TASHY TRAVELS

Every Sunday, I am going to upload a post about the different countries I have visited and/or lived in since 2002.

I can assure you of some interesting stories.

POTTYED NEW ZEALAND, NORTH

And now I take my slightly unusual view of New Zealand into the North Island.

This week has given me a chance to think. Last time I did that was 1969; you can have too much of a good thing you know. Isn’t it funny that one of the biggest attractions on this little old island here is the Waitomo Caves but when you talk to people they always associate bungy jumping with the adrenaline thrill-seeking reputation of this country. Well, let me tell you, going down 100 metres into the core of the earth in a country that has active volcanoes and regular earthquakes strikes me as far more of an adrenaline rush than jumping off a bridge securely tied to an elastic band.

Then again, in these caves, you can share the brief, ecstatic life of the glow-worm. Sitting quietly in the dark with a bright light shining out of its bum, to attract food, having two days of constant mating and then getting so confused that he flies up the bum of another glow-worm and gets instantly recycled. There’s a fun life. The question I would ask is, why? Why, if you were best man at your mate’s wedding and you’d seen him get married, have his two days of mating and then get so confused he flew off and disappeared, would you do the same thing? Wouldn’t it seem a good idea to have a celibate existence but one slightly longer than ten days or so? True mating for 20% of your life may seem like a good idea at the time but length is important too. I don’t think dear old Bruce McLaren, when he was deciding life should not be measured in time alone, was thinking of the glow-worm.

Anyway, back to my thoughts, and I really wonder whether I should even try to understand life at all. Although not all of us can have exactly the same life as the poor glow-worm, I do find that sometimes I can get quite confused and certainly feel as though I am disappearing up my own bum or to put it another way, going in circles. Maybe, if I didn’t understand it, it wouldn’t be there and then I wouldn’t get confused. How can you be confused about something if it isn’t there? Actually, I can answer my own question here, because, during our time in Australia, my then girlfriend went to walk into a room and hit the glass door that she didn’t think was there and I can tell you she did look confused after that, even concussed too. But, if the room hadn’t been there, then she would never have hit the glass door that was, when she thought it wasn’t because it wouldn’t have been, would it? Possibly a less meticulous window cleaner could have helped her too.

Maybe Waitomo Caves aren’t there either. What a great idea to take you off in a bus, into a room, hang you on a rope and then let the scenery slide past you to give you the impression of abseiling. Put up a few Christmas lights, few sound effects and there you are. Maybe nothing exists; there are no attractions in New Zealand. The Fox Glacier is just a gigantic freezer compartment. Oh yes I think I’ve sussed this out. No wonder we were told Hamilton was the most boring place in New Zealand, actually I quite liked it, because they haven’t thought of anything yet. Of course this isn’t new you know. Think of the Piltdown Man. Go and look it up and then think about it.

By the way did I ever tell you my last thought was in 1969? Four days after my birthday, men landed on the moon, didn’t they?

There is a smell in Rotorua
They call it rotten eggs
But after you’ve been there some time
You only smell the dregs

Now the House of the Rising Sun bears no resemblance to Rotorua in any other way but that just seemed to fit the tune. The question is though, why, after you have been there some time, do you not notice the smell. The sulphur is still there. It seems, if you live with it, you don’t notice it. Sadly this does not seem to apply to socks. I have been living with mine, on and off, for a very long time and I’m afraid to say, I, and those who have chosen to live with me, seem to notice that peculiar odour ad infinitum.

Isn’t the English language strange? Suddenly, in the middle of a normal English sentence, we will lapse into a different language, almost as though ours isn’t good enough per se. Then, when you have done it, it’s a fait accompli. Over, finito. I think sometimes you think of the phrase in English and convert and sometimes vice versa.You will use not only Latin but also French. A case of non modo sed etiam. Still, that’s life; c’est la vie.

Anyway let us, post haste, return to my socks, which I left lingering in an earlier paragraph. What do socks have that Rotorua’s sulphur doesn’t? Maybe, I first thought, the area around Rotorua is so pleasant you forget the smell. But I like my legs. Generally speaking, for their age, they are in pretty good condition, they work and that is quite pleasant. So that can’t be it. Then I thought, maybe the sulphur gases rise from the ground, pass the nose and disappear into the atmosphere. But so do my socks or at least the aroma exuding from them. So no joy there.

And this got me thinking in other directions too. Do I, as a human being, tend to get used to something even if it is unpleasant? After a while do I ignore it and indeed grow to like it. If so, why did I never grow to like Tony Blair? Sorry Tony, once that was called satire. You see Tony is a nice guy, wasn’t he? He thought so anyway. But how can you be nice in politics? Here in New Zealand, a farming country if ever there was one, muck spreading in The Beehive is a national sport. By the way, for those of you that don’t know, the Beehive is the New Zealand parliament building so-called because it resembles a beehive in shape. Not much honey inside though. And the problem is, just like the story about my socks, once you find the odour it sticks around.

Should all politicians be a made to live in Rotorua because then, after a while, their unpleasantness would disappear and all would be nice and rosy? Would that be fair to the good citizens of Rotorua? Obviously not. Forget that idea, and I think I must just return to the original conclusion. Politicians and socks will never lose that strange odour that goes with them wherever they go. The good news, for those who know me, is that I am only ever followed, in fact sometimes they lead, but, for the purpose of nice English, I am only ever followed by my socks. I do not have a politician in tow. In fact I have a toe in sock.

Isn’t English a strange language? We have two different ways to spell the same sound too. Or three ways. In fact, I could pour a cup of tea, stroke my cat’s paw, ex-foliate my pores while poor you listens. Maybe the House of the Rising Sun isn’t a place of ill repute but a song about home where dad’s offspring is just waking up.

While I was in New Zealand, the country won the right to host the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Great news, greeted with lots of back slapping and happiness all round, and a couple of hakas. Then, a few weeks later, they decided to think about where to hold the final, the show-piece, when the eyes of the world would be upon them. And that’s when they had a problem.

The original plan, so everyone thought, was to upgrade Eden Park, the home of New Zealand rugby for many years. A couple of people, it’s a small country, said why not hold it in Christchurch because they have a more modern stadium and a few others said why not North Shore, which is a very modern stadium but a little bit too far out of Auckland it would seem. No, it all seemed fixed, Eden Park would be revamped, it would seat 60,000 and all was good.

Of course there were some minor problems. Eden Park is right in the middle of a residential suburb. I went there in 2005 for a Test Match, they play cricket there too, and a couple of Rugby games. It was a bit tricky getting all the supporters in and out after the Rugby. The cricket was against Australia and day two, so not many turned up thinking it might all be over. Sorry, that’s not true. It ended on day three. Anyway, getting 60,000 people in and out of Eden Park by cars, taxis and Stagecoach buses might seem like a good game, good game, but it could have been done. You might lose a few but so what.

Then, suddenly, came this fantastic idea to build a brand new stadium down on the waterfront in Auckland. Now, purely as an idea, this seemed pretty good. Here was the City of Sails all ready to host a world event and there would be this wonderful new stadium, jutting out into the harbour. It would look great. Public transport wouldn’t be a problem. Buses and trains terminate nearby. I should add that the trains, so I am told, used to terminate in Perth in Western Australia, sometime between the wars if my guess is any good, but you can get a couple of people on them and they do run quite well. I know when they approach Auckland from the west they have to go into Newmarket and then out again the same way but, shunting around is good practice for the drivers.

So, they could get people there. It would be a brand new stadium so there would be plenty of parking, everything seemed well. It would cost NZ$900 million which may seem a bit steep but remember this was an estimated cost. People always estimate too high, don’t they? But then they hit another problem. Some people in Auckland, well to be honest a majority of the people in Auckland, didn’t want it. Those living near where it would be, said it would block their views of the cranes and containers at the port. Some old-fashioned people thought it should be at Eden Park because it had heritage. I’m a great one for keeping heritage, but if you are trying to play a 21st century global game, and rugby is getting bigger, in a 20th century stadium, it won’t work. Sometime Eden Park will have to be replaced so why not now?

Auckland City Council, who make these decisions, voted by 13-7 in favour of the waterfront plan. The next day, Auckland Regional Council, who own the land where it would be built, voted 20-0 against it. So now we have an agreement to build it and a veto on where. But I had a plan that would have satisfied them all.

My stay on Waiheke Island, just 35 minutes from Auckland by boat, had been put to good use. After carefully consulting the tide timetables, and with a bit of luck with the weather, the final could be played on the vast expanse of Onetangi Beach. The residents of Waiheke, in order to placate them, would have been allowed to watch from a purpose-built stand, later to be used for beach wedding parties, on the shore side. Over in Auckland, instead of building the stadium, they would just build a car park, underground so as not to spoil the view, and a vast floating grandstand, housing 60,000 people. One hour before the start of the final, this grandstand, fully occupied by the vast crowd, would be towed out of the harbour and across the water to Onetangi Beach. So, for the price of a final ticket, the crowd will have a sea trip thrown in, or up if it’s rough.

Meanwhile the purists who want Eden Park can watch from there on giant video screens and have a beach holiday, virtually, at the same time. This floating grandstand would then be preserved and, when New Zealand next win the America’s Cup, it could be towed into place, the grandstand not the cup, don’t be silly, that’s on a saucer isn’t it, and, for the first time ever, a crowd of 60,000 can sail along with the yachts as they race.

Sadly, my idea was ignored but you can't say that New Zealand is not a fun country. Where else in the world would one of your most famous buildings be a toilet? Now, you can poo-poo that idea; you can even say it’s crap but, in Kawakawa, up in Northland, the Austrian architect Frederick Hundertwasser designed the public toilets. By the way, the old Frank Sinatra song, ‘New York, New York, so good they named it twice’, is even more true in New Zealand. You can go to Kerikeri, Katikati as well as Kawakawa and even places like Urupukapuka and Whakarewarewa are repeatable destinations. Sorry Frank, New Zealand did it first and New York was New Amsterdam so it's not accurate anyway.

But, back to the toilets, an unusual posture but why not? Mr Hundertwasser came to New Zealand to exhibit his works, you can say that about architects, its OK, and he so loved the place he made it his second home. A second home should have everything a first one does, so settling in Kawakawa he obviously thought it needed a loo. Apparently, the council were looking to upgrade the local toilet facilities without spending a pretty penny as it was and so Mr Hundertwasser offered a solution. The council had the outlet and Mr Hundertwasser had somewhere to direct his flow. Of ideas, that is.

You see this puts it all into perspective really doesn’t it? Paris has the Louvre, Rome the Coliseum and New Zealand, the Kawakawa public toilets. I think this toilet may well last as long as the others; I don’t reckon it will be a flash in the pan. Certainly this attraction has not been taken sitting down by the locals, well the males anyway. It is the highlight of a walk down the main street.

Everybody helped in the building of the structure, I would probably describe it as a big job, and the toilet was opened in a dawn ceremony, much to everyone’s relief, I guess. You know how it is, whenever you wake up you always need to go don’t you, so that was really clever.

Mr Hundertwasser’s toilet has a grass roof, so you have something to wipe your hands on, yes your hands, if there are no toilet rolls, bottle glass windows, fill these from a distance if you can, and a living tree integrated into the design structure. The temptation to just nip behind the tree being quite great in New Zealand. It seems that Mr Hundertwasser was more involved in the construction of this than he was in the world-renown Hundertwasser House apartments project in Vienna. And, I ask you, what does that say about Herr Hundertwasser?

Flushed with his success, what did he do next? I don’t know and I think it is time I washed my hands of the whole thing. Certainly I can find no record of anything else in New Zealand he designed. He had no flood of offers, maybe just a small trickle. But then, why should he worry? Once you are famous for designing a public convenience, what else is left? In England he would have won the Turner Prize or something. We take our art seriously there. Stuffed sheep, stained sheets, we know art when we see it. Not for us a piddling little toilet in Kawakawa. But there it is. In New Zealand, it’s the tops although I believe there is some debate about whether it is the most famous building but I suppose it has to be number one or number two.

During my two year stay on Waiheke Island I often found myself sitting there . Well, not on all of it of course, even I am not that big, but just on a very small bit overlooking the wharf at Matiatia Bay. I was thinking about the tides because when the tide is out you can walk around the bay and up the slope to the house where we were staying at the time. The night before we had walked around at high tide but that was more fun and exciting than life should really be at my age. I mean climbing up and over rocks and balancing on the edge of one stone is more for the young isn’t it? Of course it is but maybe I’m younger than I think. They say you lose skin, hair, eyelashes, brain cells everyday and they get replaced so most parts of me are probably only about 7 or 8 anyway.

But back to the tides. Isn’t it remarkable that the water in the oceans actually comes in and out every day? Apparently, so the experts say, it’s the pull of the moon that does it. Really? I mean I know the earth is turning so wouldn’t that splash the water about it. But if it did, then lakes would have tides too so forget that one but why should it be the moon. Just because the experts say.

Experts can be wrong you know. I think I read somewhere that Stephen Hawking, a very intelligent man who wrote a book called ‘A brief history of time’, later told everyone he got it wrong. After he wrote the book everyone followed his theories and said how right he was and how obvious it was now he had explained it, but now he says he was wrong. Some people can be a little lemming like at times.

At this stage, I must tell you that time, time loops and black holes tend to blow a small fuse in my brain area. Or maybe the adjective is three words too early in that sentence. Aha, you say, he’s trying to be clever; he thinks I don’t know what an adjective is. Wrong, I would never assume my readers were that stupid. Actually I didn’t think you could count to three but never mind. Anyway, I don’t understand all this space and time stuff, so I am sure I would never agree with Professor Hawking because I haven’t got the faintest idea what he is talking about.

The tide. Why does it come in and why twice a day and why sometimes more and sometimes less. If it is the gravitational pull of the moon does it affect other things too? When you drop a cup or something, are you careless or was it the gravitational pull of the moon that helped it fall? When I lose my keys were they actually once where I put them, as I thought, and the gravitational pull of the moon moved them? Did the New Zealand athletes who finished fourth in the Commonwealth Games in 2006 really finish third but the gravitational pull of the moon worked on them because they had black shirts.

You see, I think I heard, that some places around the world, Southampton in England being one, have four high tides a day not two. Why? If the earth is moving anti-clockwise wouldn’t the water always go the same way. Changing the subject slightly, as I do, occasionally, if the earth came before clocks why didn’t we make them go the other way. In fact, I was talking to someone the other day, he’s nearly as intelligent as I am, and he said in Maths you always assume anti-clockwise unless shown otherwise. Surely clockwise should be normal. I mean I don’t behave anti-socially unless told otherwise do I? Well OK, some do. But how about always assuming people are left-handed unless they say

they’re not. Actually he is and he flew to New Zealand anti-clockwise so maybe he’s not that good.

Another thing I noticed on Waiheke is how sound travels so much further on a quiet island. In Auckland you couldn’t hear someone’s voice if he was a kilometre away and yet, on Waiheke, you could hear noises from far further away. I know there are loads of buildings in Auckland and they get in the way, but I can see how, before these buildings, men could hear sounds from a long way away and get ready for any attack. A surprise attack would be quite difficult. You would have to be so quiet and it would have to be dark with no moon. Which would probably mean no tides. Hey, New Zealand, I have an idea. Persuade India to hold the next Commonwealth Games at night with low cloud; you’ll win so much more. And run round the track anti-clockwise unless shown otherwise. 1500 metres would be easy. Even a Walker could win.

Back in 2005 we were given, sort of, a spaceship to travel in. Looking around now (2013), I see that spaceships are exploring into new pastures, if you will excuse the mixed metaphor but, at the time we were loaned one, they were fairly new. We used it to travel around Northland, in New Zealand in the winter of 2005 and gave the company as much publicity as we could. As we were visiting schools, they gave us a hundred or so ‘spaceship’ frizbees to hand out but, before we did, I had my own bit of fun. I also received a speeding ticket for exceeding 120 kph on the main road heading back into Auckland while driving my spaceship. My argument that I was driving a spaceship and thus outside of normal traffic laws was not accepted. I paid the fine. I would hasten to add that this appeared on our non-educational, mainly for travellers, website. No offence was meant to the British Beagle team. Read on.

Fantastic pictures are reaching us of the One World Spaceship. These never-before-seen shots show an amazing view of life in and around this unique craft. The first pictures show the craft in orbit, or transit, but the real surprises can be seen in the pictures when it is stopped. Please click on any photo for a closer, Jodrell Bank type view. The third picture below, shows that, on stopping, a group of little satellites take up a geo-stationary orbit around the mother craft. For those of you that don’t know, “geo” is short for gyrating elliptical object and stationary is exactly the right length for not moving. Later these dishes take up an apparently deliberate formation possibly spelling out some coded message to us here on earth.

Scientists from the British Beagle probe are studying these pictures closely, quite frankly because they have nothing else to do after they lost signals to their own craft. First opinions are that it is possible for there to be some form of intelligent life inside the mother ship. The spokesman, however, said that the chance of finding that life was a remote possibility. He added that they might never know as they had also lost the remote.

The next set of pictures show the craft in preparation for the ritual nightly, or, on a good night, twice-nightly, docking. This phrase may stem from the ancient English adage around the time of the court of King Arthur, which went, “once a night, always a night; twice a night and you’re doing alright”. The erection, yes, that’s the word I’m using, of a blue cover, is, it would seem, a vital part of this procedure. This strange cover is known in astronomical terms as the C (or cover) of tranquillity, or peace, which will embrace the craft and any occupants after the docking(s). The blue material seems extremely strong, allowing no forced ejection during this time, and does not burn up when tremendous heat is generated during re-entry. The only means of withdrawal is on the side of the craft. This sometimes means the back occupant replacing the front occupant and is known, again in astronomical terms, as a spoonism and was first mentioned in a book written about the planets, before the discovery of Uranus and Neptune, called “The Joy of Six”.

Following the docking and as darkness descends, small satellites take up a dormant position known as the Long Tall Satellite. By the way little short Richard took all these pictures. The most amazing of these show the final satellite taking up its positions. It can be seen, in the distance, on the first photo in the top row, approaching through the window of a nearby space station, and then it nears the pile and swoops across, before settling on the top.

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