We have just one world (Dire Straits)

Jacky, Wozza, brother Ross, Lynda and their son Scott - Feb. 8 2025

Wie geht's?

Recent visitors to Wozza's World have been my young brother and his family (minus Hayden, their eldest son). We live in different parts of NZ these days, so face to face has been rare since the last time we met up in 2016.

As the Dire Straits song Brothers In Arms says

There's so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones

That said, for the first 20ish years we lived together with our mother and father (who I felt smiling down on us during this reunion) and we were a really tight nuclear family - DulcieGrahamandtheboys.

I don't feel we've changed a lot since those days. Do any of us?Fundamentally, Ross and I are still who we were, and our interests have most definitely stayed the same since we were teenagers. We both turned out alright.

I was great to catch up with the northern most Purdys at Rush Monro's Ice Creamery in Hastings for an ice cream. Our dad was a big fan so it was a very fitting place for a reunion. Love you bro!

Love and peace - Big brother

Get like you used to be (Chicken Shack)

R G Purdy and W N Purdy - DYB DYB DYB

Wie geht's?

Hope your answer is positive. Speaking of positive - I woke up with a sore throat, cough, runny nose and feeling achy so I did a R.A.T. and it was...POSITIVE!

So, Jacky and I have started a seven day self-isolation from today. We're both triple vaxed so hopefully it's a mild dose and I don't get man-covid (it's lurking - stay away man-covid - you're not wanted here!!)

On to other things:

Slight deviation for this post. First up - the above photo should really have accompanied the previous post but I ran out of time to find it/scan it/crop it and use it. 

So - better late than never and all that. It will make sense if you scroll down and read that post - smiley face.

On to the main business - I loved this poem from Danusha Laméris that Swissmiss posted on her blog recently. It's worth sharing so here it is:

Small Kindness

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

Danusha Laméris

Love and peace - cough cough - Wozza

Clearing skies and drying eyes now I see your smile, darkness goes and softness shows a changing style (The Beach Boys)

Mum and Ross explore the Grmman Avenger

Wie geht's?

Recently, I sorted through our photo albums to find some pictures for my brother of a long-ago family trip to Rotorua. I thought I'd include them here as well.

We stayed in Rotorua a couple of times growing up in the sixties, and we always went to the local attractions as were then - hot pools, trout hatcheries and the playground at Kuirau Park, which included the Toot N Whistle miniature steam train, were a few.

In the playground they had also positioned a tank and a WW2 plane for kids to play on - Ross tells me that the tank was most likely a US M26 Pershing and the plane a Grumman Avenger.   

Ross and Wozza hang out in Kuirau Park - mid sixties -
before traumatic run in with some angry swans.

Looking back, I guess it would strike people (like my children) as a bit odd to have left over WW2 relics as a playground, but we used to love crawling around inside these things and it didn't strike us as unusual at the time.

Admittedly, entertainment for children has got a lot more sophisticated over the years. I get it - taste and attention spans have changed, but it's a bit sad we can't take Asher to the model train experience that his mum enjoyed when and if we visit Taupo - because, like the tank and the plane, it's not there anymore! 

During one of these Rotorua holidays mum and dad took us to feed some ducks at Sulphur Point - it was a dark and broody night - windy with a palpable threat of storm in the air. Lo and behold as we went to the water's edge a bevy of ravenous and aggro black swans came rushing towards us out of the water flapping their wings with their necks craning forward to attack us and grab the bread. Clearly their swan leader had instructed them to unleash hell. We scrambled back to the safety of the car throwing the duck's bread over our heads as we went.

I don't remember us indulging in any high-pitched screeching and wailing like banshees. But we might have.

It was all extremely exciting. And scary!  

Love and peace - Wozza

Riding on a long blue paper plane (Status Quo)

Wie geht's? 

This one's about one's hobbies!

Bruce Springsteen was asked recently about what he did outside of music, what were his hobbies?

He said something along the lines of, I'm not really a hobbies guy.

No surprise there! 

My brother though, certainly is. He loves flying remote control planes (pictured on the right above). Has done since he was a youngster - starting with those model kits we both used to do as kids.

Except as his model building got more elaborate and bigger and bigger in scale, mine stopped.

As a hobby it suits his fastidious, pain-staking, inquisitive personality. He's amazing at it!

That he's still doing it 50 plus years later is, like the Springsteen answer, no surprise.

I'm the same! As I type this, I'm listening to a record album I first heard and bought in 1972 - Emerson Lake and Palmer's Trilogy.

The buzz of excitement I get listening to it is the same (From The Beginning instantly transports me back to 1972)

So raise your glass to hobbies!

Jacky has her horses (still going strong), my brother-in-law has his vintage truck, my father-in-law has his videos and Little Theatre, Ross has his planes, our mother loved flowers - floral arranging and gardening, our dad loved electronics, and I collect and listen to music (including the new Sprinsteen album).

You don't know what you're missing Bruce!

Love and peace - Wozza

Check it out now, the funk soul brother (Fatboy Slim)

Wie geht's?

As I was researching the pictures for that Wozza in the seventies celebration (see back a couple of posts) I came across a veritable mountain of family snaps featuring me and my younger brother. 

Our dad was a keen amateur photographer and he took loads of pictures of us together. I hadn't quite realised how many!

Before our lives diverged at the end of 1981 (I moved away from home to flat by myself while going to Auckland Secondary Teachers' College), we were 'the boys', as in Dulcie, Graham and the boys.

From our perspective in 2020, those 22 years when our lives intersected, from 1959 to 1981, have become a relatively short lived period in our lives. 

For much of that time, though, as these pictures show, we were tight as. 

Off to Sunday school

Love and peace - Ross' older brother

Every picture tells a story (Rod Stewart)

For half of the seventies we lived here - 18 Korma Ave., Royal Oak, Auckland. I wasn't allowed to have a cool as chopper, but I did get this beauty for my 10th birthday in October 1967. My nerd credentials were fully intact and obvious from the bike pump, the saddle bag (groan) and  the headlamp. My token rebel move was to radically reorient the handlebars! Yes, I was ready for the seventies!

Wie geht's?

As you all know, I've been reading Ian Chapman's book that looks at (his) life in the Seventies (Glory Days - from gumboots to platforms).

His seventies in Hamilton East sounded a bit like mine: a cringe worthy time of being deeply uncool in the suburbs while listening to some of the best music ever made.

So I decided to head to the photo albums to see if I was as terminally unhip as a teenager as I remembered myself to be. 

Yikes! It was WORSE than I thought.

Those ten years, from October 1st 1970 (when I turned 13) to October 1st 1980 represented an incredibly awkward transitional time in my life: from Manukau Intermediate to Mount Albert Grammar to Auckland University. From boy to...er...older boy!

Unbelievable that just three years into the eighties I'd meet Jacky, get married and start a family!

Anyway - the pictures tell the real story, don't they!

Second from left on the bottom row. I was a young, small, baby-faced 12 year old here. Mr Lindsay - the cool guy in the tie, was the reason I decided, at age 12, to become a teacher when I grew up. A naive dream? Uh, actually, no - it wasn't.  

Geeky me in the middle with Ross (left) and his friend (right).
Nerd alert - we were on holiday in Rotorua and I was
wearing my Mt Albert Grammar jersey. Criminal.

The screen printing years may seem a move forward but the
desk and bookcase clue you in (bound copies of Nature
Heritage anyone? OMG) and must I draw your attention to
the bowl cut?

The curtains weren't far away, in the
meantime we have the side swipe.
Fashion conscious? Ha ha. Not yet.

1975 - far right front row and, unlike my hirsute
teammates, a long haired babe magnet I was not!

In the second half of the seventies, from 1976 onwards, 4 Ramelton Rd. Mt. Roskill South was our home. In the frame - my first car, an orange mini (of course it was orange - it was the seventies dude!) and Ross is in our dad's work vehicle so this must be late seventies. BTW I still have the white table and chairs, seen on the balcony, in my possession!

On holiday in Taupo with DMP. Uncool moment: I most
probably thought those clip on dark lenses over my glasses
were the height of sophistication.

MAGS badminton champ 1976. My sturdy wooden racket
was, of course, old school, unlike the trendy metal frames
the other blokes had!

1977 to 1981 found my brand of self-conscious nerd at Auckland University. I posed for this in more ways than one. The book? Tropic Of Cancer of course, but the AUT sweatshirt and the flared jeans weren't very late seventies punk or, anything really. And, note the business shirt underneath the sweatshirt. OMG Wozza - help was needed!

Ha ha - my homemade  John and Yoko
T-shirt was a start but those plaid shorts
again??? I am without speech! 

The curtain years had begun! Brand attack: non clip on dark glasses!
Adidas shoes! Puma jersey!
But I was still on family fishing holidays.

The decade ends with me pursuing a Masters'
degree and closing in on a start to my teaching
career and a move to New Plymouth at the end
of 1982 (after a year at training college)

Okay. Well, that was embarressing and fun, right? And while you'll still chortling at my fantastically unhip teenage years - why not take advantage of the lock down and hunt out your own teenage snaps.

Yeah. Boom! That wiped the grins off your faces!

Love and peace - Wozza 

Something tells me you're here with me (Train)

Wie geht's?

Have to report a tearful moment in the Purdmobile on my daily commute recently.

Been thinking about my mum and dad a lot of late (see the next post on Goo Goo G'Joob) and a live version of Train's When I Look To The Sky came on Radio Wozza. 

'Cause when I look to the sky something tells me you're here with me
And you make everything alright
And when I feel like I'm lost something tells me you're here with meAnd I can always find my way when you are here

Never fails to get me.

Then I read this poem today and it happened again.

Briefly Here and there some scrap of beauty gets snatched from this or that: One child’s voice rising above the children’s choir. A few wild notes of laughter passing through the open window of a passing car. That pink handkerchief waved at the parade. The tiny Nile-blue tile broken at the edge of the mosaic —all shining accident and awe. And this last second or two of dreaming in which your face returns to me completely. Not even needing to be, being so alive again to me. Laura Kasischke (2011) Beautiful Laura. Thanks. Love and peace - your eldest.

It's my birthday too, yeah (The Beatles)

'Tis my little brother's birthday (18th of Rocktober). He turned 58.

I'm pretty sure his knees don't look like that anymore but who knows - I haven't seen him in shorts for decades.

We used to be close - as in we did everything together for many years. I would say until I hit Manukau Intermediate for two years and he was still at Royal Oak Primary. I think it started about then.

Although going into separate bedrooms at 18 Korma Ave. about the time I started school at Royal Oak Primary may have contributed as well.

Whatever, increasingly, we got different friends, our interests more radically diverged, we didn't share stuff and I entered boy teenage fog at Mount Albert Grammar. I don't think he did. He's always been finely tuned.

By the time he caught up to me at MAGS he was my young brother who I didn't need to look after as I'd done at Royal Oak Primary.

Then we went to Auckland University. Me first, of course. I went into the arts, his path further diverged into sciences.

Our belief systems changed along the way. I became aware of social injustice. Our motivations changed.

I left home first. We lost touch more and more.

We met and fell for very different women.

I got married first, started a family first. Moved around the world.

It's now been a long time. We've grown apart, as many brothers and sisters do. But he's still my brother, he always will be, and I miss those years when we were ignorant of our differences and were close. 

Love and peace and happy birthday Ross Graham Purdy - Big Brother.

I feel I could almost sing (Bob Dylan)

You angel, you (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 2, part 3)

Three months after my Uncle Jack died, I turned ten.  

Of all my birthdays, the tenth stands out. The step into double figures, from child to pre-teener is special. For me, October 1, 1967 came to symbolise a jump, a leap, a catapult into the rest of my life.

I'd been promised a proper bike, a two-wheeler. The agony of waiting those long months to pass during my ninth year was tempered with the thought of that pot of gold ahead.

At that time we lived in the quiet cul de sac that was Korma Road in suburban Auckland. The house was opposite a Mormon Temple which took up the other side of the street. It was an interesting series of buildings. Even the name, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, in large embossed letters, was impressive.

Ross and I would play there a lot: firing acorns from the huge oak trees which overhung the car parks; climbing the roof while we pretended  to be Napoleon Solo and Ilya Kuriakyn from U.N.C.L.E. (of course I was the cool Kuriakyn); watching the crates of beer bottles being stacked at the back entrance; smelling the sweet banana palms; wondering about the secret goings on inside the temple.

Even though we were right opposite, hiding in plain sight, we were not spared visits from clean cut American men in white shirts and ties, riding their flash grown up two wheelers with saddle bags. They would lean their bikes on our brick fence for me to envy.

Our house was pretty cool, it even had an under house garage!

There was no internal access to it but it had a great space to crawl where a staircase could go in the future. There was room here for surplus wood, bricks, roof tiles and boxes that needed storing. The dank earth smell added to the clandestine pleasure of hiding and listening to my name being called just above my head.

The wooden garage doors were folding ones, painted white, with frosted glass windows. You couldn't see inside the garage from the front, but a high window on the side gave a clear view of the two cars, a company sedan for dad and mum's red mini. It was something of a delicate manoeuvre to get both cars in there but I never heard any complaints from dad.

On the back wall there were work benches constructed for dad's use. He was an electronics wiz kid so there were many small tins above the benches for transistors and valves and things. All were carefully labelled, arranged precisely, and placed deliberately.

The garage was usually clean. Whenever a build up of dust and leaves happened, dad would fill a watering can and dampen down the floor before sweeping it all up with a stiff broom. 

The walls were concrete and contained that lime fragrance that's both sweet and sickly. Cobwebs, attached to the wooden ceiling, the floor of the lounge above, added to the picture.

Around the time of my ninth birthday Grandma had given me a camera, a Kodak Instamatic with flash cubes. Armed with that and a book on photography a friend of dad's had given me, I started to shoot. Dad already knew a lot about photography, so I learnt the basics of developing and printing black and white photos from him.

From time to time, the laundry was transformed into a dark room; the enlarger that lived in the hall cupboard was brought out of its protective plastic sheath and the ringer washer was pushed to one side.

An elaborate ritual took place in the dark room. It was precise, it appeared to me to be quite convoluted, and it was magic. The different coloured plastic trays of water eventually produced the red tinged black and white photograph that I had taken only a few days ago with my Kodak Instamatic. The exclusive red darkness around the enlarger, the sweet smelling developer, the soothing lapping water - all somehow conspired to produce a photograph.

Eventually, October 1 rolled around. When you're a kid, birthdays are huge and a year takes FOREVER!

Ross and my birthdays had developed their own ritual: mum would take us to a movie of our choice as birthday treats. For my birthdays I always went for pulp westerns like Scalphunters, Villa Rides, or Bandolero. This time out it was El Dorado.

I loved westerns and the ride into town to the Civic was a treat in itself!

But, before the movie this time, there was a special gift waiting for me at home after school. 

All day during classes in Mr Haydon's standard three class at Royal Oak Primary I anticipated what my bicycle would look like. For months I'd walked past the bike racks at school, dreaming of owning the latest chopper bike with the long wide banana seat and raised handle bars. They were so cool. All the intermediate boys had them!

I walk the short distance home along Oak Street in my usual dazed state, careful to avoid the long driveway where that huge black dog lives. My heart is pounding. Thoughts concentrated on the bike, as if, just by imaging it, I could wish it true.

Down the slope of Pah Road, thoughts of what film we'd be seeing now overlapping with the bike. Past Seymour Park where, every Saturday, ever since four years old, I play soccer for Eden F.C. Cutting through the Mormon car park and thoughts of dinner (always Lemon Meringue Pie for dessert on my birthday). Past the dowdy flats opposite the Temple before getting to number 18.

Into our pathway, past the brick letterbox, between the rose bushes, up the ten concrete steps to our front door. The bike. Where is it?

Nowhere to be seen is where. Maybe they'd forgotten. Maybe it's coming when dad gets home from work. Nowhere.

I walk into the kitchen, trying hard not to let disappointment slide through to the outside. Mum's at the bench making my favourite dessert. Things are looking up. She looks at me and instantly knows my thoughts.

Then she says it, "Why don't you go and have a look in the...garage?" Could she ever read me good.

"I can't mum, the door's locked." She gives me the key. I scamper out of the kitchen,down the ten stairs taking two at a time, around the path, down more stairs to the white painted doors of the garage.

As I open that magic doorway to the garage and see my brand new, two wheel, blue and white Raleigh bicycle...I smile.

Even now, looking back at the photo I took of Ross on my bike with my Kodak Instamatic, I can still feel that smile, I didn't even notice that it isn't a chopper with banana seat and high handle bars!

We wheel it out, my mother and me. I get on.

My mother behind me, half holding the seat, I stretch to reach the pedals and take my first ride away from her as she lets go of her eldest son, age ten.

I fly off, around and around that Mormon Church car park, past the oaks, over the acorns scattered beneath my wheels, making that great leap forward, catapulting into the great unknown!

Love and peace - Wozza

Our wings were flying in the sun (Dragon)

Get Back (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 1, part 8)

On holiday at Tutukaka, Northland, NZ.

Purdzilla's early years were all at 18 Korma Ave., Royal Oak. My stable paradise; we lived there from 1959 until 1974.

18 Korma Ave., Royal Oak, Auckland, NZ

Backyard pool at 18 Korma Ave - good times

If I close my eyes I can picture every room. I see floor coverings (the garish sixties swirls), the mantle piece around the fireplace with rimu bookcases either side with ornaments and books, the venetian blinded windows, the solid oak furniture. I can smell the under-house garage, the compost heap. I can feel my bedroom, the camellia and rose gardens, the brick white pointed letterbox, the trellis and the swimming pool, the shade house with mum's orchids. Everything.

It was a magical home. I loved it. It was where I grew up. It was full of love and a big dose of sibling rivalry as well at times.

Our section backed onto a large woodland area that belonged to a kind of monastery. This was a great bonus - an overgrown playground for climbing trees, running, laughing through wild flowers, playing war games and adventuring.

Ross and I had a changing group of friends that we grew up with and we'd happily play in this area for hours. 

In many ways, we were typical brothers - although our games of league, football, boxing, monopoly and so on would often end in frustration for Ross (as in he'd throw a tanty), we'd always make up pretty quickly and be ready for another go. I'd always win because I was older and bigger and more sporty. He would often tip the monopoly board over if he was losing and table tennis games would often end with him throwing the bat at me.

Although we are vastly different in so many ways, and began to grow apart as teenagers, we were 'the boys', and we went everywhere together in those young years. My overwhelming feeling of those years together is one of family unity and happiness. Oh sure, there were days I got into trouble somehow and was punished and howled and hated my parents but I can only think of a few. Once I could outrun the bamboo stick I was sweet!

Mostly life in the sixties was simple: smiling, reading, going to football at Seymour Park, playing on my bike, reading, going to Royal Oak Primary, reading, playing games with Ross, reading, being a son, being a big brother, being loved, and loving back.

Two branches of one tree and it was solid oak

As far as I knew the whole world was like this. At the time, I didn't know how lucky I was. My parents didn't argue or hate each other. Just the opposite - they actually seemed to like each other and support each other. Not that I ever thought about this because it was just normal life. It was the way we were.


Love and peace - Wozza

He's married, he works, go on sleeping/ On the other side of the world (Jack Kerouac)

Get Back (You may say I'm a dreamer - Chapter 1, part 7)

John lennon and the Quarrymen were looking for gigs wherever they could find them, Jack Kerouac was labouring over On the Road, Sibelius and Toscanini were heading to their respective graves while Ricky Nelson/ Elvis/ The Everly brothers and Sam Cooke were having hits, nuclear tests were continuing amid protests from the Pope, and Dulcie Purdy was pregnant with her first child.

According to my mum, I was 'made in Pihia, born in Auckland'. Fairly appropriately, I arrived right on tea-time, 5.53pm.  I was a big baby, robust and bald.

Perhaps Christina, now Grandma, was momentarily disappointed not to have a grand-daughter (the doll stayed permanently in position at the top of her wardrobe), but I was pretty pleased to say hello to the world. 

My initial days on earth were not entirely auspicious ones. Being born in the shadow of One Tree Hill was symbolic enough, Maungakiekie is my mountain,  but space at this temporary hospital, a left over from the American forces building programme of the war years, was very limited. Therefore, I received my first visits from my new father while living in the service room where all the linen was kept. 

In our family stories, this became known as 'the broom closet'.

Most people's early memories are hazy and imprecise, if not unreliable. From the oak shaded hospital I decamped to 5 Oak St. - the flat, only a few houses away from Royal Oak Primary, that Dulcie and Graham let from Mrs Wells.

I kind of remember the house but I was only two when we left it. I can dimly picture the back of this house, made up of weatherboards and happiness.

Mum walked everywhere with me - around Royal Oak and Greenwood's Corner and One Tree Hill. I remember being frightened by a big pig dog on one walk, which has led to a lifelong suspicion of dogs.

Ma and mum show off the newbie - Ross Purdy

Two years and 18 days after I was born, I got a playmate - son number two: Ross Graham Purdy, or Dusty as our Uncle Jack called him.

Ross' emergence coincided with a move to a new house at 18 Korma Rd., Royal Oak. Our grandfather, now and forever called Deedoo by me, did all the plastering and white-pointed the bricks, as was the custom of the day. I helped out by bringing croncrete (sic) in my barrow, and painting 'the toadstool' - well it looked like a toadstool, in reality a much less romantic sewer air vent.

The family was as complete as it was ever going to be. We had Grandma and Deedoo; we had Ma (mum's mum, Lucy) and Uncle Jack: we had Uncles Roy and Mel and their families. 

But most importantly, for a long time to come, the four of us had become a strong and inseparable unit - DulcieGrahamandtheboys.

Love and peace - Wozza