Did This Weekend.

Can we do it? Well, turns out, yes we can. These are the first two of several planned "raised beds". We're going to build several more in this area & grow all sorts of stuff. Starting with corn and capsicum in one bed, and a mixture of lettuces & rocket in the other.







These were dead easy to make, I bought the timber some time ago & due to lengthy debate about where the beds would be positioned, it was a while before construction began. But all in all, construction, shifting the (home made) compost, planting and watering took only two days.

These are 3m x 1.5m x 0.3m. I'm going to do a bunch that are only 1.2m wide too, which is easier for shorter people to reach across.

I can make you one or some of these too, pretty cheap. Flick me an email if you're interested.

Spring at SunnyO

I musht be in heaven

I browse the job sites now & then, just in case that dream job turns up. That includes the Government job site, not that I think the dream job will turn up there, but something interesting might well & that can be fun too.

Well today a real interesting one turned up. Field Collection Officers, NZSIS.

YES! "Field" Something "Officers"! Spooks!

Intrigued I dug further.

The vacancy says this:

Working in conjunction with investigative sections in one of our core business areas, you will be part of a team that builds and maintains relationships with people of interest and relevant to our national security. To accomplish this, you will be required to establish contact and interact with a wide range of people and form an effective working relationship with each. You will need to be capable of modifying your behaviour to integrate with the range of people you will meet and the different environments in which you will find yourself. You will also be able to empathise with people whose view you may not share.

Can't you see it?! You'd be a "liaison" with narks from sundry groups (the Greens?) and ne'erdowells that might threaten your life with a switchblade knife (what a guy, makes me cry undt I did).

I've read le Carre & Deighton, Fleming too, I know this means "Tradecraft"! And sure enough, the job description is online for all to see.

And past the usual blurb we see:

Tradecraft: Use appropriate tradecraft to support meetings with agents, potential agents and intelligence interviews. To identify and apply appropriate mitigates on security issues related to agent handling; to operate in accordance with accepted best practice and standard operating procedures

"Appropriate tradecraft", I like that. Lots of scope there.

No mention of tux allowance and Aston Martins, but I'm game to speculate there'll be "dead letter drops", and cool surveillance equipment. Wires. Maybe the odd "wet job" too.

There might even be times for disguise & funny accents.

Don't you love this country? There's no covert recruitment from universities, there's just an advertisement on the bog normal government jobs website.

Neighbours, everybody needs good neighbours...

This had us chuckling in the weekend, essentially, after an 18 month dispute over a sewer pipe running through his property, a man cut the pipe at the boundary and capped it, leaving the neighbour with nowhere to go.

Neighbour cuts sewer pipe | Stuff.co.nz

What was particularly amusing to us is that we know both parties, one used to shear our sheep, the other sweeps our chimneys.

A portrait of the artist wearing Toxic Shorts

Everyone's got their costumes for special occasions, I've got a dinner suit upstairs that has seen a few formal outings, I have suits & jackets for work, I have certain clothes for walking the dog, pretty much the same set for gardening & an old business shirt & the Toxic Shorts for painting.

Actually, I retired the Toxic Shorts today, and replaced them with the shapeless track pants I bought for $5 in Rebel Sports about 5 years ago wore only once because people would stare at me in public.

The Toxic Shorts were bought some years ago on Castaway Island in Fiji, they were white & blue, with the Castaway Island logo down one side. I bought them for swimming togs, but only wore them once in the sea as they went completely transparent.

Their appearance, transparency aside, was not so great that I'd consider wearing them to a social occasion such as a barbecue, so they became painting attire.

No-one's painting attire looks stylish, but every appearance af the Toxic Shorts brought such remark, that the shorts achieved some level of family notoriety. Garlic cloves & crucifixes would be dusted off & worn prominently.

I was painting tongue-and-groove in the laundry today, it's a long story, but the clothes dryer got moved, the vent hole was plugged, the tongue-and-groove sanded & filled & then glooped over with something like a cross between putty and undercoat (it hides a lot of sins - there're a few borer so this is just a stop gap until the wall cladding gets replaced at some unspecified future time.) Today I applied the first top coat.

At some stage Mrs Llew popped in & noted the absence of the Toxic Shorts. But she said "What the hell is with that hideous old T shirt?"

"Doesn't it make me look like Marlon Brando?" I enquired.

"Yes, but not the young one." Was the final judgement.

Still, the laundry wall looks better than it has in years.

Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs here!

Am I the only person who is wondering if the dog that that Tongan guy barbecued in Auckland the other day was registered? I mean, he can get a refund on his registration fee if the dog dies. Yeah right.

Am I the only person who thought "One less neglected pit bull terrier cross off the streets"?

Am I the only one getting more curmudgeonly in my old age?

We slaughter thousands of animals in all sorts of disgusting ways every day for food, leather & soap (check those ingredients sometime). We euthanise hundreds, if not thousands of dogs for sundry reasons each year... you see where I'm going with this right?

Ask yourself, what would Kwai Chang Cain do?

Stoush over Wainuiomata monastery - Stuff.co.nz

It still grieves me that he was found dead in a hotel cupboard with his dick in his hand...

Scenes from another planet

Were "theme parties" a 1980s thing? Or does every decade subject itself to the phenomenon?

Here's the picture that will shortly embarrass a friend of mine on the anniversary of his half century on Earth.



I avoid theme parties these days, but it appears there were times I pulled out the stops. Must have been drunk. I recall I was wearing a cute vampire for a lot of this evening. Must have liked bananas.

Scenes from another century

The brother of an old friend emailed me the other day, he asked if I could search out any old & embarrassing photos of his youngest brother, in time for his 50th birthday. And so I found myself in the attic, dredging out scenes from my life from so long ago, they were printed on paper. Many have degraded to the point of unscannability (is that a word?).



I remember having multiple copies of this photo made around 1978 or 1979 for everone involved. It was taken at Staglands in Upper Hutt. The camera was sitting on the top of someone's car.

Included are myself, 4 guys I went to college with, two guys who were in my 1st stage English tutorial, two friends of one of those guys, and two friends of one of those friends. Among others, they're who I hung out with much of my time at university.

These people can be variously described, without doing them any justice whatsoever, and only accurate at all at that point in time - many of these people have changed in ensuing years. But they included the sporto, the "good bloke", bookish guy, the "complex" one with a hint of narcissism that irritated everyone & bludged cigarettes, the party girl, the accountant to be, the muso, the serious drug consumer, the chick everyone wanted to shag, and the chick everyone did shag. The lines between them were a little more blurred than that suggests though.

Apologies if you're in this photo, you choose which one you were OK?

I flatted with one of them for years, and I know where all are at the moment, save for 3. I still catch up with 3 of them regularly. Some are overseas. Not all of them still have hair.

Will work for good cause and money.

OK, I'm on the lookout for work. No wait. Now I think about it, I'm on the lookout for money, and if I have to work for it, well so be it. I'm not proud.

Fact is, I'm superfluous to the business I've been working in for the last 3-4 years, part of my job was to automate things & reduce overheads.

I did that part really well - I have saved the business a whacking $8k a month. Not counting my salary!

But actually, what it is, is I have time on my hands right now, and what better way to use that time than by making money!

But here's the rub: the thought of returning to an 8-5 corporate IT job just kills my soul. I've applied for a few, had a few interviews, and have completely failed to find any enthusiasm for the process at all. Mrs Llew recognises this & is very, very supportive.

I've pottered around the orchard, marketed a few nuts (not enough to sustain the lifestyle to which I am accustomed though - we don't have enough nuts, I mean, to give up the day job, so to speak).

This is not to say I've been idle, around sundry parts of the lower North Island I have variously: trimmed, cut & chopped; scraped, sanded back, filled and painted (although Mrs Llew has heroically painted also); dug and planted many varieties of tree; concreted and mortared; lifted lino and hardboard; arranged sanders and polishers, and telecom and electricians; moved beds, chairs, chests of drawers, TV cabinets and a HUGE old TV back and forth around the country; listened to weeks of Radio NZ, and hours of Timeless Hits; and sprayed dangerous chemicals over fruit trees.

And I must say I found that last one a little disagreeable, and I will shortly do a Handling Hazardous Chemicals certificate and get much better headwear than the mask and goggles I own (thesxe are chemical strength & good quality, but I feel I need sturdier headwear than that, something like a sou'wester with eyeholes perhaps).

I've done some writing, but have neglected all the blogs to which I supposedly contribute, have hardly commented anywhere at all... but I do draw the line at waking at noon & wandering aimlessly around the house in my pyjamas. In fact, I don't own any pyjamas anyway. I also never turn on the TV before the evening news, if then.

Mrs Llew playfully suggested I may be going through my mid life crisis. "Hello" I said, "Do you see a '68 Mustang ragtop outside, and/or a hot 25 year old? That's clearly not the case."

Women have no idea atr all how to conduct an enthusiastic mid life crisis.

So what to do....? I saw a cute seeing eye puppy today, it was in a MacDonalds, heroically trying not to react to the smell of food, not an easy task for a labrador pup - I thought that might be a really cool career - bringing one up I mean, not being one. I suspect that's a voluntary thing though.

Or a professional poker player. That would also be cool. I wonder if I'm any good at it.

I'll take suggestions if anyone can be bothered, I'm thinking laterally, something worthwhile & enjoyable, possibly something part time, not necessarily something that pays megabucks, you can take it as given that I won't be retraining to be a lawyer or anything. And don't email me any job descriptions for IT manager for an insurance firm OK?

You don’t need a fiscal stimulus if you’ve got Jesus

Heh. Words of Wisdom from Chase me ladies, I'm in the cavalry.

One of the things about living between two houses is that you often find yourself moving furniture between one or the other, then, when something changes (like the impending arrival of someone to stay for a year or so) you move it all back.

So yesterday, I was in a borrowed Toyota van, moving a double bed back into town, and a single bed, and sundry other items, back up the coast.

Someone else's car can tell you lots about the owner: it may be messy, or pristine, full of ciggie butts, or other odds & ends, but the most joy by far, is to listen to someone else's choice of radio channel.

I'd change the station, but last time I did that with this van, I'd failed to notice which frequency I'd started off with, and it was mentioned to me that leaving the dial on Radio NZ was not appreciated.

So yesterday I decided to leave the station as was & I tootled into town to the strains of variously:

Bend It - Dave, Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Titch
12 Steps to Love - The Tremeloes
I Write the Songs - The Guy Who Wrote the Songs
Something by Dean Martin that I didn't recognise

I misted over slightly at that Pony She Named Wildfire, I marveled that it had been a long time since I'd heard Jonothan Livingston Seagull (and I have now renamed one of the characters in my nascent novel, Jonathon Livingston Segal).

At Pukerua Bay, Michael Jackson's Ben* segued perfectly into something by Roberta Flack & the rest of the trip was spent with Mana FM, who seem to specialise in Motown funk & R&B.

On arriving home, I told Mrs Llew that I wasn't sure what was scarier, the steering or the radio station. Mrs Llew revealed she'd made a passing comment to the van's owner a few days ago, about the singer Pink. The van owner asked "Who?"

On the return trip, the Supremes on Mana FM sputtered once, and morphed into a Jackson song so heinous, that my mind had blocked it out until now & channels I tuned into pretty much deny its existence, no mean feat for a Jackson song at this time - The Girl is Mine (The Girl is Nine?), a feeble duet with Paul McCartney. He was a lover, not a fighter, apparently.

I endured ABBA's Dancing Queen, Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, Buddy Holly's Oh Boy, The Streak by Ray Stevens, and surprisingly, Hello Sailor's Blue Lady followed by Midnight Oil's Power and the Passion..

I warbled along to It Never Rains in California, Roy Orbison Crying, and gritted my teeth to Sir Cliff's Devil Woman.

I didn't catch the station's name, but much mention was made of "Timeless Hits", for which the cutoff date seems to be around 1975.

* A quick word at David Gest, who hosted an MTV show of MJ's 40 "Greatest" videos the other night on TV, Ben was not a song Jackson wrote about his pet rat, it was the theme to the 1971 movie Willard, a mediocre schlocker about a guy with a rat called Ben, whose friendship goes horribly wrong.

They've found the Rock!

Or the Church... I can't remember which one Paul was. Oh wait, he was the bass guitarist.

But anyway, it seems someone's opened an old tomb, and OK, it's been rumoured for eons to be the tomb of the Apostle Paul, but they appeared to be satisfied that this is indeed he, because carbon dating says the bones date from the 1st or 2nd century.

That settles it, it has been long known that the only person to die in Rome in the 1st and 2nd centuries was the Apostle Paul.

Tests confirm St Paul's bones - Pope | Stuff.co.nz

Hell yes.

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

After the referendum

Everyone be vigilant, if Larry Baldock, or anyone else behind the wording of this odd question (should it be legal to control parents' behavour by smacking them, apparently - look, I heard Baldock telling Sean Plunket* what HE thinks it means, & my take is grammatically more valid than his) ever rails about falling literacy standards, we should have grounds to demand our $9m back.

* I think that Plunket, as a journalist was more upset by the assault on the English language than the issue of child assault, every definition proffered by Baldock was met with a frustrated (and correct) "But that's not what it says."

And uh... you're going to have to look for that plunket interview link yourself, it's been months since I posted & I'm exhausted after this. It'll be on the Radio NZ site somewhere

Alexander the Director's Cut

I finally caught Oliver Stone's Alexander. Reviews of the original version suggested that all the film's highlights were in Colin Farrell's hair...

Well same for the director's cut as it turned out.

Pretty so so... but if you're in the mood for a film about a rowdy Wham tribute band brawling their way aroung Greece & Asia Minor, it's probably worth a look.

Alexander (film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia