by We were extremely lucky with the weather down south, and Friday was another sunny day. I woke up to the news that Michael Parkinson, the chat-show host for several decades, had died aged 88. He always made his guests feel at ease – not a simple task. The interviews that stick most in my mind are those with the Beckhams. That morning Mum’s younger brother, who lives in fake Palmerston, called her. He’s a strange guy in many ways. He’s quick-witted, but lately has morphed into a Trump-supporting nutjob who watches endless sport on TV. He came to my brother’s wedding in 2018 and toured Ireland with his older sister – it was the first time he’d been further than Australia. In 2019 he had bowel cancer at the same time as my father had it, and did well to survive it. He’ll need a colonoscopy bag for the rest of his life. Mum passed the phone to me and we had a good chat.
Mum and Dad decided we’d go to Dunedin for the day – I hadn’t been there since 2005. The day gave Mum a good chance to reminisce because she went to teaching college in Dunedin and began her career on the Otago Peninsula. We stopped off on the way at beautiful Waikouaiti, then visited Otago Museum in Dunedin. Mum’s teachers’ college was just around the corner from there, but back in the late sixties the museum had a Romania level of public-friendliness, so she never visited. What we saw in 2023 was something very impressive – less structured or themed than Te Papa, say, but all the better for that. The extensive collection of model ships was particularly stunning, as were all the moa skeletons and the ornate knives, daggers and swords, mostly from Asian countries. We could have spent longer there.
From Dunedin we drove down the peninsula – that road is now equipped with a smart-looking bike lane that gets plenty of use. We stopped first at Macandrew Bay where Mum did teacher training, then at Portobello where she first taught for real. It must have been breaktime as walked past the school; some kids told us not to miss the krill in the dark. They were referring to the bioluminescent krill that glows in the dark on the beach. We walked around the cemetery in Portobello – our whole family, including myself, have always been drawn to cemeteries – and we drove further down the peninsula, where the houses became cheaper and the inhabitants’ lifestyles grew slightly more alternative. We passed Aramoana, the scene of a mass shooting in 1990, and reached the albatross colony at Taiaroa Head. I went to Taiaroa when I was nine, months before the shooting – the centre had only just opened, and because it was summer there was much more to see then. My most vivid memory is the stench of the meal that the mother albatross regurgitated for her chick. There was little to see this time except a David Attenborough video on repeat.
Back in Moeraki, we watched another quiz imported from Britain, this time hosted by the comedian Michael McIntyre. I struggled to figure out the rules. What I did figure though was that humans are pretty bad at assessing risk and reward, and make all sorts of crazy inferences based on tiny sample sizes. I see that Labour want to introduce a financial literacy subject in schools, a policy supported by National. I’m happy to see “risk assessment” as one of the components of that. I agree with Mum who says it should just come under the umbrella of maths. I finally won Skip-Bo at my fifth attempt.
Unlike the previous four days, Saturday was bitter as a cold southerly came through. Before we left, we watched Parliament TV which turns into an exhibition of paintings when parliament is not sitting. We stopped on the way back at Riverstone, a rather obscene castle, and looked in the gift shop which sold mostly overpriced made-in-China tat.
