Baby Boomers

A Good Bloke…?

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(Bastards)

A Tuesday morning crossing the harbour led to a compelling conversation. I was seated next to an ‘elderly’ man, in a suit. We were both using our gold cards to travel free across the sea. He made the comment ‘It’s not bad being old,’ or something like that. I’m a succour for a chat. Some would say I am an incurable chatterbox and I will admit I am an over-sharer.

So, it was not long before this elderly chap in a nice suit and I were chatting like old friends. I am good at asking questions. He was crossing the harbour for lunch with some other chaps who like hunting and fishing. I mentioned I was meeting a friend who I had shared 8 years at Arohata with. I like to test the water when I mention my 8 years at Arohata before I finish ‘running a book group’. Somehow from this, we segued to me asking this chap what he used to do for a living. It is called ‘small talk,’ we Kiwis are good at this. He said he had gone to university really young and ended up in a Law Firm where his father worked. His Dad spent 60 years with the firm, and this chap had managed something around forty plus years. Do not ask me how we moved to this next topic, but soon he was telling me that he was a lawyer who dealt with all the pretty young things who were giving up their babies for adoption back in the sixties. I was riveted. Just that morning on Facebook I was reading about Barbara Sumner, herself an adoptee, who is an advocate for adopted children and her planned book Bastards. She is crowd funding. She is passionate and rightly so, angry that New Zealand adoption laws give more rights to the adopting parents than to the adopted child.

I imagined this still quite handsome but now elderly man (I mean everyone with a gold card aged between 65 and 85 starts to look the same, so how old was he … ), as a good looking, privileged (went to Scots College he told me) young lawyer, dealing with distraught pretty young things. He told me he always had a hanky at the ready because they were always weeping. This is not hard to imagine (the weeping). He sounded as if this made him a caring, kind young man and I am guessing it did in his mind, and I am still deciding in my own mind. He said he really admired the Matron of the Alexandra Home for Unwed Mothers at the time. He went on to tell me there was one really pretty young thing for whom he felt really really sorry. And he gestured to show me she had a cute little cleavage (do not judge I say to myself, he is a man of his time). The Matron told him not to feel sorry for this young girl because according to the Matron, below her midriff, under her dress or whatever, she had tattooed Pay as you Enter’.  He seemed to consider this was a mitigating factor and looked at me as if to say, see, they were not all innocents, expecting me to agree.  I responded with polite fury … ‘You don’t think a girl that young chose that life?.’  I spoke about my experience with the young women I met through the years at Arohata and just how often abuse lay at the heart of things. I scrolled feverishly through my phone to find Facebook and show him this upcoming book by Barbara Sumner Bastards insisting he really should read it. He agreed it looked like a book he should read – although whether he meant that or not, who knows.

We carried on chatting amicably until the boat docked. And then, we connected yet again on the return ferry ride. Friends almost, and he had had a couple of wines I suspect over lunch, and I had had a wonderful affirming coffee lunch with a woman I really admire and who admires me back – the sort of fill-up that wine cannot compete with. I was happy to sit and chat again. I’m incorrigible really.

By now, I was most intrigued by this chivalrous chap. How do I know chivalrous? He let me get on the boat first and insisted without words that I disembark first. We were old friends by now and as we went our separate ways, I reached out to shake his hand, as I’d enjoyed the chit chat even if a part of me was judging and disturbed by aspects of our conversation. He leaned forward and pecked my cheek (not quite a kiss) and said self consciously ‘I suppose I can do that.’  Ha, of course he could. And no, I did not mind. I chuckled to myself and guessed that back in the day, those sixties when I first came to Welly, I would have found him quite a catch. Chivalry I hear you. What is it? Well, it is the patriarchy of course, but hey, I’m a child of the 50’s and I want it both ways. I demand equality but I don’t mind getting off the boat first if it makes an old chap feel good. Yep, my book club friends are going to frown at this. Indeed, I’m frowning myself as I type this.

Well, roll forward to book group. I am an inveterate storyteller, and of course I had to regale the group with this compelling encounter. One of the more staunchly feminist (well, we all are really), women, commented ‘Oh, Maggie, I bet you encouraged him. I bet you thought what a nice chap.’  And in my defence, I pointed out how horrified and yet how compelled I was by the conversation. Should I have been rude right away when he mentioned those pretty young things? I felt defensive. Was I encouraging him? I saw him as a man of his time. Am I wrong to make an allowance for this? Should I have ended the conversation immediately to show my reproof? How would I have heard his account if I had not engaged in a convivial conversation, even if the topic were confronting and discomforting? Her next comment was words to the effect ‘I suppose you think/thought he’s a good chap.’  Well, indeed, she had me there. I can see that in his mind, back in that time, he may well have been one of the ‘good’ chaps. He told me he never forced them to sign and always told them not to rush to make up their minds. Did I believe him? Yes, I did, I do. I saw a man of a certain age from a certain background in a certain situation, with this extraordinary power. I can look at it through both lenses. Both now and back then and maybe a better young man would have eschewed such a responsibility. I wondered why more senior staff were not overseeing this legal area. Why did they throw a new graduate in his early twenties into the mix, to deal with distraught pretty young things? Something so powerfully life changing and this young man dealing with it as a routine legal procedure, but caring because he always kept a hanky on hand. Were there no women lawyers?  Perhaps the women, if there had been any, had refused to carry out this work.

I have a dear friend who has written a book ‘Don’t ask her name?’ which her own story of adopting two children from two different birth mothers. It is a heart-warming story about loss and love. Both children reconnected with their birth mothers. It feels like a success story. But there is deep grief from one of the mothers who is not reconciled to her loss. And then there is my deceased friend who had a baby in the late 60’s early 70’s and she was sent away in shame to Napier to give birth. Her family never spoke again about this. Roll forward 32 years, and her baby that she ‘gave away’, found her and my friend was now a grandmother. Sadly, she died one year to the day of her daughter finding her, of a brain tumour. I always remember the anger she felt when her family, suddenly were delighted to embrace this newfound granddaughter. Times had changed. They now had two great grandchildren. But my friend had carried this secret, silently, painfully without any support for thirty-two years. I have always felt her brain tumour was a metaphor or even direct result of the internalised trauma she had carried unacknowledged.

I do not think this elderly chivalrous chap on my morning commute was ever a cruel person. But the fate of those young women giving up their babies for adoption, was cruel. He pointed out, that the pipeline stopped once the DPB came in …

Bum Airborne

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Bikes are charged and waiting on the drive
I’m applying my new Korean sunscreen
Soon I’ll don my under groin padded shorts
slip on fingerless gloves with pinhole patterns
that I’ll secure with two neat Velcro straps

It’s a long cry from leaping onto my second-
hand Raleigh (a gift from my maiden aunt)
to cycle to the Appleby River and back or
Rocks Road to fish off the working wharf
or Edens Hole for a swim and sunbathe

Like my mother in her ballgown back in
the day, cycling from Richmond to Stoke
or further, ciggie in hand, anything for
a whirl around the ballroom – and who
knows what shoes she used to cycle

But it’s 2025, and I’m 75 and I have
a battery on my bike and certain
preparations required include a Hi-Viz 
vest, bright blue crash proof helmet
my iPhone charged zipped in my pocket

Past the purple ragworth, the fisherman
divers, families with chilli bins, walkers,
smiling at other cyclists, some unpowered
moving faster than me, and scowling at
a family on the beach who’ve lit a fire

On the roadside is a sign that says
Light No Fires and the ashy smell
catches in my nostrils along with
indignation as I imagine sparks
flying from the beach to the bush

I cycle over newly laid aggregate
which covers the injuries made
by Cruise Ship buses as they
hurtle along the Coast sending
up clouds of dust and diesel

Each year a fresh crop of potholes
uneven surfaces, and skid patches
for wary cyclists … the trick is to
pedal fast and sure seated like
you did back in the day, unafraid

Stand on the pedals bum airborne
as you cycle over the cattle stop
arms rigid, controlling the battle
over the bumps and down again
flying briefly, well, almost it seems

Channelling that girl on her Raleigh
no gears and back pedal brakes
riding two abreast up Oxford Street
arms folded, careless, carefree
sans sunscreen or Hi Viz, and
just a white Panama hat thank you

A view of the world

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A view of the world

Elton John’s yellow brick road races across towards our house from Matiu Soames
Mid Winter, the sun dropping in its usual show-offy way, exploding grey clouds
I’m chopping a red onion that ought to be a shallot but I forgot and it will do
the dill is waiting with the cream, the capers, the chopped garlic, zest of lemon

Tomorrow an eye surgeon will scoop out my old useful lens from my right eye
someone described it as akin to a designer scoop for a delicate entrée of
well, who knows, something that small, a small scoop and out comes my lens
my faithful view from my right eye of the world, my perspective, a wee bit cloudy

I’m having a wee slosh of wine as the recipe demands a deglaze and I only have
my favourite Pinot Gris with which to do this, so of course, I’m going to taste it too
in the meantime a friend just emailed to say they had their cataract done yesterday
And it was … challenging and everyone else had assured her it was a doddle

She emails back almost immediately to say she didn’t mean to scare me and that
her eyesight is better already but you know she just wanted to be honest and her advice 

        You just lie back and let it happen as with so many things in life

I’ve warned the surgeon I sometimes get vertigo but now I’m practising lying flat

I will lie back as my friend suggests and think of England as the saying goes
But there’s so much else to think of, eyesight aside, right now its Gaza and Tehran
And I live at the bottom of the world where I can have a new plastic lens for my
new view of the world safe inside a sheltered harbour nowhere near war


The Sisterhood

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Brooke Van Velden has a way with the flick of her hair
a nonchalant movement that says to us all, she just doesn’t care

Not a wit or a worry about changing the Bill that will 
stop fair payment claims for our sisterhood, how dare she

but you see she’s in thrall to David the Atlas guy, he of
the Treaty Bill if you will, and the school lunch revamping

an 8 % vote but don’t worry, he’s stamping all over the PM
our hapless, and hatless, and utterly witless blue suited man

who always gets tongue-tied while trotting out slogans
wherever he can things like What I’ll say to you – yet he

hasn’t clue he’s the fmcg guy, aisle ends all the way
most of the time on a plane, and flying away from us

while Winnie takes charge blaming all things too woke
crying get back to basics where a bloke is a bloke

and a sheila knows better than Winnie for sure
when it comes to the pay check the bloke he gets more

how else could he cop up for all those blue suits
shiny shoes and fine dining, our Winnie’s a winner

Brooke Van Velden is simply a total beginner
She’s sold out the sisterhood but not on her own

shoulder to shoulder the girls they lined up
Erica, Nicola, Judith, Louise, a new breed of women

all eager to please David Seymour  … ?

Bring back Marilyn Waring a girl with some guts
or some guys from the back bench could throw us

a crutch, it’s not as if equal pay is asking too much

The ballot box girls is our only solution, get started
campaigning, there’s no absolution 

for girls with the hair they flick in defiance, pants suits
they button with casual compliance, it’s time for

a change, we need hearts in the mix

Gird your loins girls of all sorts and all chromosomes
the whole bloody alphabet and all antinomes

Let’s show them what we think in 2026





High Wire by Michael Fitzsimons

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High Wire

I went to the launch at the Seatoun Bowling Club. You just gotta love the venues poets choose to launch their books. Mine was launched from the bedroom of the bookseller during lockdown. And more recently, Simon Sweetman’s The Richard Poems were launched in a trendy men’s clothing store/barber shop.

I first met Michael when we were reading poems together in Kapiti at a Retirement Village and indeed we also read to one of our most receptive audiences in the dementia ward of that village. An unforgettable and unexpectedly heart-warming experience for all the poets involved.

Early on in this lovely collection, Michael writes:

My poems seem to appeal
To people who don’t read poetry.


He got me, right there and then. I feel such a connection to these words about my own poetry. I’ve been picking his book up every day to read at random and each poem brings joy. There’s a theme of gratitude throughout. The poems speak of the ordinary with such love and affection and too, the profound. His love of family is palpable and joyful. He speaks lightly of a brush with death (more than a brush, a serious cancer diagnosis which he has written about in an earlier collection) but he manages to be uplifting and grateful in all his observations.

There’s delightful humour and I just love this poem/anecdote – yes, Michael pops poetic anecdotes into this collection, stylishly and inspiring.

A friend buys bulk chicken on special from PAK’Nsave.
He divides the chicken into meal-size portions and freezes them. You have no idea, he says. A few bucks a meal.

He and his wife live on the pension. They eat enough chicken to fly business class to Europe every three years.

Another poem that leapt out at me and I just love, is about his daughter coming home to watch the All Blacks snatch a 16-15 victory in Dunedin … the poem talks of Razor Robertson’s first test …

Surprisingly for an All Black
Coach, he’s a talker

This made me laugh out loud as I said almost exactly that when I listened to Razor’s after match chat.

Then there’s the very beautiful love poem The Fin with dolphins and orcas but at the very heart is love, romantic, domestic and true.

Another that spoke to me On the white carpet – musings about moving into a house with white carpet and spilling coffee. Memories for me of white shagpile carpet in an apartment in Auckland in the late 70’s. Play us a tune Maureen an evocative family poem reeking of all things Irish, family, history and heritage. A gorgeous glimpse into the author’s roots.


There’s so much to love in this collection. It is uplifting and for a poet, it is inspiring. I rushed to write my own poem about an encounter I had at our local Pavilion Café, after reading Michael’s delightful encounter at his local 4Square Four Square Philosophy.


The final poem in this collection Credo is one of my favourites. It’s a perfectly placed poem to end such a loving collection. It feels like a questioning of faith and yet a deeply embedded faith too. The final lines …

So when you step out the front door
by the olive tree,
you have something to take with you,

something sustaining,
like a cut lunch.

How Good is This? … (the title of another poem).

After the wars

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Gladioli staked, tied and tall
orange-throated in friable soil
in front of wide weatherboard
gaudy early summer glory


our uncle back from Korea
snaps photos on his box brownie
to give us little black and white 
pictures with crinkle-cut edges


silk tigers stalk our front room
mum’s fake pearls housed in
black lacquered boxes from
Seoul, or maybe from Japan


K Force and J Force, brothers
in both places with albums
full of pictures of post bomb
Hiroshima and geisha girls


home bearing gifts for grandma
my mother and her sisters, we
kids unaware our own father
home from a different war


mowers, the smell of petrol
grass clippings into catchers
a postman’s whistle, the whine
of a blade on concrete 


tennis mid road if you like
cows grazing on chamolly
mushrooms in the back
paddock for picking


the peanut butter scent
of the Harlequin Glorybower
the bush between us and
the next door neighbour


their son who fell from the sky
taking photos from a tiny plane
that swooped too low for
the perfect shot in peacetime


our first local tragedy 
before the taxi driver who
was murdered and our
brother who killed himself


the gladioli fooled us with 
their orange-throated glory
triumphant post war as if


this

         was
                     it


I almost slept with Don Binney

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So said a woman in Nelson at a talk

by Gregory O’Brien, or so he tells us

At his talk at Featherston Booktown






Almost slept, the words fill the air





in the Anzac Hall. All those military





men gazing down in disapproval










There must be millions of us, who





‘almost’ slept with someone and





that doesn’t even include fucking










I recall a US sailor off an Icebreaker





at my flat in Hataitai… we slept





together but we didn’t, you know










I was saving myself at the time





stocking my glory box with Irish





linen and pearl handled cutlery










So, I’m distracted, as Grego describes





two bold birds mating, the print his





parents gave him for his 8th birthday










two birds (God knows what sort of birds)





mating but it took Greg several years





to know this fact… Steve Braunias in










an altogether different session in





the Kiwi Hall tell us you need at least 70





facts in a piece of non-fiction










(I see writers scribbling this gem or





committing it to memory)










Almost slept could well be a fact but





could be easily misunderstood





I’m still thinking about it










The whole idea that this woman and I’ve





no idea how old she was when she said





this, wanted us to know










I almost slept with Don Binney










Greg is eloquent, passionate, he’s a man





to whom the letter P applies, a poet and





a painter, inspired by Binney’s mating birds










But it’s the woman who almost slept with





Binney, who holds us, riveted, her voice





unheard, fills the Anzac Hall






			

	
		
	


			
				


	

		
Microwaving happiness

		
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It’s not my own kitchen, nor
my own language, so making
mac'n'cheese means using
Google to read instructions
on the pasta packet, the
cheese label and microwave

settings in translation include
energy, medicine, middle,
defrost, thermal insulation
time/sad child, perplexingly
making me wonder if indeed
happiness can be microwaved

do the older women I see
bent almost doubled, lifting
swathes of recyclables onto
hand carts, securing mountains
of cardboard taller than
themselves, know about this?

close by in sleek black luxury
behind tinted windows lurk 
Gucci Ummas in designer shoes
parking on the pavement to
slip into buy freshly made tofu
slipping through swathes of steam

down the road further at the
oddly named Richmall, you’ll
find the older ummas wearing
faded visors and floral shirts
towing hand trolleys filled
with store-bought tofu

what if they all knew they
could microwave happiness
would they want to?





 






















			

	
		
	


			
				


	

		
Unravelled

		
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Pretty yarn all in a box
with circular needles
cost a small fortune
but how hard can it be?

Casting on is tricky for me
188 stitches and alas
every time I count them
I get a different number

Hubby suggests counting
in tens, not twos and
clever man, marking them
off, and it works a treat

I’m almost one and a half
inches into the ribbed hem
when I notice the circular
yarn is twisting – oh no

Too, the rib pattern of two plain
and two pearl has now here
and there it seems become
three pearl…how did that happen?

I will unravel and start again!
of course I will, of course I will
and recklessly I tear the stitches
into a tangled mess of knotty wool

This all started at 10.00 am after
my early morning swim and
it’s now 4.30 pm my neck 
in rictus and I’m furious

In the time I have taken to
create this mess I could have
baked six cakes successfully
I can read recipes…

I throw the needles and the 
knots of yarn to the floor 
and head to the sea .,,
cheaper than a therapist

Hubby arrives home tired
after a full days work and
quietly sits at the table in
full light, un-knotting my knots


Ah such folly

this is love

I’m unravelled