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Roger Rabbits with |
Today’s random word of the day is “pleasure”.
pleasure
/ˈplɛʒə/
noun:
Enjoyment or satisfaction derived from what is to one’s liking, gratification or delight.
Just the thought should charge up all the feel good juices, get the serotonin and dopamine flowing.
And that’s why this week we give over Page 2 to moments of deep, enduring pleasure, simple things that made a world of difference over summer.
They say ‘a man is rich whose pleasures are the cheapest.’ Well, these are Warehouse budget-low pleasures.
BLOKES BALLET
There’s a big CAT excavator with a 30 metre arm, or boom, and grapple working on the ‘living seawall’ on the Tauranga waterfront alongside the Cargo Shed.
It might appear to be just an excavator at work, but it’s an art form, a ballet, and the beast of a machine is an extension of the drivers artistic being.
The big steel tracks are his dancing pumps, the dust and dirt and rocks are his medium or stage, and the boom is doing all the expressive stuff, the arm movements.
Finding the right rock for the right space on the wall brings on the pirouettes, pas de basques and port de bras of the ballet. It’s a performance. It just needs a speaker stack blasting out some Pyotr Ilyich. I stopped and watched for five minutes.
It turned into 20. At the moment, the ‘Blokes Ballet’ is free on Dive Crescent all day weekdays.
WILL I, WON’T I, MAKESHIFT HARBOUR JUMP
The bridge across the Waikareao Estuary on Chapel Street was built as critical infrastructure, an arterial road. But it has become a destination for thrill seekers.
Kids flock to the bridge walkway, clamber over the safety rail, and chuck themselves into the briny below – 10 to 15 metres perhaps, depending on the tide.
Then they swim ashore, clamber up the rock face on the bridge approach and do it again. And again. And again. Daredevilry is addictive.
If you see a pile of cellphones, tops and towels on the pedestrian way across the bridge, you will find a commensurate number of heads bobbing in the tide below.
Vertigo suffers can live vicariously by playing “will they, won’t they”, because the timid kids will cling to the safety barrier for 15-20 minutes while they muster the courage to take the jump.
There’s pleasure in being petrified.
The “bombers”, the big splashers, are a good watch. As are the screamers, they ones who believe they’re plunging to eternity.
Anyhow, city fathers couldn’t have provided a better attraction had they set aside a budget, brainstormed and tried to design it.
Kids through the ages have always figured their own best fun, and it always comes with an element of danger.
I have been waiting for a grumpy council face to stick up a ‘No Having Fun on this Bridge’ sign.
“BESTEST” CHRISTMAS PRESENT
“It’s my pleasure,” she said. Au contraire - it was all my pleasure.
I had dropped by a service station to use the car vacuum when a wonderfully elegant and mature Māori woman had just finished cleaning her car.
She fished in her bag and offered this old equally mature but far less elegant Pakeha man a spare coupon to use the vacuum.
I suggested she use it next time she cleaned her car.
“No, I will have the pleasure now thank you. Happy Christmas.”
Just a $4 ticket but worth $1m in goodwill. The other ‘bestest’ Christmas present was an out-of-date 2022 joke calendar.
When it was pointed out to the gift-or, she was a bit indignant - the calendar might be out-of-date, she explained, but the jokes aren’t. A joke in itself.
HARRY’S SHOW OF PRIDE AND COURAGE
I have never met Harry Dynes but I like his cut, like his style.
Harry was head boy at a small rural college and he chose to use his valedictory speech to declare his sexuality, his gayness, to the people who mattered to him.
The world really. It was a powerful and emotion charged moment. And 500 people – colleagues, teachers, friends and family all gave him a standing ovation – the first head boy to be given the honor.
Harry was relieved – a weight off young shoulders, and proud Mum spoke of a bold, brave and much loved son. This all happened well outside our readership area.
But the story of Harry’s pride, courage, and acceptance, resonated far afield, giving me enormous pleasure over Christmas.
NOBLE PLEASURE THAT IS ICE CREAM
I bought well. Because if I tripped at the front door of my hovel, I would land where a coffee and ice cream cart has just popped up 20 metres down the road. It is a source of immense pleasure.
Summer’s upon us when the ice cream cart comes out of hibernation, the shutters are thrown up and the first scoops are scooped.
At first I wondered how they’d make it work – folk dropped by in dribs and drabs. Now there are queues – people gather, yap and lick.
And across the road on the harbourside reserve, instead of hoons pissing up and making bother and a mess, there are now families with faces buried in ice cream.
The pleasure comes with a bit of a bottleneck – but a manageable one.
You can forgive people making silly driving and parking choices when they’re pre-occupied with berries and ice cream.
They should put up a road sign – ‘SLOW - ice cream at work’.
MAKING TIME
And finally - there’s a wee rooster and his Dad over Brookfield way, who like spending time. All their time. When Dad’s in the driveway pottering over, around or under his car, Dad’s boy has his toy car parked up alongside with his own set of small gauge tools.
And they potter, they swap tools, they chat and laugh for hours. Their time is precious.
And when the lawns are being mowed, Boy, with earmuffs and sunhat, is strapped securely into a special seat so he can enjoy the mowing journey with Dad.
Slowly, up and down, up and down. Dad and Boy permanently bonded. Now I can sense the Pleasure Police getting rarked – ‘dangerous’ they will be saying.
Then I remember as a kid, my old man plonking me between his knees in the driver’s seat.
As a seven or eight year old I would steer round the open road while he worked the stick shift and the pedals. So many of our pleasures as kids came with an element of risk.
