Southerly by David Haywood

In an exclusive interview with Public Address, the Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives talks for the first time about his close friendship with superstar Michael Jackson.

"It was 1978," remembers Dr Lockwood Smith. "And I'd just been made redundant from my job as singing coach to Sir Rex Harrison. I was completely broke. The only asset that I had was a rhyming couplet that I'd written."

The rhyme had been inspired by a trip to San Francisco in 1977. "It was pure autobiography," says Dr Smith. "The lyric ran: 'We spent the night in 'Frisco/In every type of disco.' To most people, it probably didn't seem like much, but I felt that it had the potential to become a top ten single."

Dr Smith showed the rhyming couplet to his friend Liza Minnelli. "Liza fell in love with the lyric, and suggested that it might form the basis of a song for her protégé, Michael Jackson."

The next morning, Minnelli phoned Michael's father and manager, Joe Jackson. "I read the lyric over the phone to Joe," Dr Smith recalls. "He immediately recognized its potential, and invited me to the Jackson home in Gary, Indiana."

Dr Smith struck up an immediate friendship with the Jackson brothers, but says that he formed a particular rapport with Michael. "I stayed up all of that first night rappin' and jivin' with him, and by the morning we'd written the song Blame it on the Boogie. We played it to the rest of the band, and they decided to make it their next single. It went straight to number one."

From that moment on, Dr Smith says that he was virtually adopted into the Jackson family. "Joe used to refer to me as 'the sixth member of The Jackson 5ive'. People used to think that he was joking -- but he was completely serious."

Despite his closeness to the Jackson family, Dr Smith is modest about his role in their musical success story. "Apart from Blame it on the Boogie, I don't claim to be responsible for any particular Jackson hit, but I doubt there was a single song or record in which I didn't make a vital contribution," he says. "For instance, when Michael went solo, he decided give his seventh album the title 'Mediocre'. I convinced him to change the name to Bad, which was a slang term that I'd invented a few years earlier as a synonym for the word 'good'."

Dr Smith also assisted the Jacksons with their dance moves. "It started with the head-flick in the music video for Blame it on the Boogie. By the time the Triumph album came along, I was choreographing all their live shows and television appearances."

"I think my most important dance contribution was for the Motown 25th Anniversary Special," he adds. "Michael was looking for something new, and so I introduced him to a dance that I'd been doing for years at the Orewa Surf Club: 'The Moonwalk'. Michael caught on really quickly. The darker-hued races have smaller feet, which -- I suppose -- enables them to moonwalk more rhythmically than Europeans."

Dr Smith is quick to point out that his friendship with Jackson was not simply a one-way street. "Michael often used to write questions for my popular television programme It's Academic," he says. "I remember one of them was 'Are the headlights on your father's Rolls Royce electric or acetylene?' It was a clever question. If a state school contestant attempted to answer, then either response would be marked as wrong -- because, of course, their father didn't actually own a Rolls Royce."

Jackson was also a close confidante to Dr Smith during the 1990 general election. "Michael suggested a tactic whereby I would promise to eliminate student fees, but then renege on my promise once I was voted into office," recalls Dr Smith. "We laughed about it for hours -- imagining the post-election astonishment on the faces of the students who voted for me."

But Dr Smith maintains that the best moments in the friendship were always about the music. "I can think back to when we were doing the initial mix of 'Beat It'. Michael wasn't happy with the song, and he wondered aloud what could be missing. I just looked at him and said: 'Van Halen guitar solo?'"

"Quincy [Jones] was dubious that Eddie Van Halen would agree to play on a Jackson track," continues Dr Smith. "But he'd forgotten that I was a fashion advisor to David Lee Roth. So I called up Dave, and he gave me Eddie's number, and I persuaded him to play the solo. And not only that, but I convinced him to perform without payment. A few years later, I used the same negotiation technique to score a free-trade agreement with Singapore -- an achievement that would make me arguably the greatest Minister for International Trade in New Zealand's history."

Work obligations meant that Dr Smith's friendship with Jackson became less intimate over the years, but he points out that their respective careers have had "eerie similarities".

"I know what it's like to be the victim of innuendo," says Dr Smith bitterly. "I know what it's like to have people suggest that you're living in a fantasy world. And, of course, as a former Minister of Education, I know what it's like to have people accuse you of being a menace to children."

But for Dr Smith, the laughter stopped on the 25th of June 2009. "Liza Minnelli phoned me in the middle of the night. She said: 'So sorry, Lockwood'. I knew immediately that something must have happened to Michael. We were both aware of the problems he'd been having with medication, and of course, the first words out of my mouth were: 'When the autopsy comes, all hell's going to break loose.'"

Dr Smith says that Minnelli helped him to survive the initial shock. "She has a strange, almost idiot-savant wisdom -- a bit like Muriel Newman or the title character in the film E.T.," he observes. "In the end, she healed me with just two words: 'Marry her.' At first I didn't understand what Liza meant, but then she said: 'That girl you've been dating since 1970 -- you know, old What's-her-name.'"

"It came completely from left field," maintains Dr Smith. "Obviously, we'd talked about marriage -- but because the boogie would always come first with me, it hadn't seemed fair on either party. I reminded Liza of our objections, but she just gently said: 'Michael would have wanted it, Lockwood.'"

Just over a week later, Dr Smith married his long-term girlfriend. He says that the couple have no immediate plans for children, but adds: "Of course, if one does come along, then obviously 'Blanket' is the top of our list of names."

"It been a year of great losses and gains," muses Dr Smith, "but it's a wonderful feeling to know that somewhere up there -- in Jehovah Witness heaven -- Michael is smiling down upon us."

Every time I've driven along Blockhouse Bay Road -- and, one way or another, I've been driving along it all my life -- somebody seems to be burning wet grass.

It's quite a pleasant odour; I'm not complaining or anything. But I do wonder: has it been the same person all these years? Or do the local citizens have a roster to watch for my arrival: "Here he comes now -- quick everybody, set fire to your lawn!"

All down Blockhouse Bay Hill, the pohutukawa trees were veiled in smoke. But by the time we reached the intersection with New North Road, it had begun to dissipate. Just before Cradock Street, I turned the car right, down a long driveway.

My grandfather was splitting wood on the front lawn. My grandmother emerged from the house to greet us. They both made a pleasing fuss of Bob-the-baby; declaring that their ninth great-grandchild (of ten) was even handsomer than they'd remembered.

My grandparents have lived in the same house since before I was born. As we were ushered inside, I realized how little it has changed over the years. Paintings by my grandfather decorate the walls; he designed and built most of the furniture. Everything was very clean and tidy, as it always is -- with a familiar childhood aroma of baking and fresh laundry.

While my grandmother got re-acquainted with Bob-the-baby, my grandfather showed me his latest project. For the last few weeks, he'd been struggling to complete the final draft of his memoirs. "That Microsoft Windows is bloody rubbish, isn't it?" he told me with feeling. "I should've bought a Mac."

The memoirs describe his life before emigration to New Zealand. In comparison to my Scottish relatives -- whose recollections of Glasgow's slum tenements are positively blood-curdling -- my grandfather's upbringing in Wadsley (South Yorkshire) sounds almost idyllic. Although it's now a suburb of Sheffield, Wadsley was a separate village during my grandfather's youth, and so countrified that its residents used 'thou' and 'thee' in familiar conversation (with the word 'you' reserved only for formal speech with outsiders).

The writing in the memoirs is extraordinarily vivid and entertaining. It takes talent to capture someone as skilfully as my grandfather does in this pen portrait of his own father:

I always got on well with my father. He was intelligent, good-natured, and skilled in numerous ways: a proficient artist and stone mason, excellent at blowing tree-stumps out with dynamite, and he played the concertina quite well.

The description of my grandfather's mother is nearly as colourful:

My mother was very interested in politics, and a large framed portrait of James Keir Hardie hung in our front room. If it wasn't for her family commitments, she would have joined the suffragettes and chained herself to the gates of Buckingham Palace.

My grandfather was the youngest of seven. As a child, his elder siblings doted on him: they took him on exciting excursions, and -- being talented artists and craftsmen -- made him elaborate toys. Incredibly, at the ripe old age of twelve, he was taught to drive a car by an indulgent brother. As a result, my grandfather has the hair-raising distinction of having been behind the wheel for more than 80 years.

I was interested that his memoirs made no mention of the family's experiences during the First World War. My grandfather's eldest brother was a conscientious objector -- which made things very difficult for his immediate relatives. Perhaps from habit, my grandfather skipped the answer to my question, and instead leapt directly to the defence of his brother: "It wasn't cowardice or anything with Jack, you know; he really believed that it was morally wrong to fight in that war. He was determined not to have to murder some poor German for no proper reason. Jack was gaoled, and he had a hell of a rough treatment in that prison. He stuck by his principles -- and, bloody hell, he paid dearly for them, too."

It's slightly frustrating that my grandfather's memoirs end before he leaves Yorkshire. There's a sequel still to write, in my opinion. I'd like to know more about emigration; the early years of married life with my grandmother; his time as a rigger in the RNZAF (at one stage, he played centre-forward for their football team); his art studies at Elam.

I know that my grandfather worked as a carpenter when he came to New Zealand. Two of his brothers were bricklayers; another was a plumber. Together they built a lot of houses. It must be nice for him to drive around Auckland, and to see his handiwork still providing shelter and comfort to people.

One particular aspect of his handiwork dominated my early childhood. My grandfather celebrated his retirement by building a gigantic Herreshoff H50 yacht in his back garden. The boat took five years to finish, and ripped the gearbox out of the first couple of lorries that attempted to carry it to the launching slipway. As a six-year-old, I was allowed a day off school to watch my aunt smash a bottle of champagne over its bow. It's still sailing.

We adjourned for a lunch of my grandmother's famous vegetable soup. The recipe has the important feature of being infinitely expandable -- which is highly useful if (as with her) you are the eldest in a family of fourteen children, and your younger siblings are still in the habit of dropping by unannounced at lunchtime.

If I'm completely honest, I've never managed to get my grandmother's brothers and sisters straight in my head. They are a wild tribe of Irish-Scots, with a bewildering array of nicknames: Mickey, Frankie, Joey, Jackie, Meggs, Ron, Jim, Nell, Lou, Chris, Dot, and Janice. You have to be fully inducted into their secret society to understand how 'Cecilia' could be shortened to 'Mickey', or 'Robert' could be abbreviated as 'Meggs'.

Coming from such a large (and impecunious) family, my grandmother suffered a hard childhood. To make matters worse, her family had religion. "I grew up as Brethren," my grandmother told me over lunch. "Oh, they're a miserable bunch. When I was older I switched to the Baptists because they had more fun". This astonishing statement certainly puts into perspective how fun-hating the Brethren must have been.

I wonder how many meals my grandmother has presided over in her lifetime? How many parties she's given? As a child, I can recall an endless stream of special occasions: Christmas parties, New Year parties, Guy Fawkes parties, Birthdays parties, Wedding anniversaries, parties because there hadn't been a party for a couple of weeks, and parties that spontaneously emerged out of nowhere.

The closest I've ever come to dancing properly was as a four-year-old, standing on my grandmother's feet as she waltzed around her kitchen during parties. She did her best with me, but some people are beyond unteachable. It seems a cruel quirk of evolution that I didn't inherited so much as a scrap of my grandparents' abilities on the dance floor.

Appropriately, my grandparents met at a Yorkshire Society dance. My grandfather was playing saxophone in the band. He and my grandmother had a chat, and discovered that they got along. Seventy years later they seem to be getting along just as well.

After lunch, we took Bob-the-baby for a roam around my grandparents' back garden. This part of their property has changed dramatically over the years -- becoming increasingly low-maintenance. But I found that I could still picture my grandfather's semi-built yacht, looming in the back corner. And, if I squinted, I could see the huge hedges that used to border the section: the Christmas plum tree; the kiwifruit vines; the vegetable gardens; and the chickens behind their fence.

When we visited as children, my grandmother would always cut a bunch of flowers for my mother. And my grandfather would entertain me by making soap bubbles with a wire hoop.

Before we took our leave, he demonstrated that his bubble-blowing skills have not diminished over the years. Bob was utterly entranced. The bubbles shimmered in the Auckland breeze -- bobbing through the back garden, past the eaves of the house, and up into the sky.

Public Address would like to thank the Sunday Star Times for generously allowing us to publish a preview of Michael Laws's forthcoming weekend column.

And so the femi-Nazis have finally won. Our prime minister has collapsed like a pricked balloon. The career of Dr Richard Worth, one of the few capable ministers in this government, lies in tatters -- and for no other crime than being from Epsom.

How the PC brigade must be cheering.

Look -- let's get one thing straight -- there can be no doubt in my mind that Richard Worth ever "flashed his schlong" or "drew his pork sword" in front of any of these so-called women. What rubbish.

Has it escaped our prime minister's notice that government agents are paid to spy on all New Zealand families? In the good old days we called them witches, and they were burnt at the stake.

Of course, the PC brigade have put a stop to all that. Now, we are told, they must be called 'Plunket nurses'. It's like living in a Robert Heinlein novel.

I wonder if this was in Dr Worth's mind as he arrived at his desk on Tuesday morning. Minutes later, the giggling John Key -- looking for any excuse -- would destroy a career and a life.

And what of Phil Goff's role in all of this? The Labour Party leader claims to have known "certain details" about a related case.

Garbage. Like many New Zealanders, Dr Worth will be able to remember the days when children were forced to drink milk in schools. By a Labour government.

Let's face it, as far as the hairy-legged lesbians in the Labour Party are concerned, it's a crime to be male. You're no longer safe in your own home.

I am reminded of an acquaintance of mine -- let's call him an acquaintance -- who opened his door to street hawkers. Why should he support an organization that

won't have him as a member? Who can blame him for "introducing them to Mr Johnson"? Why should he buy their stupid biscuits that aren't even chocolate?

We can all guess what happened next. The police and somebody calling herself "Brown Owl" arrived at his doorstep.

Notice how they're always brown? Never mind that -- as Dr Worth surely knows -- sixty per cent of animal life was made extinct before Europeans ever set foot in New Zealand.

Never mind that -- as Mr Goff must have learnt at school -- forty per cent of New Zealand's forests had been destroyed while Abel Tasman was still a boy with his finger in a dyke.

Or perhaps Mr Goff didn't go to school.

And yet with our Plunket nurses, school milk, the 'P' epidemic -- and now the persecution of Dr Worth -- New Zealand has arguably become the most dangerous and crime-ridden nation on earth.

There can be no doubt that PC is alive and well in this country.

Fortunately for us -- and unfortunately for Dr Worth -- New Zealand finally has a prime minister worth his salt. John Key has shown himself to be a strong leader who will not suffer the dictates of the pinkos and the femi-Nazis.

Mr Key has silenced his critics by decisive action. Dr Richard Worth had to go, and -- in the words of Robert Heinlein -- "T'were well it were done quickly".

In this week’s column, the Governor of the Reserve Bank uses his medical expertise to help people with health problems.

Dear Dr Bollard,

Sometimes I have difficulty breathing, particularly after I've exercised. Is it possible that I'm developing asthma?

Yours sincerely,
Theodore
(Ashburton)

The good news is that you definitely don't have asthma, Theodore. The bad news, however, is that you do have a serious blockage in your windpipe -- and you're going to have to give yourself an emergency tracheotomy.

Here are the tools that you'll need:

1. A sharp kitchen knife.
   
2. Some spare tubing (for example: a length of old garden hose, or the neck of a broken bottle).
   
A strong disinfectant such as petrol.

The most difficult item to obtain will probably be the petrol. Since this is an emergency situation, it is perfectly permissible to siphon fuel from your neighbours' car. Of course, you don't have time to borrow the keys, so just hack into the side of the car (next to the petrol tank) with an angle grinder or an oxy-acetylene torch.

Drain four or five litres of petrol, and use it to wash your kitchen knife. You want that knife good and clean, so give it a thorough rinse.

Now -- with as much force as possible -- plunge the knife into the side of your neck in the location of your windpipe. The knife should leave a large gaping wound with little or no blood. If blood is fountaining from the hole, then you've probably hit a carotid artery or one of your jugular veins, and you'll need to stab yourself in the throat again in a different location.

Take the end of your garden hose or broken bottle, rinse it in the petrol, and force it between the wound 'flaps' that you've made with the knife. You'll have to push really hard to open up the incision. If your tracheotomy 'tube' still won't go into the hole, then take a heavy object -- such as a brick -- and use it to hammer the tube all the way into the wound.

Once you've finished, take a moment to pat yourself on the back. Well done, you've saved the most important thing that you own -- your life! Some people find a tracheotomy tube to be disfiguring, but why not make a feature of it? Try draping a piece of ribbon around the tubing. How about a balloon on a string? Learn to live a little! Don't be such a whiney bitch your whole life.

Dear Dr Bollard,

I've recently re-paved my drive -- and, after lifting a heavy wheelbarrow of concrete, felt a sudden sharp pain. Have I given myself a hernia?

Yours sincerely,
Gwen
(Titirangi)

Oh, Gwen, Gwen... it must be wonderful to live in your little fantasy world. Of course it's not a hernia. It's angina, and you're going to die -- unless you perform surgery upon yourself immediately.

Now about half the patients I diagnose with angina will tell me: "Of course I've got angina -- I'm a lady." Well, I'm not talking about that sort of angina, Gwen. I'm talking about the other sort; the type that kills you. Here are the tools that you'll need for your operation:

1. A bottle brush.
   
A clean rolling-pin.

2. Some fine piano wire.
   
An ordinary circular saw with a 250 mm blade.

If you're not musical yourself, then you'll have to take some wire from your neighbours' piano. There's no time for social niceties such as ringing the doorbell, so take an axe, and hack through the wall of your neighbours' house. Chop open the piano and remove a length of the thinnest wire that you find inside.

Lie down on your neighbours' kitchen table (there's no point in getting your own table messed up with blood), and start the circular saw. Cut cleanly through your breastbone, then -- thrusting both hands inside the incision -- 'crack open' your chest cavity. Wedge the rolling-pin into the wound to stop it from closing.

Using the circular saw, deftly trim off the various veins and arteries that connect to your heart. In all probability, Gwen, your angina will be caused by atherosclerosis, so take the bottle brush and give everything a really good scrubbing
-- making sure to remove all the atheromatous plaque. Work quickly, because with your heart disconnected there'll be no blood supply to your brain, and you could lose consciousness.

Use neat stitches of piano wire to reconnect your heart, and use any leftover wire to sew up the incision in your chest. Phew -- you're done! Give yourself the rest of the morning off, and don't barrow more than five tonnes of concrete (in total) for the rest of the day.

For the next few years, you should eat mainly a lard-based diet, in order to 'plug' any gaps that you may have left when sewing up your blood vessels.

Dear Dr Bollard,

I'm not normally a drinker, but last night I went to a party and foolishly allowed myself to be talked into having a glass of shandy. This morning I awoke feeling terrible: my head was pounding and my hands were shaking. What should I do?

Yours sincerely,
Paul
(Parnell)

I'm afraid this is a textbook case of alcohol abuse, Paul. Your hands are shaking because you've permanently damaged the motor-control regions of your brain. Happily, the good news is that if you act now -- right now -- you can stop the damage from spreading. Here's what you'll need to do the job:

1. An ordinary drill-press big enough to take your head.
   
A 13 mm drill bit (Important: do not, under any circumstances, attempt to substitute an imperial 1/2" bit).

2. A bicycle pump.
   
A dewar of liquid nitrogen.

The liquid nitrogen will obviously be the most difficult item to obtain, and I suggest that your best bet will be your local hospital. Because this is an emergency situation, you won't have time to get your own car out of the garage -- so hot-wire your neighbours' car.

Drive to the hospital and smash the car through the front of the building. Make your way to the section containing the medical laboratories. If the corridors seem too narrow, then 'flick' the car sideways onto two wheels so that it can be driven more safely. Remember that you're in a hurry, so keep up a brisk pace -- don't go any slower than, say, 170 kilometres per hour. Keep an eye out for anything that looks icy.

Once you've located the liquid nitrogen, plug in your drill press, place your head on the clamping table, reach backwards over your shoulder to operate the drop-arm, and plunge the 13 mm drill bit into your skull -- it doesn't matter where, any random area will do. Caution: you should stop driving and get out of the car before attempting this step.

Now look at your hands -- are they still shaking? If they haven't stopped shaking, then repeatedly drill through your skull at different locations until you notice a change. As soon as you do, then you've located the alcohol-damaged part of your brain! Use the bicycle pump to suck a measure of liquid nitrogen from the dewar, and squirt it down the hole to 'cauterize' the damaged neurons.

You're done! But you'll need to be extra-cautious when driving home because drilling into your brain may cause side-effects -- such as loss of vision or your sense of uninhibitedness.

As a final point, Paul, I should perhaps mention that some of the steps in this medical procedure weren't strictly necessary -- but you needed to be taught a hard lesson to stop abusing shandy.

Disclaimer:
Dr Bollard is a proper doctor and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand advises that you should immediately act upon his advice -- without seeking any further medical opinions.

So anyway, I'm at the Richmond Working Men's Club with Alan Bollard, and there's this bloke staring at us.

Eventually he comes over and points a finger at Bollard, and he's all: "I know you, mate. I've seen your fucking face before."

The bloke's got an Aussie accent, and I can tell Bollard's just about to smack him one for that reason alone -- never mind the business with the finger-pointing -- when suddenly the bloke goes: "Got it! Alan Bollard, Western Australia, 1974. Port Hedland bare-knuckle fist-fighting championship. You won."

Bollard puts down his pint, and he's like: "So fucking what?" But he pronounces it like this: "So. Fucking. What." And he gives the Aussie this extreme psycho-killer stare. Of course the conversation dies a bit of a natural death after that, and the bloke goes off to the lounge bar to finish his drink.

So Bollard and me have another couple of pints. After a while I get to thinking about what the Aussie says, and then I'm like: "Didn't know you've been to Western Australia."

And Bollard goes: "Yeah?"

And then he's like: "It was after my Master's at Auckland Uni. S'pose I was trying to find myself or something."

Now Bollard's having another swig of beer: "It's kind of a funny story, actually. The Port Hedland championship's the biggest prize-money I ever win for bare-knuckle fist-fighting."

"They pay me in fifty dollar bills. When I get back to my hostel, I spread it out on the bed, and count 500 notes. So I go straight down to the Marrapikurrinya pub, and shout the whole bar a beer.

"It's a real hot night, even for the north of Western Australia, and I get talking to this girl with some sort of hyphenated name, like Mary-Joe or Peggy-Beth. I forget as soon as she tells me. But, you know how it is, I feel embarrassed to ask again later. So I just have to keep talking to her without using her name.

"And anyway she seems to like me, and after a bit I go: 'If you can have anything you want right now, what will it be?'

"And she says she wants to see snow.

"So I'm 23 years old, and I want to impress her, and I'm like: 'Righto then, we're off.'

"The barman's been listening to our conversation, and he's all: 'It's a long way from here to the snow, mate, hope you got a full tank.' And he starts laughing at me, which really fucks me off. But then I start laughing too -- you know, so that I don't look like a dick -- and so does Mary-Beth (or whatever her name is), all the way to the ute, where she goes: 'Are you really taking me to see snow?'

"And I'm like: 'Gotta get some supplies first.'

"So we drive to this 24-hour petrol station and I buy some booze. Then Peggy-Joe (or whatever her name is) says we should go round to a friend of a friend of hers. We spend about twenty minutes knocking on the door, and in the end they wake up and sell us a big bag of dope -- which puts a bit of a hole in my winnings, but I try not to think about that.

"And then we get back in the Holden and she rolls a joint, and I open a bottle of vodka, and a couple of cans of beer -- and we're totally out of there, mate. It's about seven in the morning by this stage, and people are getting up, and people are going to work. But we're heading south-east; we're going to the snow.

"And we drink and drive, and drive and smoke, and a bit later we stop and fuck -- which is pretty good, in my opinion. And then we smoke and drive some more. And I think at one stage I start to get a bit out of it, 'cause it all kind of merges into one -- one big blur of desert and cars and motels, and drinking and driving and smoking and fucking.

"And a bit later, a day or so later, or maybe it's as much as a week, Peggy-Beth or Mary-Joe (or whatever her name is) starts to piss me off. Drinking my booze and smoking my dope, as I see it. And then there's the whole name thing. I mean you can't go through life with a woman, and you don't even know her name -- but it seems too ridiculous to ask at this late stage.

"And I'm getting on her nerves, too. Or, at least, this is my impression from the way she keeps nagging me about getting to the snow, and how we're running low on dope. And then there are more 24-hour petrol stations, and more hard liquor and beer, and drinking and driving, and desert and motels, but not so much fucking now. And it all starts to put a big hole in my winnings, but I am beyond worrying about that anymore. And we're getting south, and it's cold at night.

"And then I really start to get out of it. The big blur gets even bigger -- like I'm travelling underneath the ute, with my face nearly touching the road, down the highway at about 190 kilometres an hour. And it's all night: one huge blur of blackness, without road or desert or anything. And in the middle of the darkness, I'm wondering: what's gonna run out first, the booze or the dope or Mary-Beth (or whatever her name is) or maybe me?

"But in the end, it seems they all run out at the same time. And I'm sick, really sick, hallucinating sick -- sick for what seems like days, heaving and retching and trembling, and coughing up stuff like cotton wool, all white and fluffy, like little bits of cloud. And I'm never this crook before, mate, no fucking way. And I'm yellow; I'm the colour of butter. Even my eyeballs are yellow. Even some of my clothes have turned yellow. Alone in this motel room, with nothing but empty beer bottles, and the smell of chunder, and a few left-over coins.

"Eventually I feel better, and I get up and go outside -- and in the distance I see these really huge fucking mountains with snow on them. Just like you see on telly. All big and white and beautiful, so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes -- or maybe it's the cold that does that -- and I think: "Fuck. So we do get to the snow after all."

"And I go back inside, and clean up a bit, and have a shower, and then I look for the motel manager. I get my map of Australia, the big one, the really big one, and I say to the manager: 'I'm a bit lost, mate , can you point to where we are on the map?' And I gesticulate in kind of a general way, so he won't know quite how lost I really am.

"And the motel bloke looks at me, and he's like: "Are you taking the piss, mate? This is a map of Australia ."

"Anyway, that's how I end up in Christchurch. After that I go back to Auckland Uni -- do my Ph.D. in economics. You know the rest."

So here we are -- Bollard and me -- sitting in the RWMC finishing our beers. And eventually I go: "Yeah, I knew it must've been something like that."

And then Bollard's like: "Hey, you know that Aussie bloke from just before? Did he remind you of Ken Done?"

I think about it for a moment, and I'm like: "Yeah, I s'pose."

And Bollard's like: "Well then, I think I'll have to go and kick his fucking head in."

Note:
David Haywood is a friend and spiritual advisor to Alan Bollard. He is willing to sell the exclusive rights to this true story to New Idea, Investigate Magazine, or as an opinion piece for The Sunday-Star Times.