November 2024

It’s raining in Motueka. It feels like it’s raining all around the world.

A few weeks ago, it was the birthday of one of my all-time best friends, Mike Jones.

I can’t remember how long ago Mike died, but it seems like a long time.

Then a day or two after that it was the birthday of my beautiful daughter, Hope. R.I.P.

Grief is a sneaky thing. It’s there, but you may not know it’s there.

I met Mike when I was 14. My parents had moved to Christchurch from Dunedin and Mike lived over the road at his mother’s dairy. Phyliss, Mike’s mother, sold lots of pies and sandwiches to the railway and cartage workers who worked just right close to the store. Trains would wake us up in the middle of the night. The gasworks were about a quarter mile away. The stench never left us.

Phyliss was a little round Pakeha woman with grey hair and some random hairs that grew off her chin. Phyliss’s eyes almost always gleamed with love. She had two pug dogs, Mickey and Minnie.

Phyllis started work at 5am when she began to make sandwiches for the shop. My favourite was always lettuce, vegemite and some crushed walnuts.

Mike was half Maori. It was said (by Phyliss) that Mike’s father fell into a vat of boiling fat at a whaling station somewhere around Picton.

Mike was a big guy with a huge personality. He had a crook hip and walked with a limp which was barely noticeable.

Me and Mike connected fast over our mutual love of music. He played bass guitar on his Fender Precision Bass. He’d practise day and night and thrust his groin away behind the guitar. He wasn’t a flashy player, but my God he was solid.

When Mike played his acoustic guitar, he’d sing away to an original song that he created called, “Wees and Poos on my little brown head.”

Life was a laugh. We had music day in and day out.

We’d sing together at night. “Have you seen my wife, Mr Jones,

do you know what it’s like on the outside?

Don’t go talking too loud you’ll cause a landslide, Mr Jones…”

I moved into the dairy (my parents lived 30 yards away on Wilson’s Road) to be close to Mike so we could talk music day and night. We shared a very small bedroom.

Each Sunday Mike’s girlfriend, Kay, would come over and stay in bed with him all day. Mike would give her a good rogering. Kay was a sweet little thing.

One day one of my girlfriends came very close to an orgasm in that room. I didn’t stop running until I got to Ferry Road.

Hope, my daughter, was a beautiful woman and all too vulnerable for this world.

Grief doesn’t allow me to say much more about all that. Grief draws a ring around your heart and draws it in real tight.

Lately on television there have been various news items about the notorious mental hospital Lake Alice.

In the Big House I met a few guys who had been sent to Lake Alice for punishment. They tried to rebel. When they returned, they were very damaged goods. There was no place for them in the whole, wide world. They never rebelled again. It just wasn’t

in them.

I was in mental institutions three times between 1974 and 1975. I was in Sunnyside twice when I tried to escape my addiction to Cocaine and Opiates. On the first night in Sunnyside another patient jumped on top of me at 3am and tried to have sex with me.

I was sentenced to the Cherry Farm Mental Hospital in 1975 for a court report. I was put into Villa One which was a treatment villa for alcoholics. I was the first drug addict in the place. Every morning at 8am a nurse would bring me my Methadone, then she would sit in front of me for an hour to make sure I didn’t die.

After a week I was elected Secretary of the Patient’s Committee.

The head shrink said that my problem was that I could not express negative feelings.

After a couple of months one of my visitors was busted for bringing drugs onto the premises. As punishment I was given a shot of some drug whereby I literally could not move. I complained and was given another shot of the same drug.

I couldn’t kick up trouble anymore.

But that’s living in a democracy for you.

Needless to say, I was given a bad court report and went straight to jail.

In jail I found the book that would change my life, “Soledad Brother” by George Jackson. It allowed me to feel angry and that got me through my Lag.

There are lots of things that will piss you off in the world. The new leader of the free world is one of them. The man is a sordid piece of rubbish and we must express negative feelings about him, but we are trapped. I’m sure you know this.

Every time I enter the USA, I must have a “waiver of ineligibility” because of narcotics convictions from more than 40 years ago. This waiver takes months and months to get.

So, we have a convicted felon in charge. This man is loud and belligerent. He will make your ring-gear pucker up.

There are plenty of people in New Zealand who are quiet and belligerent, who think that the world owes them a living, who rip off anyone who comes close. People who would rip the pennies off a blind man’s eyes.

Decades ago, I was in business with a man like this. He was a nightmare. And more about this in my next blog.

Kelly and I have just been downtown in the ’52 Bug. It’s pouring with rain, and ordinarily we don’t take any of my Volkswagens out in wet weather.

The bug ran out of gas, and we had to crawl to a gas station to fill it up. With a 6-volt ignition, it doesn’t pay to have the lights and wipers on as well as the fog lights. The ’52 bug doesn’t have a fuel gauge, which can be difficult at times.

I had to go to my pharmacy and pick up some Prednisone and antibiotics. I’ve not been breathing well. In fact, I have some kind of shadow on my lung, the same as I did when I was eight years old.

When I was eight, my mother told me the doctors were going to try to keep me alive until I was ten years old and then take a lung out. No one seems to know what this meant. My mother was very much in awe of doctors, so it’s possible she misinterpreted everything.

When I was ten, they put me into hospital and the shadow had gone. I never got sick again for years.

Nowadays, we often talk about “Healthy Homes.” I was brought up in a house that had rotten floorboards and a room (a second living room) that was dedicated to coal for the coal range. We lived right by the bush in Dunedin, and it was always damp.

But I’ve always been good at (if I do say so myself) overcoming obstacles in my way. I’ve always gone against the tide.

I often ask Kelly what I should write about in my next blog. This time she said “Coldplay.”

I had to change my clothing.

My chemist is a 45-year-old Mormon, and he took his daughter to see Coldplay over the weekend. This was the very first concert he had ever been to in his whole life, and he loved it.

That’s good enough for me.

Coldplay brings happiness to millions of people, and I can’t criticize that.

I’ve never seen a Mormon dance.

I often write about freedom and the importance of having one’s own views. Bob Dylan once said that no one was free and that even the birds were chained to the sky.

Mao Tse-tung, when he sent Chinese troops to help North Korea in the Korean War, said, “Without the lips the teeth are cold.”

There is nothing worse in this life than to be alone. Solitude has no friends. That is my view.

Yet it is easy enough to feel that one is on one’s own. My mother went to work when I was a kid. There I was all day, lonesome and unable to breathe properly. That is being alone.

My friend “Mad Dog” was alone. He died of a morphine overdose on Christmas Day many years ago. I have not yet stopped crying for him, for his solitude and what he could have been.

In my terror, I surround myself with people. We help each other.

Yesterday a very good friend got in touch with me after several years.

I glowed all day.

That’s what friendship does. It warms the heart.

Kelly and I have just been downtown in the ’52 Bug. It’s pouring with rain, and ordinarily we don’t take any of my Volkswagens out in wet weather.

The bug ran out of gas, and we had to crawl to a gas station to fill it up. With a 6-volt ignition, it doesn’t pay to have the lights and wipers on as well as the fog lights. The ’52 bug doesn’t have a fuel gauge, which can be difficult at times.

I had to go to my pharmacy and pick up some Prednisone and antibiotics. I’ve not been breathing well. In fact, I have some kind of shadow on my lung, the same as I did when I was eight years old.

When I was eight, my mother told me the doctors were going to try to keep me alive until I was ten years old and then take a lung out. No one seems to know what this meant. My mother was very much in awe of doctors, so it’s possible she misinterpreted everything.

When I was ten, they put me into hospital and the shadow had gone. I never got sick again for years.

Nowadays, we often talk about “Healthy Homes.” I was brought up in a house that had rotten floorboards and a room (a second living room) that was dedicated to coal for the coal range. We lived right by the bush in Dunedin, and it was always damp.

But I’ve always been good at (if I do say so myself) overcoming obstacles in my way. I’ve always gone against the tide.

I often ask Kelly what I should write about in my next blog. This time she said “Coldplay.”

I had to change my clothing.

My chemist is a 45-year-old Mormon, and he took his daughter to see Coldplay over the weekend. This was the very first concert he had ever been to in his whole life, and he loved it.

That’s good enough for me.

Coldplay brings happiness to millions of people, and I can’t criticize that.

I’ve never seen a Mormon dance.

I often write about freedom and the importance of having one’s own views. Bob Dylan once said that no one was free and that even the birds were chained to the sky.

Mao Tse-tung, when he sent Chinese troops to help North Korea in the Korean War, said, “Without the lips the teeth are cold.”

There is nothing worse in this life than to be alone. Solitude has no friends. That is my view.

Yet it is easy enough to feel that one is on one’s own. My mother went to work when I was a kid. There I was all day, lonesome and unable to breathe properly. That is being alone.

My friend “Mad Dog” was alone. He died of a morphine overdose on Christmas Day many years ago. I have not yet stopped crying for him, for his solitude and what he could have been.

In my terror, I surround myself with people. We help each other.

Yesterday a very good friend got in touch with me after several years.

I glowed all day.

That’s what friendship does. It warms the heart.

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