Wed 24 Sept

Gary Manawatu is Nostradamus. Tonight on the news there’s talk of robotic cowsheds being the next big thing. And the Fonterra fiasco is a bad case of black udder. Earlier this year, Gary pitched his idea for a rotating cowshed diorama that symbolised a totalitarian evil called Fonterror! I rest my case. And then there’s Gary’s Lazarus complex…

Sun 14 Sept

Fly to AK in the company of my Paekakariki neighbour – Apirana Taylor. It’s a cool korero all the way there and back. We do workshops with emerging Maori writers at a ka pai modern marae in Manurewa, while tamariki do kapa haka out the back. I wear my Warriors T-shirt – a good conversation starter. I finally confirm the great story that Stacey Jones’ dad, Mungo, had a cable going from the Gables pub in Jervois Rd to his house so the family could watch league at home when the pub was closed.

James George, Aroha Harris, Api and I rotate around the groups. Everyone’s inspired and inspiring, filling up with big breathes of life – te hei mauri ora. Only shame is I can’t sit in on everyone else’s excellent sounding seshes. Thanks Huia Publishing and NZ Book Month for making a big effort to show there’s some good news stories in South Auckland. Head home buzzing to watch the Warriors stun the Storm with a try in the last two minutes. Couldn’t write a better script.

Thurs 18

NZ Film Archive. Interview Neil Cross for Script to Screen and NZ Book Month. I’ve swatted hard. He’s a charm. Full of insights into writing the BBC spy drama SPOOKS – it’s a good recruitment tool for the real M15, especially for women, except when one gets killed on the show. And the real spies only get paid the same as any other civil servant, even though they’re risking their lives to defend the Realm. And here’s Neil on being long-listed for the Man Booker prize for his novel Always the Sun – I’m glad I didn’t make the short-list as I was already lying in bed writing my acceptance speech and in grave danger of becoming a w**ker.

He’s a charming and disarming guy who doesn’t mind admitting that this book about bullying was inspired by his own slightly psychotic episode after the arrival of his first child. Neil was carrying a hammer in his stroller just in case someone threatened his offspring. Almost hoping someone would get too close so he could have a crack at them. Neil was in a bad place, so wrote a great book about it. Being a new Dad myself I totally understand these primal urges. I reach for my notional bazooka whenever a boy-racer burns past us out strolling.

There’s a lot of questions from the floor, the interview goes over time, Neil has to go and we tee up a quiet one for a later date. NZ Book Month Michele gives me some choice books. Ta. Script to Screen Simon shouts me dinner at Nicolini’s on Courtenay Place. It’s humming. I have bravissimo green prawn pasta.

My collection of short stories, A MAN OF THE PEOPLE (VUP 2004) is loosely strung together by the thread. If you stay in Wellington long enough you’ll end up f**king yourself. Yeah, it’s that small. Turns out that Taika Waititi is at the end of our table. He just won best film director at the Qantas Awards the previous night. In his speech he compared the award’s design to female genitalia… and got away with it. Better, got a big laugh. The man has testicolos.

Fri 19

A very special day. The birthday of Sophia Loren, Jarvis Pulp Cocker… and me. I send Jarvis’s Help The Aged song to all my Facebook friends on their birthdays. He’s a genius. Once described on stage as ‘a giraffe on tranquilisers’. True, but so gangly cool he can pull it off. I count my Facebook birthday notifications – 24. Yes, I’m that shallow. Warriors suck it up and smash the Roosters, who complain fans threw chicken wings at them. Classic.

I came into this world on the same day that famed NZ-born political cartoonist David Low died. He was black-listed by Adolf Hitler. John Clarke has a Low on his wall. I like to think just a smidgeon of Low’s wit went into me. Someone once called me a great big flake. I took it as a compliment. I used to do yoga four times a week and these days flirt with Buddhism. I’m planning a self-help book called Soft is Hard. In the meantime here’s a koan I’d like to share – Don’t just do something, be there.

Sat 20

My birthday, again… in Canada. Yes, I test my wife’s patience sorely. She is a saint. We have a play date in the park and I lose my son’s favourite ball in a tree. My old friend, Lee, who has a defibrillator connected to Berlin via satellite, tells me it is the Year of the Potato. Spuds are apparently a better crop to grow than rice, and use way less water. This year the local Triangle Centre meet to meditate on the wonders of the potato.

Wellington beat Auckland 27–0 to win the Ranfurly Shield. 27–0. My team winning the shield is only a twice in a lifetime experience. The first was Manawatu in 1977. It’s been a long time between drinks. Cheers. 27–0.

Mon 22

Meet up with an old Palmie Boys’ boarding school mate who I haven’t seen since 1979. He left before Gary’s Legendary North St Battery Charge (the first chapter of my 6 Pack story), but he does remind me how some boys made bombs in ink bottles with swimming pool chlorine and glycerine. He reckons my mother’s ginger beer was almost as explosive. This guy used to smoke in class. Now he’s an accountant for the Australian parliament. I take him to Te Papa to see the squashed possum preserved in tarseal, Rita Angus (whose Suzy’s café painting is a timeless masterpiece) and Roger ‘The Wink’ Gascoigne (who has the best Iggy Pop story ever. Ask him next time you’re there. It ends with Iggy puking on Roger!). I give my old schoolmate a 6 Pack to take back to Aussie. He texts me from the train back to town to say he loves Gary. It means a lot.

But I hear some readers are disappointed by Gary’s fate in my 6 Pack story. So I can now officially reveal that it wasn’t Gary’s body in the Kingswood that went under the Overlander. That it was actually the body of the Hoon who nicked Gary’s car. And that Gary tried to save the guy, but the mashed up munter was clearly heading for the big do-nut in the sky, so Gary asked – Who’s your dentist?

Why? So that Gary could later break into a Feilding dentist’s office, the ditchdigger who drilled them both, and switch X-rays. Thus allowing Gary to disappear and re-invent himself somewhere else. Meanwhile, however, the family of the lost Yahoon wonder where their poor boy has got to. Gary spreads a rumour the lost boy has done a runner from an unwanted pregnancy, and is losing his hair two miles down an uranium somewhere out of Kalgoorlie. But no one believes this as the guy was afraid of the dark. So Gary starts another rumour that the missing munter is working as an accountant for the Australian government, which is code for ‘hitman’… stay tuned.

You try to get away, but they pull you back in.

Yeah, out of the blue, I’ve been asked to speak at the PNBHS Leavers’ Dinner this year, and pass on some wisdom to the next generation. Sadly, they haven’t heard of the 6 Pack… yet. I’m going to read a bit of Gary out at the dinner, to show I’ve immortalised the old school in print. The do is at the Awapuni Racecourse. In 1979, I got gated for sneaking out here to place bets. I’ve used this in my novel – HENARE VIII – out next year…cross fingers. (Yes, I am into shameless self-promotion – Always be closing!)

Tues 23

Take my baby son Tahi to the Ranfurly Shield Parade. I love sport. (Yeah, no kidding!). I love sport… for the theatre. The lack of a script. The bounce of the ball. The tribalism. The winners. The losers. The characters. The inane commentary. The metaphors. And the spectacle, it is our circus, our church  - the parade has seven floats.
1.    Wellington Supporters Club
2.    School kid fans.
3.    The final score WELLINGTON 27 – AUCKLAND – 0.
4.    Four cheerleaders who look cold.
5.    Four old Wellington players/codgers, including Paul Quinn guy who just happens to be running for National in the election.
6.    Half the team and Captain Piri Weepu, who is tiny. The shield looks half as big as him. He smiles a lot. Maybe the small-man-syndrome that leads to Half-cut Halfback Horrors! - menacing the downtown of city near you! – has finally been tackled (see also Jimmy ‘No First Chances’ Cowan).
7.    The rest of the team. Beaming smiles. Black eyes. Fans struggle to hold up inflated Lions’ paws in the wind.

We trek to Civic Square, where there’s a gold-painted polystyrene Leo the Lion, Councillor ‘Mystery’ Morrison, and some speeches. But we have to leave as the wind funnel effect is picking up. I feel the Ghost of the Millard Stand whip through and head back to the prefab residential remains of Athletic Park. I have a holy relic from this hallowed ground – a circular sprig of dirt from the last international game ever played here.

So, yeah, the parade is not exactly Carnival in Rio, but it’s as close as we get. No, actually, The Sevens is our Carnival – a free pass to dress up and get seriously silly. This is why we get so upset when the All Blacks lose at the World Cup. We have planned for months our weekends to get increasingly “silly”, and suddenly they lose, and instead we feel really silly for ever getting so wound up about what is just a game. (Note to self: Must write OUT-PASSIONING THE CHRIST-LIKE, the first XV reasons we keep losing the World Cup, and Is Rugby a Religion or just Secular Humanism at its muscular best?

Yeah, I love sport. But winning a spot in the 6 Pack is my Ranfurly Shield. My Quantas. My gold medal. That’s right, I was going to talk about the Olympics. Best moments:
1.    Performance – NZ Equestrian team member dropping *** in world record time when camera suddenly turns on him, thus confirming the horsey crowd remain lovable degenerates.
2.    Commentary #1 – You won’t stop a Hungarian from that distance! During the handball. Does this game have rules? Or was it the water-polo = aquascrag?
3.    Commentary #2 – John Dybvig bagging TVNZ for “cleaning up” Peter Montgomery’s faux pas, where he called the Evers-Swindell race wrong. He thought the twins came third but they’d actually won. Now the revised sound-bite is – It’s black to gold! Relax Pete, only another four more years to think up another nugget.
4.    Commentary #3 – ‘And hasn’t she got a lovely smile’ – Keith Quinn, about Kiwi BMXer Sarah Walker and the Russian pole-vaulter who wore make-up. Keith showed exactly why he’s our favourite uncle, and is advertising cemetery plots in the commercial breaks - And what a lovely smile he has.
5.    Fantasy Sport – Who will get to dip Valerie Vili in Dancing With The Stars? Jonah? Or will she dip the man? Is it just me or does Dancing With The Stars sound like a poetically indigenous way of saying someone is dead?

Thurs 25

Blogmaster Dee has implied that one of us 6-Packers could write shorter. And another is shameless at dropping names. Um…I take both fouls. And, yes, Nick Cave always said I was a name-dropper.

Now I worry that I’ve blogged heaps about sport... and this month is supposed to be all about literature. That’s okay, I just read Owen Marshall talking about how NZ artists punch above their weight. So even our greatest writers go to the stadium for their metaphors. Reminds me of a bumper sticker – METAPHORS BE WITH YOU.

I’m sad that NZ Book Month is ending soon. But rapt that I was into it in such a big way. And really happy that it’s only two more years until the winter Olympics in Vancouver, a parallel universe for me. And I could still make the NZ curling team if I start throwing rocks now. (Note to self: Must stop being such a try-hard jock. Note to self #2: Must write JOCK SHRINK – comedy about a sports psychologist who is kidnapped by a gambling cartel and forced to make his clients throw games, starring Will Ferrell or Russell Crowe – Always be pitching! Note to self #3: Must stop doing things and just be there. I need to find a potato, sit still for a long time, and meditate on its goodness … Ommmmm – Will it be a meditato?)