When I was a child in the 1950s, we had various ways of passing the acres of unoccupied time, including cat’s cradle, jacks, yo-yos, marbles, plasticine and something involving an empty cotton reel, four nails and some wool which was called French knitting. This produced a long thin snake of woven wool which you could spiral round into little mats or even a hat if you went on long enough. Things were much less sophisticated in those far off days. Progress or not? French knitting is not unlike the recent craze of… Read More

Homelessness is getting a lot of attention in New Zealand nowadays, particularly in Auckland. People who live in so-called leafy suburbs rarely come across it, I imagine, whereas I live in the Central City and have homeless people sleeping outside my building and in doorways and on benches all the way up Queen Street, so I see them every day and it’s hard not to think about and care about their plight. Where has kindness gone? What our society needs is a good helping of kindness.  New Zealand used to have kindness… Read More

It’s been a bizarre couple of weeks which have left me pondering whether there is any sanity left in the world. I was hoping Facebook might get its comeuppance with the latest data breach news, but unfortunately, no. It would appear that (to borrow a quote from the Zuckerberg himself) “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa”. Is he a genius or is he Machiavellian? I suspect the latter given an exchange of instant messages between the… Read More

Political bigamy Fine words are always spoken prior to elections. That’s certainly no different down here in NZ, nor is what follows. Stentorian rhetoric gets watered down by the appeasement that comes with the MMP system.* The leader needs to ‘consult’ with two other leaders before actually ‘leading’. It’s ironic that a system touting broader representation looks like poisoning itself with its own prescription. Courtship At the ballot box, we were swept up in a flurry of expectation; our new prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, was all we’d been dreaming of: young, idealistic… Read More

I’m not usually a great one for museums, finding them either boring or bewildering, but the museum in Waipu in Northland, New Zealand is in another league entirely. It tells the gripping and extraordinary story of the epic migration of hundreds of hardy souls from the Highlands of Scotland to the green rolling hills and forests of northern New Zealand. Stage one to Nova Scotia It all began because of the Highland Clearances of the early nineteenth century in Scotland. The break-up of the old clan system had led to the profit… Read More