Memoir

Last letter to my Dad

30 Apr 2026

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

03 Apr 2026

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

09 Mar 2026

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

15 Feb 2026

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

19 Nov 2025

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

04 Sep 2025

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

26 Aug 2025

In a moment we return to the cliffhanger entitled I Am Dave's Beating Heart, What Am I Going To Do To Him Next? But first, a couple of thoughts about this sorry braindead excuse for a government. Yesterday gave us the spectacle of Luxon saying he’d like

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

15 Jun 2025

Plus a bit of memoir

65

20 May 2025

Today my heart attack turns 38 and I turn 65. It's now way older than I was when it grabbed me in a hotel bar at ten in the morning on my 27th birthday and squeezed. So many things I think of as just the other day turn

More road pics

Brace position

09 Apr 2025

Road photos

Making sense of it all

23 Mar 2025

Driving to Masterton again

All your dreams are on their way

09 Feb 2025

At a funeral on Friday, there were A4-sized photos covering every wall of the Dil’s reception lounge. There must have been 200 of them, telling the story in the usual way of the video reel but also, by enlargement, making it more possible to linger and step in.

Love, happiness, blur

23 Dec 2024

The last few days have been a bit too much of a whirl for me to manage a fresh edition each day. It's been that kind of year. Hope you don't mind. I’ve been coming around to thinking that it doesn't really matter

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

10 Dec 2024

David would be well-advised to live some place, any place actually, other than New Zealand

Mild! she replies

23 Oct 2024

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

22 Sep 2024

Sunday column

A warm embrace

15 Sep 2024

Sunday column

99

03 Sep 2024

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

30 Jul 2024

More photos! Here we see two guys from New Zealand, mates since law school, now in their sixties, at the end of their 3,000 km ride from Nantes to Budapest. Some friends had their doubts. No-one should ever doubt our resolve. What do you do next? You have

A friend in uncertain times

21 Jul 2024

Sunday column

Oh Vienna

10 Jul 2024

Nothing can warm your heart like the sight of your daughter stepping off a train. Mary-Margaret arrived on Saturday to ride with us to Vienna. You know your way around a bike? the guy at the hire shop asks her. Yep. She’s ridden them on rail trails, Auckland’

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

27 Jun 2024

Some of the wilder things that have crossed our paths in the last couple of weeks: Wilder thing #1: A snake sunning itself on the hot asphalt as we came riding towards it Dick was in front and was slowing down to take a picture, thinking it to be another

A privilege

25 Jun 2024

On we go, at 20 kilometres an hour, truly the best pace for rolling through the world and breathing it all in. Fascinating to get to see two, four, twenty new places each day. Marvellous to get to see how very many different ways you can make it good for

Life at 20 kilometres an hour

12 Jun 2024

We are still in France, getting from A to B. Possibly for only another week, though; Switzerland and Germany are looming now. On we pedal, towards Budapest, at about 20 km per hour. What are are mostly doing is inhaling a country, loving its ways and its food. Rolling, talking,

Going some place and there's no going back

29 May 2024

more road and rail

Days in the life

23 May 2024

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

12 May 2024

Sunday driving

Early evening, April 30

05 May 2024

Sunday reading

25

28 Apr 2024

Sunday birthday column

These people are not our friends

24 Apr 2024

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

21 Apr 2024

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

17 Apr 2024

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

04 Apr 2024

Let me tell you how I feel about COVID which decked me three weeks ago and left me stuffed until just two days ago. Let me tell you how I feel about COVID, which has lately been leaving workplaces full of holes where their productive labour units should be. Let

Eulogy

25 Mar 2024

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

20 Mar 2024

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

08 Jan 2024

Mum called this morning to say Dad was taken to hospital last night. Her words were calm and measured. She sounded more deliberate and composed than in a long while; more the voice I knew growing up; the one in charge. I thought, God, no, this is it.