You can't beat a trumpet

Diary of the last 9 hours

7.00am

Patient has slept in, thus missing the first hour of Morning Report. Just as well, by the sound of things, because suffering Jesus how many more broadcast hours will be asked to lay down their lives in homage to yesterday’s historic mighty victory on the water?

I do not come here to Grinch. Not unduly. Them big boats have been our constant companions these past couple of years here in the seaside village. You’d be sitting on Cheltenham beach or making your way across the harbour on the ferry or looking up from your desk and out the window and there they would be and holy Toledo see them go. Am I impressed by a boat actually flying? Yes sir I most surely am. 

And I was watching when American Magic all in a moment was upending and taking on water and you bet I was frozen to the spot waiting to see they were okay.

And yes, as ever, those were some truly Kiwi tendencies being winningly displayed in the understated way them boys went about their sailing.

But that media coverage? Give me strength. The empty boosterism, the endless blather to fill spaces with hackneyed cliches about hoisting the auld mug and salty dogs and makes you proud to be a Kiwi. This is why the mute button must always be the biggest one.

It was a cheering story for sure. Great to see the excited happy crowds and the quietly proud sailors take their bow. But all those hours of it? What happened to the sense of proportion? Did someone capsize it? 

I include in this, underlined in red: the reliably ghastly spectacle of white moneyed vacuous Auckland at play, out on the water, back on dry land getting ready to do the sort of thing John or Max Key would do. 

However I am certainly interested to see what sort of media attention this bit of social realism will be getting. 

Pebbles Hooper @PebblesHooper

Ah yes, another glimpse behind the curtain of Auckland’s elite. I’d rather rub shit into my eyes than rub shoulders with anyone on this floating vessel of vermin

Also, here comes a string of words I never thought I would type one after the other: I agree with Pebbles Hooper.

7.45am
Just to refrain: very exciting to see them boats move the way they did. Impressive technological feat.

Now back to the grinching: Get a load of what the FYI.org people have learned, by way of an OIA request. Total cost of putting together that Rod Stewart singalong: about a mill.

Sure, it’s not serious money, it couldn't buy you a shed in Grey Lynn. But all the same, a joke’s a fucking joke. 900k to do a Sailing singalong?

The response is wrapped up in a shiny ribbon of marketing verbiage. 

To maximise the impact to the New Zealand economy of hosting the America’s Cup, businesses and government agencies are running a programme of events and activities to lift New Zealand’s profile internationally. Rock the Dock was part of our leveraging activity that brought New Zealanders together in a show of support for the teams and their fans around the world who are unable to be here. 

Yeah nah. You've already lost me with maximise the impact to the New Zealand economy. What gets fondly imagined to be leveraged or impacted can fall prey to all kinds of fanciful interpretation. It feels like the fanciful interpretation dial has been turned all the way around to 11 for this one. 

The whole daft idea sounded like a bit of a sad joke when we were first told about it. But at 900k I'm feeling now the joke was on us.

7.55am

Out walking to escape the celebrations that will not end. Thinking about compensation. 

Been thinking about it all week, since the mosque attack commemoration got the talk started again: why is it so hard to arrange compensation? 

I get it about legal precedent, I have a degree that says I should really get it. But why are we talking about it as an ACC issue at all?  

Could we, rather, have the state simply state: 

Lives have been ruined by this. It is a disaster. In times of disaster, the State is here to help. We are going to find enough money for you, the families of the  victims, to try to make your lives whole. Grave harm was done by someone who the state might have intercepted with better intelligence. Grave harm was done and it might have been averted with stricter gun control. The state could have protected you, but it failed. It will not fail you twice.

Morning Report interviewed someone about this yesterday. Minute by minute, he grew more animated, more moved, so wholly taken by the immensity of the harm and the need to remedy what happened to so many families. It was pure and honest and heartfelt. That’s the instinct by which we need to move, it feels to me. This was exceptional and it warrants an exceptional response. It need not be held as precedent for anything other than acting compassionately and decently.

10.20am

Reading about what has happened to computer hard drives all over Victoria University and feeling for so many people.

I have known the cold dread of a dead drive. I wrote about it once, and a year later I had to write about it again. You think you're covered, and then to your horror you discover you're not and then you start calculating what it may mean if you have no way to get back your work, your data, whole parts of your life.

I don't mean to make things worse, so I’ll stop now. But I wish you folks all good hope.

4.20pm

I have been playing trumpet music because MTAF reader Leah - Hi Leah! - asked if I had any good suggestions for an eight year old just starting out.

I had a few thoughts:

• For pure sophisticated style, maybe Miles Davis Blue in Green, on Kind of Blue?

• For the mighty Mex sound of trumpets, Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash?

• There’s miles and miles of catchy trumpet from Herb Alpert, maybe Tijuana Taxi; A Taste of Honey?

• For old corny pop, the mournful trumpet in I Did What I did for Maria, Tony Christie?

And then I wondered: is that what that sound is in I Did What I did for Maria? Trumpet? So I asked Mr Wikipedia and Mr Wikipedia said yes, and it was written by Mitch Murray and someone else.

Never mind the someone else, I thought to myself, why do I know that name?

Eventually it came to me: an ad that used to run in the Private Eye classifieds in the early 90s offered speechwriting services from Mitch Murray. I’m pretty sure his line was I’ll make them laugh or no fee. 

I was, in those days before the internet, trying to figure out how to get a speech writing business going. So I rang up Mitch Make them laugh or no fee Murray in London and asked him for advice.

He was a bit bemused but a good sport about it. We had a nice chat and I said cheers Mitch thanks very much.

But now as I read about Mitch Murray on the Internet I realise I was indeed talking to the writer of I Did What I Did For Maria and well obviously that could have been a whole other fascinating conversation about the song that more or less made Tony Christie a legend of 1970s light entertainment and all those volumes of Solid Gold Hits. 

Regrets, I have a few.

Will we play some Tony Christie and add to the regrets? Hi MTAF reader and Solid Gold Hits afficionado Sue! Shall we give him a spin?

Oh fuck it, why not. If Sailing is worth 900k what does anything mean any more?

Just in case that really will be the worst thing to ever happen in this newsletter,  please also enjoy Eddie Vinson. Yes, I know that’s not a trumpet.