The decade's almost over

Here’s something surprising to think about. It’s not much more than 18 months before we’ll be farewelling this decade. This 10-year block that some call the noughties (not much of a label, but what else is there to call it?) is fast disappearing down history’s plughole.
All too soon it will join the nineties, the eighties, the seventies and all those other 20th century time zones in the library of what used to be.
When you’re old enough for your memory to span a few decades, the past tends to blur. Now, when was that singer a star? What era does that movie come from? And how did we get to here?
Even going back to the dearly departed nineties is an exercise in realising that even if we think not much has changed since 2000, it certainly has. I’ve recently been ploughing through early Next magazines in the course of doing some research. I was Next’s launch editor in 1991. And, oh wow, talk about nostalgia. If you were a grown-up in the early nineties, you too may remember life when:
* magazines still had knitting patterns because everyone knew how to knit
* maternity clothes were big and baggy; showing off your baby bump just wasn’t done
* Johnny Depp was just that strange young dude in Edward Scissorhands.
* we were ripping out leg hair with the fiendishly painful Epilady
* no-one had yet had a Brazilian
* Suzy Aitken was pushing her fitness videos
* Olivio and Olivani began to give butter a fright
* we were suddenly delighted to eat sushi
* Anne Geddes was just beginning her rush to fame by photographing babies in clay pots
* Sitcoms still reigned and we’d not even heard of reality TV
* every woman worried about toxic shock syndrome
* we were endlessly debating how possible it was to “have it all”
* beauty companies first told us that “cellulite” existed, and that it had to be banished
* we lusted after clothes by Barbara Lee, Annie Bonza, Marilyn Sainty and Thornton Hall
* everyone’s kitchens were painted yellow and blue
* home renovation involved heaps of rag-rolling, stencilling, sponging, dragging and stippling
* the Filofax was everyone’s must-have business tool
* cell phone price tags sank to around $200, down from $2000 in the eighties
* Call Waiting first became available for home phone lines and drove us mad as we struggled with the new phone etiquette rules
* 50% of people had a home computer but 20% couldn’t programme their VCR
* The first personal trainers started working in gyms
* Women actually wanted to make their own pot pourri
* Lionel’s Muffins (recipes from Shortland Street) was a mega-best seller
* waterbeds were finally ejected from the nation’s bedrooms
* we were fixated on millennial predictions based on the sayings of Nostradamus
And right at the end of the decade some group of bureaucrats called the Y2K Commission warned us to stock up with three days of food, a stash of fresh water and batteries for our torches. After all, there was a chance that the world, as we knew it, might stutter to an end as every computer died. Pictured above is a fridge magnet I still possess, sent by the government to every New Zealander, telling us what to do.
Looking back, it all seems so naive. But somehow we got through the nineties, just as we'll survive this decade too. Even if things do look decidedly dodgy on a whole lot of fronts right now!

The First Wives' Club from Hell

New Zealand TV channels don’t do overseas news until about 25 minutes into the news hour because they’re so stuck on the idea that viewers like local news best. The only time that changes is when the world is falling apart.
Around half an hour into the news bulletins of the last day or two we’ve been witnessing the sad sight a woman whose world is falling apart. Poor Mrs Spitzer. Skewered by the glare of lights and cameras, she was either forced or felt it necessary to stand alongside her husband, the granite-jawed Eliot, now former Governor of New York, as he confessed to using the services of prostitutes even while he was going after other people for doing the very same thing.
He blah-blahed all the usual things that American politicians have said over the years as they ’fessed up to wrongdoing. There’s been a long line of them, including Bill Clinton’s own excruciating moments. Every time, their wives (including Hillary) stood shoulder to shoulder with their errant spouses, grim-faced but upright, willing to be seen as the good woman staying strong through thick and thin.
It seems, in America, to be required of them. And even a woman like Silda Spitzer, a top Harvard graduate who once had a big career in finance, felt the call to fall into line and stand gamely before the avid cameras as her husband intoned his “sorry” speech.
What a face she showed us. Eyes like stones, grey complexion, compressed mouth, face wiped blank with... what?... rage, humiliation, grief, anger, shame. No need for the latter, of course. He’s the bad boy. But she’s probably feeling stunned with the shame of it all, knowing that her position as Number One society wife of America’s greatest city, with all the parties, the honour and glory, the designer gowns and flowers, the best seats in restaurants and shows and operas, the invitations engraved on fine paper, the chauffeurs opening doors, and doormen saluting and lunches with powerful ladies... all of it is now in the compost. Along with whatever life she used to have with the father of their three teenage daughters.
What, by the way, do you tell three teenage daughters about the trouble their daddy is in over his habit of having expensive sex with young women not much older than them? How did Silda hold it all together in public like that, when what she must have really wanted to do was howl and sock him in the chops?
But this, it would appear, is how life is for the spouses of famous men. Just look at the great political parade going on in the US elections. Each candidate must be accompanied by their other half. Whenever John McCain appears, there alongside him is his wife of 28 years, the smiling and silent Cindy, groomed to the max, pin-thin in her bright silk suits and with ultra-sleek blonde hair, looking like a very mature Barbie doll.
Michelle Obama, wife of Barack, looks like she can barely contain herself as a talker, but must resist blurting for now. When she did speak recently she made the mistake of saying she was “proud of America” for the first time in her adult life. Big oops! Patriotism must not be questioned. Since then, not a murmur.
Then there’s Bill – so verbally effusive in recent weeks that he came close to and pushing Hill’s campaign off course. The former Prez has had to go quiet, too. It must be killing him.
It’s a weird thing. All these middle-aged couples but must chat and argue and fight and debate and chew the fat far into the night – but on the election trail there can be no hint of that. Instead the partners must just stand there, visible but mute, as useful as a stuffed sausage but still somehow necessary to the process. For it seems no single candidate could ever be elected to the White House. Hard enough to be black or female. But single? Not a chance.
Here, it’s all so different. Our own First Husband, Peter Davis, pops up only when absolutely necessary. And because here, too, it’s election year, PR requirements will mean we’re bound to see him pottering amiably in the next few months, keeping the home fires burning while Helen does her thing. Mrs Key? I don’t even know her first name. I could bump into her at the supermarket and be none the wiser. And I have no idea if there’s a Mrs Hide, or a Mrs Peters, or a Mr Turia. What a good thing. How lucky we are.

See the whales dive

Have you too been watching housing for the last half-decade, marvelling at how those values have gone up and up and up? It’s been optimism all around. Those who’ve bought houses since the turn of the century have been on to a very, very good thing. It’s all been so fabulous that few imagined a time could come when the value of our dwellings might not only plateau but slide, just like a whale arcing up out of the sea and then slipping back down again, propelled by its own great weight.

At least three years ago I chatted with a young (well, 30-ish) friend about real estate’s great cycles. She and her man were buying property after property, leveraging each one on the back of the one before, starry-eyed about the future and confident that their returns would always cover their outgoings and that values would keep rising for ever.

I told her about a place we tried to sell in 1998. We’d paid close to $320,000 for it just a few years earlier, and it was in a prime location. The best offer we got was little more than $290,000. We sighed and accepted it. We were buying again on the same market and so could move on to something similar for about the same money. But the point I was trying to make to my friend was that prices had tanked then – that they can and do go down sometimes. She listened politely but was convinced that long-term they’d be fine. Which is probably right but there's still the short-term to get through.

The drive to make a killing has kept on building, fuelled by all the TV property programmes showing the thrill of doing up houses, flicking them on and looking for the next one. It’s a strategy that’s worked beautifully, with people making delicious (and untaxed) capital gains. I mean, why wouldn’t you? Lots of us have done it, or cheered as our kids did it. And yet. And yet.

I watched a local show a few weeks ago about a young couple who are dreaming of establishing a property portfolio of 20 houses. Their idea is that when they finally retire, a few decades hence, all that rent income will fund an ongoing good lifestyle.

But six houses later, the combined rent was failing to keep up with their mortgage payments and they were having to top them up out of the husband’s reportedly average salary. The wife had no salary, being a stay-at- home mum. Some people might have sold a house or two to get back on even keel. But no. Their solution was to buy two more places because the rents from these two new places were going to be (applause, applause) around $900 a week.

Aided by a smiling broker, the couple borrowed still more, blithely increasing their indebtedness to $1.8 million. One. Point. Eight. Mill.

I sighed again a month ago when I read a New Zealand Herald story by Simon Collins about how 10-15% of all new mortgages are now going to people borrowing 100% of the cost of their homes. He interviewed a hard-working couple who looked like really good citizens, both working fulltime to raise their two lovely kids and repay $1500 per fortnight back to the bank.

They’d just paid nearly $400,000 for what was described as a “modest house”. Judging from the latest stats, the value of their Birkdale house may already have dropped. The Real Estate Institute reports that the median North Shore price sagged from $516,000 in December 07 to $495,000 in January 08.

Not so much, you might say. Just a few thousand. But they, and many other hundred per centers, must be hoping like hell that this is as far as it goes. And that they don’t lose their jobs. Or get sick. Or have an accident. Or get divorced. Or encounter any obstacle to the continuance of happy life in their pleasant home, with their careers secure and their expenses stable. Fingers crossed, everyone

Big Butts

Having posted a poem about Christmas last week, I might as well add another download of personal doggerel that may be useful to contemplate after Christmas, subsequent to the consumption of too much rich food. It is dedicated to all of us who find ourselves fatter in the next week or two. Ah well, best advice is to keep smiling, just like the adipose angel seen here...

BIG BUTTS

We all sing the chorus,
‘Does my butt look big in this?’
Say no and you bestow upon us
Such a shot of bliss.

We can never see what’s right
Or even what looks wrong.
Are our pants best uber-short
or ankle-scratching long?

If we go for wide-set pockets
will our hips look too capacious?
Or might a larger size contrive
to make us merely spacious?

Higher waist or low-rise?
Sloppy fit or snug?
What’s the way to stop us
seeing ourselves and saying, “ugh!”?

The trouble is those changing rooms,
designed to make us weep.
The cruel lights and those mirrors
are enough to make us leap

into the next damn diet –
all celery and greens,
with no sweet cakes or macaroons
or chocolate ice creams.

So stop now! Aim to love your butt
and quit being so damn grumpy,
for were it not so soft and plump
would sitting be so comfy?

SANTA’S BIG FAT CARBON FOOTPRINT PROBLEM

Santa had a headache, a mean and nasty one,
for fulfilling all the orders was no longer any fun.
Every year his problems were enough to make him scream
and now the elves were telling him he had to go more green.

They said they couldn’t keep up with the factories of Shanghai.
Their working hours were lousy and they pestered him with why
they had to make these bleeping, flashing, noisy, garish toys at all!
“We’re not here,” they whined, “to fill those shelves up at the mall.”

Out back in the workshop, his helpers had the snitch
because the fur they used for teddy bears was promulgating itch.
They hated all the packaging they had to wrap round toys,
and were sick of whining letters from greedy girls and boys.

“It’s got too much,” the reindeer cried. “The hype’s become unreal.”
So they sat the old guy down and told him, “Santa, here’s the deal.
We’re not freighting presents unless you start recycling,
and a low-emission, hybrid sleigh would be more to our liking.”

“Bah!” yelled Santa, “Don’t you know that all our days are numbered?
Have you seen the costs with which this business has been lumbered?
I need new GPS’s. The sleigh’s become outdated.
The hay you eat now costs so much it’s like it’s silver-plated.

“Your farting is so hearty that the methane fills the skies.
Our carbon footprint’s got so big I can’t believe my eyes.
I’m trying to recycle but you elves waste so much wood
that even firing half of you won’t do us any good.

“And then no doubt you’d drag me to the great Employment Court
and claim unfair dismissal – oh, yes, a sneaky elvish rort!
You’ll be wanting compensation and a lump of next year’s pay.
I’m damned if I’ll put up with that, no matter what you say.”

So there was little for it but for Santa to comply.
His workers got a pay rise big enough to make him cry.
The presents turned all eco, guaranteed organic,
(and kiddies used to plastic were thrown into a panic).

And now when Rudolph leads the team out on their annual trip
The sleigh’s a half-tonne lighter, which makes the flight a snip.
The elves feel really happy ‘cos they’re making Christmas greener
and Santa tries to smile - but his life is feeling leaner.

The trouble is he’s finding that he misses all the glitter,
the bling, the booze, the bad-taste gifts, the eating and the litter.
However, when he’s lauded for the changing of his ways
he’s not averse to preening in the light of so much praise.

But just quietly, if you ask him for some tips on his success,
he’ll tell you he’s still partial to some OTT excess.
“Save the planet? Sure,” he’ll say. “Go for it, my friend.
But loving life is what makes life worth living, in the end.”

Merry Christmas!

Watching birds

I’ve been to see my dad again. He is 98. My mother died at 58. How odd it is, this distance that can separate people. Is it in our genes, when we’re born, the clock that cuts one person off short and gives someone else decades more?
This is not a question that troubles my father. He was married to my mother for 34 years but can’t now remember her name. Or that of his second wife, with whom he had another 15 years or so before being widowed once again. Or that of his third wife to whom he’s still wed after another 15 years, not that he knows it. He doesn’t know me either.
He married his third bride in his early 80s. ‘Why?’ we asked, pleased he’d happily found late love, but mystified by why he was making yet another walk to the altar. ‘At our age we like to do things properly,’ he said.
Now, he’s in a nursing home, which of course is a cause of guilt on my part. Good daughters aren’t supposed to let that happen.
But when his dementia sent him wandering, there was nothing for it but for him to be kept somewhere safe. He was in a Catholic-run retirement village then. One night they found him naked in the chapel in the wee small hours. Who knows what the Virgin Mary thought. Another time he fetched up in the billiard room, wrapped up in the blanket off the tabletop, unable to find his way back to his bed. Another time he wandered into a gas station a kilometre from home, asking for his Uncle Basil, who died sometime in the middle of the 20th century.
Dad’s too wobbly now for wandering. Mostly, he sleeps. When he’s awake he sits at his habitual place at a table in Cairns, North Queensland, slowly turning the pages of books he doesn’t comprehend. He has to wear a bib over his shirt, for his dribble.
This week I pointed to pictures in the bird book in front of him. ‘Look,’ I said, in the high, clear voice you use for small children. ‘Here’s a woodpecker. Look at its lovely red head.’
Dad took no notice and turned the page to look at ducks, muttering something I couldn’t understand.
And I suddenly realised this moment was an echo of my earliest memory. I’m very small in this fragment of recollection, standing up in a cot holding onto its bars, looking out the window on a misty morning, excited by the morning chatter of birds. I’m pointing out the window. My father is smiling down at me, sharing the moment. Me, him and the birds.
And here I am again, so many years later, life gone full circle. No mist now. We’re in the tropics. Flame trees blaze outside. New Zealand’s meek thrushes have given way to brash Aussie parrots. But otherwise it’s the same, except that my father is the infant now.
Me and my dad. I feel the years, and my aching heart, flip-flop as we sit together, looking at birds.

Natural solutions

I’ve had nature on my mind this year. That’s hardly surprising, as I’ve just published a book about it, along with my good friend Trish Whillans, who took the rose photo you see here. Our book is called The Answer: How Nature Can Help You When Life Seems Too Hard (for more pop over to my website, www.lindseydawson.com).
The Answer is not about global warming, or climate change, or carbon footprints, or compost, or recycling. Instead it’s a little book with a simple storyline that imagines a conversation between ourselves and the natural world. It’s based on the notion that getting in amongst the green, slushy, gritty, tangled stuff that makes up the wild world can do us good - because nature can tell us things.
It took a Malaysian conservationist called Osman to remind me of that last year. I was staying at the Andaman Hotel on Langkawi Island. It offers an early morning nature walk. Always a sucker for such delights, I turned up the next morning and off we went into the humid dawn.
Osman was a quiet, still sort of guy. Never raised his voice above a murmur. But his eyes were sharp and alert. To everything. “You might like to step back,” he suggested at one point, indicating our feet.
A broad, seething ribbon of large ants was surging close to our toes on the jungle path, fast and urgent as a black river swollen after rain. “They have a very painful bite,” Osman mildly observed.
As we strolled with him, he pointed out amazing birds, like the racquet-tailed drongo, and all manner of plants, both healing and toxic. Many had steely barbs.
“But nature always has a solution,” he pointed out. “If there’s a plant that can hurt or give you a rash, you can guarantee that there’ll be another plant growing nearby that can fix the hurt. Problem? Solution. Problem? Solution. That’s how nature works.”
I liked that. It set me wondering whether there was a message in there for me too. As in, does nature in more temperature climates, like where I live, have solutions for different sorts of problems – such as fixing emotional woes? And decided that of course it does. I know all too well that if I’m feeling itchy with frustration or mad as a snake, a walk on a forest track always sorts me out.
As Trish kept on taking her photos and we were putting the book together, I had my ears open for ways in which others were seeing (or not seeing) the nature of nature all around them.
I did a wonderful waka tour down the Whanganui River in April and listened to our guide, Niko Tangaroa, as he talked about leaving his structured life as an engineer in Australia to return home and set up a business where he could share the river’s delights with others. With a big grin, he said, “Every morning when I get out on the river, I look up at the sky and say, “Thank you, Ranginui [sky father], for my new workshop!”’
By contrast, in July I had a short, startling encounter next to a rose bush in a French garden with a young American woman. She was so unaware of nature that her only connection with its smells was via the cosmetic industry. I pointed out a pink bloom to her because it had the most beautiful fragrance. “Mmm,” she sighed. That’s so beautiful! It’s just like rose oil. So this is a rose, huh?”.
Then in Fiji, in September, I saw such a warping of nature that it chilled my heart. I was in a bus with friends as we drove through a valley filled with emerald jungle. But the tree profiles were strangely lumpy. The leaves were a densely packed, uniform, brilliant green. We came to realise we were looking not at the rich variety of specimens that should have been there, but at a vast leafy blanket that was smothering miles of native forest under a thick duvet of curling vines . “What is that?” we asked. “Killer vine!” spat a local man. “The Americans brought it here during the war to use as camouflage. Now it is everywhere.” It can overcome the tallest trees and nothing can stop its spread.
Like most pest introductions, the kudzu invation started innocently enough. Japanese gardeners brought it to a Philadelphia garden expo in 1876. Americans loved it. They wanted it for their gardens, too. And now it’s strangling huge areas of the south-eastern United States, too. No wonder they knew it would be good for concealing soldiers in the tropics. Kudzu is very polite in Japan as winter frosts knock it back every year. But deprived of cold it becomes a maniac, growing by as much as a foot per day.
It’s a problem. Out of control. Just like so much of the stuff going on in our lives. But I remember wise Osman and his quiet observation : Problem. Solution. Problem. Solution.
Our little book can’t stop kudzu, but in its small way it might untie a few other knots in modern life.