Races are over for another season

When's the next race?



Somebody's lucky number



Only the Gulls for a crowd now

It's winter now, and the Wellington Racing Club's Trentham Racecourse has fallen into gentle decrepitude until the next season. The infield now echoes not to the thunder of hooves, but to the shouts and exhortations of youngsters playing rugby and soccer. The elegance of Wellington Cup day is but a memory as the weather cools and the winds are a bit more bitter.

A mentor farewelled tenderly by his "Finksters"

The once always open door is closed now forever

Fink would not have given me a dateline for this. Those you earned only by being there. You had to smell the smells and see the whites of their eyes. You did not give yourself a dateline if you just made a few phone calls or rewrote other people's stories.

But such is one of the sad facets of living on the other side of the world: you miss so much of the important life you wish you could be a part of. My friends and colleagues celebrated the life of my beloved mentor today in Athens, Ga. My wonderful parents made the trek for me, and that meant almost everything. But I would have given a lot to be there, to have heard the stories, to have been together again with that band of Finksters, the army of driven, dedicated ink-stained wretches that Fink created and inspired.

My father at the memorial

I am, however, forced to rewrite from my copy desk in New Zealand. I am never at a loss for words when it comes to talking about Fink. But trying to craft remarks for his memorial service proved  intractably hard. My father delivered my remarks with a few of his own words added in with "wit and elegance," according to one report. The Finksters, Jeff Wilson, Les Simpson, Steve Sears and the folks at Grady College treated my parents with great kindness and for that I am deeply grateful too. Here's what I wrote:

"To Sue and the rest of Conrad’s family, I’d like to pass on my deep condolences – and also our thanks for sharing this remarkable man with us over all these years.

I have dozens of stories that I wanted to tell today. I wish I could be here to do so, but also to listen to all of your stories.

Knowing how much Fink meant to me, my father kindly offered to come in my stead so that I could pay my respects through him.

Ironically it has taken me weeks to know where to start. Normally I don’t know where to stop when it comes to talking about Fink. Complete strangers all over the world have been regaled about him.

I finally realized there was only one thing that I had to say, something I never had the chance to tell Fink in person.

Thank you.

Thank you for seeing through my “diffidence” and realizing there was something confident in there.

Thank you for lighting a fire in me that gave me direction and set me on my way.

Thank you for teaching me that people are the story.

Thank you for lining my curiosity with skepticism.

But most of all, thank you for taking a special interest in me.

Fink made me as passionate about the newspaper business as he was. So when I began harboring thoughts of jumping ship three years back I felt almost as if I were betraying my mentor or, worse still, letting him down. When I finally reached out to him, with dread in my stomach, he not only understood, but he began giving me advice about my new career. Even if it took me away from the newspapers to which he had devoted his life.

That perhaps meant more to me than any of the other things he did for me. He helped me because I was Adrian Pratt. Not just because I was a newspaper man.

I feel the loss of him keenly. But I feel the knowing of him much more deeply.

Goodbye, my old teacher. And thank you."

My friend Steve Sears ended his remarks by very appropriately quoting Longfellow:

When a great man dies,

For years beyond our ken,

The light he leaves behind him lies,

Upon the path of men.

Rest in peace, Conrad. If I may call you Conrad now.

Wellington Castle finally discovered

So, with apologies to Mike, I finally found the Wellington Castle. Having been on a couple of wild goose chases to find it, and having found no one else who had ever heard of it, I had begun to doubt Mike's word on this matter. Yet, hiking up the back of Red Rocks, there she stood, looking castlely. The reason no one had heard of the place is that it is modern, built as a cool indulgence rather than as a fortress against medieval peasants. But there it is.


That's not the Great Wall of China; it's our path from the castle.

I'm not the fittest human being in the world, but the hike that Morgan and I took on ANZAC Day beat us up pretty thoroughly. They know how to build mountains in New Zealand and then, for no reason other than because they can, the Kiwis like to put trails on them.

But, as is always the case, the views were well worth the effort. It is one of the great blessings of this country that we could drive five minutes after being at a ceremony attended by several thousands and be in glorious wilderness. We hiked for two hours and did not see another living being. We felt as if we had the whole country to ourselves. It cleanses the soul.

Necessity: the Marmite of invention



Taken from the Marmite NZ Facebook page

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The great Marmite shortage that has befallen the land has caused a form of slow-motion panic. Nobody actually thought they would run out. Now posters urging people to not "Freak" are popping up at bus stops and on billboards. This is serious. The Christchurch factory that made the tar-colored spread from yeast extract has been closed due to earthquake damage, and supplies are gone. All that's left are online auctions and self-made Marmite patches for those who have any - any - of the paste left. The good news is that production should be going again in a couple of months and these are sturdy folks who can put up with anything for a couple of months.

ANZAC Day - a time to remember



ANZAC Day in Wellington

A large crowd attended the Dawn Services to commemorate ANZAC Day in Wellington this morning. The pre-dawn hour was set to remember the first wave of Aussie and Kiwi forces to hit Turkish soil on April 25, 1915, the day that began the tragic Gallipoli campaign. Many thousands died or were injured that day. While set on the anniversary of Gallipoli, ANZAC Day now commemorates veterans of all of New Zealand's campaigns.

It is a very touching tribute, to have thousands of folks of all ages rise before the sun and stand, largely silently, and then solemnly sing hymns to the night and then applaud the servicemen as they marched by.



The Turkish flag also flies on ANZAC Day

All across the country such services commemorate the day as well as the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). Gallipoli went horribly wrong, resulting in 2,721 New Zealand and 8,709 Australian deaths. Intended as a quick knock-out punch it turned, instead, into an eight-month deadly stalemate. Still, the eternal bond between Aussies and Kiwis was set, and the spirit of the brave sacrifices of the diggers lives on today.

Throughout the dreadful Great War, 18,050 Kiwis perished. With the population of New Zealand standing at just over a million at the time, the casualties represented 1.64 percent of the population.

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The President of Wellington Returned and Services Association read out the ANZAC statement: "At this hour, on this day, ANZAC received its baptism of fire and became one of the immortal names in history. We who are gathered here think of the comrades who went out with us to battle but did not return. It is fitting that we should keep this dawn vigil together in remembrance and gratitude. We feel them still near us in the spirit. We wish to be worthy of their great sacrifice. Let us, therefore, once again dedicate ourselves to the services of the ideals for which they died. As the dawn is even now about to pierce the night, so let their memory inspire us to work for the coming of the new light in the dark places of the world."

And then the day broke bright

G'day, mate ... or not

Daybreak from Red Rocks

I will confess up front that these pictures have very little to do with this post. Very little, but not nothing. This post is about running etiquette and I took these pictures while running. In any event, I think they are lovely and you might enjoy looking at them.

In most places I've lived I've figured out the great running enigma pretty quickly: when to acknowledge a fellow runner with a friendly "hello."



Dawn still breaking from Red Rocks

In some places the answer was always; in others never. In most places it sort of depended on the individual. In South Dakota, for instance, you always greeted a runner as a companion - even if you didn't know him, which was rare. What's more, you always threw in some pithy observation about the weather. It was wonderful, on cold, windy mornings to be out in the hostile elements and to hear a chorus of, "Good morning; it's a bit nippy today" coming out of the darkness ahead of you.

In the Falls Church suburb of Washington, D.C., no one ever passed me a greeting in almost six months. Eyes were averted, feet observed.



This fellow and I exchanged a nice greeting

There seem to be no clear rules about this sort of thing in New Zealand. Maybe there are, and they are just not shared with foreigners. My observations seem to hint at a sort of age divide. Youngsters - unless they are particularly bubbly or American - never acknowledge the presence of an older runner. Yet they seem to be positively profligate with their "hellos" to each other.

Older runners almost always give a nod and a mumbled greeting to one another. Maybe it's a survival thing. Walkers, on the other hand, are the most garrulous creatures. If you make too much eye contact they'll stop for a chat, even if you are a stranger determined to plow on.

Perhas it is just me. It's possible that I look so close to dropping when I'm running that other exercisers believe saying "Good day" to me commits them to performing CPR on me when I collapse. It could be why older folks usually greet me: they're looking for a similar commitment.

Red Rock at Dawn

On an annoying side note, but one that does have to do with these pictures, I missed the Orca again last weekend, and this time by a matter of minutes. By the time I came off Red Rocks after my long run, hundreds of cars had arrived in the parkig lot. There was some sort of Xterra trail run beginning. I felt very superior because I had already been out and about for two hours before these elite athletes even showed up. Turns out they were the smart ones. According to my friend Mike, a few minutes into the race, runners spotted Orcas. Right where I had been minutes before; in the waters where I had trained my camera. This truly is beginning to seem personal. My communion with the seal will have to do for now. I will find my Orca, though. I will.

Harbourside Market - pretty cool



Amy and I have finally discovered the Farmer's Market in Wellington

There's no reason it should have taken us this long to discover the Harbourside Market in Wellington. We've seen it plenty of times, but just never got around to checking it out. There have been fruit and vegetable markets in Wellington for more than 100 years.  In years gone by the market was nearer to Courtenay Place, at Blair and Allen Streets. A huge fire in 1928 forced the closure of some of the warehouse buildings that used to house the market.


Our new friends, the Feijoas

The current location, down by the harbor near Te Papa, has been in use for a decade now. Every Sunday about 7,000 to 9,000 folks show up to buy their produce. It's a festival atmosphere, with fast-food caravans and music everywhere.

Our new favorites - the Feijoas - are quite the tastiest things I've ever had, well of a fruit and vegetable sort of things. A Brazilian relative of the myrtle family, the feijoa, or pineapple guava, is pretty popular around New Zealand. Having only just discovered it last week, we are converts.



I could really get into this kind of shopping


The colors around the acres of stalls were fantastic.



The colors were voluptious

Then it was down to the docks to Nino's seafood boat. He's quite the characer and his fish is fresh. He puts on a little show for the customers who line up boatside.

Our trip to the market and the boat are about as close to a good deal as we've come across in New Zealand. We bought six filets of terakihi, Amy's favorite local fish, for $25 and about 20 pounds of vegetables for less than that.

Nino himself



Having our fish cleaned

Having spent another couple of hours this morning looking out to sea in the eternl hope of spotting some Orca, it was a nice surprise to come across this fellow. Measuring in at at least four or five feet, the Stingray was flying around the waters beneath Nino's boat, no doubt hoping for a few scraps.

This massive Stingray (about four feet) was swimming around under Nino's boat 

I belong tae Glasgow, dear old ...



Glasgow in the 1970s. These pictures put a lump in my throat for various reasons, but not exactly because it's pretty.

Apparently I don’t belong tae Glasgae town anymore.

I was chatting away at a dinner party the other night. There were a couple of sharp-witted and socially combative people either side of me.

Towards the end of the evening I said the one good thing about being from Glasgow is that it makes the weather everywhere else better.

"You're not from Glasgow," my Kiwi interlocutor said.

"I was born there," I said.

"But don't say you're from there," she said. And she said it with a mild accusation in her voice, as if I were being pretentious.

"Well where am I from?" I asked. She obviously had the answers.

"I don't know, but you're not from Glasgow," she said.

"Are you accusing me of making up the fact that I was born in Glasgow?" I asked. "Because that might be a first in human conversation."

"I'm not accusing you of anything," she said. "I just don't think you should say you're from Glasgow."

God, these pictures look so old. Glasgow, 1976

Now I've been accused of being pompous many times, but never for "claiming" to be from Glasgow.

"But if I was born there and went to school there and have spent as much time there as anywhere else, where should I say I'm from?" I asked, feeling a bit of Glasgow ire rising in me.

"I think you're saying you're from Glasgow just to give yourself a bit of street cred," she said. "Why do you have to be from anywhere?"

It's always bad when pictures from your time in your place are only in black and white. These girls look like they have street cred, though.

Now it's true that I've been gone from Scotland for a long time, but this drove home the point. When the hell did it get to be so cool to be from Glasgow that people lied about it? People used to lie about not being from there.

I think I like it. I think I'm going to introduce myself with the fact that I was born in Glasgow from now on. You know, to give myself a bit of street cred. Oh, and talking of street cred: My wife's from Philly. Go ahead and argue with her about where she's from, bitch. I dare you. 

Cone-head near Town Hall

Added without comment.

100 Days until London 2012



The onset of winter made an irony of the Polynesian entertainers

By dint of its location, New Zealand was able to hold the first official event for the celebration of 100 days to go until the London Olympics. Put on by the British High Commission, the street party was attended by Sir Ian McKellen and some of the other stars of The Hobbit, currently being filmed in New Zealand.

Winter showed its claws for the first time today and the Polynesian entertainers, in their traditional warm-weather outfits, looked decidedly out of place. Not that you could tell from their island smiles and happy music.

The first event at the first event was a foot race from parliament grounds up to the High Commission, which sits a tad imperiously overlooking the New Zealand parliament. Kids, diplomats and politicians took part in the race, which was ceremoniously started by Sir John Walker, the Kiwi gold medalist in the 1,500 event in Montreal. Kids won.

There was food from various countries and lots of music. Much of the news reports out of London seem to indicate that arrangements for the 2012 Olympics are coming along splendidly and that the facilities are on time and quite grand. Poor London has a hell of an act to follow after the magnificent games of Beijing. I remember good old Boris Johnson, the disheveled mayor of London, accepting the handover at the end of the 2008 games and thinking, "Oh dear, the Brits are being set up for failure here." His very hair seemed an admission of defeat. But it sounds like the East End of London is getting all gussied up and the people are getting excited and that the Brits, by God, might just pull it off. One hundred days to go until we see.

Another bog blog

I have done some odd things in the service of this blog. But having been a newspaperman for many years, I'm over embarrassment. I'm all about getting the story.

Still I felt more than a  little creepy getting the art for this post. I also worried that there was more than a slight chance of arrest, or at least interrogation by law enforcement. Here I was, after all, at about 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning taking pictures of a public toilet.

In my experience public toilets - especially over the weekends - are the purview of the drug addled, the desperate, or those seeking illicit or fleeting company. They're called bogs in Glasgow for a reason. And here was I, in shorts and what my children call my wollen mugger's hat - I was going for a run - loitering outside the public facilities with a camera in hand.

That's not a good look, right?

But the point of my interest was that this toilet was exactly the opposite of my past experiences. The public toilets, as I have already written, are quite remarkable in this country, which is why I have, er, remarked on them.

Without putting too fine a point on it, I had just used the bathroom on Lyall Bay, half expecting to be accosted or to have to step over used syringes. The experience was totally surprising. Having seen from the rather modern-looking control board on the outside that the institution - for such it is - had a vacancy, I entered with some trepidation. Nobody was sprawled on the floor in a pool of vomit and there was a rather pleasant aroma, perhaps it was lavender? A hint of Marigold?

Once inside I pressed the lock button. A voice spoke to me, informing me very politely that I had 10 minutes. I half expected him - he sounded like a DJ on a Midwestern Country Music radio station - to ask me to "take a seat."

Then music began. Not country. Not rock and roll. But a soothing Jazz number. There I was, in a sheltered, nice-smelling little chamber with my own private entertainment playing over the speakers. It was rather nice. It could, in fact, cause people - people, not me - to linger. I had no idea what sort of alarm bells or other unpleasantness would occur should I outstay my 10-minute welcome. A parking ticket? An illegal dumping citation?

I left, but happy. It really is the small things in life that make everything else a little easier to bear. Little touches of civilization are pleasing.

That feeling has past now, and I accept that anyone who wishes to call me bizarre after reading this is free to do so. I just felt you should know - again - that New Zealand has bloody fine public toilets. And it is, after all, just about the story.

A Cardboard Cathedral for Chch



(The Christchurch Press)

Construction will begin next week on a cardboard cathedral set to temporarily replace the now being de-constructed Christ Church Cathedral.

I freely admit that I have no idea what on earth a cardboard cathedral is or will be, but am assured by news reports that it is considerably more permanent than it sounds.

In fact, far from a few packing boxes stacked on top of each other, this will be a $5.3 million work that, if the roof is maintained, could last for up to 50 years. It should be completed by the end of the year, one benefit of building with cardboard, I suppose.

It will be erected just opposite the CTV building which collapsed in the Feb. 22 earthquake, claiming 125 souls. The iconic Christ Church Cathedral, declared too dangerous and beyond saving, is in the process of being taken down.

Easy as it would be to sneer at something billed as a cardboard cathedral, this is a good and meaningful turning point. Christchurch, particularly its Central Business District, is being systematically dismantled. Little of any meaning remains. The reconstruction of the new Christchurch has not begun in any meaningful way. The lack of rental facilities has Cantabrians renting out and living in garages, if not their cars.

The last time I was in Christchurch, the absence of any forward progress was not only heartbreaking, but really beginning to wear on the locals who felt trapped in some sort of awful Groundhog Day limbo where every large aftershock further complicated already labyrinthine insurance company quandaries.

So this new temporary cathedral will be not only a spiritual reconnection with the up high but also an important step forward for humankind in the face of continuing assault from below.

It is a step forward for a city that has lost so much.

The cardboard cathedral - slated to be only a temporary replacement while the new Christ Church Cathedral is constructed will be able to hold 700 people. The cardboard structure will become St. Johns - also lost to the February quake - once the new cathedral is complete. It was designed - for free - by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, said to be an expert at emergency replacement construction.

According to the Christchurch Press, "the innovative structure will comprise cardboard tubes, timber beams and structural steel."  It is designed for more permanence than "cardboard cathedral" seems to indicate, will be structurally able to withstand earthquakes and should be a feature of the new Christchurch for decades to come.

For a stressed-out citizenry that has been battered for more than a year, that is dealing with a chronic housing and entertainment shortage, that is wrestling with stalled insurance claims, that has seen so little progress and done so much hanging on, this is something to raise a brief cheer for. So much more is needed, of course, but something finally is going up, rather than being knocked down.

Kiwinglish 9 - beached as, bro

Apparently it's been a shocking oversight on my part not to have introduced you to "The Beached Whale" before now. Apparently it was equally shocking that I hadn't ever come across it until now.

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My efforts to inform you about the Kiwi version of English could not be complete without this lovely little film. Everybody here knows it, they just forgot to tell me about it. Well, that situation has been rectified now and we're still laughing at it.

The benches that speak to the past



The memorial bench at my Makara

 New Zealanders are an outdoorsy bunch, with a suitably well-developed sense of appreciation for the awe-inspiring scenery so casually on display in their country. The land - be it the mountains, the ocean or the bush - is in the Kiwi genes. Once you spend a little time here, you bond with the place, it becomes a part of you and you become proprietary about your favorite places. For me it's my Makara and my bays of Wellington or the Southern Alps. They are all places that have changed me and will remain with me long after I leave Aotearoa.

Many of my Kiwi friends have told me about "their" place. There's a lovely tradition here, once someone has passed, of dedicating a bench in their memory at a place that moved them. All over this country are benches with the most spectacular views and touching plaques.



Many of these benches are often visited by friends and families and decorated with little mementos or flowers. Such gentle touches remind that you are sitting in a place of special importance. It adds weight to the view.

There are, literally, hundreds of these benches all around Wellington and it cements the special link between people and place, and between past and present.

Far from being melancholy intrusions into a commune with nature, I find these tributes to be uplifting: here are good people remembered by those they've left behind; here are their loves memorialilzed in the grand arenas they once roamed with hearts full of their daily passions. The vistas they survey stand there still, eternally glorious and worthy of the loves of those who once embraced them, touching reminders.



The good and the loving remembered.



Jogging: Blame NZ for that

The 2011 Wellington Marathon

For everyone who has come back sweaty, injured and unamused from a run and blurted out to the universe, "Who came up with this stupid idea in the first place?" let me say this: that would be New Zealand.

Not the idea of running, of course. That's been going on quite a while. But this ridiculous and wonderful thing that we do to ourselves that came to life known as jogging. Yes, that thing came from New Zealand.

Those of you whose first reaction was, "Wait, what about Bill Bowerman from the University of Oregon?" should read on. Those of you whose first reaction was, "Who gives a damn? it's a stupid 'sport' anyway?" should perhaps come back tomorrow or read some of my more fascinating earlier posts about, say, Marmite or Shrek the Sheep.

Running recreationally is a relatively new thing. I remember reading in Neal Bascomb's "The Perfect Mile" that in Roger Bannister's time doctors thought that the human heart only had a finite number of beats to it. So, training or competing by definition shortened your lifespan.


Arthur Lydiard

 Such big stigmas about running had been proven to be medical baloney, but running for the sake of running was still basically something only professional athletes did. But in 1962 in Auckland the renowned athletics coach Arthur Lydiard - who'd coached such Kiwi legends as Peter Snell, Murray Halberg, and Barry Magee - gathered a bunch of overweight businessmen at his house for "fitness and sociability." This group grew larger and was later dubbed the Auckland Joggers Club by the New Zealand Herald. (This is thought to be the first use of the word jogger in this context.)

Just a few months later Bowerman came for a visit to New Zealand with some of his runners to train with Lydiard and his lads. Bowerman, according to the Auckland Joggers Club history, was invited by Arthur "to come for a run with the Auckland Joggers, including a lap to the summit of One Tree Hill. He was so impressed with what he saw and experienced that he took the idea back to the U.S. and the world-wide jogging phenomenon was spawned." Bowerman was also a co-founder of Nike.



Bill Bowerman with Steve Prefontaine

In 1966 Bowerman wrote the book Jogging and the sport of running for no particular reason and mostly in circles was popularized in the United States. (If you haven't seen the movie Prefontaine, by the way, you should. It captures something of the legend of Bowerman.)

The Auckland Joggers Club is still in existence. In the early days they "negotiated with the Carlton Rugby Club to start from their clubrooms in Puriri Drive, Cornwall Park. The traditional 'cup 'o tea' after each run was made in a small shed called the 'tea hut' which stood separately from the rugby club building, and was powered with an extension lead to the tea urn."

As for Lydiard, he died in 2004 in Texas whilst on a promotional and speaking tour. His training methods (he also trained the incredible Lasse Viren) are still used by middle-distance runners today. He was an early prophet of running for everybody and inspired many ordinary Kiwis to hit the pavements. He started what became the largest road race in New Zealand, the ‘Round the Bays’ fun run in Auckland, which now attracts more than 30,000 runners annually.

I curse and praise him daily.

Rave Runs III - The Bays



Sunrise over Breaker Bay

 There's not much better than an early morning run around the bays. The rising sun brings the gorgeous landscapes to life. The salt on the breeze and the whisper of the waves remind you that you're in a special place. There are a bunch of what Runner's World would call rave runs around Wellington.

Sunrise ove Lyall Bay

 These runs never make me regret getting up early and set me up in a good mood for the rest of the day. I'd guess you could run for 50 miles along the various bays around Wellington. There's always a lot to keep your attention, whether it's a hint of the South Island, below, across the Cook Strait or the eternal hope of spotting some Orca.


Sunrise over Moa Point

The magnificent views on this run came quickly upon one another. This was just a five-mile run and I took shots of 13 magnificent vistas. It really must be one of the best places in the world to run.