25 random things about me

(Cross-post from Facebook)

1. When I was 12, I went with my class to the old Auckland District Court and sat in the small public area to learn about the legal process. By coincidence the day we visited was one of the most important in the court's history. We saw the arraignment of Dominique Prieur and Alain Mafart, the two French secret agents caught in the aftermath of their despicable bombing of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior docked in downtown Auckland.

2. I've been on TV a few times. In 1991, I was on two episodes of Mastermind, and was the second youngest competitor they'd had on. I got through to the last eight. Three years later I was on two episodes of Sale of the Century (when it had moved to TV3). I was 'carry-over champion' for one night. Won a trip to Wellington. And some placemats.

3. My alarm goes off at 6.33am on workdays: not 6.30 or 6.35, but *6.33*. I never hit 'snooze'.

4. I flew a plane before I drove a car. We went on a beginners' flight out at Ardmore Aerodrome in 6th form and I piloted a Cessna through a quick take-off and circuit back to landing.

5. I didn't actually get my driving licence until the age of 27. I'd failed my test when I was 17 and didn't try again until I was back from my first OE in Britain. And I didn't bother to sit my full licence test until I was 33.

6. Rachel Weisz, since you asked. Those eyes...

7. I don't have a middle name.

8. I've been to 31 countries, if you count New Zealand.

9. When I was little, I thought America and Australia were the same place.

10. We moved around a lot. I lived at 13 addresses before I was 13.

11. I was dux literarum of my intermediate school. That was the pinnacle of my educational career; it was all downhill from there :)

12. I've seen Goldenhorse live four times, which is the most I've seen one band play. I've seen Crowded House thrice: Auckland Town Hall in 1993, Western Springs in 1995 and the IndigO2 in London in 2007.

13. I wanted to change my name when I was about 10, but it was too expensive. I wanted the initials 'A.J.' like the cool one in Simon & Simon.

14. The Tuckers arrived in New Zealand in 1841 on the William Bryan, the first settler ship to arrive in New Plymouth. My father's ancestors, the Chilmans, were on the same ship, but they had their own cabin.

15. I lived in Wellington for seven years, and defended the weather against the depredations of snide Auckland critics for a good five or six of those years.

16. In November 2007 I visited Tyne Cot cemetery in Belgium with friends and paid my respects to my grandfather's uncle Eric Tucker, who died at Passchendaele. I think I was the first Tucker to visit.

17. While I like corresponding by email, I also enjoy writing proper letters and sending them by conventional mail. It keeps alive a connection to centuries of tradition.

18. I've been to quite a few places now, but unlike most of my friends I've never been to Melbourne. I know it's cool; I just never got around to it.

19. I'd like to write a screenplay or a novel, but I think my style of writing is more suited to non-fiction.

20. I wore the same Doc Martens boots for 11 weeks straight on my Eurobus tour of Europe in 1997.

21. Fidgeting people give me a headache. Seriously, I have to look away.

22. I played indoor netball for four or five years in Wellington but wasn't much good at it. I once scored a three-pointer from twice the distance of the shooting circle though. Wasn't actually aiming for the net at the time, but still, pretty damn cool.

23. I have over 1200 CDs. Most of them are in 13 boxes up at Bruce's farm, waiting for me to listen to them again one day.

24. My favourite movie is probably Wim Wenders' Wings Of Desire, but I've only seen it once. I worry that re-watching it might spoil the memories of seeing it at the cinema and being overwhelmed by its beauty.

25. I still have no idea what I want to be when I grow up.

What an old dog can teach us

New Zealand director Toa Fraser's new film, Dean Spanley, is a gentle, whimsical comedy that deals with one of the abiding fascinations of earlier ages: the notion of past lives and reincarnation. It is a low-profile New Zealand-British co-production that deserves a much wider audience outside the realm of film festivals.

New Zealand film fans may recall the mean-spiritedness surrounding the funding arrangements for the film, with critics of its New Zealand Film Commission backing arguing that the film had nothing to do with New Zealand aside from its director and one of its lead actors, Sam Neill. Perhaps the critics have a point, although parts of the film were made in New Zealand. But when a film is this good, it seems that this might be a case of a decision that works in practice, but not in theory.

The story of Dean Spanley is taken from a short novel by the Irish author Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, the 18th Baron of Dunsany, which describes a meeting with a clergyman with a taste for an impressively rare Hungarian imperial tokay. Upon consuming said wine, Spanley mysteriously reverts to a previous life - as a loyal and adventurous spaniel.

Sam Neill's performance as Spanley is perfect, in that it could so easily have been played for cheap laughs. Instead, his restrained performance ensures that the fantastical plot remains believable. The legendary Peter O'Toole is excellent as the elderly Scrooge-like figure of Mr Fisk, snapping at his frustrated son, Fisk the Younger (played by Jeremy Northam), who is compelled to push him around town in a bath-chair. Bryan Brown, who seemed omni-present in the 1980s but later faded from prominence, is well-cast as the humorous Australian fixer Mr Wrather.

Overall, Dean Spanley is a pleasure to watch, and it is to be hoped that a film with this much character and genuine straightforward appeal succeeds in a wide range of markets. It's just been picked up for US distribution by Miramax, so here's hoping they promote it smartly. The film benefits from a solid story with literary pedigree, pleasing touches of humour, and a strong collective performance from its ensemble cast. Special mention must also go to the film score by former Mutton Bird Don McGlashan, who has created a deft blend of music that enhanced key scenes while not seeming out of place in the film's Edwardian setting.

The rise and fall of Sergeant Skinner

Yesterday after a stroll through St James' Park I visited the Guards Museum, which is devoted to the long and colourful history of the famous British Army Guards regiments. The five regiments of Foot Guards (the Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, and the Scots, Irish and Welsh Guards) and the two regiments of the Household Cavalry are all celebrated in the museum's displays, from the earliest 17th century battle orders consisting of musketmen protected by pike-wielding infantry through to modern coalition operations in southern Afghanistan.

It's not a particularly high-tech museum: most of its displays are simply medals, weapons and paintings of famous battle scenes. It doesn't need to be high-tech because it contains plenty of interesting tales from the long history of the regiments. Aside from the usual heroism of the much-feted officer class, I was particularly taken by the story of Sergeant J. Skinner who was a member of the King's Company, First Guards during the ill-fated Walcheren expedition of 1809. In this expedition the British hoped to secure the Scheldt estuary in the Netherlands and destroy the French fleet located upstream at Flushing (now Vlissingen). But it soon turned to disaster as the low-lying terrain was flooded by the defenders and thousands of British troops were lost to a virulent and highly contagious fever.

One glimmer of hope for the British Army was the actions of Sergeant Skinner. When the Army took Fort Batz from its French defenders, the fort's 12 artillery pieces had been 'spiked' to render them unusable to the enemy. However, Skinner volunteered to repair the guns, and devised his own tools on the spot to carry out the task. All 12 guns were returned to service and trained on their former owners. For this feat of engineering Skinner was awarded a distinguished conduct medal, which would probably have been paid for out of the pockets of his officers, because the Army did not issue service medals for bravery at that time. Skinner's medals were on display in the museum (see picture, bottom of p.33 of this document), along with a fine-looking portrait of the man. He was later promoted to the role of recruiting sergeant.

It was in this role that Skinner's star waned. Less than a decade after his heroics at Fort Batz, Skinner was convicted of defrauding the Army by amending three £5 cheques to read £15 - a most serious crime of embezzlement. He was given 300 lashes and broken in rank, becoming a private soldier once more, and presumably cursed his greed and foolishness for the remainder of his Army career.

Another interesting aspect of the Guards' history was the long-standing tradition known as the Bank Picquet (picket) in which Guardsmen secured the Bank of England against ne'er-do-wells. This was first ordered in response to the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots in June 1780, and the nightly task continued for nearly two centuries until it finally ceased in 1973. This report from the New York Times of 28 March 1880 records the spectacle:

One of the most curious "guards" in London is that which is termed the "Bank Picquet", and which proceeds to take up its nightly quarters inside the Bank of England every evening at 7 o'clock all the year round, remaining there until 7 the next morning. It is an officer's guard and consists beside of a drummer, two Sergeants and over 30 men. Each man receives a shilling from the bank authorities immediately on his arrival, the Sergeant's share being 2s. The officer is allowed a dinner, laid for two, with three bottles of wine, and is permitted to invite a friend. The guard or picquet is comfortably housed, each man being "served out" with a watchcoat and a blanket; and the sentries are posted during the night at the bullion vaults and the counting-house parlor.

Three bottles of wine! Now that's what I call a tough billet.

[Pic: Guards Museum website]

Shanghai Pudong

Returning from New Zealand to the UK last month I stopped for a transfer between Air New Zealand and Virgin Atlantic in the relatively new Shanghai Pudong international airport. That's the one that's famous for its frighteningly expensive and hyper-modern maglev train linking the airport with the nearby Pudong city in next to no time. While I didn't have time to examine the super-fast train, I did glide over the polished floors and admire the swooping curves of the wave-like and lofty ceilings. It's an impressive structure, and it exudes confidence.





One aspect of passing through the airport was less than high-tech, however. International transfer passengers were required to have their passports scrutinised twice - once at the regular admissions desk and again in a back room, where presumably strange and mystical methods were used to determine whether or not we were reputable enough to stay on Chinese soil for three and a half hours. The problem was, all of these passports had to be returned by hand to a crowd of a hundred or more passengers who were corralled into a confined space in the massive immigration hall.

Each of the polite young Chinese border officials tasked with returning the passports as they emerged from the back rooms one by one had to call out the names of the passport holders and check they were returning the right passport to the right owner. This was less than straightforward because not only was the mass of transit passengers making a fair bit of noise in conversation, but the Chinese officials were not blessed with loud, stentorian voices - more of a half-apologetic squeak, in fact. And of course many of the names they had to read out were incomprehensible to them, so the names emerged in a garbled fashion. Some helpful Antipodeans assisted by shouting out some of the more challenging pronunciations - the Chinese officials couldn't cope with Maori names, for starters! Luckily everyone took the delay with a dose of wry humour.

After my passport was eventually returned unscathed I exited the scrum and took a couple of sneaky photos of the 'holding pen' - those still held hostage to bureaucracy. Hopefully they all made it out alive!

Tarnished gold

The footage of New Zealand batsman Neil Broom's dismissal (see below) in the first ODI at Perth last weekend is notable not only because Australian wicket-keeper Brad Haddin's eagerness to claim the wicket was so palpable and because it threatened to disrupt the New Zealand run chase. As you can see in the replays, it's clear that the ball hit Haddin's gloves before the bails were dislodged; indeed, if his gloves hadn't been encroaching in front of the stumps the bails would never have come off and the batsman would never have been given out. As Haddin's gloves were in front of the wicket the delivery should have been no-balled and the batsman should have continued his innings.

What the incident and the Australian team's public comments in the next few days showed is that the Australian team, which is under pressure due to its string of home defeats, is also in danger of losing its self-promoted reputation as straight talkers and honest dealers. Ricky Ponting's attempted mind games, in which he made the erroneous claim that New Zealand's captain Daniel Vettori had apologised to Haddin after the wicket-keeper took offence at his integrity being questioned, indicate that Ponting is under pressure in a period when the Australian team's former invincibility is being undermined.

While a certain degree of gamesmanship is acceptable in cricket, both on the field and in the media, Ponting's actions run the risk of alienating his most important stakeholders: the Australian cricket-loving public. Sure, it's commendable to back one of your players when they're criticised by an opponent. But to do so in the face of overwhelming evidence and to then make mischievously misconstrued statements? Unless his team starts winning again very soon, Ponting's reputation will suffer a quick decline. Australians have little sympathy for poor sports.

A winter's tale

I know, you've probably heard - there's been plenty of snow here in London. The biggest snowfall in 18 years, apparently - a special present from the Russian Arctic. London ground to a halt on Monday as the Tube, train and bus networks all fell over. There's so little snow in the capital that when a decent amount falls it paralyses everything. Transport services were half-running yesterday - you could get around the city but it took longer than usual and involved numerous detours and slow buses instead of speedy trains.

On Monday morning I struggled for two hours to get to work before I gave up and trudged back up Putney Hill to work from home. I took these pictures down in Putney at about 9am. St Mary's Church near Putney Bridge looked pretty in the dim morning light, while the row of buses parked on Putney High Street were going nowhere because of the slippery roads. The shot of the motorbike near Tibbet's Corner at the top of Putney Hill gives an idea of the areas that hadn't been disturbed by pedestrians: lots of pretty, fluffy snow. Now it's all turned to treacherous ice and London is hoping that the second wintry wave approaching on Thursday and Friday doesn't redouble the disruption.