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08 October 2006

A weekly column published in the ‘Sunday Star-Times'

THE STREAK

One of the great truisms is that bad news travels fast. This is particularly true of public life – your cellphone is jammed with media enquiries long before any official notification that you’re in deepest doo-doos.

For that reason I’m always intensely suspicious when my cellphone indicates that it has multiple messages. This is an indication that I’ve either done something wrong, said something stupid or – more likely – failed to do anything at all.

Last week … all three. The perfect storm. By the time I got to the eighth message – all gloating requests from snot-faced journos – the colour had entirely blanched from my body. Lord knows, where all those those red corpuscles went but some organ in my body was getting a blood-engorged feast. And not the usual suspects.

Because every message was the same: the ‘Overlander’ had been saved. Get your kit off.

Of course, it was my own fault. In this very column I had expressed doubts that any government – much less one involving the parsimonious Michael Cullen - would be blackmailed into saving some crappy train. And a dreadful relic, the ‘Overlander’ is too.

I mean, there is bugger all glamour in train travel at the best of times. It is a novelty for the first hour and interesting for two. But come the third, fourth and fifth – and when you’re still clattering through the slums of Hamilton – the whole experience has palled. That’s when you realize that it will be next week before you arrive, that the so-called buffet service sells only cold pies, and that the guy opposite has skipped day release.

This accounts for that strange phenomena, now regularly observed, when the Overlander actually reaches Wellington.

Passengers flee the carriages, kiss the platform and vow never again.

Indeed that’s the thing about trains. They’re romantic in the same way that ancient ruins are. Once you get there, you wonder what the fuss is all about. It’s just a few rocks and a lot of graffiti. And there isn’t a clean loo anywhere. Much like the Overlander.

Yes, but I had done more than express doubts a couple of months ago. I had been so sure that Cullen would not cough, that I had written my Ruapehu opposite, Mayor Sue Morris, a note during one of our meetings. If your lobbying saves the Overlander, I wagered, I’ll streak naked down the main street of Ohakune.

Interestingly, the mayor’s face dropped upon reading the message. At that exact point I had scuttled her council’s advocacy and saved everyone a lot of heartache. But no. She stoically folded up the note, and promptly changed the topic. You got the feeling that they don’t do naturism near their National Park. At least not without Search and Rescue on stand-by.

But I was feeling cocky. Especially after Toll upped the public ante and encouraged the Greens to make this their latest cause.

If there is one thing that Michael Cullen truly loathes it is being hectored by sow-crate sweetie Sue Kedgley.

Yeah, but who figured that it would be Toll who would fold, eh? That they would agree to prop up the service over the summer months before tapping all the local government lobbyists in the New Year for some cold, hard cash.

At which point the media went ape. The Overlander was saved: show us your willy.

Now, the problem is that the train service has not been preserved. Rather, that its stay of execution has only been delayed and that the service will, at best, be reduced to just three days a week from Easter next year. You get the feeling that Toll will be transferring its pressure from the government to the affected regional councils, knowing that next year is their election year.

In addition, Toll is threatening to close other services – including its freight trade – in its ongoing war with Treasury for a public subsidy. I would not have thought it possible for rail services to be worse, and more dilapidated, than when NZ Rail ran them.

But even that public slug was preferable.

Of course it’s not entirely Toll’s fault. They didn’t asset strip the national carrier like Fay Richwhite and their rapacious mates. What has been left is not so much a viable transport network as a series of ghost trains. Running to nowhere with no-one on them.

And yet this is all immaterial to me. The public perception is that snail passage between Auckland and Wellington will remain.

Ergo: honour your wager or forever be condemned as a wowser.

Sue Morris was kind enough to ‘phone me and let me off with tea and lamingtons. But,dammit, a bet is a bet. I may be many things but a welsher I am not. Thus – one darkened night – and soon – I will drink myself senseless, remove every stitch of clothes, and cavort naked down a hitherto unblemished New Zealand provincial town.

It will need to be an act of subterfuge for any number of reasons. Not least that the Police will be waiting to Taser and arrest me, and because I have no intention of letting news editors Photoshop my nether parts.

In the meantime, I’ve consented to sponsor and participate in an Undie 500 through Ohakune over the summer - wearing only orange Speedos and an Awatere-Huata shamelessness. Unlike Wi though, I won’t be claiming to have diamonds at the convergence of my thighs.

Which means, it may be summer, but I’m still going to need those socks.

ENDS