I’ve hated this woman. I’ve not loved her at full capacity. I’ve fed her lies & told her she wasn’t good enough and have allowed others to tell her she wasn’t good enough. I’ve allowed her to be broken. I’ve allowed others to treat her disrespectfully. I’ve allowed her to run through brick walls & […]
Tag: family
‘Are you a girl who used to be a boy’, then the follow up ‘are you Finn’s Mum?’
Rāhui Day 29 (31): Shit, it’s those odd numbers again. Oh well, just have to live through them, I guess. Hard to believe it a month since I sat in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs at Maungakiekie and watched my Cushla coaching, our Finn shooting arrows, and George Corbett trying to strangle me. I […]
A tight-lipped, shudder of cultural inconvenience.
Rāhui Day 30 (32): Spent much of the day trying to find something to commemorate in lives sacrificed to the gods of money, nationalism, and ego. The ANZAC Days of my childhood were not the jingoistic memorialising of tidied up carnage that they are today, the knowing was still too raw and real. Some men […]
Being a survivor – The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care
Kāti rā, ā te tākiritanga mai o te ata, ā te huanga ake o te awatea, kia tau he māramatanga, kia ū ko te pai, kia mau ko te tika. Koinei ko te tangi a te ngākau e Rongo, tūturu ōwhiti whakamaua kia tina, tina! Hui e, tāiki e! (And so, as dawn rises, and […]
RymanHealth ‘Senior New Zealander of the Year’
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 […]
The All Blacks v The Wallabies
Early in the year, Cadbury ran a promotion celebrating volunteers. This involved submitting the name, a brief CV, and a photograph of the person you were recommending as a top volunteer and Cadbury would turn this into a cute, animated cartoon video featuring that person. This seemed like fun, so I submitted details for both […]
Health
At my age, and discounting mobility, I have say I’m blessed with extremely good health. Please note the qualifier ‘at my age’. I have a karate associate in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Eiko Hanshi Renzie Hanham. with whom I went to school. We shared a number of courses over the years and sat next to each other in […]
Maiden Tāmaki
I’m not sure whether I’ve been clear enough in my earlier statements about my health. Mostly it’s great, sometimes it’s not. There are two reasons why, at least some of the time, my body is not quite right. These are: My excuse for (2) is that we didn’t know how to train properly, had no gyms […]
Edinburgh Comes Home
I’ve been to Edinburgh, but I don’t remember that much about it. It wasn’t that memorable. Grey clouds, and rain. I stayed in quite a nice hotel, small, and a bit classy. I had a nice first floor room that overlooked a rather elegant street. None of this was planned. The hotel just happened to […]
When I was a kid, New Year’s Eve was a bit of a thing.
Facebook 31 December 2021 When I was a kid, New Year’s Eve was a bit of a thing. I didn’t know then but where we lived was the wrong side of the tracks and brutally working class. It was post-war, the dawning of the 1950s, and everyone on our street lived in a state house. […]