Frost And Pegg's Perfect Night In

On Christmas Day I wrapped my presents, and on the 27th we finally opened them.

Christmas in our house tends to be a bit out-of-sync with the rest of the world. Usually it’s my fault, but not always.

Anyway, what do you do when Christmas Day’s festivities are over? Of course, you watch all the Christmas telly. Or in my case, I watch all of 2007’s telly.


This is why I've just sat through the above-named cheap 90-minute filler show, in which the above two funnymen from Spaced, Shaun Of The Dead and Hot Fuzz link very brief clips of TV shows from yesteryear with ever-so-slightly-longer opinions and trivia.

I think one of the reasons why I like Simon Pegg and Nick Frost's TV and films so much is because they put so much thought in to them. Alas, after a promising start posing as a Goodies-esque sitcom, this was not really on display here. Improvising around most of the links was perhaps not the best plan when the leader of the duo was clearly half-asleep.

But hey – they knew what a cheap throwaway format they'd been asked to fill, and how lowly such theme nights are regarded, so who can really blame them for not making much effort?

Looking forward to watching the new Spaced DVD that I got for Christmas – that'll be much better. They – and their viewers I think – care a bit more about that.

DARE TO BE STUPID – "Weird Al" Yankovic

From 1985, this CD was Weird Al really getting into his stride. I might even be tempted to call it his heyday, but for the fact that's he's still coming out with better and better material today.

As soon as you read the track listings of Like A Surgeon, Girls Just Want To Have Lunch and Hooked On Polkas you know exactly what you're in for, well until you find his original compositions mixed-in anyway, and they really could turn out to be anything.

George Of The Jungle doesn't attempt to be anything other what it is – contract work for a kids' movie. Something Al rightly gets away with thanks to his now long-held "family friendly" image.

Yoda is all about... well, guess.


I know Darth Vader's got you quite annoyed,
But remember if you kill 'im then you'll be unemployed...

But my favourite track on here really has to be Slime Creatures From Outer Space, which comes across to me (maybe wrongly) as Al's tribute to Neil Norman And His Cosmic Orchestra.

Great stuff.

"WEIRD AL" YANKOVIC – "Weird Al" Yankovic

I don't think I've listened to this again since I first got it, so this morning I put it on as I wrapped presents.

Al's first album is something of a curiosity, lacking as it does the polish and production of his later ones. The eponymous title implies that at the time, the album's commissioning was something of a novelty, with little confidence that Al's appeal would last to any further ones. Boy, were they wrong.

Just about every track is played on the accordion, but this doesn't restrict the selection of styles on offer. Already we find several – quite unconvincing – parodies such as My Bologna, Another One Rides The Bus and Ricky, (based on Mickey) which is about the old I Love Lucy TV show.


"Oh Ricky,
What a pity,
Don't you understand?
That every day's a rerun and the laughter's always canned..."

But we have several of his lesser-known original compositions too. I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead (the title of which sounds like it must be a parody of something) and The Check's In The Mail are highly catchy numbers, the latter evoking a whole 1920s feel.

Mr Frump In The Iron Lung is too uncomfortable for me though. It's one thing to crack jokes at the expense of the strong, but another at the weak.

But hey – this album was a long time ago now.

Santa sketch

At some point either today or yesterday I had a sketch simulcast on NewstalkZB and Radio Sport. If you'd like to hear it, you're welcome to click here.

Going Home For Christmas

Man it was cold at Heathrow Airport.

Minus three degrees – the last time I remember it being a minus was when I was a kid, watching Jack Scott play with magnets.


However I was prepared. Having got through the deserted customs area, I put on me gloves, jumper and coat and headed off for the central bus station. A 285, a 490 and £2 later I was shivering my way home feeling rather good about it all.

At 7:20am I crept into my house and saw two cats raise their heads at me from the sofa, before starting as if to suddenly bolt away. Seven gave my finger a good 20 seconds sniffing before deciding that I was all right after all. The other one really didn't seem to care.

I woke my mum with a cup of tea – always a special moment – and so began the next two days of detox from the flight.

I rang Herschel, but was told he was too sick to come to the phone. The following day he actually managed to croak through two minutes with me. I think the strain of editing all those clips shows must be getting to him.

I saw neighbours. I ran into friends, one of whom told me that another friend I'd caught up with last year had passed away a month ago. Crikey. No more Pam.

Into my immediate plan I had scheduled two working days (Saturday 22nd and Monday 24th) for Christmas shopping. This involved two trips up to London, catching the mainline and the good old tube, and pacing around my favourite haunts on New Oxford Street.

It must be said that I have never known my way around London. Even today I still always begin my wandering at Centre Point, purely because that's where I always went as a teenager to get to the old old Forbidden Planet bookshops. Virgin Megastore has been renamed "Zavvi" (was it the only .com website they could still get?) while Tower Records at 1 Picadilly Circus has just vanished. Still, another interesting change in myself – I found that for the first time I was actively engaging with the geography and trying to build a map of it in my mind for future journeys. It just seemed like the first thing to do with the problem.

Every Christmas Eve there's a lovely moment. It's when the shops have all just shut. I always, wherever I am in the world, sit down and just watch everyone else milling around and going home. It's so peaceful. The professional stresses of the year are all over, and all that is left is to go back home to one's family, whoever that may be. I always maintain that, for me, December 24th is the real final day of the year.

This year, that lovely moment didn't happen.

I left the new new Forbidden Planet bookshop in Shaftesbury Avenue upon closing time at 6 o'clock, but the rest of London seemed to be closing at all sorts of different times. I wandered up New Oxford Street again, having varied luck, and outside Zavvi was accosted by the first, rather late relatively speaking, complete stranger asking for money, and clearly lying through his face.

In Auckland I would have offered to get him a burger, and then quite possibly sat in Burger King chatting with him for half an hour, but back here in my old environment I slipped straight back into my old habits and just gave him the money. Immediately another bearded guy sitting on the pavement asked me for some also, claiming that he'd been sitting there for 2 hours and had got nothing. I gave him much less, but as I flicked through the CDs in Zavvi afterwards, this bothered me.

The first kid had been quite rude, leaving with the money without saying a word, prompting me to even shout after him "You're welcome!"

For some reason though I found I believed the second guy, even despite the unlikeliness of his claim about having got nothing for 2 hours. Maybe it was because he was Scottish, like the homeless guy I'd played bogus interviews with to teach the present perfect continuous back at work in Auckland. Maybe this was why it didn't seem like Christmas Eve yet.

With my mind on a small note that I really wanted to keep in my pocket, I deliberately left Zavvi by a different exit.

He'd moved around the corner to this street. Dang.

I turned around again and dawdled on the spot facing the other way for several minutes. Finally I resolved to give him a proper donation, only to find... he had gone! Result!

Oh no, there he was, sitting a bit further up. Oh well.

A nice exchange, smiles, a shake of hands, and an exchange of names. He told me that someone had suggested he change streets, and I agreed that there did seem to be more people here.

Afterwards, as I headed down the steps into Tottenham Court tube station to go home, I pondered the morality of the musical buskers, and exited the subway into the ticket area, where a woman dressed in woolly clothes asked me if I could come and have a chat with someone on the other end of a payphone. He was lonely and just wanted to talk to anyone who was there.

Highly suspicious, I picked up the phone and had a very brief chat with a guy in New York. I asked his name, told him mine, wished him a happy Christmas and closed the conversation. He ignored my closure so I closed it firmly and handed the receiver back to the woman before he had a chance to protest. I smiled and told her "That's not a New York accent – good luck with your show." Her expression didn't flicker even slightly. I got out of there quick.

But wait – there's more and it's even more boring.

Still determined to sit down for a few minutes and watch people milling around and going home for Christmas, I got to Waterloo Station and decided to buy a Burger King meal after all, for me. It seemed to be a fairly short-sighted branch of Burger King, because I discovered it had no toilet. So I found the one on the station concourse, but was incensed to discover that I had to pay for it. Outraged, I did what any sane person would and briefly boarded a train that I had no intention of catching. Thousands of people must do this every day at Waterloo. Yet maintaining a toilet on a train must cost far more money than maintaining one in a station. So why do they encourage it? That's privatisation for you.

Anyway I then bought the meal at Burger King and sat outside eating it and watching everyone mill around, going to their homes.

Nope, the annual sense of peace and closure was just not there this year, no matter how much I wanted it to be.

I have no idea why.

Eat Less Pay More

In December 1990 a group of us from church set up a charity restaurant to raise money for third world development projects throughout the run-up to Christmas:


Fig. 1: The Mayor opens the restaurant, and everyone tries not to get run over.


Fig. 2: Immediately, the restaurant is teeming with custom.


Fig. 3: A bit of inspired publicity should help. Or scare everyone away.


Fig. 4: Suddenly we're filled to capacity. (and that was just the kitchen)


Fig. 5: I have no idea who this is.

That was a bonkers month. Tonight, bizarrely, I got to confess to everyone at my new church in Auckland about it:

Ratatouille

Has there ever been a good movie to watch on an aircraft?

Sure, you got yer crowd-pleasing safe bets – yer Transformers, yer Pirates Of The Carribeans, even yer Jurassic Parks. However once they've been reduced down to the size of a disastrously-placed antimacassar, somehow even they become a focus for forgiveness in order to get through the flight, rather than the breathtaking masterpieces they might otherwise be considered.

Recently, despite Herschel's pressure, I utterly failed to catch Ratatouille on its theatrical release. It got something of a mixed last chance therefore when I found it airing on Cathay Pacific's inbound long-haul flights to Hong Kong this month.


Struggling to make it through the dreadfully fuzzy picture and painfully distorted sound on only one channel (like I said, you make every effort to forgive these things on flights for as long as it takes), was a fairly by-the-numbers Pixar romp about, as the title suggests, a rat teaching a human to cook in old-fashioned Paris. (as I said, the title was a bit fuzzy)

That's not a criticism though – this movie successfully overcame such incredible obstacles and actually gave me a passable 90 minutes, albeit with the headset pushed up against one ear, and one hand constantly adjusting the volume. Now I understand why Lieutenant Uhura usually sits like that.

Ratatouille also bravely avoided endowing the rat with the power of speech. Sure, he could communicate with his ratty friends no problem, but the language barrier with humans provided a wonderful opportunity for the two friends to build up a non-verbal rapport from nothing but a silent, respectful need for each other. I could even cite this as a metaphor for the need for understanding and reconciliation for our time – something today's kids are criminally protected from by producers' blinkered drive to make everything relevant – especially since even the film's setting is another country and, it sure feels like, another time. Flip, this movie's getting better by the word.

Anyhew, after changing flights with a whole ten minutes to spare at Hong Kong, would you believe that the second flight actually put on the wrong set of entertainment for the outbound flight to London, and so I took the chance to watch five minutes of it again. After all, this aircraft boasted bigger TVs!

Ooh, it was good. The picture was sharp, the audio was clear and in both ears, and there seemed to be rather more gags and detail in both the picture and sound. Suddenly I was transported off of that plane and into another world, just as the filmmakers had intended. Had I sat through the whole thing again, I might well have found another film entirely hiding in all those pixels.

Couldn't have that though – I'd enjoyed the first version too much.

Flight Times

I was a bit better organised again this year.

Sure – for the second year running I'd had to cancel recording a Christmas show for Hope City FM, but this year it was because I'd been asked to produce a sketch to go out on NewstalkZB.

Somehow I'd done all my remaining lessons, chased around buying Christmas presents and souvenirs, backed-up all my computer files and even found time to – unprotestingly - pack.

Usually, I hate packing. This time, although I got to bed at 5am, the thought never entered my head once. For some reason I was completely unaware of, this time it had struck me as an achievable task.

After five hours of sleep – again an improvement on usual – I hauled myself out of bed, into the shower, through breakfast, and buzzed around the flat doing last-minute laundry and packing. Flatmate Cathy – my lift to the airport – was about as silent and patient as I really need another person to be in these circumstances.

Freezer meal in the freezer for my return – check.

Bye-bye Pauline and Sue – check.

Bedroom vacuumed and bed made for similar reasons to the freezer meal – no and still in the tumble-dryer. Oh well.

So we left later than planned and, laughing at the GPS' creative advice (as you do), we got to the airport later than planned too, but as I said to Cathy, it was still much earlier than I usually make it.

This trip it had been Cathy who was, arguably, the first person I saw, and the last.


My single bag was over 22kg, but Cathay Pacific accepted it, proving that they could have done so for a much lower weight four years ago instead of charging me $300 for it. As I raced around checking-in, paying the departure tax and picking up some last-minute souvenirs, I repeatedly failed to locate my phone in time to take Phil's many attempts to call me. Finally he got through, gave me the good news that I would finally get my voice on a national NZ radio station again on Christmas Day, and we said our goodbyes. Phil's been a good mate since 2004 – believing in me over a long period of time when others didn't – and I felt a certain sense of irony when we hung up and I realised that I was standing on the exact same spot where I had stood for literally about half an hour saying good bye to New Zealand the first time nearly four years ago now.

That day in March 2004 I had been running very late. Many things had stood in the way of my departure – leaving Matamata so late, my overweight bag, a packed security area, and a guard who didn't want me to join the fast-track queue even though my name - "Mr Gobble" – was being repeatedly called over the tannoy. I mean I actually had to argue with him to let me go through and run to gate 5 to catch it. That time, apparently, New Zealand had not really wanted to let me go of me. And I certainly hadn't really wanted to let go of New Zealand. But I was a people-pleaser.

Over the years, I've noticed how those tannoy announcements for Auckland Airport’s latecomers to hurry up have changed. Initially they developed this house script of listing the names and then chivvying them with "...and all other passengers are waiting for you." Later this seemed to subtly change to become "...and all other passengers are waiting for you." It conjures up a mental picture of all these other travellers standing around by the entrance to the plane and greeting you with a mixture of worry and relief: "You're here! At last! But... why are you so late? Was there an accident?"

This year the announcement had evolved a little bit more, and inserted pauses between the final three words, which in this blogger's humble opinion, gave the impression that today's other passengers were ever so slightly more disgruntled: "...and all other passengers are Waiting. For. You."

Well, today I found quite a few of them waiting when I got there, and they were certainly waiting for a long time.

After all that rush, the flight was delayed by nearly three hours, scoring each of us $10 of free food at any shop not displaying the DFS Galleria logo on the voucher. (I still can't believe that system)

Weilding my Marco Polo card, I decided to sit this one out in the Qantas lounge, where there were free showers, free food, free drinks, and a whole lot of empty airy space.

Flatmate Dave rang. A third long-term mate, who I hadn't known when I'd first come here.

As the afternoon dragged on, I mused about how New Zealand now, as four years ago, still appeared curiously determined not to let go of me.

Filming The Past

If we’re going to live forever, then what is the point of photographing something? Looking at the photo at a later date can only hold you back from experiencing something new.

In spite of the above paragraph, one of my passions is preserving recordings.

It probably partly stems from a lifelong fascination with the TV series Doctor Who, of which there are still 108 episodes for which the pictures are no longer known to be held by the BBC.

Anyhow, the little bit of the world that I can do something about – stuff that I personally help to make – I tend to take great care over preserving properly.

On 15th July this year, Jacob, Tyrone and myself were to perform a sketch written by Brett at Cession Church. Alas, shortly before the performance, I learnt that there could be no video copy made of the service that evening. A shame for Brett who, unusually, had to miss the service and so would never see his script being performed.

I asked Sarah if she could video our sketch on her phone.

Unfortunately, Sarah’s phone had other ideas, and gave up after just six seconds.

Nonetheless, in the months that followed, those six seconds would become like gold-dust to me…


The sketch had been part 1 of a 4-part series, so I tried to get everyone together before the service the following week to reperform part 1 on video. In the event though we were all too busy rehearsing that week’s episode, (part 2 - which was videoed fine) and so we re-scheduled the reshoot again for week three.

Of course, we had no time on week three either, or even on week four, so now I found myself trying to get everyone together to refilm part 1 after the whole series had been finished.

So, we had copies of sketches 2, 3 and 4, as the video camera had taped those services okay, but it bugged me that everyone who might see these recordings in the future would, unanimously, have to forgive the absence of part 1.

Yes, yes this was definitely starting to sound like the William Hartnell era. And yet, I had an advantage over the latterday Doctor Who fan. I was aware that I existed at the only point in time when:

a) The three original actors were still living in the same area,
b) The three original actors still looked the same age, and
c) The three original actors could still fairly clearly recall our half-improvised performance.

If history was going to have a copy of this sketch, it had to be made now.

Getting us all together in the same room was clearly proving impossible though, so by 21st October I’d given up on actually revideoing it, and instead asked Jacob and Tyrone to simply rerecord their lines separately on audio, figuring that I could put their sound to appropriate stills from the later sketches to reconstruct the performance as a slideshow.

After they had kindly rerecorded their lines, I went home and wondered why I had settled for this compromise. If they’d been willing to re-say the lines into a microphone, then it should be just as easy to film them saying the lines with a camera. I wasn’t looking to shoot a Kubrick movie here – just head close-ups would be fine. Shots that could conceivably have been taken from the front row during the actual performance.

And that was really my focus here. Not something that would pretend to be a recording from that night, but rather a video that would honestly give an accurate, truthful account of what we had presented that evening.

For example, for the other three sketches Tyrone had brought some workmen’s reflector-jackets for he and Jacob to wear, but on the first week we hadn’t had those. Although we now had the opportunity to “fix” that shortcoming, I didn’t want to film a version that contradicted the original performance. We had told that first audience that these characters had said those exact words, in those exact clothes, in that exact pose, and I wanted to stand by what we had told them, as best as we and Sarah’s phone could recall. Of course, we’d also all been a little unsure of our lines, but while I was happy to try to repeat my fluffs, I wasn’t going to ask anyone else to. That would have been to lose sight of the greater goal – to make the world a cheerier place.

Thus, on the 28th October, as everyone was milling around after the service (and making it impossible to refilm it on the stage) Jacob and I went into a similarly acousticed room off the main church, hung one of Cession’s black tablecloths over a whiteboard, (to double for the black curtain that had been behind us) and reperformed our lines as Warren kindly shot us. Jacob had recently had his hair cut, so Warren cropped him at the forehead.


When Jacob left I thanked him: “Cheers for humouring me in my madness,” to which he laughed like a hyena, before kindly advising me “Recognition is the first step to healing.”

Ty was absent, but I figured we could get his lines in close-up the following week. At last it was all coming together.

Or it was until I was told that the tape containing the footage we’d just shot had gone AWOL.

Yes, we were back at square one again. Truly this moment in time was determined not to be filmed, and yet, that’s how it had once looked for An Unearthly Child too.

After I’d obtained a copy of the opening and closing music, on 4th November flatmate Cathy lent me her digital camera, and after that evening’s service, Ty and I nailed his lines once and for all.


Afterwards I returned to the stage and, holding the camera at arm’s length, took a mute cutaway of my feet too, despite the presence of many parishioners standing around drinking coffee.


Back home, Cathy filmed a couple of mute close-ups of me in front of a plain white-background, doubling for the back wall of the church. The lighting, provided by flatmate Dave’s halogen lamp, was completely different, but I didn’t care about that. Then I very suddenly did care when I accidentally knocked said lamp off of the coffee-table and smashed it to smithereens.

Whoops. The space-time continuum was angry. I’d forgotten that I was breaking a cardinal law of time-travel by going back and filming an event that had not been filmed in the first place. In fact, the continuum was so angry that it then devised a devious new way of preventing me from reshooting Jacob’s dialogue a third time. So just what was this latest insurmountable production-problem? Did Jacob catch flu and lose his voice? Did he quit Cession Church and join Destiny? Did he unexpectedly move house to the moon? No, all of those problems could have potentially been worked around. (even the moon one could have been fixed with a really, really long lens) No, this production issue was far, far more insurmountable than that…


Yes – Movember! An entire month when kiwi males grow mo’s for charity.

So I waited and waited until finally the last clean-shaven month of the year rolled around, (Fleshember?) and I was able to ask Jacob if he wouldn’t mind saying the lines for what I prayed would be the absolute fourth and final time.


Jacob was an incredibly good sport, so on 9th December, armed with flatmate Dave’s digital camera, we finally got Jacob’s shots in the can, and I snuck the black tablecloth and the mug I’d used on week one back home to reshoot my own lines.

You’d think that there could be no further problem with just filming myself. Except of course that my bedroom sounds nowhere near as echoey as the room in which Tyrone and Jacob had been filmed. As a result I had to rig-up a makeshift tripod to shoot myself lip-syncing to my dialogue that we’d audio-recorded at church back on 28th October. Oh, and both the camera batteries were almost dead, so I had to get it right quickly. There is a badge I’m wearing that I wasn’t on the night, but that was too trivial even for me to worry about redoing.


Then began the process of arguing with Windows Movie Maker and a similar program in Nero, both of which had their respective advantages and disadvantages. One wouldn’t read the movies from Cathy’s camera. Neither would recognize the file from Sarah’s phone. In the end I had to upload that one to YouTube, and download it again as an avi via vixy.net.

The most challenging problem to negotiate with the software though, was the way that deleting a shot would automatically move all the subsequent shots earlier to fill-in the gap, whilst deleting a piece of sound would, correctly, just leave them where they were. In the end this made resyncing everything such a chore that I finally drew a line under the whole project and just uploaded the rough cut as it was. Yes, I had finally reached the stage of deciding that it was all too much trouble. It was ragged around the edges, but good enough for me.


It’s not Koyaanisqatsi, but it is a fairly accurate representation of what the audience saw that night, five months ago.

The other episodes:

Part 2 of 4
Part 3 of 4
part 4 of 4

And now, here is a description of all the trouble I went to recalling all the different dates and events for this blog-post…

This blog’s reading level is: ELEMENTARY

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Having taught English at elementary level, I'm extremely pleased!

Luke 6:27-38

Straight after the immediately preceding sketch, I had so much sweat in my eyes, that I could barely make-out the words...

Conspiracy Busters - The Mistletoe Effect

Tonight I was honoured to be asked to be Dave Pitman's guest-sidekick in his current series Conspiracy Busters at Cession / Community Church. "Random Dave" is a challenge to upstage at the best of times, but I did my best anyway. The script and graphics are all Dave's. He'll be a researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy one day... (or maybe he secretly already is)...

Went to another games night with Chris, Kylie and Dave, and learnt the game Rummikub.

Bumped into Melissa on the bus into town tonight.

Then, on Queen Street, I thought I spotted John going into Sky City.

Then I went to see old friend Jamie competing against 12 other acts in the heats of yet another comedy award. Despite all the usual swearing, the night was cleaner than usual, giving room for several quite intelligent acts, of which Jamie’s was certainly one. A lot of laughter as a result, making a really good night out.

And while I was there, I ran into Deanna too!

BEE MOVIE

Seinfeld is back. Or that’s how it felt.

As soon as Jerry’s – sorry – Barry’s parents showed up and started rattling on in their own mindset, it felt like it was once more random weeknights on BBC-2 at 11:35pm. (or thereabouts)

BEE MOVIE is great. It’s bursting at the seams with gags – both spoken and visual – and treads that thin line between telling a mindlessly unworkable story with a great deal of intelligence.

And just for once it’s a CGI-cartoon in which the moral isn’t all about who your family is. (not that there’s anything wrong with that)

Patrick Warburton plays David Puddy as usual.

I had tears of laughter in the cinema during this one. This is brilliant.

9.5 out of 10.

Lamentations

The will of the Lord alone is always carried out.
Good and evil alike take place at his command.
Why should we ever complain when we are punished for our sin?

- Lamentations 3:37-39 Good News Version

Punishment has never made sense to me.

I mean if Harry punches Tom, then that’s wrong.

But if Harry then gets punched as punishment, that’s not really making it right. That’s just doubling the wrong.

Even the argument that Harry needs to get punched in order to learn why punching people is wrong is a bit poor, because someone could just explain it to Harry in words, and then the wrong would not have to be doubled.

For the above reason, whenever I find the assertion in the Bible, or anywhere else in the world, that sin must be punished, it has never made sense to me. The most defining example would have to be Jesus’ suffering our punishment on the cross. He gets punished for us. To me, that’s really wrong. And, without wishing to offend anyone, I don’t think those - awful - hours are anywhere near enough punishment to make-up for all the billions of us that are sinners in the world, plus all those before us throughout history.

In my opinion, the temporary suffering of one cannot equal the eternal suffering of billions.

Or can two wrongs actually make a right after all?

Lamentations is a book that tells it how it is. It’s not just a book about how unbearable life is, it’s a book about how unbearable life is because God deliberately makes it happen that way.

Look, O LORD! Look at those you are torturing!
Women are eating the bodies of the children they loved!

- Lamentations 2:20a (the ironically named Good News Version)

And yet, this is all in the context of a people who are being punished. These Harrys have punched people, and have had their wrongs explained to them, but refused to learn and carried on punching people anyway.

Your prophets had nothing to tell you but lies;
Their preaching deceived you by never exposing your sin.
They made you think you did not need to repent.

- Lamentations 2:14 (Good News)

This is one side of Christianity that somehow seems to get lost in evangelism. Often God’s forgiveness seems to get presented as a magic spell that means that nothing bad will happen to Christians, or if it does, then get this – we actually say that we don’t understand why bad things happen to good people… but that God must have some reason.

No-one is good though. In turning to God, I know that I have a ton of stuff that I need to learn, and simply telling me what I’m getting wrong just doesn’t do it. I see pictures on the news of starving skeletons in bombed-out warzones, and I logically understand, but I don’t really emotionally understand it inside. Unfortunately I need to experience that to really get why it’s wrong to stand by and say/do nothing.

But that's just trite, isn't it? Everyone has bad stuff happen that appears to bear no relation whatsoever to anything we've done. I find myself crying out "WHY, God?" And maybe that's just it. Because it's shaken me up and made no sense, I suddenly go around trying to understand God and morality much more than I did before the tradgedy.

Reading the Bible, and partcularly the short book of Lamentations (5 chapters) makes a heck of a lot more sense to me when reading words like ‘punishment’ as ‘teaching.’

And yes, I'm aware that sounds trite too.

Cession|Creative

About 18 months ago I was invited to pitch-in with Cession|Community’s fortnightly creative meetings, to help brainstorm and plan the content of our church services. I’m not much good in a crowd, so it took me a few of these to relax and start contributing, and to not feel self-conscious about falling silent for a long time. In fact, these meetings have become one of the things that I most enjoy about living here.

Recently these things have been restructured to happen less frequently, but be open to more people attending. Not many people have responded so far, however as Brett said tonight, you need to be able to both contribute ideas and be okay with having many of them turned down by the group.

I still have trouble finding the confidence to argue for an idea, particularly if it’s my own, but it’s good to feel like I’m on a learning curve.

And GREAT to see an idea happening at church a few months later…

Walk Like An Englishman

Getting off the ferry at Half Moon Bay, I still had an hour’s walk ahead of me to get home.

Taking a wrong turn rather cemented an idea I’d been lightly toying with for this evening – to do a bit of exploring and revisit some old haunts in the area.

Living in Howick for the past two-and-half years, I’ve fallen into some bad habits. One of them would be getting used to being driven around by other people.

Much as I enjoy my friends' company, I also feel really good that I took up jogging again this year.

So anyway, with only a vague idea of how the many places I’ve visited in this corner of Auckland jigsaw together, (I never absorb geography unless I’m walking) my legs set-off on a trip down memory lane, and quickly found Bucklands Beach.

Did I say memory lane? I don’t think I’ve ever been to Bucklands Beach – just heard a lot of mention of it, and spent about a year honestly believing that Eastern Beach had been it. So far this was more of a trip down amnesia lane.

Still, I treated myself to a can of Coke and marvelled at the beautiful bright red sunset as I strolled down the front in the cool evening air. It was highly tempting to just stop and chill on a bench, but I knew that would rob me of the rest of my journey.

When Bucklands Beach had run out, I continued along the coast hoping to make it round the cliffs to the aforementioned Eastern Beach.

This wasn’t going so well. Each turn around the cliffs just revealed another enticingly short walk to the next promising turn, but my worn-out shoes were letting in more and more water from the wet sand, and after a while it was getting pretty dark too.

Then the zip on my backpack burst open (as it’s apt to do lately) and my camera fell out and smacked down onto a rock.

Finally I decided I had to do the sensible thing, and I turned back. I’d noted that 3 turns back there had been a set of steps up the cliff.

Making it to the top, now almost in pitch darkness, I discovered that civilisation was still nowhere to be found. This turned out to be somewhere called Musick Point, a place that will remain forever etched in my memory as having a pathway that I followed through a lot of grass until it just stopped. Literally – it stopped and just became grass too. What the heck was the point of building that?!

You know how in films, when a character is lost in the wilderness, they always like to find a high vantage point to look around from? Well, that was no help either. From this high-up peninsulan perspective, I actually appeared to impossibly be on a small island – surrounded as I apparently was by water through all 360 degrees.

Following the pathway back, and occasionally using my phone to try to illuminate the map on my bus timetable, I vaguely perceived a road about 2 metres away. (it was that dark now) I was in luck! Any road couldn’t help but eventually lead back to civilisation. So I followed the road downhill until I found I had actually been wandering about on Howick Golf Course.

So I headed down Clovelly Road where, I later learnt, my buddy Shaune drove past me, but assumed it wasn’t me because I was so far away and on foot. :)

Still, tired as I was, I was still determined to take a detour down to Eastern Beach. Here I had been Kayaking for Kenya. Here I had also been to two Edge camps, and here I had also been baptised in 2004. Tonight however, here was where I saw a real live shooting star, burning down through the atmosphere towards the earth.


After revisiting the spot of my baptism (the tide was now out) I photographed the stars from there, and retraced an exploratory stroll I’d been on with fellow Brit Karen in 2005. Up two flights of stone steps and to an American-looking residential area. I accidentally walked around in a circle, and in so doing inadvertently managed to retrace the whole short journey from that afternoon.

Now however I was getting tired. Home was still a long way off, and my priority now was to make the next hour of walking go by as quickly as possible.

So I set off via MacLeans College and remembered my very first trip to Howick, when I’d been applying to a Bible School here three years ago. From then on I was simply retracing my steps home from a few weeks ago when I'd been to hear the Bruce Murray Singers one evening.

Arriving home at 11:30pm, I’d been walking for four hours. I made a cup of Horlicks, and crashed into bed. The daytime on Waiheke Island had been unusually free of walking, but the evening had certainly made up for that.

And I’d never have got to have that adventure in a car.

Waiheke Island

There’s nothing like a deadline.

For years now I’ve had an ambition to visit little Waiheke Island, (partly because I can see it from my house) but with another trip home looming soon, early this morning I finally got it organised.

Sitting on the Sealink ferry about to leave Half Moon Bay, I phoned Nigel and his brother Steve who would be joining me over there. They were still waiting to catch a different ferry from Devonport on the North Shore, which was further away, however an hour later they had arrived over there okay, but were still waiting for me.

Even more bizarrely, when my boat did finally arrive in the little port, Nigel and Steve were nowhere to be seen, although their voices on my phone claimed that they were standing right in front of me.

How was this possible? Were they invisible? Had I slipped onto a parallel Earth? Had my longer boat journey somehow resulted in our both standing on the same spot at different moments in time, yet still eerily having a phone conversation across two different time-zones?

No, it turned out that Waiheke Island actually has two ferry terminals, and, yes, we were both scratching our heads on opposite sides of the island.

So we agreed a rendezvous-point, and I got the shuttle to the BP station in Oneroa, the driver very helpfully promising to pick me up again from here at 6 o’clock, and giving me a phone number to call in case I decided to change the pick-up location to the other ferry terminal. Now there’s service for you.

As I waited and browsed in the convenience store there, I couldn’t help but reflect that the limited supply of products on offer had all had to come across on the ferry too. Afterwards I lay down in the hot grass on the opposite side of the road and continued to wait for my friends to arrive. I was lazily starting to feel like I was on holiday.

Upon making contact, the three of us went to a café for brunch. I’d already had a big breakfast, so I just had a slice of cheesecake while Nigel and Steve tucked-into a big fry-up. When I took the following photo, we were joined by a fourth companion – can you spot them?



After an hour and a half discussing kiwi slang, we all agreed that we didn’t much feel like spending the whole hot day charging around getting tired, so it was down to the beach to snooze for another long while.

After that we visited a dual catholic / anglican church, before getting an ice cream and attempting to check the bus times.


Giving up on that we headed down to another totally deserted beach – the Esplanade – where we played Uno and again we all crashed-out for some more kip around a breakfast table.


At one stage I went looking for a toilet, only to find a road with two signs at each end that both read “TOILET” pointing at each other, with no personal convenience in-between. This struck me as a particularly cruel piece of town-planning. Some exploring revealed the toilet to actually be in the nearby park, however the assumption that you would guess to explore over there rather defeated the point of putting the signs up in the first place.

Along the way I spotted two people taking down the bus timetables and replacing them with updated ones. When the three of us thus had to check the times all over again, it occurred to me just how much this really did feel like I was getting away on holiday. I mean, when every single place on the bus timetable is unfamiliar, you know you’re some distance away from home.

At their ferry terminal, Steve bought us all a coffee, and we went our separate ways. The shuttle driver showed up to take me to the other terminal, and to protest about how his helpful colleague should never have made such a helpful offer this morning.

I added this to my growing list of instances when two different people, both using ‘logic,’ have arrived at two irreconcilably polarised answers. You can smugly talk about rules, laws and policies all you like, but none of them understands right and wrong.


Sitting on the ferry again watching the island scroll away in front of me, I’d had a much-needed relaxing day of nothing. I find it extremely hard to stop my brain turning over, but today I’d got away from the clutter of my everyday life, without much of an agenda other than to simply set-foot on the island.

Sometimes it’s great not to have a deadline.