Summer breeze makes me feel fine, blowin' through the jasmine in my mind (Seals & Crofts)

Wie geht's?

As I type this, I'm listening to the three amigo's latest playlist - songs with weather features in the title.

Riders on the Storm by The Doors has just come on - one of my selections as it happens, and I'm instantly sitting in mum's mini, waiting for her outside an antiques' store in Remuera, Auckland.

I've heard the song countless times, but I'll never forget that first time in the car. Gobsmacked, is the appropriate term, as I drum my fingers on the dash (then and now).

Many, many songs do that to me - instantly take me back to a time and a place. Gypsy by Uriah Heep and Wings' Uncle Albert/ Admiral Halsey instantly transport me back to my bedroom at 18 Korma Ave.

Speaking of which - I wrote a piece about my childhood home in my Year 13 class recently. The task I set them was to use a memory of a place from their past and revisit it as they are today.

Here's my effort:

Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?

My childhood home was in Auckland’s Royal Oak area – 18 Korma Ave. to be precise. Royal Oak is a central area of Auckland.

From the age of two in 1959 until 1973, this was my safe place. The place where my brother and I lived with our mum and dad. The place I returned to each day from Royal Oak Primary School, and Manukau Intermediate (a short walk in the opposite direction to the primary school), and Mount Albert Grammar School. Going to M.A.G.S. as an out of zone student meant I had to get a bus to Mt Albert. That’s as far as I’d had to travel from home to that point.

We moved away from Korma Ave. during my first year doing School Certificate and I kind of knew there was no going back. Our next-door neighbour was doing bizarre, vindictive things like pouring oil into our swimming pool. So my parents decided to move. They would buy a section and build a new house in Mt Roskill South, but that's a different story.

As a child, the area around Royal Oak was my whole world. I’d gone to a kindergarten in Greenwoods Corner run by Mrs. Bridges from our first house in Oak Street. We lived there while our house in Korma Ave. was being built. It was only a few streets away from Royal Oak Primary where I’d eventually go and only a short walk to the Royal Oak shops and to Korma Ave. I grew up in a tight knot of streets – I was even born nearby in Cornwall Park/ One Tree Hill. An American field hospital had been set up there during World War II and was still operating before National Women’s Hospital was opened in 1959 (my younger brother was born there). So, my mountain was quite literally Maungakiekie (the real name for One Tree Hill).

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On a trip back to Auckland a few years ago, I took Jacky on a little tour of the neighbourhood where I grew up in; where I played tennis (a short bike ride from home); where I did school patrol while at Royal Oak Primary; Seymour Park where I played football for Eden F.C. (a one minute jog from home). Finally, we turned down Korma Ave. with the Mormon Church still occupying the right-hand side of the street. I was excited to share this nostalgic trip with her – events like this are always richer when they are shared, I’ve found.

We drove down the street. There was the Brethren Church on the left-hand corner, the familiar block of flats where I used to collect money for paper deliveries (why oh why did they trust this task to small boys? No way would this happen in 2026), then…nothing. A vacant section where the solid brick and tile house stood.

A complex set of emotions overwhelmed me. For a start my brain couldn’t really decode what my eyes were telling me. The place I’d grown up in had been demolished and in its place was newly sown grass.

Flashes of memories replaced the fogginess: the willow tree; the swimming pool in the back yard; the air vent I’d called a toadstool and painted as a two year old; Christmas mornings spent waiting by the glass sliding doors to the lounge for mum and dad to wake up; my bedroom where my love of music hatched and developed; the kitchen which was my mother’s territory (all those meals, all those cakes and tins of biscuits; all those birthday parties)…

The memories overwhelmed me as I sat in the car, next to Jacky.

Then I realised - the only solace was that all those old memories were still inside me, and always would be. Plus, now, as I sped away from 18 Korma Ave., I knew I could continue to make new memories with Jacky.

Yes, I thought - I could have my cake and eat it too.

Love and peace - Wozza 

Do you think you will be happy, buttering the toast of your semi-detached suburban Mr. Most (Manfred Mann)

The Royal Oak roundabout,
ten years before I arrived

Wie gehts?

A while ago, I mentioned Tracey Thorn's wonderful book about her roots in suburbia, Another Planet. Specifically I alluded to her need to get in touch with her easy childhood and testy teenage self who lived in 1970s Brookmans Park (an hour train journey north of north London).

During the book, she goes on a pilgrimage of sorts, a 'day trip into the past', back to that small suburban commuter town and finds a lot of things unchanged. Except for her self. Like all of us, that's a person from another planet.

Where would I go if I was to follow her example? Because she's right:

So many of us live in some version of suburbia, the majority of us I suspect, yet we heap scorn upon the place, and what does that do, I wonder, to our sense of self. 

As they like to say in dramatic TV programmes, 'it's complicated'.

In the UK it's easier because it's not tainted with rosier childhood/ testy teenage memories. 

My history there isn't at touching distance - it skips two generations back to my grandfather who emigrated to New Zealand from Rochdale with his brother and parents in the 1900s. My father and I were born in NZ.

In NZ though, a pilgrimage back to my suburban roots/routes would take in a very small part of Auckland where I lived from zero to mid twenties (I lasted longer in my home town than Tracey did as I didn't travel away from home for University).

Here's a list of things I'd be able to walk to if you dropped me off at the Royal Oak roundabout, Auckland:

• Seymour Park (football from age 4 onwards)
• Royal Oak Primary
• Manukau Intermediate 
• Oak Street (my first house from 0-2)
• Korma Road (our house at number 18 was demolished some time ago, I lived there from 2-15)
• One Tree Hill (where I was born and roamed as a kid and teenager)
• The Royal Oak shops (like Brookmans Park, some are still there, like Ollie's Ice Cream)
• Greenwood's Corner
• Fernleigh Avenue (tennis club)

A short bus ride in a variety of directions would mean visits to:

• Auckland University
• 4 Ramelton Road, Mt Roskill (my house from 16-25)
• Mount Albert Grammar School
• Queen Street, Onehunga
• K Rd and Queen Street, central Auckland (where Greg and I walked and visited record shops)
• Shackleton Road, Mt Eden (where Greg lived)
• Disraeli Street (where I had football practice)

The universe was very small and comforting in suburbia days. Eventually, like Tracey's version, it would also became stifling. I've explored a bit more of the world since then.

That exploration is now over, and I'm ready for a smaller part of the planet again.

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

Didn't take too long 'fore I found out what people mean by down and out (Led Zeppelin)

Real books and real sounds from my stereo. It's so good to see you both again. I've missed you, so much.

Reading ebooks is okay but only when you don't have access to the real thing. Listening to an ipod dock is okay but only when you don't have access to the real thing.

It feels like we're on a holiday of sorts (a holiday in limbo land) as we wait to see where the maple leaf is heading next. During my holidays I often get a hankering for reading a Stephen King novel so I visited the Waipawa Community Library.

Reading books from a library is a pleasure I've enjoyed since I was a wee nipper living at 18 Korma Ave., in Royal Oak, Auckland with mum and dad and Ross.

First library mum ever took me to was down the road in Onehunga.

The Carnegie Free Library in Princes Street had been opened in 1912. Apparently, it was one of eighteen in New Zealand built with funds from the American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie.

It was a grand building with a large entrance way with a decorative crest and it felt like I was entering a secret Roman Temple.

It was amazing; you could borrow a book to read! You didn't HAVE to buy the book in a shop. You could go to this building and they would let you walk out with a book without any payment. Crazy and amazing. Try getting that idea off the ground these days!!

I LOVED it!

It's no longer a library but I'm happy to know that it still exists in Princes Street even if it is now a restaurant.

The Waipawa library isn't so imposing. Libraries are noisier places these days (they even have a radio playing fer goodness sake). Seems the place is a de facto youth centre come after school drop off zone but the Waipawa book stock is fantastic so I can put up with noisy teens playing games on the computers (what a world we live in huh).

I found two books by Mr King that I had never seen before: Duma Key and 11.22.63. 

I'm nearly done with Duma Key. So far so Stephen King (weird dolls, zombies, a narrator with mysterious powers, all set in a backwater town in Florida called Duma Key). Perfect for a holiday escape.

Love and peace - Wozza