Remembered

Last letter to my Dad

My brother said: I’m glad he got to be 100, and I’m also glad he didn’t have to go on to 101. If grief is the process of coming to terms with losing someone, our grieving for Dad began some years ago. Frustrating to see his world

Goin' back again

Happy Easter break!  There’s plenty to be said about the reshuffle and the rumored failed coup attempt that brought it on, and is this one more item to be added to the didn’t-get-it- done list of Chris Bishop, the one who gets things done?  There’s

Waiting for a call

Diary of the last month She comes through the arrivals gate we’ve been watching for half an hour and her face lights up. Home for the first time in two and a half years. Hugging bearhug tight, our lives fill with sunshine whenever we’re back together. Back to

Life with ghosts

This newsletter is only occasionally and tangentially about the proud little town of Feilding. For this reason, there’s a name change coming soon.  But not today. Today’s story begins on Kimbolton Road, and you cannot get more Feilding than that. Kimbolton Road carries you north through farmland to

A life in colour

What counts as history? Anything and everything. It can be Big Bang and MAGA, it can be Einstein and Eric Trump. It can be an object lesson, it can be a chastening truth. What counts as history? What even is it? It can be, according to your mechanic, your gasket.

Genial, self-contained, 100

Before yesterday I had never spoken to anyone 100 years of age. The first thing I said was happy birthday Dad. He was already having one. The Rest Home had made a real party of it. It was in fact the second celebration. We’d already had one on the

The envelope, please

Why the Regulatory Standards Bill is dangerous to New Zealand’s democracy

65

No going back

The one who left

Making the most of it

Brace position

Making sense of it all

Driving to Masterton again

All your dreams are on their way

Love, happiness, blur

What I saw, sort of, at the emergency eye clinic

Mild! she replies

Do you find it frustrating — exasperating even — when in conversation someone asks you to repeat yourself, and then says: sorry can you say that again?And then: really sorry, again? And then: once more? Do you find it frustrating — exasperating even — when it keeps happening all the way along the

Eulogy, delayed

Sunday column

A warm embrace

Sunday column

99

Dad turned 99 today. Hell of a lot of candles, eh? He won't be alone for his birthday. He will have the warm attention of my brother, and my sister, and everyone at the rest home, the most thoughtful attentive and considerate people you could ever know. On

Lovely piece of Turkey

A friend in uncertain times

Oh Vienna

At the start of 2020, no-one was in a position to say where that virus was taking us

A privilege

Life at 20 kilometres an hour

Going some place and there's no going back

Days in the life

We returned last week from England to London. Two different worlds. A quarter of an hour before dropping off our car, we came to a complete stop on the M25. Just moments before, there had been six lanes of hurtling cars and lorries. Now, everything was at a standstill as

More road

Early evening, April 30

Sunday reading

25

Sunday birthday column

These people are not our friends

Morning in London  Mother hugs beloved daughter outside the converted shoe factory in which she is living. Afternoon in London  Travelling writer takes himself and his wrist down to A&E, just to be sure. The triage nurse asks are you having any difficulty gripping or rotating? I say

Thank you

This is a column to say thank you. So many of have been in touch since Mum died to say so many kind and thoughtful things. You’re wonderful, all of you. You’ve asked how we’re doing, how Dad’s doing. A little more realisation each day, of

Backbone, revisited

The schools are on holiday and the sun is shining in the seaside village and all day long I have been seeing bunches of bikes; Mums, Dads, teens and toddlers chattering, laughing, happy, having a bloody great time together. Cheers, AT, for the bits of lane you’ve added lately

Let me tell you how I feel about COVID

Eulogy

My sister Belinda asked Dad yesterday what one word would describe Mum best. He said: vivacious. If you only knew her from the photos on the slideshow we've made for today, you might wonder about that, because the camera tended to lie with Mum. If ever she saw

Driving to Masterton

Mum rang on Sunday afternoon to check on me, because a mother can worry about you forever. She told me they had an isolating covid case too. She told me she hoped they wouldn’t end up cooped up again. She told me the really frustrating thing about life now

Back at the keyboard, happy new year

Because it's not too late

Live long, live well

Taking on the world barehanded

Down the river

A night out

Letting go

Sunday column

Your face is blue

A lifetime of driving flashes before you

Absolutely positively freezing

Life opportunities

So much of what was there remains

Tribute

We never get to feel one thing at a time, us grownups

It'll wash you away and there ain't never enough

Sunday column

Absolutely positive

Pandemic-era material deprivation blues

Preparing yourself

Sunday column

The warmth of a home

Sunday column

A week of masking up, a week of unmasking

50 ways to leave your living

The beautiful idea of Matariki

Sunday column

Go wherever you want to go

When everything was new

Sunday Column

We hold ourselves back from saving ourselves

Work in progress

A world worth wanting, and why Steven Joyce is completely wrong as usual

We reinvent ourselves, I have anyway...

I, however, was busy being born, and so I missed it

Hospital discharge newsletter, with birthday greetings for Siouxsie Wiles and yet more help from my friends

Not screaming up Lake Road

Another hospital diary, with more help from my friends

I feel like Hank Williams tonight

Free Sunday column. What all happened in this week’s hospital adventure.

Don’t let anyone tell you that going to New World isn’t dangerous

Diary of the last 20 hours and 300 bathroom breaks.

No worries

Diary of the last five days

Crazy for it

Sunday column

Best food in the universe

Backbone

Public Address Jan 2009