Untamed

It may as well have been a family holiday to outer space. The winding metal road definitely seemed galactic in length – signaling the increasing distance from civilisation as we knew it. But arriving at the final frontier was worth it. Just beyond the diminutive kaikoura grass carpark, a wild scrub and scorching black sand path led out to a lunar landscape: to the left, a short walk to the small, coarse-sand beach, dirt cliffs sinking to jagged rock pools; to the right, the long, distant, shimmering beach meeting the charcoal horizon. Base camp had its own unchanging vista: the timeless, brown painted fence and chipped walls standing constant against the changing seasons and fashions.

Despite the grandeur of the landscape, two memories from our holiday at Whatipu beach really stand out for me. The first was a frog hiding at the tube-like base of a flax bush in the garden just outside one of the cabins. One of the other kids must have heard the frog and we all gathered around to try and find it. Was it really there? Did frogs actually exist outside of Beatrice Potter books? Shunning the common garden path, it maintained an air of intrigue, (so as to segue smoothly out of our picture-book imaginations and into reality) by choosing the flax-tube portal to another world. We peered into the tube, into a timeless place so accessible to boys and girls short on years but rich in imagination.

The second was an older boy – tall, gangly, with fair hair and skin, wearing a horizontal red-and-white-striped T shirt – who broke his arm. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Older boys were tough and invincible. He was what they called a teenager, but to me he was as good as a grown man – sure, slightly younger than my father – but certainly as commanding, perhaps with an added mystery due to the extraterrestrial setting. With his older-boy broken voice he let out the most heart-wrenching older-boy screams. I’d never seen someone in so much pain before. He appeared to me, at once, both brave and broken, and I felt for him a strange, raw mix of pity and admiration.

Whenever I go back to Whatipu I scan the brown camp to see if it is as I left it, and imagine the frog still hiding in the flax portal, intriguing a new generation of space travelers. I wonder where the boy with the broken arm is now; what he looks like as an older man, whether he still remembers Whatipu, or if he shut it out to make his home in another galaxy. On one of our early dates I took my now wife to Whatipu, where we climbed the not very galactic dirt cliff and sat shivering and exposed, politely enjoying ourselves.

My entry for the 2012 North & South magazine essay writing comp.

Boarding school

On Saturday I went snowboarding for the first time in about 15 years. I was expecting to see some revolutionary new shape of snowboard, or at least a throwback to a retro design – a bit like how the latest skateboards look like the long, thin, downhill boards of old. But unlike skateboarding, snowboarding doesn’t really have much of a history to throw back to. On hearing that I virtually hadn’t snowboarded since the invention of (the) sport, my helpful bro-in-law John brought me up to speed on a few skiing essentials, including that you are now in the minority if you don't wear a helmet. My first thought was, “what, even including snowboarders?”, because, you see, I’d always thought that snowboarding was the cool thing to do on the mountain, while skiing was just for conformists. But that all changed when I asked John, “are your skis wider than normal skis”, to which he replied, “it depends how you define normal skis – anything goes these days.” …Okay, I’ll just be over here twirling my 90s dreadlocks. After hiring my boots, board and helmet, and figuring out how to do up my boots, put on my complimentary wristguards (they go on the outside of the gloves) and lock my front foot into the bindings, it was time to join John, my twin five-year-old nieces and eight-year-old nephew in plopping backwards into the chairlift for the tranquil, scenic ascent to the point of uncertainty. As soon as the top of the chairlift came into view I got some slight jitters about the all important slide with your chairlift chums down to where you are well clear of the turning chair. Adding to the pressure was the fact that I only had one foot in the bindings, but I found some spare plank on which to put my back foot and made it down ok. It was such a beautiful day (it felt more like a day at the beach than on icy snow), I was determined not to ruin it on my first run with a stinging face plant or dislocated shoulder, so, after making the whole party wait while I clumsily secured my back foot, I gently began my descent, stopping every metre or two to look in awe at my already tiny relatives disappearing ahead of me. I was happy to find that after such a long hiatus, snowboarding is like riding a bicycle, except you face sideways, and you don't hold onto anything... so maybe skiing is more like riding a bicycle than snowboarding. I digest. Next day my nephew and I went skateboarding and I discovered I can still ollie - there is now probably some cooler word for it - so I must say I'm tempted to get back into skateboarding... I'm just not that excited by having to get my old job back at the chicken hatchery to pay for it.

Breakneck

Ollie back to 1989, when I was saving for a new skateboard. I already owned a Santa Cruz Tom Grosso(?) mini that I bought off a guy at school with one blue and one green eye who loved to talk about skateboarding, and who once instructed me to find out for myself a bit more about one particular aspect of skateboarding, to which I replied, "I'll do that for homework." His nickname for me was "runner boy", because I was doing a lot of distance running at the time. I needed $340 to buy a new deck, trucks, wheels, bearings and accessories from Cheapskates in Henderson, and the obvious pathway to my dreams lay in sacrificing my two-week school holiday for a job breaking necks at the Waitakere Chicken Hatchery, where my sister had worked before me. She had the unenviable task of sorting the reject chicks from the good ones, then breaking their necks using a special thumb technique. I wasn't given that job, and instead ended up on forgettable tasks like cleaning and stacking plastic trays and hosing out tanks etc. I saved my $340 and proceeded to Henderson to get me some wheels etc. The skateboard deck I picked had graphics depicting death, eg skulls and/or demons, which didn't impress my dad, a church pastor, so he gave me the choice of either returning the deck to the shop or scraping off the graphics using a brick. I took the deck back and swapped it for a Santa Cruz Jeff Grosso 'toybox', featuring a picture of a toybox.

National labour

We took 17 days to sail from Fiji to New Zealand, landing in Opua in the beautiful Bay of Islands. From Opua we sailed overnight to Crusader’s final resting place in Auckland Harbour. Despite it being winter, I had a strange desire to continue traveling south, so I went and lived in Christchurch with my sister for a while. I had decided that I wanted to be a yacht designer, so I went around the boat yards looking for labouring work, and wound up working for an old guy who made Olympic row boats. I can’t recall exactly what purpose I served, but I remember one day drilling bolt holes in seats, and making a mistake, which caused the old man to exclaim, “stuff in Christ!” – obviously the dyslexic version of “Christ ‘n stuff”. Pushbiking to work in sub-zero temperatures wasn’t for me, so after two weeks I quit my job and headed back to West Auckland, where I got a job in a large fiberglass yacht factory. I was helping an old man called Martin to assemble a large fleet of small inflatable/fiberglass, see-through-bottom fizzboats, ready for shipping offshore. Martin liked to call people nerds, and complained that over his lifetime he'd paid over a million dollars in tax. One of the other boatbuilders, a mate of mine, was helping to churn out a new yacht design called a Farr Platu, or as he called it, “plaadu”. Sometime in January I either quit or was laid off the job, and with my yacht design ambitions behind me, I asked a builder friend of mine for a labouring job.

Three months in a leaky boat

We never made it to Kiribati. A week after setting off from Fiji our boat sprung a leak and almost sank, so we turned back for Fiji. We approached Suva Harbour at night, and decided to negotiate the channel to the anchorage in the dark instead of heaving to and waiting til morning. We didn't read the channel lights properly and our boat came to a grinding halt on top of a reef. Skipper Sam was in conniptions, so Mike sprung to and radioed the coastguard, who told us he'd knocked off for the day and couldn't help - laid back Island styles to the extreme! Fortunately some other yachties in the harbour were listening in on their radios, and on hearing our plight, donned wetsuits, jumped in their rubber duckies and selflessly came to our aid. Using two anchors they cleverly lifted us off the reef. During our three week layover in Fiji we hitch-hiked around the island of Viti Levu, went to the movies and saw Schindler's List, did some token missionary work and took a token dive over the side of the boat to check for damage in preparation for our return sail to New Zealand. We set sail once more for the last leg of the voyage. As we were nearing New Zealand we saw an air force Orion fly low over us a few times so we turned on our radio and received instruction from them to change course and head toward a stricken yacht in the area. (Mum and dad later told me that they had an anxious wait between the first phone call from the coastguard telling them that a yacht in our area had activated its emergency position-indicating radio beacon, and the second to say it wasn't our boat!) About four hours later we found the tiny yacht bobbing helplessly and with its two crew looking quite relieved to see us. We threw them a line and started towing them back to New Zealand, which, given the headwind and our unreliable motor, turned out to be a bit of a hopeless task. A charter fishing launch came out from New Zealand and took over the tow, costing the two guys $5000 including bait.

Crew

By about May 1994 I was getting sick of eating fish and chips for lunch every day so I quit Captain Delicious and joined the crew of a sailboat headed for Kiribati, an island nation in the central Pacific Ocean. The yacht, "Crusader", was skippered by a Scottish retired merchant seaman named Sam, whose aim was to show Christian films and deliver Bibles to the natives. Sam needed three crew, so once again it fell to me to recruit two mates for the job. My seamen of choice were Michael "Thwaite means field" Haythornthwaite and Steve Rauch. On the first leg of the voyage from Auckland to Suva we were joined by two Bible college students, both great guys whose extra crewmanship proved invaluable on our maiden passage. Dubbed "the floating footpath" by some other yachties in Suva harbour, Crusader was a 50-foot, 27-ton yacht made of an inch thickness of cement smeared over steel frame and chicken mesh wire. Being concrete, Crusader didn't rot, didn't rust, and didn't move. Whereas race yachts take only four days to sail from Auckland to Suva, we took 12 days. But they were a pretty amazing 12 days. Here is a letter I wrote home as a bright-eyed 20 year-old (first, a small piece of background info: we sailed to Fiji in tandem with another yacht called Ipo Kai (referred to by Sam over the radio as "Eko Pie")): DEAREST Mum Dad Alastair Catherine and Evelyn, Wow! The trip so far has been amazing and I don't know where to start. Well, we saw you guys disappear from the wharf and Mike and I both looked at each other in total disbelief as we tried to comprehend the next 5-6 months. We had a great night's sailing to Tutukaka yacht club and arrived there at noon Sunday and left for Fiji (after Sam had finished clearing customs at Whangarei) on Monday evening. Steve and I are on the 4 - 8 watch (twice a day) and we had a real scare just leaving Cape Reinga on Tuesday morning. We had a storm and were forced to take down all sail and just let the wind and waves do their thing. That's when the sea sickness set in. All six of us were feeling lousy but only three of us 'hove to' for a few days while popping dozens of seasick pills. The weather eventually cleared up and it wasn't long before we were itching to jump in the 'briney'(Sam has taught us some real seaman terms). We eventually persuaded Sam to let us have a swim while we were in the doldrums for a few days. According to the chart, where we swam was 5.5km deep and we went over with masks and snorkels. It's amazing to look down - you don't see anything but a beautiful purple/blue/mauve colour but you can see a long way down - if you know what I mean - you feel real giddy. By this time we had conned Sam into unreefing the sails and putting an extra sail up. The boat is quite capable and we hit 10 knots a few times. One of the bizarre things of the Pacific is the flying fish. They leap out of the water and literally fly, only a few feet high, for ages - 10 or 20 seconds and it's sometimes hard to distinguish between these and some offshore gulls we had. On Thursday night we had to heave to (quite clever - you reverse the headsail, tighten the mainsail and give the wheel full windward lock, effectively stalling the boat in one position) for eight hours in the Kadavu passage while we waited for the wind to swing. It swung all right! That Friday we were heading upwind for Suva and the wind dropped off completely. Then five minutes later the wind hit us from an unexpected angle at about 40 knots with rain that felt like shrapnel. We were so scared (again) and the wind kept up for one day and we headed for Nandi to shelter. Sam rang Ipo Kai on the VHF and told them our plans - they heard us but we didn't hear them. We were told later by Ipo Kai that they heard us and were praying like mad that we wouldn't head there because there are tons of reefs there. Anyway, we got to Suva, navigating through other reefs, on Saturday. The waves are really amazing out on the ocean - about two to three metres high but about 10m spaced. They roll along at about 20 knots and look really freaky. Night sailing is freaky too because every piece of broken water lights up with luminescence and it looks all glowy.

Captain Delicious

One morning on my way to work I was passed by Grant Gibellini in his mustard yellow Triumph 2000, which was a big relief because I was on foot and he picked me up. I had not only got my brother a job in the hothouse but also his mate Grant, and our friends Mike and David Haythornthwaite. I’m not quite sure why my boss needed so many positions filled, but paying us only $4 per hour, he virtually could have afforded to start white slavery. The hothouse job wasn’t the only job I recruited my mates for. As a first-year university student I got a part-time job in the city at a new fish and chip shop called Captain Delicious. It was in, I think, Auckland’s first ever food hall, down the bottom of the BNZ Tower. Despite bringing with them their own secret fish batter recipe, the owners – brothers Bing and Ben – had hired a professional chef to make salads for the salad bar, and it wasn’t long before he was passing on his salad-making skills to me. Next thing I'd finished uni for the year (and also for good – my bachelor of science was boring me to tears) and I was working full-time as master and commander of Captain Delicious, rocking up there early every morning to boil eggs, pasta and spuds for the egg, pasta and potato salads, and also mastering tabouleh and fish frying. The office consisted of a phone/fax tucked in a corner near the door and my brother and I still joke about seeing one of the owners on a number of occasions having intimate phone chats with his (we assume) girlfriend, standing up but trying to minimize the appearance of a front-bulge in his pants.

Glasshouse

At the end of sixth form I decided I needed a holiday job, so I headed to the countryside and went door knocking in a tomato hothouse area. I literally knocked on the front door of a house and must have caught the owner at lunchtime because I was able to deliver my spiel to a Scottish man named Roy, whose wife was called Robin - hence their car numberplate "ROBROY". They owned about three white Scottish terriers which would turn green from running through the tomato plants. I know this because I got the job. The job was my introduction to hard physical labour, and also involved a half-hour bike ride to and from work (I was saving for a car). Sometimes at lunch I would even cycle to the bakery for a quick sit-down to scoff my pie and donut before scurrying back to the vines. First thing in the morning was tomato picking time and the acrid smell was not for the weak-stomached - my brother worked a stint in the hothouse and one morning the smell was enough to make him throw up, to which Uncle Rob responded, "it's all in your head laddie." Obviously people who live in glass houses don't throw up. From the tomato hothouse we moved over to the beans hothouse for a game of try-to-spot-the-green-string-beans-hiding-in-amongst-the-lush-green-foliage-then-fill-up-your-pouch-til-it-needs-emptying-then-do-it-all-over-again-for-the-next-two-months til 12 o'clock lunch, which meant we'd broken the back of the day, much like our actual backs. After lunch it was outside for a bit of sawdust sifting with our friend the Norse horticultural student - we'll call him Steve. One person's job was to wear the gloves and spread around the cheap grade sawdust on top of the chicken mesh table to separate out the woodchips, while the other person shoveled the sawdust on to the table from a pile the size of Vesuvius. You knew it was time to switch roles when the person shoveling got sunstroke. Cycling as quickly as possible away from work was my only source of energy for the sweaty ride home. A year and a bit after starting the job I'd saved enough money for a car, which meant I had to decide whether to buy a Triumph Herald, Fiat 850 or Renault 12. I went with the orange Renault 12 for $700.

Chapter 4.

With only six months to go on the course I took a gap year during which I traveled to Remuera to work as a dish pig in two restaurants diagonally opposite each other at a large intersection. Cycling home in the dark one night I noticed up ahead a group of youths loitering on the footpath and spilling out onto the road. I didn't bother swerving for them and they grabbed my bike and brought me to a halt. One of them mashed a piece of buttered bread into my face, obviously leftover from what his mum had packed for him that night. Then they let me go so I carried on to the next intersection and stopped at the red light, which turned out to be a mistake because they caught me up and before I knew it I was out cold lying on the road and waking up to the sound of a concerned motorist yelling from her car, "leave him alone!" Needless to say I continued riding home making sure I'd left enough of a gap between myself and my pursuers before stopping at any more red lights. Also that year I did Axis Ad school for which I did two months work experience in an ad agency creative department under the auspices of creative director Gordon Clarke. At the time he was pitching for the Tourism NZ account which he lost with efforts like a picture of a man in a forest and the line, "Where the only man-made thing is you." The winning entry was the 100% Pure NZ campaign with the genius NZ % sign. To his credit GC was the first and only person to ever tell me to get over myself - probably the best slogan I've ever been given. Recently I googled him and read a funny story about how once while entertaining dinner guests he got up and started vacuuming. Despite my creative partner and I getting runner up we didn't get a job and I continued washing dishes and deep frying poppadoms and working on my portfolio before returning to AUT to finish my four-year diploma.

Chapter 3. My journey as a writer.

When I was 21 I decided to enroll in a Diploma in Advertising at AUT. I was accepted but, having heard that group presentations were involved, my fear of public speaking prevented me from starting, so I continued working as a builder for another year. The following year I reapplied and this time went through with it. I did the course partly because I was sick of my job and also because of perceived societal pressure to go to uni to “get a piece of paper”. I think I knew at the time that all I needed to get a copywriting job in an ad agency was a good portfolio, but as an early-twenty-something with time to burn I decided to spend a few years as a student instead. I was only really interested in the creative side of advertising but the three year course required me to do papers not only about the broader business of advertising but also straight business papers like accounting and commercial law (which I failed two, possibly three times before I was given a pass mark). The one paper – and lecturer – that made the university experience worthwhile for me I found buried at the end of my second year in the lazy summer holiday. Led by NZ ad guru and copywriter extraordinaire Jim Falconer, the copywriting paper uncovered a love of language which I had lost since I was a kid.

Post Post

After completing my fourth New Zealand comedy festival show, I realise how much more work I have to do to become the world's best comedian (goal setting has never been my strength, so I figure if I just aim for the absolute furthest away stars then I might just hit the top of the tree, or however the cliche goes). The New Zealand comedy festival is easy - you only have to do five nights each in Auckland and Wellington. At a "real" comedy festival you can do 28 nights on the trot if you like. Next year I'd like to do another New Zealand comedy festival, but this time preview my show in the Melbourne comedy festival before. I'm currently having two weeks post festival to chill out and reflect before I start writing a new show for next year. I'm finally learning to think in terms of writing a new show each year instead of just randomly updating my 20 minute pub set with new jokes. It's taken me a long time to start thinking like a professional. In the past I have just been toying with comedy, just because - among other reasons - I thought I was going to live forever. Now I am starting to recognise my limitations and finiteness.

It seems like only a year ago that it was only one month til comedy festival... oh wait, it was only one year ago. I'm not used to doing shows in back to back comedy festivals, so you could say that this year I've had to write a new show twice as fast! Which has been aided by the momentum I'm carrying from last year's show. I really think I'm going to have a lot of fun with my show this year and I'm already having a lot of fun writing and testing it. This year I will perform a Wellington season of my show, something I haven't done since festival 2009 - so, for me, two shows ago. But unlike 2009 I will do my Wellington season after my Auckland season, so I will go into my Auckland season cold, but not as cold as I went into my show last year because that was my first show in two years!!

My new show is called GSOH in which I explore what a good sense of humor is by looking at how my own sense of humor works, and how I write my material. A popular question I get asked is, how do I think of my material? Trying to answer this has made me look at where my inspiration comes from and how I nut out material after it has struck.

GSOH opens in Auckland on Tuesday 8th May, 7.15pm, and runs for five nights at Q Theatre.
In Wellington Wednesday 16th - Saturday 19th May, 10pm @ Cavern Club.