Posts by Rob Hosking
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Hard News: The Digital Natives, in reply to Kumara Republic,
If it’s not Laila Harre in the end, then the media have just done a Dewey Defeats Truman.
Believe me when I say there are those of us who have nightmares involving that very image.
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Hard News: Jones: The contender leaves, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
If you obligingly providing a ten car pile up, it’s a little rich to complain when people slow down to look.)
Yup. And bloody hell, the number of business folk I used to hear complaining about the awful left wing pro-Labour NZ Herald would make you weep.
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Got given the Rick Stein Curry book last year - its the book of the tv series a couple of people have mentioned.
It's close to my book of the year for 2013, nudged out only narrowly by Jesse Norman's 'Edmund Burke: the First Conservative'.
Currnelty working my way through it: tonight's meal is the lamb & sweet potato curry for which I've used kumara and also bunged in a spoon of ground sumac - I know its usually a fish or chicken spice but I thought it might go well with the kumara.
The two favourites so far are this beautiful Madras fish curry: Stein uses snapper but we've found terakihi is fine (and a hell of a lot cheaper) but it loses something if you use skinned fish. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/recipes/10197422/My-favourite-dish-Rick-Steins-madras-fish-curry.html
The other favourite is the First Class Mutton Curry: but note that the recipe in the book is quite a bit simplified from the one on the tv programme.
My first 'real' curry was aged about 10: the mother of one of the Indian kids in my class came along and cooked us all a meal.
Two things stand out: how hot the meal was to the uneducated palate, but also how gorgeous the bread was. In retrospect it was probably some form of bhatura. All I know is I can still taste it. Light, fluffy, not too oily: filling, and warm, stayed on the roof of the mouth and dissolved. This was 40 years ago, and it is still incredibly vivid. [Anyone know the Urdu for 'madeleine cake' or 'in search of lost time'...' ].
Back in the year after I finished Uni and hadn't found a job back in journalism I worked on a gardening gang and the boss (best boss I've ever had, btw) was an immigrant Geordie with a taste for curries. He took us all out for lunch before Christmas to what he reckoned was the best Indian restaurant he'd ever come across in NZ - it was in K Road, almost opposite the Post Office. Lovely rogan josh and fantastic (if very oily) roti.
I *still* haven't got to India, but I had some lovely curries in Nepal - the best of which were from roadside stalls.
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I don't know if he's survived the current cull but I'll also put in a huge plug for chief sub Michael Collins.
When he was at NBR he used to not only sub the words but he would [deep breath now] CHECK JOURNALISTS' MATHS.
And he was good at it.
So, back in the print only days, if you got a call from Michael late morning Thursday, you knew he'd been going over your numbers and found something not quite right.
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Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Paul Campbell,
There was however a very Wellington/Auckland thing going on (later on it also became an ANC vs. PAC thing with one group supporting one and one the other) – probably also caused by the various left factions that were locally ascendant at the time.
This is a bit of theme in Geoff Chapple's book on the Tour, which I sat up re-reading last night & which captures so much of the vibe of the time it gave me bloody nightmares.
I remember Hiwi Tauroa coming back from South Africa in (I think) either late 1980 or early 1981 - certainly not long before the Tour started.
I think he was already Race Relations Conciliator but I'm not sure: he had been coach of Counties, a very very successful one, and was a real local hero.
He was interviewed on TV after he came back - I think by Ian Fraser - and said, eventually and very heavily, he didn't think the 'Boks should come.
It was a real 'more in sadness than in anger' declaration - at least, that is my memory of it - but you could hear the cocks crowing thrice between Pukekohe and Waiuku. Because it was such a rugby mad area, and it was seen as a massive betrayal by Tauroa.
I also recall it being a surprise to a lot of people: there was a feeling Tauroa would be in the 'bridge building' camp.
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I know other folk have posted this music clip here before, but here, again….
To me it captures 1981: not so much the anger of the time but certainly the angst. There was a sense of scabs being ripped off, more at a social level than at a political level (although politics there was, of course, aplenty).
On Mandala himself, this piece in Slate, on why he was not a saint is very good. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2013/12/nelson_mandela_dies_at_95_the_south_african_leader_s_flaws_as_much_as_his.html
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Hard News: Friday Music: The First Time, in reply to Simon Grigg,
Edit: although looking at it, it ain’t February so …
Looks too green for February.
That touches on something I meant to mention re: Sweetwaters - final weekend of January, lower Waikato basin, baking, broiling heat, and there is Graham Brazier in black leather trousers, fronting the Legionnaires.
Just about got heatstroke just looking at the guy. Bizarre.
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I've seen a lot of local (and a few international) bands in pubs and at Uni and Polytech and the like but I've never done the big concert Western Springs/Mt Smart type of gig. Don't like crowds much.
Sweetwaters is the biggest I've managed: the 1984 one which had Talking Heads, Pretenders, Eurythmics, Simple Minds, and pretty much every local outfit who could plug in an amp.
My main memory of the Saturday night is the Pretenders doing a very perfunctory gig, Chrissie Hynde getting pissed off because the punters were throwing a lot of beer cans around and some were ending up on the stage: she swore very loudly at them in the middle of a song. But the band ending with a storming version of Small Faces 'Whatcha Gonna Do About It?' And, being chronically historically obsessive, explaining this factoid to the folk I was with instead of just, you know, getting into the whole thing.
Missed most of the Talking Heads part: David Byrne came on, on his own, strumming a guitar and singing ('Psycho Killer', I think) but by then the beer cans were flying again and I got whacked on the head with one which was half full - probably of someone's piss.
Never did any gig with my parents. Idea is bizarre...
First unpaid local gig - I know during the Twitter exchange alluded to above I said Daggy and the Dickheads, which has a 50-50 chance of being true. The first few weeks on my Polytech course after I left school they played a lunchtime concert, and so did Blam Blam Blam. (this is February 1982). But I don't recall which was first.
Both were very good - Daggy and the Dickheads were from Taihape, they had one single which can be heard here (and I still have my copy) and a few other songs which came out on an EP later that year and which were good live and crap on record.
The Blams, of course, are much better known. Was impressed by the fact McGlashan could sing from the drum kit, and then get up and play the French horn. They did a mixed soft shoe shuffle/twirling dance during the chorus of "Maids To Order'.
First international artist gig was probably John Cale at the Gluepot, summer 1986-87.
Just Brilliant.
First School gig A local band made up of a few blokes a year or two ahead at school. Bass player sang most of the songs - a lot of covers of Police numbers. [this was around 1980-81.]
Dave Patrick, who comments up-thread, might remember this outfit - I think they were his his year.
Anyway, the bass player is still playing bass, and his outfit is doing rather well, |though not doing Police songs any more. ]]
Biggest gig regret Cold Chisel farewell tour late 1983. Was all set to go but ended up stuck in Whakatane in bed with concussion after car accident.
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Most of this dance music stuff goes over my head (I don't dance any more. Its sinful* )
But the Battling Strings' 'If I Do' ?? Ahhh... Live clip here, from the Auckland Uni Cafe.
* Well, it was the way I used to do it.
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Hard News: No Red Wedding, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
You too? Perhaps I’m a naif, but if Key and Cunliffe were the pair of evil genii Twitter would have us believe their life goals are tragically low. At the very least, HBO should have signed them up for a fashionably nihilistic drama by now.
This place needs a 'like' button or perhaps something similar but less cliched.