I was on some strange chemical combination on the night this photograph was taken. I don't remember what it was though. In fact, I don't remember a lot of things from those days. A few friends and myself used to be into swallowing quantities of pills without bothering to find out what they were beforehand.

I do have some memories; some good, some amusing and some quite unpleasant. Many are vague and I am unsure whether they really happened or whether my mind has transformed some weird drug induced image into a part of my history.

 

Drug memories

• Around 8.00pm on a busy Friday night and I am lying in the gutter (literally) in a crowded Wellington street. I have a bright blue mo-hawk. A very trendily dressed person is trying to convince me to move because, "the cops are coming".

• I have gate crashed a party and have just been in a fight. Some bloke came up to me and said, "You can't do that to my wife", and hit me. I have no idea what it is I am supposed to have done and hit him back. People separated us but I still managed to kick him in the groin. Later, when I leave the party, I steal a television. My friend, Julie, steals some other things. (They got returned the next day).

• I am at the door of some people's house. They are strangers. It is well past midnight and I am trying to tell them that a friend of mine is stuck somewhere. They give me money to go away.

• It is around 3 or 4 in the morning. I am lying on my living room floor surrounded by lots of baby fur seals which are crawling around the place quite happily. A friend is also there but he has grown tall enough to place his head inside the light shade that hangs off the 9 foot high ceiling. I'm not sure if he really exists or not but when I talk to him he answers.

• It is around 3 or 4 in the morning (again). I am watching television, only I am watching it on the face of a large clock. I am deeply fascinated by this as I am aware that this is an impossibility. The programme is a British soap called "Coronation Street", which I normally dislike intensely. Two of the characters, Stan Ogden and Eddie Yates, are having an argument.

• I am at a party with the local biker gang. I think there is gang rape happening in the next room but I am not going to see if it really is going on. These are very big and nasty people and I am very fucked out on pills.

Not my drug memory

• I was finishing a job so we had a bit of a party. Almost everyone there was fucked on some pill or another and we were doing what we usually did and drinking vast amounts of alcohol. I had already taken a combination of pills when someone offered me some that I had never taken before. I promptly took them. Some time later I was in the back of a friends car when I suddenly collapsed. I was still alive but my breathing was so shallow it couldn't be detected. My friend thought I had died. Not a good drug memory for her.

Since giving up drugs I have done my bit for the world.  Some years ago I helped save a small New Zealand town from almost certain destruction.

Standing in Ruataniwha Street, Waipukurau,10 minutes before the annular phase of the eclipse which occured just after midday last Wednesday, are brothers Benny Diction (left) and Benny Fishery .  THEY came to save Waipukurau on the day of the eclipse last week. Brothers Benny Fishery and Benny Diction, from the Ancient Holy Order of Saint Tristram the Doleful, patron saint of pessimists and maniac depressives came to town from their retreat to 'make a lot of noise and ask the eclipse to leave'. Brother Fishery said they chose Waipukurau as it was the centre of Hawke's Bay which was now the centre of a new British Empire. That was why the eclipse was more powerful here, he said, and signalled a decade of change. But as the day dawned cloudy and stayed that way the eclipse was not anywhere as startling as had been expected.

 

To the left is how I looked around March, 1998 when I moved in with my partner, Lisa. To the right is how I look now. Lisa claims that she is 'changing me' and our neighbour thinks that I look like a farmer. I claim that I am still myself and that my attitudes remain pretty well unchanged from what they have been over the past 20 odd years.

 

 

 

As of writing it has been 357 days since I moved in with my partner, Lisa, and her two children who are aged 7 and 10. This has been a bit of a shock to my system but I seem to be coming right. Naturally I had to leave the previous place I was living at, Orua Wharo Homestead, which is a pity as it was a very good place to live but one must make sacrifices.

  Pawa' the duck.  
 

Moving also involved changing towns. I moved from the tiny New Zealand town of Takapau to the slightly less tiny town of Waipawa. One of the good things about Waipawa is that it is, and this is going to sound cliched, a friendly place. I like the fact that I can say "Howdy" to people while wandering around the town without them thinking that I'm do-lally. I also like that I can wander across the road during rush hour without having to worry about the traffic. One thing that I don't like about Waipawa is that it has a huge statue of a yellow duck that was obviously modelled on the yellow bathtub toy. This statue sits on a plinth right in the centre of town. There is no escaping it.

   

Lisa loves 'Pawa' (for that is the duck's name) and glorifies it. She believes that the duck is Waipawa's chance for fame in the realms of large town icons. In fact, Waipawa has two chances as 'Pawa' the duck has spawned a duckling that is also a yellow duck shaped statue. Apparently the duckling has wandered away from its mother and is lost. This is why it is sited some distance away from the mother statue behind some shops. In order to demonstrate that the duckling has wandered duckfoot shaped prints have been painted around town.

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