AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

My very first teacher was Mrs. Brady. She was a tall and handsome woman with a severe haircut and coke-bottle glasses. She wore modest calf length skirts with comfortable cardigans and she taught numbers and letters in a furious cloud of chalk dust that was at odds with her restrained, no-nonsense attitude.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 

I am thirty-seven years old.

I am having a mid-life crisis.

I have joined a gym.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 

Every couple of years or so, I have a Friday night like this.

A seemingly endless, no-fun filled Friday night that makes me feel like the World’s Biggest Loser.

I want to go out but nobody wants to go out with me. I want to do something, but I don’t know what I want to do. I’m bored and I’m restless and I just know everyone else on the planet is having a really good time.

Without me.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

Damn it, Jimmy.

Why did I have to run into you on the sidewalk today when my car was illegally parked and my hair was a mess and my eyes were dark with lack of sleep?

Why did I have to blurt out what I did?

“Oh my God, I’ve been wanting to run into you for years!”

Man, Jimmy. I was like a school girl. I hope you didn’t notice that I was blushing or that I stammered. 

“Cool,” you said.

And you were. 

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 

I’m a black and white kind of person. I either like things or I don’t. I love them or hate them. It’s one or the other. Hot or cold. Black or white. Get it? There’s not much grey in my life.

So, just to be totally clear that there’s no sitting on the fence here…

I love LA.

I totally heart it.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

Memory can be like a magician’s trick; part sleight of hand, part smoke and mirrors. It’s real but it’s not real. Sometimes you’ll catch a glimpse but you will never actually catch the trick.

So it is with music. There’s a song that I don’t know the name of, but if I hear even two bars of it - it reduces me to a quivering wreck.  It was the song that was playing on the radio when I found the lifeless body of my kitten that had been squashed flat by a gas tank. I was about eleven years old when this happened and despite the resulting trauma, I count myself lucky that that the song playing was an obscure electronica piece. I’d have been fucked if it had been something really popular like Spandau Ballet’s ‘True,’ which still gets a lot of airplay even now.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

In the morning, there are tui. Native to this land of the long white cloud, they call to each other with the sound of bells.

Their feathers look black but if you happen to find one carelessly shed; you see that it is made more of the sea than the air. The colours are iridescent green and violet and they shimmer before your eyes.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 

Does it hurt?

Yes, it fucking does.

Sometimes I feel like the Velveteen Rabbit. Come alive, made real but bruised and shaped by love.

Hard love that pulls your hair and pulls no punches.

Soft love that barely tickles and is feathery light and floats away before you have time to name it.

For even the most gentle love can be brutal.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

In part one of this sorry little tale, I established that reading other people’s journals is a bad thing - especially if you don’t bother reading all the way to the end.

I also established that in my younger days I fell in love far too willingly. Once even, with someone simply because he told me I had perfect nostrils.

This propensity to hand over my heart, and to snoop in other people’s journals, had been my undoing as I watched my love object fly off to another country and into the waiting arms of another girl.

I thought I’d never see him again.

I was wrong. Damn it.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 

I fell in love way too easily when I was young. 

All it took was a playing-hard-to-get smile or a mysterious hairstyle and I came over all beating heart and sticky palms. 

And given that most of my love falling happened in the early ’90’s when interesting hair ruled, it wasn’t hard to make a mistake. Or three.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

Television has been very important in my life.

It made a strong impression on me from a very young age. When I first saw colour TV - I wet my pants. Literally.

Television is how I’ve made my living for most of my working life. It’s inspired me. Exasperated me. Paid my bills. Introduced me to my great love. Taken away my great love. Given me lifelong friends and opened the door to terrible enemies.

You could say television has had a profound influence on me.

But maybe not as profound as it had on my sister.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

It could be a courtroom anywhere. Small town or big city, it wouldn’t matter. It just happens to be here in New Zealand. A packed gallery, a witness box, a bench - everything in place for a murder case.

Nothing unusual there, murder has become so commonplace that it takes a really juicy one to shock us out of complacency. This case has juice in spades.

It goes something like this:

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

I wear my grandmother’s wedding ring.

I wear it on my own ring finger because it’s said that’s the only finger with a direct blood vessel to the heart.

I wear it as a connection to a love story that began long before I was born.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

Barren is the ugliest word I know. It speaks of death. It reeks of utter loneliness.

It’s a word that the dictionary says applies to me.

It applies to fields where nothing grows. It applies to urban landscapes where homes are not built. It applies to my body.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

There are a few things in my life that I regret doing. But stealing from the Red Cross isn’t one of them.

Vomiting into a colander when I was drunk certainly is.

And I wish my last words to my grandmother hadn’t been so mundane.

“Have you got any vinegar?”

I would have said something more meaningful if I’d known she would die suddenly that night.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

I’ve always been good at presents, so consider this my parting gift to you.

You who have held my heart, not so carefully, but for so long. 

Consider it every letter I wrote to you, every telephone call, every birthday present. Each phrase, each whispered goodbye, each coloured ribbon. (more…)

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND-

I need to get strong. Sinewy Madonna strong.

I’ve managed to somehow get through the break-up. I’ve watched every episode of The Sopranos. Back to back. I’ve shed a few tears and talked and talked and talked.

Now I need to get strong.

I know there’s a spine inside me somewhere that has grown soft with decades of benign neglect.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

Generation X.

I like it. I like us.  I think we have the coolest generational brand.

X.

It marks the spot. It’s mysterious. It’s also a kiss.

But I think we’ve also been ripped off. BIG TIME.

The Baby Boomers before us are such attention seekers. Gen Y behind us don’t even need to seek it, the self-confident little shits.

But Generation X. Well, I think we’ve been quite hard done by actually.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND-

Why are Human Beings such assholes? I don’t believe this is an opinion, I believe it’s a fact.

I mean, think about it. How many people can you say have never had an asshole moment? I can’t think of any. It’s not limited to one single demographic either. Assholes can be any age. I’ve met elderly assholes, middle-aged assholes, Gen Y assholes, even asshole kids. Actually, especially asshole kids. Just because they’re small doesn’t mean their asshole quotient is less.

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AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND -

HIM

Hello. Just wanted to say how much I’m looking foward to seeing you. I think you’re beautiful. Can’t wait. Bye. xxx

ME

Hi!!! So nice to get your text!! I’m so excited to be seeing you so soon! Counting the days!! xxxxxx

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