In early December, I was contacted by the people who run the New Zealander of the Year Awards and informed that I was, once again, a semi-finalist (top 10) for Senior New Zealander of the Year yet again.
I must admit I was really chuffed as it’s a nice acknowledgement of the work I do on many fronts. I get to go to the flash event that I don’t have to organise myself, have a great kai, take my whānau with me (they have to pay, of course), and spend the evening with some of the very best people you could ever meet.
I’ve seen ‘the competition’ for the Senior New Zealander of the Year title and I’d be totally astounded if I got through to the next stage – the finals which is the top three – because the other semi-finalists are unbelievably, astonishingly good. I’m honoured, and certainly pleased, to have reached this stage, doubly so when I find that 3,500 nominations were received for the 2025 awards.
I’d especially like to thank Anna McDonald for informing Auckland Archery Club members that I had received the honour and for loading it on the club’s social media page. Mostly when people receive awards like this – and I’ve been lucky enough to receive a few – they are resoundingly ignored even by our own mates. Tall poppy syndrome? I like to hope not, but then …
I love to hate that term. We often think it’s a Kiwi-ism but it’s not. Its roots go way back.
The first use of phrase ‘tall poppies’ appears in Livy’s story from volume one of his history of Rome and its people Ab Urbe Condita (‘From the Founding of the City’). Livy (59 BCE – 17 AD) wrote of the despotic Roman King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus who is said to have received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquin went into his garden, took a stick and swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there. The messenger returned to Gabii and told Sextus what he had seen. Sextus realised that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, which he then proceeded to do.
We don’t do that in Aotearoa New Zealand – yet. Here we bugger the gene pool of leadership talent by electing the least able to our Whare Paremata (parliament), bitching about them for three years, awarding the leaders knighthoods, then voting them out – but it is happening under Trump in the US.
Other similar stories with the same theme can be found in Aristotle’s Politics where Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, makes the head chopping gesture to a herald of Thrasybulus, tyrant of Miletus, and also in Herodotus’ Histories in which the same Thrasybulus makes the decapitating gesture to Periander’s herald. However, these Greek stories involve fields of grain and only Livy’s Roman tale features poppies.
It would seem to be a pretty universal concept because in Japan they say ‘the nail that sticks up gets hammered down’ while, in the Netherlands, the expression is “don’t put your head above ground level’. In Chile they say ‘’pull the jacket’ while in Scandinavia they refer to The Law of Jante. The Law of Jante derives from a 1933 novel by Aksel Sandemose which contains rules and stipulations such as ‘you’re not to think you are anything special’ and ‘perhaps you don’t think we know a few things about you?’
My old Mum used to say to me ‘don’t think you’re special, you’re not’ and ‘don’t be so up yourself’, and occasionally, when I’d really got on her wick, ‘don’t get ideas above your station’.
I had no idea what that meant.
Another of her favourites was ‘stop putting on airs and graces’ as though whatever my behaviour was in that particular moment was actually the preserve of a higher class and therefore forbidden, or at least frowned upon, when seen in a piece of working-class, white trash like me. She was terrified the neighbours would think I was becoming a snob despite the fact that I went to garbage schools, had learned nothing, had no friends, and lived in a neighbourhood as far on the wrong side of the tracks as it was possible, in 1950’s Christchurch, to be. Her constant reminder to ‘never forget where you came from’ mirrored the voices I was hearing in the music I loved that originated from the southern states of the US where ‘don’t get above your raisin’ was the constant warning from recently liberated working class black mothers to their growing children and which was at such serious odds with my dad’s proud, largely egalitarian, often unspoken, working-class heritage, that confusion reigned.
While I didn’t really understand what Mum was saying, and any realisation that a terminal case of imposter syndrome would soon kick in, my unhelpful response was aways ‘a cat may look at a king’.
Impotence personified.
There’s been plenty of tall poppy shit with this nomination but there’s also been plenty of support. The announcement of the top three places for Senior New Zealander of the Year is on the 20th which it would seem, is today.
UPDATE: nothing yet.
So, all the very best to all the nominees. You’re the most extraordinary bunch of ancients and I love you all. See you all at dinner.
I’m so very glad this ain’t my first rodeo.
dykiegirl 