A Memory of Light and The Wheel of Time series reviews

It took more than two decades, 14 books and more than four million words. Hundreds of characters fighting and angsting and sniffing through dozens of intertwining and sometimes interminable plots. But finally, finally, The Wheel of Time fantasy series came to an end this year. I finished the final book, A Memory of Light a few weeks ago.

I've told the story of my stormy affair with The Wheel of Time before, in my entry about author Robert Jordan's tragic death. It's a bit weird to think that I've been reading it my entire adult life.

If you're planning to read A Memory of Light still, or want to read the series, don't read on if you want to avoid spoilers. Oh, and this is a long review. It's a long series. I've been reading it since 1991. And it's my blog, dammit (well, partly).

Ten songs that have rocked my world recently

Let It Loose - The Rolling Stones, Exile of Main Street

Wrecking Ball - Gillian Welch, Soul Journey

Please Read The Letter - Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Raising Sand

Red Dirt Girl - Emmylou Harris, Red Dirt Girl

Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks, Something Else By The Kinks

Shangri-La - The Kinks, Arthur

Intervention - Arcade Fire, Neon Bible

Back To Black - Amy Winehouse, Back to Black

Mykonos - The Fleet Foxes, Sun Giant

The Cave - Mumford and Sons, Sigh No More

I love good music. What's been rocking your world?

Through the window of a plane

It may well be a while before Lauren and I get overseas again, which makes me reflect back on those days when we were hopping into a plane (oh, the carbon miles guilt) and heading off to some exotic place.

There are many who intensely dislike plane trips. Maybe it's the interminable airport queues.  Or the souless no-man's land of the departure lounge. Or being crammed into a small space where you can never get a decent sleep. Or the fear of plunging to your doom.

Me though, I like plane trips.  Airline food (heck, any food) has to be really bad for me not to enjoy it.  These days, I have a smorgasbord of games, tv shows, documentaries and movies to watch - and usually end up choosing some mindless action movie (the flights to China featured Prince of Persia and The A-Team).

But the real kick I get is being in the air.  There we are suspended above the world in a steel capsule, watching hills turn into crinkles and clouds turn into hills.  I bet there were Neanderthals who watched the birds and dreamed of flight.  Now we can do it so often it becomes mundane.

Not for me.  Here are some of the reasons why.

Los Angeles at night

The endless suburbs of Mexico City

The epic, monochrome landscape of Baffin Island, Canada

Great Barrier Island - the first sight of home for two and a half years

In the bones of the earth

Following the Pike River mining disaster that has consumed New Zealand for the past two weeks, my Aunt Sylvia sent me some pictures of my great great grandfather, Yorkshireman Stephen Ruberry, and his family.  He bady injured his back in a mining accident, and never recovered.



Stephen Ruberry and Elizabeth Shepherd at the time of their marriage



Later in life



"The fatal explosion at the Altofts Colliery, near Wakefield"

Sylvia also sent me this poem by that great and tragic poet of World War One, Wilfred Owen

MINERS

There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall.
I listened for a tale of leaves
And smothered ferns,
Frond-forests, and the low sly lives
Before the fawns.
My fire might show steam-phantoms simmer
From Time's old cauldron,
Before the birds made nests in summer,
Or men had children.
But the coals were murmuring of their mine,
And moans down there
Of boys that slept wry sleep, and men
Writhing for air.
I saw white bones in the cinder-shard,
Bones without number.
For many hearts with coal are charred,
And few remember.
I thought of all that worked dark pits
Of war, and died
Digging the rock where Death reputes
Peace lies indeed:
Comforted years will sit soft-chaired,
In rooms of amber,
The years will stretch their hands, well-cheered
By our life's ember;
The centuries will burn rich loads
With which we groaned,
Whose warmth shall lull their dreaming lids,
While songs are crooned;
But they will not dream of us poor lads
Lost in the ground.



It makes you wonder why anyone would want to work down there, in the darkness of the earth.  For an answer, see this brilliant interview clip from Welsh actor Richard Burton, whose father was a miner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkddEkM7FQw

Whingeing Poms and Loud Americans

Being in the US and coming back to the UK has got me thinking about different attitudes in different countries. Stereotypes are dangerous, unfair and sometimes just plain wrong. However, often there is a kernel of truth. Nations do have cultures, with people tending to behave in ways that fits in with most other people, which is what many stereotypes are based on.

A couple of stereotypes that I'd be interested in getting your thoughts on are the friendly American and the negative, complaining Brit.

One of the things that struck Lauren and I being back in the States was just how good the customer service is. People serving us were so polite, friendly and helpful. I'd never noticed customer service in the UK or NZ as being particularly bad before, but in comparison it really isn't flash. A nice smile and cheerful snippet of conversation is not what you expect from the minimum wage slave behind the till in Pac N Save or Tesco.

Flags ringing the Washington Monument. Yanks do love the Stars and Stripes.

Back in London, I've been extra aware of how many Brits - especially in groups - like to have a good moan about something. How you'll hear something is 'rubbish', when it's merely mediocre, or 'decent' when it's very good. On the bright side, British pessimism makes for lots of great comedy and a healthy scepticism about people in authority.

I think New Zealanders have picked up some of this in our cultural baggage. There's the tall poppy syndrome for example - the urge to cut down people who stand out from the crowd.

Guardsmen at Windsor Castle, no doubt off to wet their stiff upper lips with a pint of warm ale and a moan about the boss.

So, what do you think of these stereotypes? Gigantic generalisation for sure, but is there something to them? Is so, why do you think it came about? Is it the British weather (I don't think it's that bad at all)? Is it the space and freedom of America, the optimism of people coming to the New World? What about other stereotypes - like the coarse, cocky, boozing Aussie? Or the cold, humourless German (completely untrue in my experience)? I'd interested to read your thoughts.

Movies, movies, movies (and sometimes other stuff)

Hi, as with Lauren's books (see below) I've set up a separate blog for my occasional movie reviews and reviews of other things, like books and concerts. That way my long-winded essays won't clog up the main blog! The reviews blog is:
http://tanesreviews.blogspot.com
I've started with a review of the latest superhero blockbuster, Watchmen.

A Killer concert

It was perfect timing - the night before Lauren's birthday, so us old people could sleep in. It was also the best rock concert we've been to. The Killers killed it.

I've been to shows by better artists - though The Killers are great - playing better songs with better sound. But I've not enjoyed anything else more. One of the main reasons was because as soon as The Killers came on stage and Human started pulsing out, everyone got to their feet and stayed there for the whole show, clapping, swaying, hopping and singing. It's frustrating being at a rock concert when you can't move for fear of upsetting the grumps behind you. Like during The Rolling Stones' Wellington concert back in '05. Bloody hell, it's Jumpin' Jack Flash, you should be jumpin'!

It wasn't perfect. The sound was fine for the softer and faster tunes, but it was rather muddy for the couple of mid-tempo tracks from the latest album, Day and Age. And they didn't play my favourite song from the album, Neon Tiger. But those are just a quibbles. Here's a few reasons why it was such a good gig.

Cracking songs: For Reasons Unknown, Somebody Told Me, Read My Mind - Brandon Flowers and co write some damn good tunes. It's hard to pick the highlight on the night, but I'd have to go with the mass euphoria when they played Mr Brightside. Mr Brightside kicks ass.

Surprises: The violins on the downbeat versions of Smile Like You Mean It and Sam's Town. Nice.

Discoveries:Wow, Dustland Fairytale is an American epic. Springsteen, eat your heart out.

Performance: Huge video screen, a storm of bubbles, the literally explosive finale - there was more than just sound to admire. True, Flowers' voice barely manages to carry the songs and the rest of the band don't do much, but they pull it off.

Seats: We were waaaaay down the back of the O2 Arena for Leonard Cohen, but close to the stage this time. It ruled.

Leonard Cohen

What was it about the old musos? Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop and now Leonard Cohen - they're all old enough to be in rocking chairs, not rocking arenas. Maybe if you survive all those drugs you become immortal or something.

Lauren and I went to the excellent O2 Arena to see Leonard Cohen on Friday night. The guy's 74, we thought, he's not going to be around for much longer. Even if he's rubbish, at least we could say we'd seen him.

He wasn't rubbish.

Cohen is a great lyricist and songwriter - the best description I've read of him is a "the poet laureate of high maintenance love affairs" (see Chelsea Hotel #2 or A Thousand Kisses Deep for example) - but there's one thing that really sets him apart.

The band comes on stage, followed by a straight-backed man in an elegant dark grey suit and matching fedora. A waltz-like beat starts, the three women singing backup begin a low 'la la la la', and Cohen opens his mouth to say the word 'dance'. Around the arena, thousands of people gasp. That voice.

Cohen's voice is to singing what the Marianas Trench is to nature. Deep, dark and incredibly seductive, it draws you in and floats you away. As you'd expect, Cohen didn't do a lot of running around stage, and only played an instrument three or four times, but when you've got a voice like that - and a terrific backing band - you don't need to.

What you wouldn't expect is that he'd play for two hours and forty minutes - excluding a break. It was fabulous stuff. Many of the songs were better live than, with his 80s tunes stripped of the cheesey frills and many songs infused with virtuoso playing of a double-stringed lute-like instrument (a tamburitza?). So many of the songs were wonderful, it would have been hard to pick a highlight - had he not played Hallelujah. I don't like his original version that much - it's fgot those 80s frills that make it far inferior to the Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright covers - but this version ... wow.

Lauren summed it up: "I don't think any live music that will top Leonard Cohen singing Hallelujah live".

Amen.

The times they are a changin'

You have to smile when white conservative politicians like John Key and Britain's David Cameron talk about how similar they are to black liberal Barack Obama (I'm cool too!), but they do have a point. They all riding a wave of desire for change.

People get sick of governments and their leaders, no matter how who those politicians are or how well they have done. Irritations and scandals accumulate like barnacles and eventually voters decide it's time to get a new boat. It's different in some democracies, like Japan or Sweden, when the same power has held power for decades, but not in New Zealand, Australia, the US or the UK. Change is why John Howard went. Change was Obama's campaign slogan. Change is almost certainly going to doom Gordon Brown. And change is why John Key was playing 'The Times They Are A Changing' at National's victory party yesterday - though, as TV3's John Campbell dryly noted, Dylan probably wouldn't have cast his vote for the Nats.

Voting for change in and of itself is stupid. Giving The Bill and Ben Party power would be a change. But after a few years the urge to try something different is something many voters feel, which is a nightmare for long-standing governments and a blessing for oppositions. Comes a time when all the opposition has to do to win is look moderately competent and not too scary. This election, John Key did those things and did them well.

A few thoughts on the New Zealand election:

1) If many politicians delivered every speech as well as they do their concession speech, they wouldn't need to concede. As John McCain did earlier in the week, Winston Peters and Helen Clark brought down the curtain on their careers with grace and dignity.

2) With the global economy in meltdown, this may have been a good election for Labour to lose. They've got three years to rejuvenate themselves and criticise National while the bad news rolls in. National have made a lot of promises and it's going to be very hard to keep them all.

3) Key has won a resounding victory, which is in a large part down to his personal popularity and rebranding of National as centrists. But he now has a difficult path to tread. He can govern with ACT, but that means a move to the right that will alienate the moderate swing voters he has done such a good job of capturing. Alternatively, he can govern with the help of the Maori Party - but a deal that involved something like changes to the Seabed and Foreshore Act or entrenching the Maori seats would be anathema to many conservative National supporters.

Helen Clark was a master of managing governments under MMP. Can Key? If not, this could be a short National government.

4) Labour's suddenly got some very big shoes that need filling. This was a bad election for them, but not a terrible one - they only lost six seats. A lot of that goes down to Clark, whose approval ratings were excellent for such a long serving leader. But she's stepped down, and soon the almost equally influential Michael Cullen will follow her. No one in Labour springs to mind as able to make those slippers fit.

5) Roger Douglas is back. It's like Wham having another No1 single. But weirder.

6) No more Winston. He's been in parliament practically my whole life. Yes, the times they are a changin'.

Some thoughts on the US elections

Though the polls have been predicting it for months, though we've been talking about it for more than a year, though it was going to be an extremely difficult for any Republican to win after the disastrous years of George W Bush, it still feels a little unreal.

The Democrats didn't screw it up. And America has a black first family.

I've been addicted to this election campaign, with its endless twists and compelling personalities, from the first primaries on. Not so long ago, the smart money would have been on Hillary Clinton vs Rudy Guiliani. And now here we are.

I'm going to miss it.

Some thoughts:

1) Obama, for all his intelligence, calmness and amazingly uplifting oratory, will inevitably be a disappointment. The hopes that are invested in him are impossibly high and the challenges impossibly huge. This is not eight years ago, when Bush came in to peace and prosperity. The global economy - and the West's in particular - is sliding rapidly downhill. America is fighting two wars, which may both be unwinnable. Iran is looking to get nukes and North Korea already has them. Africa is full of as many horror stories as ever. And, worst of all, the world is warming as resources shrink.

2) For the reasons above - plus that the next election won't see blacks, Hispanics and the young as fired up for historic change - there's a very good chance that Obama will be a one-term president.

3) But he can't be counted out. Yes, he's fairly inexperienced in government, but he also ran perhaps the best political campaign of modern times. That shows he's got the ability to assemble, direct and inspire a great team. Not bad attributes for a president.

4) You have to feel a bit sorry for John McCain. He seems like a good man and was the best candidate the Republicans could have selected, but he was running against history and was caught between a rock and a hard place politically. He's too moderate to energise the guns, guts and God crowd, so he chose Palin and moved to the right. For example, though he's been tortured and has opposed the Bush administration's sanctioning of it, he didn't stand up against waterboarding. But then he was too conservative for the moderates and made it a lot easier for Obama to paint him as Bush, mark two.

5) McCain didn't run a good campaign, either morally or politically. For example, there were some ugly implications that Obama was unAmerican, particularly from Palin. He lurched from position to position over the economy, coming out with policies seemingly at random, grandstanding over the first debate and generally coming across as reckless and impulsive. So while it wasn't a classy campaign, his concession speech was one heck of a classy finish.

6) When you see something like this video and this one, even if you're to the right of the political spectrum you'd be a hard-hearted person not to feel moved about what just happened.

7) We're going to see Leonard Cohen next week. I really hope he plays 'Democracy'.

A Year in London

This month is Lauren's and my anniversary of living in London. It's been a great year. There's no place like home of course, and we do miss the land, family, friends and kumara chips. But London's probably the easiest place for a New Zealander to live in overseas, outside of Australia. After all, there's probably more Kiwis living in the west of the city than in Masterton, as well as the stream of family and friends passing through on their tours of Britain, Europe or the world.

But there's still a lot of differences between the colony and the Mother Country. Here's a few I've noticed during the year.

Bricks. Pretty much the first thing you notice when coming in from the airport at Heathrow is that wow, they really do have lots of terrace houses. As our latest visitor Laura put it, you expect to see Mary Poppins popping up over the rooftops at any minute.

Cricklewood, in north London

And all those houses - plus most other buildings - are made of little red-brown blocks. It's said that Augustus found Rome brick and left it marble. The Georgians and Victorians seem to have found London wood and left it brick. Having grown up around wooden and stucco houses, it's one of those small differences you really notice. I guess building flexibility is not much of a worry when your equivalent of a powerful earthquake is one that rattles the tea cups.

Diversity. You're taking the Tube and the guys sitting next to you are peaking Polish. Opposite you are some teenagers cursing in Italian. Down a bit is someone in a turban, next to the couple whose parents came over from the Carribean. Back home, the plumber who's come to fix the loo is from the Seychelles. His boss is called Cyrus - his family's Persian.

London is the most ethnically diverse city I've ever seen. It's brilliant.

Public transport. Speaking of the Tube, much of your time in London - certainly before you get the chance to orientate yourself by walking around the central city - is spent like a groundhog. You disappear into the tunnels, pop your head up to see something, then duck back under again. You could be in five kilometres or 50 metres away from where you started, for all you'd know.

Being a true Londoner also means being able to have conversations like: "Take the Central line down to Bond then change to the Jubilee, that's quicker than the Picadilly" and not be thought weird.

Everyone moans about the Tube and the train system fairly often - the stuffiness in summer, the suffocating commuter crowds, the delays. But for all of that, you can get everywhere in the city without having to drive. It makes you realise just how terrible Auckland's public transport system and urban planning are.

These crisps are well good, yeah. It's English, innit?

History. From palaces where Henry VIII chopped and changed, to pubs that Shakespeare might well have had a pint in, history is everywhere in the UK. It's quite easy to get blase about it, but geeks like us love it.

Elizabethan era pub in Stratford-upon-Avon

Foxes. They're like really timid little dogs, or big cats with pointy noses and bushy tails. There's dozens around where we live, and, though you only ever see them for a few seconds, we love them. Even if they do scream like banshees.

Class. Watch enough British tv or movies and you'll realise that they're obsessed with class. And it really does tint everything, from the paper you read to the supermarket you shop at. The snobs are snobbier, the yobs yobbier. People seem to take more pride in their 'station' - you'll see a lot more ostentatiously expensive cars, floppy-haired public school boys and thuggish men with shaven hair and gold chains than back home.

Countryside. England has the prettiest countryside I've seen. Ireland runs it close, as do parts of rural New Zealand, but England is the best. Before you bring up the magnificence of the Rockies or the bush, I'm thinking about farmland, not wilderness - though parts of the Lake District do rival the South Island for rugged splendour. There's rolling hills, pockets of trees, fields of rich green grass and - the key factor - hedgerows. Hedgerows are great. Every farm should have them or, just as good, dry stone walls. They may not be as cheap as wire fences, but they're a heck of a lot nicer to look at.

Troutbeck valley in the Lake District

Books. When you get millions of people spending hours on trains, buses or tubes getting to and from work every day, you get a lot of folks with little to do but read. Which means books are really cheap relative to what you earn - £8 for a new paperback vs $NZ22 back home. By way of comparison, a pint of beer is about £3.30. Lauren's in heaven.

Latitude. We're closer to the pole, which is great in summer, but means in autumn it gets really dark really early really quickly. Going to and coming back from work in the darkness isn't fun.

Crowds. I think the litmus test for whether you'll like London is how you deal with crowds. There's eight million people in Greater London and does it show. At peak time every main street and transport hub is like Lambton Quay at lunchtime - but often worse. Oxford Street on the weekend is madness.

The centre of things. If all the big events and big gigs didn't give you a hint, then looking up on a clear day in west London would tell you that you're in one of the world's hubs.

Vapour trails above the Thames, near Hampton Court

It's a small world after all. For all of London's teeming hordes and being on the other side of the globe from home, you do get frequent reminders that it's a small world. There was the bus tour to the Costwolds where we sat behind two women that were in my university hostel. Then there was the former colleague I bumped into at Paddington Station. At times like that London kind of feels like a suburb of Hamilton.

Thirty

It's a strange thing, being 30. Yes, it's just a number, just a convenient marker point. There's plenty of thirtysomethings that are funnier, more energetic and more irresponsible than many twentysomethings. I know more than a few.

But still. 30. There's been a change in the way I think of myself, which I've not quite got my head around yet. I can't really think of myself as a beginner anymore, or someone who is unconditionaly young. OK, I'm young - but in comparison, like to a pensioner. I'm a grown up. Teenagers probably think I'm old. Especially if they saw me with my new walking poles.

In Wales, smiling through the pain of creaky knees.

But if the number feels a bit weird, the process of turning 30 was great. As Lauren's blogged already, we had a really excellent party here in Ealing, then a trip to Ireland that saw us relish the New Zealandesque scenery and flexibility of a car. Thanks to all our friends, especially those who came from far away to get to London's Mild West for drinks. Extra special thanks to:

Erica, for the yummy cake.

Flatmate Jay, for the Airbornes. Evil man, evil drink.

Supercooks Megan and Clint, Flash the rental car and Horace the tent for making camping in Ireland one of the best things we've done since leaving home.

Lauren, for not realising how close she was to the edge of Inishmore.

The ancient Aran Islanders, for building Dun Aegnus, an awesome hill fort whose back door is always open.
Ireland, for being almost as gorgeous as you-know-who.

Battle of the titans

Federer vs Nadal, the Wimbledon final, 2008. What a match. It was one of those very rare occasions when you could reach for the box of superlatives and tip out the lot, without exaggerating. The tenacity, the skill, the power of both men was - well, reach into that box and pick out whatever you want. If you like tennis and have not seen the match, sell your house, your liver, your grandmother, if you have to. You must watch it.

I watch very little tennis, so I can't compare it to other classic matches, but it was possibly the greatest sporting contest I've ever seen. How often do you get the top two teams or individuals in a sport clash in an encounter that's consistently entertaining, immensely skilled and so nailbitingly close?

A few contenders spring to mind:

In football, there was some cracking games in this year's Champion's League and Euro 2008, but - tense as the Chelsea-Manchester United final was - not between between the best teams in the world. The only match I can think of that might compare to Federer-Nadal was the thriller between Holland and Brazil in the quarter-finals of USA '94.

In cricket, I sadly didn't see the famous 2005 Ashes Series and only caught the very end of the tied 1999 World Cup semi-final between South Africa and Australia. While I've seen a few riveting Black Caps matches, not when they could be considered a truly great cricketing team. That heartbreaking 1992 World Cup semi-final loss to Pakistan might have been up there, had it been a shade closer.

Rugby league had the ever enthralling State of Origin - the Graham Lowe-coached and Wally Lewis-led Queensland team's victory in 1991 sticks in my mind most strongly.

And rugby? Two Wallabies-All Blacks games: the 'Gregan tackle' match of 1994, and the match in 2000 won by a last-minute Jonah Lomu try.

What about you? What are the greatest sporting contests you've seen?

A shout out to the parents of the world

Right at the moment, it seems that half the women we know either have recently had, or are about to have, a Zorg, a Tiny, another Jardine-Langston or mini Margenau - in short, a baby. Not that we've had the pleasure, but as the elder children of large families, we've seen plenty of maternity clothes, pooey nappies and bleary-eyed, short-tempered parents. It ain't easy.

So a big shout out to the new and about-to-be-new mums and dads. You guys are awesome.

Mad dogs and Englishmen

It's the hottest May on record (which means since the 1700s) and boy, are the English enjoying it. Rather like in Wellington, where warm, still days are also rare treasures, everyone rushes out to lie in the sun. There being no beaches to mooch on short of a train ride to Brighton, in London that means they hit the parks.

Kensington Gardens

Unlike in New Zealand though, the ozone layer still exists and no one seems to much care about skin cancer, so the parks become filled with every shade of brown, pink and pasty white. While playing football I offered some sun cream to a pale-skinned topless, red-headed Pom. "No, I want to get burnt," was his reply.

Mad dogs ...

Lewis and Lauren think the sun is, on balance, a good thing.

Last weekend also saw Manchester United seal the Premier League title in a photo finish with Chelsea. Inside a Kensington pub (deep in Chelsea territory, but filled with Man U fans), when Ryan Giggs scored the clinching goal, grown men yelled, lept out of their seats, hugged and jumped up and down. At the same time. It was a beautiful thing.

The highlight of the weekend though was frisbee at Ealing Common, which was rudely interrupted by a deluge of Noah proportions that was confined to the suburb apparently just to spite us and our guests from central London. We offered them towels and alcohol, but they will probably never visit the hinterlands again.

"Right, I think I can get two squirrels, but the rest of the animal kingdom could be a problem."

Still rockin' in the free world

On Friday night one of my biggest dreams came true. No, not the one where I develop superpowers and save the world from alien invaders, but something even cooler. Neil Young. Live.

Apologies to all non-Neil Young fans. This is going to be a bit long and gushy.

That's one of the best things about London - everyone big comes here a lot more often than they make it to New Zealand. This show was at the Hammersmith Apollo (a huge and acoustically excellent theatre), which was packed mostly with middle aged fans, but with a healthy portion of twentysomethings like me. I can only call myself twentysomething for the next four months, so I'm going to take the chance to do so.

The stage looked like a hippy junkyard, filled with amps, drums, various stringed instruments, an orange piano painted in flowers, letters and numbers covered in light bulbs, a wooden Indian and lots of paintings. Some guy was adding to them, painting at the back of the stage during the show, often watched by a little boy. Random. Maybe it was Neil Young's son or grandson and that was his way of babysitting.

The opening act was Neil's wife Peggy, a lovely platinum blonde with a deep, sweet voice. She played a pleasant set of country songs that drew warm applause, but that was drizzle compared to the thunderstorm when Young came on stage.

Shaggy grey hair straggling away from a big bald patch, a tan suit for the acoustic set, a paint-splattered black one later. He sat in a circle of guitars, picked up one, strapped on a harmonica and played From Hank to Hendrix. After finishing that, and each other song, he'd get up and wander around, as if wondering which of his zillion classic tunes to play next. When some wag in the front row (there were more of a few in the audience) made a crack, he turned and told them to "f*ck off. You know, you're great. I'd go anywhere to see you," to general amusement. That aside, his banter was good-natured. Every now and then he chucked in a few reminisces - like the time he wrote Don't Let It Bring You Down after coming back from seeing Hendrix at the Isle of Wight festival.

Right. He's old.

Anyway, the acoustic set was superb, a mix of famous songs like After The Gold Rush and obscure ones like Ambulance Blues. My highlight was Cowgirl In The Sand.

In the second set, he brung the grunge.

The change between Young's mellow and manic modes is amazing. That thin, heartbroken voice grows razorblades and his guitar starts to drip venom. There's one word and a world of difference between Old Man and Dirty Old Man.

Like the Stones and Iggy Pop, Young is a fogey with the energy of a teenager, jumping around the stage, tearing out solos, snarling into the mike about Johnny Rotten and the powder and the finger. The long jam at the end of the new and rather mediocre closer of the set, No Hidden Path, was self indulgent, but the encore - Cinnamon Girl and a mesmerising version of Tonight's The Night - finished the show on a high.

The man whose house was at deep mid-on

This is a little tribute to Mr Mogford, my family's neighbour.

Mr Mogford was the last of the neighbours who were there when we moved onto our section, back when I was a toddler. He and his wife helped my parents a lot while Dad was building our house. Randomly, he used to work with Grandad (Mum's dad) at the Power Board. I remember the two grey-haired men chatting over the fence one day.

I did not know Mr Mogford well. What I mostly remember is his good humour - which he needed, as his immaculately maintained section was at about deep mid-on from the sports field where we played cricket. We were always hitting balls over there. He'd be there with a smile to let us in and sometimes helped us look for the ball under the big plum tree, or amongst the garden, or next to the shed.

He died last Thursday, suddenly, aged 86.

Heath Ledger

Man, what a bad couple of weeks for talented Antipodeans. First Sir Ed, then Hone Tuwhare, now Heath Ledger.

Lauren and I both really, really liked Ledger, who was one of the best young actors on the planet. Brilliant in Brokeback Mountain and Candy, I was really looking forward to seeing his taken on The Joker in The Dark Night.

Looks at the moment like suicide by drug overdose. If so, that's yet another talented artist to kill themselves. Very sad.

The Quintessential Kiwi?

We New Zealanders lost two of our most distinguished countrymen in the last couple of weeks - poet Hone Tuwhare and adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary. Their deaths got me thinking about who we choose as our national icons and what this says about us.

It's strange, feeling sad about someone you've never met and really know very little about. I felt that way because Sir Ed was, of course, one of the few people the overused words 'legend' and 'great' actually fit, but it was more than that. You saw his face every day on the $5 note. He was the only New Zealander most people in the world have heard of, a man whose death led the websites of all the major serious daily papers in the UK, and was big news in America, Australia and many other places. As residents of a small nation stuck in the bottom right hand corner of the map, a place that goes unnoticed most of the time, we are almost hysterically proud of anyone who makes a mark on a global level.

As the person who made the most famous mark of all, Hillary played a major role in defining how we see ourselves.

He was rugged, humble, generous, laconic, adventurous, environmentally and socially aware. A high achiever who didn't boast about it, a man who used his fame to help others more than himself. Helen Clark described him as "the quintessential Kiwi".

But was he, really?

For example, how many New Zealanders are at home in the wilderness, or even enjoy a few days bushwalking? More than many countries probably, but I think most of us would rather get out a DVD than go for a tramp, let alone drive a tractor across Antarctica. We, like the rest of the Western world, are getting increasingly fat and lazy.

How charitable are we? Our national aid budget is miserly. And most would rather stick a new tv on the credit card (or go on a big OE) than contribute much to saving starving Africans.

How committed are we to conservation? We talk a good game, but we're among the most wasteful of all nations. It's only our low population that has kept us from completely fouling up our islands. Since coming to London, where public transport is light years ahead of Auckland and environmental awareness generally seems higher, we've realised that New Zealand is behind the times.

There's truth that many of Hillary's qualities are part of New Zealand culture - we admire modesty and that dry sense of humour can be seen in Flight of the Conchords, for example. But overall, Hillary was someone we like to think we come out of the same mold as, rather than that actually being the case. He's the peak, we're the foothills.

Also, the strong, stoic Pakeha outdoorsman of the Hillary/Colin Meads/Barry Crump type plays too big a role in our gallery of heroes. Hone Tuwhare's passing reminds us that 'quintessential Kiwis' include Maori, women, artists, scientists and more. The kind of people we admire is changing - look at how Peter Jackson is revered. But the Speights men still have too firm a foothold in our national identity, particularly in rural areas, for my liking.

What do you think?

Why I'll be backing South Africa

It's a rare occasion that a New Zealander finds themselves supporting South Africa in the rugby, but that's what I and I suspect most of my rugby-following countrymen will be doing on Saturday night. I'll be watching the World Cup Final with my South African flatmate, who served in the British Army and probably knows more ways to kill me than I've cooked dinners with spiral pasta, but that's not the reason why I'm behind the Boks.
It's England. Not that I have any bias against my new home - I support their football side and don't mind their cricket team, but oh, how I hate the rugby team.
I do, reluctantly, have to give them credit. From looking like they would struggle to beat Opotiki United a few weeks ago, they've showed a huge amount of guts and intelligence in getting this far. They've tackled strongly, their forwards are tough, they've played to their limitations. And Johnny Wilkinson, though far from the messiah he's portrayed in the media here, has kicked enough points to get them through. But boy, are they boring.
The excellent Jason Robinson aside, they have the attacking flair of a beached whale. South Africa at least know how to throw the ball around. In fact, after rubbish refereeing, ferocious French defence and some stupid decision-making saw the All Blacks go home, South Africa are the most complete team in the competition.
Let's hope, for the good of the game, they win and 10-man rugby doesn't.

P.S. Why is it that, time and again, France play well enough to beat the best team in the world, then fall flat the next game?

P.P.S. Given the number of friends who've told me how little they care about the rugby, I think the next World Cup might be the game's last chance to maintain its key place in New Zealand national identity. Which will probably be a good thing, though it's always nice to be consistently the best in the world at something.