The long chain of gold that binds me.

Wie geht's in your lockdown bubble?

These are memorable days! Or are they?

I'm going to riff on this for a few posts (probably, or it could just be this one - that's the way I roll).

This idea was prompted by a great passage in, erm, Great Expectations. Here's Pip:

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

Pause.

Iron or gold, thorns or flowers: I have so many memorable day examples to draw upon it's not funny, but I'm going to narrow it down to three major gold links in the chain, without which my life would have been much different:

1 The day I watched the Ed Sullivan Show and a group called The Beatles came on and blew my socks off (not literally but they rocked my world for evermore). 

Place and time - our lounge at 18 Korma Ave., Royal Oak, NZ. Although the show happened originally in February 1964, it didn't reach NZBC until many months later.

Picture me - age 7, alone in front of our black and white set. Mesmerised by John Lennon.

Without that seminal experience my obsession with music in general, and The Beatles in particular wouldn't have happened.

2 The day I attended an interview at Mt Albert Grammar in late 1970, and answered Mr Hall's question, "Do you have a career in mind for when you leave school?" by saying, "Yes, I want to become a teacher'. 

Picture me, as an out-of-zone applicant from Manukau Intermediate - age 12.

Without that response, and if I'd failed at that interview - no teaching career, and consequently no number 3 below. 

Luckily, my dad was a MAGS old boy so I got an out-of-zone place and no one there ever tried to dissuade me from my goal - even though I failed everything!

3 The day in December 1982 when the Headmaster at New Plymouth Boys' High School, Tom Ryder, rang me at home (4 Ramelton Rd., Mt Roskill South) and asked me a few questions and then said a telegram was coming offering me a job!

Picture me - age 25, off and running in my first teaching job.

Without this day I would never have met Jacky, our four children and one grandchild wouldn't exist and the world wouldn't be spinning correctly on its axis.

Love and peace - Wozza

Keegan

Family Man (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 9 part 2)

I'm a family man
Working every day for my family


Dragon (Family Man)

In terms of nailing purpose, Marc Hunter's lyrics are spot on. This chapter is devoted to family.

I like the way everybody has a family tree of some sort. Everybody has a whanau (an extended family) which expands, always exploding outward, on-going and limitless.

My Purdy family offshoots take in an ever expanding number of other families, some I know well, others are more tenuous but we are all interconnected.

Aside from various Purdy families, right now in 2016, my whanau takes in branches of the Adsett, Holden, Curson, Selman, Dix, O'Neill, Bulman, Smith, Hope, Skynner, Moore, Rowbotham, Peterson, Haigh, Hodge, Kennedy, Kirkham clans.

They all intersect on me! Cool.

In 1984, Jacky learned with some surprise that she was pregnant. All I remember is a kind of dumb elation. She was 22, I was 27. Although we were married, we were just kids ourselves. What did we know?

Keegan Warren Purdy was born in New Plymouth's Base Hospital on December 19, 1984.

He was two weeks late and still wasn't that keen to enter the world, and Christmas was coming. 

Jacky and I went on long walks around New Plymouth to help pry him loose. Fording the Waiwhakaiho River was somewhat helpful but even then he was a reluctant participant in Wozza's world.

Time was a dragging on and finally, Graham Purdy's first grand child was induced to appear but even then he took his own sweet time going about things.

We had gone up to the hospital the day before - the evening of the 18th. Jacky had little sleep that night and Keegan was making slow progress by the morning of the 19th. Little had happened during the day as well. Our GP (Dr David Lyall) was the father of one of my star students and he made the call for an epidural shortly before 5pm. The timing was critical because the anaesthetist went off duty at 5. Hey - it was the eighties, and it was provincial Nu Zild.

An epidural is a cunning little procedure. It works on the spinal column to numb the lower body. So the urge remains to push, but the pain is alleviated. Jacky was immediately able to relax and go to sleep.

Thinking I had some time to play with, I decided to grab some dinner - you should know that Purdys don't operate well when they're hungry. I went off site for a McDonalds combo and returned to the hospital, sitting on the steps of the maternity wing to have my dinner. 

Tanked up on a Big Mac, fries and coke, I returned to Jacky's room just in time for Keegan to finally get his act together. It was all good. When I think back now, I was the picture of calm. Ignorance is bliss!

Jacky was in a lot of pain during labour, a long and slow process in this case. 

Although we'd been to ante-natal classes, nothing really prepares you for the gush of emotions that accompanies a birth. 

As soon as Keegan appeared, two things happened: I cried my eyes out and Jacky said, "Well that wasn't too bad".

The whole experience was completely overwhelming and draining. Jacky slept, while I sat beside her in an armchair and held onto this new life in my hands and was drenched in pride and tenderness for both Jacky and Keegan.

It's one of those moments.

When I returned home, leaving KW and Jacky to get some rest, I immediately started on Keegan's photo album - cards, photos, news cuttings of the day. I wanted a sense of history. I've done this for Adam, Samantha and Jade as well, and I realise a selfish need here. This didn't exist for me and I wanted it for them.

As a baby and an only child, Keegan lulled us both into a false sense of security. As soon as school started for the new term, he slept through the night. During the days he played happily in his cot and rocked himself in a bouncer chair that Grandad, up in Auckland, had bought for him.

This parenting thing was a doddle!!


He certainly had all the equipment as his cabbage coloured parents embarked whole heartily on their new adventure together.

I don't recall any in depth discussion but Jacky had given up work at White's Department store (in the shoes section) to look after Keegan and, now that he was here, devoted all her time and energy and love into his upbringing.

Although she's not maternal, she's an amazing mother. Go figure.

I went on teaching English at New Plymouth Boys' for the next year but during 1985 we decided a return to Auckland was needed. I missed my dad for one thing. 

So, we loaded up what possessions we had (mainly my record and book collection and plants) and my then brother-in-law and I drove the heavily laden van up to new digs in Windmill Rd, Mt Eden, in time for a 1986 start at Maclean's College.

And a whole new adventure!

Love and peace - Abu Keegan

Come inside, the show's about to start, guaranteed to blow your head apart (ELP)

Tonight and forever (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 6, part 4)

Eek - all those walk socks! Wozza (top left next to former All Black hero Murray Watts) is joined by Alan Elgar (in front of him in the snazzy vest), Rosie Mabin (row two second right), Terry Heaps (front row second left), and captain of the team Tom Ryder (mouth always open in pix).

As a newly married couple, we lived in three New Plymouth flats through 1983 and 1984.

From Lorna Street to Devon Street East (corner section on a busy intersection) to List Street (the pink house). The last two with our new baby boy - Keegan Warren Purdy (the Family Man chapter will detail his, and our other children's emergence).

With Nana Pat and KW in Pukekura Park (NP)

After my second year at New Plymouth Boys' High School, I graduated from List 'A' to List 'B' and was a proper teacher with a certificate and everything. 

In many ways NPBHS was the perfect place to start my career. Although a traditional and well disciplined environment, it still gave me plenty of challenges. I knew where I stood with both my HOD (Terry Heaps) and my Headmaster (Tom Ryder). They didn't suffer fools!

Holed up in Pridham Hall, I taught English and (ha) social studies. I was close to the boys in age, being 26 when I started. The oldest boy I taught in my first year is turning 51 this year and I'm only 59.

I was game for anything - cricket team? Sure! PTA rep? Why not! Magazine helper? You bet! Football coach/manager/player? Crack on! School newspaper editor? No problemo. Organising speech competitions? Sign me up!

I never said, "No".

Staff Notes in 1983's Taranakian has this to say about me: Mr W Purdy, a teacher of social studies and English, also joined the ranks. He has shown an early promise, taking a full part in the life of the school. A dynamic class-room teacher, he coaches the second soccer XI, cricket and has edited The Whistle.

Player/Manager with a great bunch of lads (Bill
Lawsons Snr and Jnr - coach and captain, are also featured
- these guys will be getting on these days!)

Football was awesome. After my apprenticeship with the seconds, I was given the first XI in 1984. They played senior league teams and we were able to play some overage players. That would be me! 

It was fantastic. I managed the team and played during the regular season. Ar - Sunday football injuries - how I miss you!

After three years I started to feel the pull away from New Plymouth. The lure of Auckland and my dad became too strong to resist. Keegan was one year old and needed some firmer connection to his grandad we felt. At that time Jacky's whanau were all spread out and not in physical contact with us. Pat was still in Southland, Brian was overseas working on oil rigs and Sallie was not grandma. So, Auckland!

I applied to three schools and in stark contrast to previous attempts I was offered two of them - Keri Keri High School and Macleans College.

Keri Keri was too far away, even though we loved the northern lifestyle. So - Macleans College in Auckland's eastern suburbs! 

I'd been up for an interview with Colin Prentice, the Principal, and loved the school. I remembered, too, how Colin had been encouraging on my earlier application back in 1982. In the flesh he was imposing but I have good instincts and knew it would be a great fit.

As it turned out, it was an inspired choice. The next four years came to represent the pinnacle of my teaching in so many ways.

Love and peace - Wozza

I've waited years for you tonight (Carly Simon)

Tonight and forever (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 6, part 1)

I've waited years for you tonight 

My faith in love has been my guiding light. 

I've heard your voice, I've read your heart, 

I fell in love with you though we were miles apart 

Tonight and forever - I am yours!                  

Carly Simon (Tonight and forever)

Warren Purdy - English teacher.
Pridham Hall, NPBHS
(complete with hilarious board notes)

An omnipotent force with a gruff manner, Headmaster Tom Ryder was a formidable presence at New Plymouth Boys' High School (NPBHS). 

The no nonsense phone call I took in the kitchen at Ramelton Road was brief and to the point. It was Mr Ryder calling. There were a few questions (which I don't remember much about except that I must have answered them okay). Actually Mr Ryder did most of the talking (he was very much that kind of guy!). He told me that my college report was impressive and then he said I could expect a telegram offering me a job the next day!!

I hung up the phone in a daze. What had just happened? After no real interview at all, suddenly, after all of those applications, I had a job. Out of the sixty plus applications I'd sent off, no other headmaster/principal had phoned me.

Huh. Destiny. I was off to New Plymouth.

First I had to figure out where exactly New Plymouth was. And what kind of a school it was. And where I was gonna live.

When I was a young kid, we'd passed through New Plymouth on a family holiday, I think. I have a dim memory of a North Egmont car park, dad is backing the car, of snow, trees, and vague strange thoughts that the car was going over the edge, backwards. Yoikes.

Apart from that I drew a blank on New Plymouth. Okay! I was about to leave Auckland and go some place I knew nothing about. Great!! A big challenge, but I was ready. It was my first step.

Unfortunately, it also meant not being close by for mum. Her cancer had spread and I was under no illusions. Things were not going to get better. She realised that, I realised that. But we didn't talk about it. It was too hard. 

Looking back on it, I realise I was pretty exhausted mentally.

She and I both knew that moving to New Plymouth meant only physical distance, the bond was and is unbreakable, but it was hard all the same.

In December, 1982, she and I drove to New Plymouth, staying in a hotel at the base of the hill on Coronation Road. During this trip I finally met Tom, my HOD Terry Heaps, the Deputy Principal Lyn Bublitz, and another new staff member Allan Elgar.

My face ached from smiling, body was sore from shaking hands, and my brain hurt from all the new sights and information.

NPBHS is a great school: the grounds, buildings, boarding houses - all with traditions going back over 100 years. I felt at home, it was so like MAGS. I left relieved that serendipity had rescued me again.

Now I had the summer to find a place to live.

Love and peace - Wozza