Work in progress
Previous | Detour | Next This detour is therapy more than anything else. Picture me on the therapist’s couch talking about 1964-66 in detail instead of skipping over it. If you really want to watch my wheels fall off in slow motion, help yourself — some people enjoy observing lab mice! Otherwise I’d ... Read more
Previous | Detour | Next Aimless I may have thought I was on the way up after my stint at the hospital, the magic Summer of ’65 and reverting to my original goal, a degree in agriculture, but I was wrong. After only three days I wanted to leave Massey. Like the previous ... Read more
Previous | Detour | Next I thought it might be amusing to record an old man (“older man”!) reading his nineteen year-old’s words aloud — the diary I wrote over the Summer of 1965. Honestly, I was amazed — by how much we did, most of it forgotten. By our youthful exuberance and the ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next But yesterday wasn’t my day. I got flagged down by a cop on the motorway near the railway station. I decided to wait until they’d all gone off duty after rush hour. I started out but the bike went a mile and stopped. I primed it again ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next He looks like a captain, with shaggy white hair and huge eyebrows. His eyes are blue, his cheeks red with broken veins, his whole body still bluff and strong. He’s a pleasure to serve because he has courage and strength that most of the men lack. He ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Margaret was working in the ward, gay and strong and sympathetic as always. God bless her and her husband and children. Jenny was struggling in Ward 3, a little flighty and foolish but with a heart of gold, so common here. But struggling. Nigel was in Ward 4, ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next It might have been attractive in summer, but walking up from the station in persistent drizzle on my first day was quite depressing. I was carrying my suitcase and wearing one of those cheap 1960s nylon raincoats, with my body heat condensing inside it. In ... Read more
| Contents | This, for what it’s worth, is what I was reading and writing in 1965 after dropping out from VUW. Looking back, I thought it weird that the book that eventually “grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me” was written by a German psychotherapist in 1930 — ... Read more
Previous | Detour | Next Mum and Dad drove me down to Wellington in February 1964. All I can remember of the trip is staying overnight at a little, long-gone, old-time hotel in the hills somewhere past Auckland, and seeing black-and-white TV for the first time in its lounge. The ... Read more
Previous | Contents | Next He wears glasses and his nose is rather prominent. His upper lip slopes out towards the tip of his nose so that he gives the impression of perpetually sniffing at something. He’s friendly, something of a snob, likes to feel superior and blushes easily. He spends part ... Read more