What would Willie do?

Diary of the last 8 hours

6.40am

The radio is ringing in my ears with people saying let us in let us in let us in because our sweet number down here outside plague world is growing ever more popular and prized. 

People are telling the radio, JFC it’s a nightmare, all I do all day long is refresh the website and so on. Their objection is: how are you supposed to queue up for a room in managed isolation when people are gaming the system by scoring multiple room reservations and not releasing the remainder after they've matched up their flight with their room requirement?

2020, you endless year of malice, you just keep delivering shocks and surprises, don’t you?

This reservation-hoarding should not count as a surprise. It’s barely a revelation at all, is it, that people can be selfish inconsiderate, sharp-elbowed assholes.

The new old Listener had a surprisingly good story a couple of issues ago recounted by Gerald Hensley. It was the tale of the Pan Am flying boat service making its way down the Pacific towards us down here at the bottom of the Pacific, with Pearl Harbour just hours behind it, when all hell broke loose.

With its path of return cut off, what followed was a tale of intrepid determination to get back to America, going the wrong long way around the globe and at various points only moments away from doom as they tried to get together enough fuel and altitude, plus at various points evading pursuing bears and whatnot, to make their way home. Hell of a yarn.

I mention it because World War Two brims with accounts on a grand scale of courage and ingenuity and adaptability, and it might not seem it, but actually there is a war on, sort of, at the moment. We’ve had the great good fortune to be largely out of its way but that doesn't mean you should not expect random shelling of the figurative kind. And yet the way some people go on (and also the way some people seem to expect to be able to go about their usual business) you’d think it was all over and the sailors had kissed the nurses and everyone had got drunk and gone home. Not yet, Private, sorry. 

If you're fortunate enough to have your life proceeding normally, wonderful.

But if you’re not, there’s a reason things are not running to their normal timetable. You'll just have to be a bit patient please sir. And maybe you could improvise and adapt a bit. Maybe you’ll find yourself doing something other than what you imagined you would be, come the end of this year. Many of us have. Mate.

At such times we might ask where is the plucky British spirit of facing adversity, that’s what the world needs.  Well don't look for it in Britain right now.

Jesus, the ringing in our ears as all those disillusioned Brits express their dismay that What they thought they were voting for is not going to happen and that ending “freedom of movement” doesn’t just stop Polish people coming in it also stops you from just gliding in and out of Europe from now on.

That’s not a unicorn, they cry with horror and dismay, it's a broken down nag with wings and horn taped on. Yep. And it was staring you in the face when you cast your ludicrous deluded vote and you couldn't smell the horshit even when it was piled nose high.

7.15am

The ghostly chains of Winston Peters are ringing in my ears. 

There could be an agreement on Ihumatao going before Cabinet. It might entail buying out Fletchers so they can proceed to dealing justly with confiscation of land absolutely steeped in the history of human occupation here.

You should probably try a bit hard shouldn't you, to address injustices and treat the land with the regard it’s due. 

And well, yes but you can't be setting expensive precedents that might open up new settlement nightmares said Winston Peters once twice and three times as they brought proposals to cabinet, we are told.

You can't say he wasn't consistent. Well, not about this at least. 

He was saying that kind of stuff in the 1980s that this treaty settlement business would sprawl out of control and so forth. You may recall the Sunday Times going all the way to town on it at one point with a double page map of the entire country showing how very much personal property might be in peril if the wrong precedents were set, and boy, we sure dodged a  bullet didn’t we as negotiations proceeded  and tribunal decisions were delivered and the stories were told of dispossession and settlements were made compensating the dispossessed owners of the land all the way up to 4 or 5 cents in the dollar. Ruinous. 

Grateful that Winston enabled a change of administration last time around. Glad he's not here this time to keep getting miles and miles of rope caught up in the gears.

10.40am

Birdsong is ringing in my ears. This is what my sister Belinda De Mayo sent to me after I wrote yesterday about conservation and restoring the beautiful roar of the dawn chorus. She was in the upper South Island working her way north on the Te Araroa trail when Covid closed everything down. I think she was tempted to stay where she was but she came home and locked down. Anyway this is what she was hearing shortly before that happen, in Arthurs Pass. Absolute state of it. Just gorgeous.

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Midday

Hello mighty little tweet from Amanda sitting on the desktop for  weeks and weeks, this is your day to go in the newsletter, because talk about ringing in your ears.

1.00pm

The words I was thinking at 7.00am are ringing in my ears. The Prime Minister says the cabinet has agreed, in principle, that the travel bubble with Australia will come into force in the first quarter of next year – bar any significant negative Covid-19 developments.

This should make a lot of impatient people very happy. No question, a bubble would make for a thriving economic unit. Sure hope everything will be properly ready. 

1.45pm

The words of the Uber driver who brought us down Lake Road last week are still ringing in my ears and I’m still pissed off about it. 

Clearly he was accustomed to a warm response for disparaging the state of the road, and traffic, and useless politicians, and dumb cycle lanes and he said: nobody wants to ride a bike. I said Yeah, that's what they used to say in Copenhagen. They used to have the same numbers there driving cars the way we do, and today most of them ride bikes and they do it in the goddam snow. And then I looked out the window and sulked while Karren courteusly pressed on, engaging with him explaining why making more lanes for cars on Lake Road is a fucking moronic idea.

I’m just waiting for more people to get themselves up on an e-bike and actually ride one. Because it's one thing to read about how good these things are, it's another to get on one and say holy crap this really could be my runabout car. 

We are doing a lousy job of getting our emissions down, and as long as you have Hosking and his loyal listeners driving Ubers and saying everyone loves their cars you can't change that, our climate emergency response is going to be stuck in traffic.

4.20pm

Ringing in my ears ever since last night, and best of all, is the new Willie Nelson album from his 85th birthday show last year. You may know him from Crazy and Georgia On My Mind and fourteen thousand other classics and when he says three chords and the truth - that's what a country song is he's saying just a little and a whole damn lot. 

Everybody turned up and it’s a treat, but I can't see any of it on YouTube yet, so please do go to your streamer of choice or record shop to hear Willie Nelson American Outlaw.

And while you're getting there, please enjoy Gary Allan