Random Play by Graham Reid

As anyone who has lived in, or travelled though, the USA -- watching nightly television “news” (such as it is) or reading mainstream papers -- will attest, every new day will throw up a new blazingly bold-type headline: deaths in Iraq! a Letterman controversy!! “Balloon Boy“!!!

So it goes . . .

The cumulative effect is that what was important yesterday (was it Letterman or Iraq?) disappears behind another diversion, smokescreen or -- in rare cases over in the US of A -- “real” news.

I’m getting the uncomfortable feeling something similar is happening here: every day a new distraction . . . so previous stories, especially important ones, aren’t given the legs and longevity they deserve.

At the end of last week I was convinced and confident the absurd proposal for “party central” on Queen’s Wharf (and thanks Herald for using the quotes to remind us where this base, populist John Key cliché came from) was on its last legs.

The public was indifferent if not outright damning; ARC chairman Mike Lee said the final eight designs were “lacklustre, under-whelming and mediocre“; Auckland mayor John Banks was wavering; and Herald columnist Brian Rudman was taking his typical, uncommonly good sense into a vacuum of defeatist Auckland. (Aucklanders, used to being defeated by people lacking in vision -- or worse, those having “the vision thing” -- I think resigned themselves).

Even that most rare of breeds, The Seldom Seen, Rarely Spotted Auckland Architect (usually as scared of the light as the kiwi) were coming out of their dark holes to note the flawed process, not to mention the pathetic designs . . .

Cool!
All over bar the applause when the ill-conceived wharf plan was scrapped, I thought.

Because I have been boring on this previously I just kept quiet.

But this week . . .?

Well, it has gone worryingly silent (more “news” came down the turnpike?) -- and in this instance I think silence will be taken as consent.
That endemic Auckland negativism I cited previously (we don’t deserve the best, so why expect it?) is now about the only mood you can feel in my hometown.

Over the weekend I looked at the wharf from various angles -- and the harbour from the top of the SkyTower with former Ak-family over from Melbourne who observed what a treasure it is -- and wondered about possibilities.

I don’t want to go into them again but bugger-it, I will. And I‘ll add a few more thoughts to the mix.

I believe we deserve something visionary for our harbour and city, and I reiterate I have no problem with an international architect (certainly our finest minds seemed lacking) being chosen to work their magic.

The (unapologetically) Biggest City In The Country deserves and requires something which enhances its waterfront and reflects the nature of our city and nation. (And maybe more specifically reflects upon -- in a design sense -- the Hilton/apartment building opposite).

This is not a project (like that insulting Mallard-like-it-or-lump-it waterfront stadium) which should be imposed by political will from Wellington or “above”.

As the Who said, “look at the new boss, same as the old boss”

There is no hurry to get this thing right forever (which is looong time): the haste for the 2011 rugby encounters are just a smokescreen. What gets thrown up there in haste we will regret at leisure. (Can’t haul down a $47 million project, can we? Huh?)

So . . . we must slow down and take a deep breath.

If it takes another few years to get our ideas in order (an international competition, let international architects come and consider us, we could learn something) then so be it.

Just one chance, one opportunity to get it right -- and it shouldn’t have something as crassly opportunistic and centrist/populist as “party central” driving it.

The sheds?
Jesuschristonafugginbike!

They aren’t historic, so they have to go. And no tears good bye.

As any architect will tell you it is the space you are given that you will look at. Get those damnable sheds out of the frame.

So: thoughts? A level for cruise ship reception for sure; a gallery of exciting contemporary art, that’s a given; you want to get your Museum of Rugby in there, then go for your life and make your case; and obviously cafes and bars at ground level and looking out into the harbour.

Some open space too -- but let’s not get obsessed with football-field sized parks “for families” because the place will be wind-swept and bloody wet most of the time. (This isn’t Cote d’Azur, folks, it‘s Auckland).

And . . .

Thinking caps on.

And, am I the only one who thinks it odd that in this city where the beautiful, genuinely historic and architectural jewel that is St James is being let to rot while some people (oh, “architects” among them?!) worry about a couple of old sheds?

Right now, if there’s $47 million to spare I’d rather see it go in preserving and restoring the St James (imagine what an exceptional sister venue it would be to the wonderful Civic) than some place where people gather to look at some rugby games on a big television for a wee while.

Frankly I think there should be an outcry which goes along the following, alarmingly simple, lines . . .

Just Stop.

If “party centraL’ didn’t happen no one would miss it.

Most international tourists (65,000?) coming to the games will be in the park; locals will go to long-favoured local bars, pubs and sports clubs with their mates; and those who don’t care a fig about a transitory sports event which last but the blink of an eye in this city will probably go to see bands at the Kings Arms, stay at home or maybe tune in on the television out of some kind of curiosity.

But “party central”? We don’t need it.

I love Auckland for all it shitty problems, stupidity and self-aggrandisement.

I wasn’t born here, had no choice when my parents brought me here, grew up in this place, and it is my home. I travel as often as I can but I am always happy to be Home.
I love Auckland. It breaks my heart to see what a shallow political/sporting/populist agenda is doing to my city.

If you love it too -- or even if you are in another city or province and understand how The Rest of the World interacts with this country’s Gateway City -- you might want to send a signal to those who would railroad us all -- Aucklanders and the nation -- into this fatally flawed project.

Quickly: before another balloon boy, low-rent political scandal or car accident/weather bomb/outrageous crime commands our headlines

Just say Stop! In the Name of Love. “before you break my heart”.

Over to you now ................. Please

IN ALWAYS BETTER NEWS At Music From Elsewhere there are many musical diversions (the Brunettes, Wolfmother (!?!), that great Eighties band Wall of Voodoo and much more posted.

And I have two terrific DVDs written up: Gamorrah about the Camorra in Naples (where I have been recently and who have just hit the headlines) and a superb doco about Jack Kerouac (with music by Jay Farrar from Son Volt). They are both at Cultural Elsewhere .

I’ve also brought back to the foreground from the deep, deep vaults of Absolute Elsewhere a piece on Martin Scorsese’s doco on Bob Dylan (which screens on Sky this week) . . . as well as posting another Essential Elsewhere album which you really should have in our your collection (an album which has just popped up in iTUnes)

And there is much more (as always) by way of book reviews, anecdotes and “inform-amation” (as subscriber described Elsewhere in such a clumsy but flattering way).

Oh, and if you aren’t a subscriber (it is free here but you just missed the weekly giveaway to subscribers.

PS: Thank you for those favourable “reviews” and comments about my new book The Idiot Boy Who Flew (see below) which come at me via this direct link.

I appreciate it and, like you, I prefer my anonymity when it comes to saying what you really think!
Ho ho ho ho ho ho ho . . .

There’s something utterly bonkers but appealing about the plan to build a miniature replica of the Taj Mahal in the middle of semi-suburban Auckland.

I like nutty stuff like that.

I have photographs of myself in the Oval Office of the White House (in Austin, Texas), of the Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty in Las Vegas (there are many Liberty statues in Japan, and one on the Seine of course) and in my book Postcards From Elsewhere I wrote about how I graced the occupants of Graceland Too with my presence (mad Paul McLeod whose home isn’t so much a replica of Graceland as a worryingly obsessive homage to Elvis).

At Travels in Elsewhere I have just posted a piece about getting on board a biblically proportioned Noah’s Ark (in Hong Kong), and I have been photographed towering over the Great Wall of China (at Miniature China in Shenzhen near Hong Kong). I enjoyed bizarre Huis Ten Bosch just outside of Nagasaki, the whole town is Dutch with windmills and canals, and they sell hearty Dutch food. I wrote about that in Postcards From Elsewhere also.

In my new travel book The Idiot Boy Who Flew I write about a strange slice of Muslim art and architecture near Honolulu (once the home of a filthy rich and fascinating multimillionairess), and of Stonehenge . . . in Oregon.

Travel and tourism these days must account for all tastes and I find it as interesting to go to where Jurassic Park was filmed and where Elvis got married at the end of Blue Hawaii (both on the island of Kaua’i incidentally), as I do rooting out a dark and musty museum of Native American art, a nasty bar full of sad stories in a run-down part of San Francisco or spending a day looking at half a dozen Goya paintings in the Prado.

What is the poet said, “I contain multiples”? We all do.

So the idea of mini-Taj seems to me to be perfectly rational in this irrational world. I do question the placement of it however: right there on the site of the Gandhi Centre on New North Road at the most difficult and narrow part where cars come at you from all directions? That seems ill-advised.

Yes, of course it has to be accessible for both the Indian community and tourists but my guess is the planning permission people of Auckland -- an unreliable bunch at best if the urban disasters around us are evidence -- should think very carefully about this. That would be as bad as having a rugby stadium right in the middle of the suburbs and . . . .

Oh.

Some questions, genuinely asking:
Were you at all surprised at the cost overrun already on the Rugby World Cup? Is there a sweep going in which we can bet on the final, fully inflated figure? Or will we never actually know the “true cost”, just that we will somehow have to stump up for it.

Sex and the Stats Just what is the believable statistic on sexual abuse? In the past few days I have heard one in four women, then one in three. To me, innocently asking, these seem extremely high ratios not to mention significantly different. I am increasingly sceptical about such figures: when the hat is being passed around it is always one in 10 who suffer from whatever, the one in five New Zealanders who have whatever. Again, just asking.

Helping hand-out Why do people send an e-mail asking for your assistance but then have some weird block on your reply. Yesterday I spent half an hour typing in great detail a lot of helpful stuff for someone’s career (a complete stranger just asking for advice) only to have it repeatedly bounce back at me. It has happened before far too often. The soft touch days are over, but know this Kerry. I wasn’t some arrogant dickhead who ignored you. I tried and tried. You career in journalism won’t get far, and not because you didn’t get my advice and suchlike.

This is worrying: It’s not often I hear anything that Miley Cyrus says let alone sings (not a note in fact) but she seems to be on the money about young people spending too much time in cyberspace. I lecture in music at Auckland Uni and one student asked if instead of reviewing a live concert he/she could do one that was posted on You Tube. Maybe the real world is a bit too real and 3D for people used to screenlife?

Music of the spheres What I guess to be the first local review of the new Flaming Lips album is now posted at Music From Elsewhere.along with dozens of other CDs. There are also DVD reviews, travel pieces etc around the site. Check out the clip for the Canadian telly series Corner Gas which were aren’t screening here. It has dry, droll and lowkey Flight of the Conchords appeal. The Timothy Leary track with the Gonzo DVD review is worth hearing: sampling (illegal) from about 1970.

The clash of civilisations? I recently returned from Sydney and Crave -- a festival of food, art, culture and so on -- and I had a terrific time. I said so to someone and felt I had to immediately apologise. I was told that Sydney was all right, but Melbourne would have been “better“. I don’t know how people determine such things, but it would have been hard for me to imagine a better five days in Melbourne than the five I had in Sydney.

Melbourne we are repeatedly told is more artistic, but I found dozens of galleries and exhibitions in Sydney no trouble. I don’t get this Melbourne Vs Sydney thing that people here (mostly Aucklanders I have to say) get into.

I think it was Paul Kelly who said to me he didn’t understand New Zealanders: “they complain about the weather here then go and live in Melbourne”. Fair point.

I also don’t understand Auckland Vs Wellington or Auckland Vs The Rest (actually it seems mostly vice versa in the latter case). Mark of small minds or defensive people? Dunno, just asking.

That said we are going to Wellington shortly for an overnight stay and to see some Big Art Stuff, and because Wellington is a place I rarely go (and no, it ain’t personal) I’m curious if anyone can recommend a decent, modestly priced and slightly different place to stay in the centre of the city.

It will be all the more enjoyable if it looks like The Oval Office, Graceland, or the Taj Mahal of course.

Because my wife has family in Samoa, yesterday was a strange one. I heard the news early and called her at work, then rang her parents (her dad was born in Samoa and grew up in a small village near the south coast), then the calls around the family began.

Last night it was clear that we are among the lucky few. It’s no great comfort.

Like many New Zealanders I have spent time in Samoa and holidayed at Lalomanu which is one of the most beautiful spots on Upolu.

I remember waking in the morning, rolling up the mat wall of the fale and seeing the gleam of white sand and blue ocean right outside. Beautiful.

I have been more fortunate than many: I have also stayed at the high-end Sinalei on one occasion, and at Coconuts next door where I spent one memorable afternoon and night at the famous 3 Stool Bar drinking rum’n’Coke with Mika who opened the restaurant there.

The story behind the founding of Coconuts says it all and Mika was highly amusing. As you may see there, he even gave me his recipe for Coconut fish.

Last night on the news I saw the ruins of Mika’s restaurant-cum-bar, and of beautiful Sinalei.

It was heartbreaking -- and of course there were the villages nearby where the people who worked in these places came from. I went to church there one Sunday. It seems those villages, and some of the people in them, may be gone also.

I am waiting to hear if anything has happened on the low-lying east coast of Savai’i, the other main island, which seemed to also be in the line of the waves. But I guess no one has managed to get over there yet.

Sudden disasters such as this catch everyone off guard by their very nature, but it was disappointing that on one television news channel last night we were being told of the destruction at Lalomanu and nearby places but the images (uncredited) were from Pago Pago in American Samoa. I’d seen them earlier on an American news channel.

It seems in the nature of television just to run with pictures, irrespective of whether they illustrate the truth or not. That’s not helpful.

I am pleased however that more news people are making the effort to pronounce “Samoa” correctly (it’s never been “S-mower”).

It will take time for us to fully realise the enormity of this, but this much we do know.
We can help.

If, like me, you ever experienced the generosity, hospitality and pace of Samoa then you know what to do. It’s simple.

Hand in pocket. Today.

About 15 months ago I was in and around Alice Springs, a town that trades on the idea it is close to Uluru. It isn‘t.

The town has a fascinating, if brief, white-fellah history, the landscape in that part of the desert is spectacular, and I wrote a wee bit about it here . . . but that was before things went weird, as you may see from what follows.

I’m reminded today of my time in Alice because of the extraordinary film Samson and Delilah which I saw last night.

Briefly it is a grim and uncompromising look at the barely-fictional lives of two Aboriginal kids (and their mob) who live near Alice. Hardly a word is spoken but it is eloquent, and if there is a redemptive ending (in some small way) then it is probably necessary after all that has preceded it: alcoholism; incessant reggae riffery played by the band on the compound; glue and petrol sniffing; the people being encouraged to make dot paintings which are then on-sold to tourists for many thousands of dollars; violence and rape . . .

Although I only spoke to a few Aboriginal people in Alice there were a few weird conjunctions when I was there.

Naturally I went to the art galleries (dots everywhere, mostly rubbish stuff) and could see instantly the difference between reputable dealers, galleries and painters and all the rest. A boiling controversy was a Four Corners expose which showed how local people were actually imprisoned behind locked fences on some compounds and had booze and food shipped in to keep them painting dots, dots and more bloody dots.

I learned however that seeing Aboriginal people sitting in a dusty riverbed surrounded by bottles of booze might not be all it seemed: I was repeatedly told (by Aboriginals and whites) that black-fellahs were outdoor people and so preferred to sit there rather than in the cool of a pub.

If indeed they were allowed in some pubs.

There were three pubs in Alice where I spent quality time: the first was the place where tourists gathered for huge meals and drinks (I was ordering Bundy’n’cokes like they were jugs of beer, we all were) and Aboriginal people were conspicuous by their absence; then there was the English pub with its dartboard and so on (just weird) and you can guess there were no black-fellahs.

Finally there was the Todd Tavern named after that dusty hollow they call a river.

I got drinking with two guys from a compound a few hours away in the Spinifex’n’rock who’d already been on the booze for a few days straight and certainly since bird-call that morning.

One was part Aboriginal guy who was possessed by a deep-seated anger, almost incoherent from the booze, and jealous when I talked to his partner, a white guy who had been a nurse in Adelaide (if I recall) and had taken a posting on this aboriginal compound.

He’d only been there a couple of months in a two year-long contract and already had come to despise, if not hate, the Aboriginal people and the tribal leadership which he said ripped off government money.

I have no idea whether it is tough being gay in Alice, but these guys were immune to it: that’s what rum, beer and then vodka shots can do to you.

The Aboriginal guy told me he had been adopted out to a white family when he was small and had reconnected with his own people a few years ago and didn’t like them. They were all alcoholics. In fact he hated being black, he said through slurring and gulps of rum.

He stumbled off to another table where he sulked and glared at me menacingly, the white guy just kept talking but moderated his stance.

Actually the people were fine, he conceded, but were being paid to do nothing but sit around, so they drank, drove and crashed cars, sank into alcoholic depression and dependency, played the most awful reggae or country music (I agreed with him on that) and largely were a people dispossessed.

It was an Australian tragedy that white people were happy to ignore because to deal with it was too complex, too awful, too shameful.

Later we three sat drinking again when the white guy fell asleep at the table and immediately others in the bar pointed him out: the landlady came over and told the both of them to leave, there was shouting from the Aboriginal guy who looked about to start a fight but was too far gone to swing a blow, the white guy talked his boyfriend down and they left the bar amidst jeers from the people at the next table and shouts and incoherent threats from the Aboriginal guy.

It was messy and tragic in its own way.

Later I saw them down in the dustbowl of the Todd River drinking again, this time with some young black-fellahs.

I waved. They had no idea who I was.

The film Samson and Delilah -- a fictional story which can be critiqued for its filmic values, certainly -- takes you into the edge of this world, and into that dusty hollow under a bridge across the Todd, the carpark near that hotel, the Coles supermarket -- and most of all to the place where we can probably never go: that netherworld of hopelessness on a compound where people make dot paintings for a pittance, where today is yesterday and tomorrow because they are all the same, where death and drunkenness and mindless reggae riffing are just part of the contract of life . . .

Samson and Delilah is a stark, important and mostly bleak film that director Warwick Thornton from Alice Springs says doesn’t include anything he hasn’t seen. I believe him. Although I doubt it will help tourism to Alice.

It opens Thursday. Don’t miss it, especially if you really liked (or hated) Baz Luhrmann’s fuggin awful Australia.

Update, Wednesday Sept 30: Samson and Delilah has just been selected as Australia's official entry in the Best Foreign Language category at the next Oscars. More details are here.

At Elsewhere: To acknowledge Tim Finn’s double CD retrospective Anthology I have posted a timeline of his career which makes you realise how prolific he has been, and how diverse.
There are also reviews of the new Miriam Clancy, Pearl Jam and Grand Archives albums, a lengthy interview with Marianne Dissard (whose new album was produced by Joey Burns of Calexico who also wrote the alt.country music to her French songs), something about a great Argentinean singer now in her 90s and still going, and much much more -- including the long awaited re-release of the Middle Eastern/metal/hip-hop/oud album by Speed Caravan who wowed the crowd at the last Womad. That‘s all at Music From Elsewhere.

Oh, and there’s a review of the bizarre film F for Fake by Orson Welles from ‘74 which has come out on DVD. It’s an odd and annoying one. That is here along with a review of the Sir Howard Morrison DVD (mentioned in my previous posting) that I was watching when I learned he had died.

Giveaway for subscribers today are three packages of albums by Finn, Dissard and the Monsters of Folk (Bright Eyes, M Ward, Jim James from My Morning Jacket) whose album is also reviewed.
But you have to be a subscriber to Elsewhere to be in to win. It’s free, just go here asap.

Big Day Out line-up: Looking interesting (if a little return bout on some names) with Muse, Mars Volta, Dizzee Rascal, Peaches, Lily Allen, Ladyhawke, Kasabian etc. It is all here

It gives me no pleasure to note the coincidence, but earlier this week I started watching the three-part doco Once in a Lifetime, a Maori Television two-hour interview with the late Sir Howard Morrison (and family, friends and fellow performers) which has just come out on Rajon DVD.

I was, and probably still am, going to write about it for the Cultural Elsewhere pages on my website.

Among my notes on the first chapter where he speaks with self-deprecating humour about schoolboy crushes, of being strapped at school and how the Quartet lost their first talent quest to an old woman on crutches who sang the Lord’s Prayer I have simply scribbled “honest”, “funny” “ego” and such.

But I also wrote the following: “When Sir Howard, now [?], passes on we will perhaps realise who and what has gone . . . a great NZ story . . . important . . .”

I wrote that on Tuesday.

The tributes have already started but last night I was at a function and when I mentioned Sir Howard a gentleman made a disparaging comment and then guffawed, “there’s no Hori’s in that scrum”. I believe he thought he was being witty and recalling that time when Maori were often called -- sometimes affectionately, perhaps rather too often dismissively -- “Horis”.

Well, we needn’t go into all the story behind My Old Man’s An All Black again, but that line was politically pointed and although it raised a laugh it also articulated what many Maori were probably thinking when South Africa accepted an All Black team as long as there were no Maori in it. Strange times.

I only spoke with Sir Howard twice, once in a phone interview and then later at a function: the first time he was exactly as people warned me he would be; imperious, slightly condescending, a little pompous and quick witted. At the function he was charming, cheeky (a word often applied to him, and I can vouch for its veracity) and not quite as full of himself as I had previously thought.

I often reminded myself when I interviewed someone like Sir Peter Blake (who literally and metaphorically looked down his nose at me) or Sir Howard just how often they had been subjected to the same questions from someone like me, a journalist. And I would sometimes ask myself later just to get some perspective, “Yes, but what do they think of you?”

The answer was obvious: they didn’t. No slight intended though.

I’m hoping that the Sir Howard tributes don’t simply come down to My Old Man’s An All Black/How Great Thou Art and some passing mention of his work with young Maori. That seemed to be television’s default position last night.

He was a much more complex character than that, and much more interesting -- as the doco shows. Sometimes you laugh out loud at what he says (he's genuinely funny), other times you might smile with recognition or nod with understanding, and occasionally you'll just go, 'nah, that's bullshit'.

Without overtly doing it, he is telling you about a New Zealand that was out there once. May still be.

For the past few years I have been picking up old records at various fairs and the like, and have gravitated to New Zealand music of the 50s and early 60s. I have some nice 10 inch albums, silly stuff like EPs by John Daley (“New Zealand’s Funniest Comedian . . . For adults only”) and William Clauson singing The Bishop and the Tohunga and so on.

Not many of my friends want to hear The Little Folksingers of Mt Roskill Primary and Intermediate Schools going through Run Little Donkey -- but I sometimes inflict these things on listeners to my radio programme Sidestreets on Kiwi FM. (Sundays at 1pm, repeated Thursday at 2pm, that’s a plug).

Kiwi allows me to play whatever I like and it is sort of off-beat stuff like early Maori pop music, comedy records, spoken word, bad rock and minor league stuff -- and that’s why I scout the record shops and cardboard boxes in secondhand stores and record fairs.

Last year I was turning up 45s and EPs by the Howard Morrison Quartet from the late 50s and early 60s -- and what has struck me is just how often they would put out traditional songs in te reo.

I had no idea of this side of their output -- and on the various compilation CDs that have come out these songs (and George, the Wilder New Zealand Boy I think it was called, about the repeat-escape prisoner George Wilder) rarely appear on them.

I am guessing that such songs were played infrequently, if at all, on radio stations like 1ZB at the time. Their versions of Where Have All the Flowers Gone? and Michael Row the Boat Ashore certainly, but Haere Ra E Hine and Marama Pai?

It became quite common in Pakeha New Zealand to dismiss Sir Howard as “Uncle Howie” (sometimes affectionately, and he kinda liked it I am told) but here was a man singing in te reo at a time when very, very few other mainstream Maori artists were.

Certainly there were concert party albums and 10 inch albums (the Wai Patu Concert Party, Hymns in Maori by the Putiki Youth Choir and the Aotearoa Maori Entertainers album of 1956) -- but these were not by musicians who were appealing to middle New Zealand (Maori and Pakeha) like Howard and his quartet.

I think that small part of his career is deserving of great respect. I have no idea whether they had to battle Zodiac or La Gloria to get these songs released, maybe they had so much clout they could do what they wanted. But they were singing in te reo long before it was common. And it isn’t even that common now.

If it was a battle then they fought it and won, if it wasn’t then they did it because they wanted to and could. Good on them either way.

Oh, and Howard, Jerry Merito, Wi Wharekura and Noel King also made people laugh -- which I think is a great gift.

Okay, maybe today we might be uncomfortable with Mori the Hori (their adaption of Ahab the Arab) but I still like Rioting in Wellington (“the MPs are slandering each other again”) as do the audience on the live album of 1962.

Maybe it’s just me, but we seemed better at laughing at ourselves and each other then?

I remember Dalvanius telling me how he and Patea Maori had come up against resistance at radio when Poi E was released because it was in te reo, and that was in the early 80s.

About 25 years before that The Howard Morrison Quartet had just gone out and done it.
Remarkable when you think about it. And worth remembering at this time.

And: Many thanks to those who supported my book launch on Tuesday night (Russell of this parish, Quentin, the sponsors, and of course David Haywood without whom “but who can’t be here with us tonight”). It went very well, books were sold, praise was heaped upon me by those who have already read The Idiot Boy Who Flew (and they weren’t relatives) and a splendid time was had by all.

Later today I am speaking about the book on Maggie Barry’s show on Radio Live (4.10pm).

My second child is taking tentative but increasingly confident steps into a cruel and indifferent world.