Accidental Anthropologist

That’s me done. All four children through school. Eldest daughter says “grandkids next dad”.   Arse. I thought I was clear. Earlier this week, fourth in line for the family throne gave his yr 13 cohort a group cuddle, his favourite teachers a nod, and legged it with some stage booty. Well done son, 13 yrs in school. That morning they’d walked up the school driveway with balloons, cheered by the rest of the school. So cool. Thank you to the amazing teachers that added value to him and to all my kids. I’m hoping they returned the favours. I slammed a few tequila’s before this prizegiving. Not my usual habit, but this one being the last … it lived up to expectations, a good old Waiheke ‘being sort of formal’ event. Think Harry Potter meets the Adams Family doing ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’, all live from the prison lunchroom. Funny costumes, obedient children.  School stand school sit – no talking from the bleachers. There’ll be a detent...

Hamilton has come on. It still gets the occasional poke in the ribs, but its no longer in the recovery position. Poor old Huntly gets that one now. Following the South African rugby tour in 1981, the infamous invasion of the pitch and the calling off of the game, political cartoonist Tom Scott wrote "there's a lot of nice people come from Hamilton, it's the ones that stay there that spoil it." That was both genius and less than generous. I'd just moved on from the Tron and it was like both a pat on the back and a kick in the pills. Our family moved to Hamilton in the 1970's when the pop'n was 100,000 and I was 15. These day's it's double and I'm nearly four times that. Dad spared us Huntly, commuting there each day for work. Life was rugby in the winter, rowing in the summer and holiday jobs on the land. Picking up hay or cutting animals up for export at the freezing works. Cafe culture was kona coffee or percolated in ...

I was 8 yrs old when TV arrived in our house. It immediately became God, displacing the radiogram - the Archers, dads Tijuana Brass and Mantovani records. We gave the box in the corner our full attention. I fell for it, mesmerized. After a few years a colour one arrived, viewing intensified and it was dinner on a tray in the lounge. We talked less as a family. There were new more important spokespeople in the room and they sported british and american accents.  God and I were getting it on. At high school I taught teenagers how to make TV, all the clever ways to frame the story. Then one day I actually got to be with God, I got on telly. A bit of comic selfie-cam stuff led to a few slots in TV ads. In the money. I realized I’d made it when I was recognized in Lynmall. Then a bunch of us had a crack at playing God. Pre-internet and my chums and I spent our savings on a TV transmitter, broadcasting video clips from the hills over Auckland.   We w...