Why everyone can (and should) join the composting revolution

Are you a time-poor urban apartment-dweller who’s put composting in the too-hard basket? Read on…

About half of what Aucklanders chuck in their rubbish bins is actually compostable material. That means a whopping 90,000 tonnes of Auckland households’ food waste ends up in landfill each year. Why is that a problem? It breaks down without oxygen and produces the potent greenhouse gas methane – and that, it goes without saying, is bad news. 

Composting, on the other hand, returns nutrients to the soil to support photosynthesis, which removes carbon from the atmosphere. For those reasons, composting is one of the most important things you, as an individual, can do to fight climate change. 

This is a point The Compost Collective, a collaborative project supported by Auckland Council, is trying to hammer home through the workshops it holds regularly throughout the city, as well as convincing doubters that composting really isn’t such a big deal. 

“A lot of people visualise this big messy compost bin in the corner of a yard, and as soon as they’ve got that picture, that’s it, they’ve ruled out any opportunity of being able to do it,” says Pip Beagley, who runs workshops on the North Shore through The Compost Collective.

Pip Beagley taking a bokashi workshop in Kumeu (Photo: Supplied)

A hefty traditional outdoor compost bin is just one of several methods you can learn in the workshops. Renters, those who live in units or apartments in the city or anyone without much outdoor space – which is increasing numbers of us in Tāmaki Makaurau – can do their bit for the climate just as successfully as those Aucklanders who have big suburban backyards. 

One option is ShareWaste, a resource that connects people who have food scraps with their neighbours who are already composting, worm farming or have chooks to feed. You can browse a map to see who’s near you, then send them a private message to arrange the transaction. Kind of like Tinder for composting. Of course, you can go the old-fashioned route by bypassing the website and simply asking around your neighbours, friends, family and workmates too.

In this scenario, you can keep your scraps in a basic compost caddy (top tip: in the sweltering summer months, put it in the fridge so it doesn’t get gross), or try out a bokashi system, which means less frequent toing and froing with your scraps.

If it’s warm and you’re not adding your scraps to your compost every day, keep it in the fridge (Photo: Supplied)

Bo-what now? Bokashi is a Japanese system that basically pickles your food waste to create nutrient-rich compost. A bin with holes sits inside another bin, you add your food scraps and cover it with a couple of spoonfuls of a bran-like “sprinkle” that contains microorganisms to kickstart the fermentation process, then squish it down (a potato masher works well) and close the airtight lid. Get in the habit of doing this every day, even if you only have a small number of scraps. Every two to three days, drain off the liquid that collects in the outside bin, which you can dilute and add to your plants, or tip down the toilet or sink to help keep them clean. When the bin’s full, close the lid and keep it in a warm place for 10 to 14 days (but keep draining off the liquid).  

Compost Collective workshop facilitator Jennifer Kerr says bokashi is her number one suggestion for apartment dwellers and others for whom space is an issue. “They’re very small and pretty simple – it can even go under your sink.”

Beagley likes to think of it as a storage unit. “It’s stored in a low-odour situation until you’re ready to deal with it, until you’ve got time to take it to your ShareWaste person or to the neighbours to be dug in.”

Yep that’s right, this is low-odour composting. “The best bokashis actually smell so good you almost want to eat it,” says Kerr. “In my workshops I pass around a sample of some bokashi juice and it smells almost like fruit punch – I have to tell people not to drink it!”

Hmm, that certainly wasn’t my experience when I attempted bokashi in my apartment, I admit – it kinda stunk. Beagley and Kerr are quick with the troubleshooting tips: was I adding fresh scraps every day, not letting them sit in a compost caddy to start going off before putting them in the bokashi? Ah, that could be the problem. Another piece of advice: if it does start to smell, just add more sprinkle. 

Bokashi being added to a traditional compost bin (Photo: Supplied)

Another benefit of bokashi is that it can take the vast majority of food waste, including meat and cooked and processed foods that other systems struggle with. Just make sure the scraps are in smallish pieces (golf ball-sized is a good guideline) and avoid liquids. 

Once your bokashi bin is full and has had its fortnight rest period, the solid waste needs to be dug into a garden or simply added to a traditional compost bin. You shouldn’t find it too hard to find someone via ShareWaste or your neighbourhood social network who’s keen to take it. 

Alternatively, see if there’s a community garden in your area – you could even get involved with your own plot. “Then you’re taking your scraps there and growing vegetables in it to take home – completing that natural cycle,” says Kerr.

For those who lack space, a worm farm is another option for dealing with food waste. Kerr and Beagley often suggest worm farms for families with children, as it’s a fascinating process for curious kids to get involved with. Worm farms produce castings (essentially worm poo) and “worm tea”, both of which are wonderful for the garden and you can share with grateful ShareWaste “hosts”. The downside is as worms are a bit fussy, you can’t add anything too spicy or acidic – citrus is out, for example.

A worm farm in action (Photo: Supplied)

The Compost Collective workshops are free to attend and if you go to one you’ll get a $40 discount code to spend on the composting system of your choice, which would take a bokashi bin and two bags of the “sprinkle” that will last you a year or so down to around $70, depending on size. Check out the website to find a workshop near you at a time that suits, or if you can’t make it in person, you can school yourself via the website and complete an online quiz, which will nab you a $28 discount. For an even cheaper option, The Compost Collective also holds workshops on how to make your own bokashi bin from scratch. 

So there’s no excuse not to join the composting revolution. “We try to emphasise how easy it is,” says Kerr. “By providing discounts on products it makes it more affordable, and they’re delivered so you don’t have to go out to get them. 

“We’ve taught you how to do it, and we’re always available – the contact details for the facilitators are on the website, and the Facebook page is a great place for support and follow-up – a lot of troubleshooting happens there.”

As Beagley says, in a time of uncertainty and fear around climate change, “it gives you the power. A lot of people are feeling worried and disempowered because the problem is so big – ’what can I do?’ But you can do a lot.”

This content was created in paid partnership with The Compost Collective. Learn more about our partnerships here.

Why you’ll no longer get offered a fridge to go back to your old power company

The government has announced a ban on electricity retailers using promotions to lure back customers who’ve changed companies. Flick Electric’s Nikki Cockburn explains why this is a victory for consumers and competition. 

Progress on the Electricity Price Review (EPR) might be slow – especially when it comes to putting recommendations into action – but yesterday things kicked up a notch. The Electricity Authority (EA) announced it’s imposing a rule that will mean power companies have to wait 180 days before they can contact customers who’ve jumped ship to a new retailer and dangle cheeky offers in front of them in the hopes they’ll tempt them back.

Known in the industry as winbacks, these special offers include things like fridges, cash, lower power prices, and even dirty old prompt payment discounts that are never offered to loyal, bill-paying customers – only those who decide to walk (and walk they should!)

These tactics might look good on the surface, especially for those who are proactive and engaged when it comes to switching retailers and finding the best deal. But in reality, winbacks have only helped to add to the problem of a two-tier market that advantages those who frequently switch retailers at the expense of those who don’t.

That’s because the research shows that while consumers who change retailers are rewarded by winbacks, benefitting from things like lower power prices and sparkly new electronic goods. But loyal customers who stay with the same retailer pay the price with higher charges that prop up the winbacks model. As outlined in the Government’s EPR response: “the average gap between the cheapest retailer’s price and the incumbent retailer’s price has risen about 50% since 2002.” While one tier benefits, the other tier suffers – and that’s plain unfair.

The EA’s ban means that retailers can’t offer customers winbacks for a period of 180 days after a customer has switched to another retailer. Hopefully, they’ll instead be more encouraged to offer their customers the best deals right off the bat and maybe even reward loyalty. 

And, for smaller, independent companies (like us!), the new ban will mean they have the time and opportunity to prove themselves to new customers on their own merits, without the bigger retailers cutting in. It’s good for competition and good for customers. 

The new ban comes into play on 31 March and we’re hopeful that it signals the start of some bigger, crucial industry and market changes that will have positive, ongoing effects for Kiwis. In three years the EA will review the changes to see if they’ve worked. 

It’s a win for consumers that will hopefully result in all power customers being treated fairly, rather than just those who shop around. And at Flick we’ve long campaigned for an end to winbacks and applaud the EA for taking strong action to make the market fairer for consumers. 

This content was created in paid partnership with Flick Electric. Learn more about our partnerships here.

Review: I didn’t fully understand Netflix’s Horse Girl but I loved it all the same

Netflix’s new release Horse Girl promised a quirky indie dramedy from its trailer. In reality, it’s a nightmarish time-warped look into the mind of a mental illness sufferer, writes Alice Webb-Liddall.

There was a horse girl in every primary school classroom. The one with ballet flats and low ponytails and books covered in pony-themed duraseal. They probably galloped everywhere instead of walking like everyone else and spent their lunchtimes by themselves leaning against a classroom wall drawing horses on their exercise books.

The horse girl has been a subject of torment for years, now synonymous with any school-aged girl with a bossiness complex, no friends, and the audacity to not care at all about any of it. 

Horse Girl is about one of those people, now all grown-up. Sarah is played by Alison Brie (Community, Mad Men) and begins the film suffering from a pretty bad case of loneliness. On her birthday she tells her colleague she’s planning to “go out with some friends from Zumba”, but after spending her Zumba class trying to catch the eye of the others, it’s evident she’s a bit more lonely than she’s letting on.

Soon after, when she begins to sleepwalk, Sarah consults her stepfather about what age ‘weird things’ started happening to her grandmother, and a particularly concerning family history of mental illness is uncovered. 

Sarah keeps a photo of her grandmother in her bedroom and begins to fixate on the uncanny likeness between her grandmother and herself. She begins to believe that she’s a clone of her grandmother  and has been abducted by aliens. Much of the action takes place in the fantastical dream-like worlds inside Sarah’s head.

Alison Brie in Horse Girl.

A staccato beat for a soundtrack is an almost dizzying accompaniment to her psychotic episodes, like a heartbeat that’s fallen out of rhythm. It sets the perfect tone for the mental torment Sarah is experiencing and provides a way to distinguish real from fake for the first two acts of the film.

In the first two acts, I found myself really feeling for Sarah and the people around her as she spirals further from reality. Her roommate encourages her to start seeing a boy while also dealing with Sarah’s sleepwalking and psychotic episodes. While her workmate, played by Molly Shannon, seems to be the only person who actually cares about Sarah, comforting her when she wanders naked into the fabric store where they work.

The only parts of the film that exist outside of Sarah’s perspective are at the very beginning and at the end, making it almost impossible to distinguish what’s real from what’s not. 

The last half hour exists in one of Sarah’s delusions, and while the cinematography is beautiful, the sequence of dreamlike visions felt to me like they were 15 minutes too long. Because Sarah’s perception of time is so warped, it leaves the film up for a lot of interpretation and there’s been widespread discussion of this on Reddit. If you’re into wild theories, the r/horsegirlfilm/ thread covers everything from the prominence of circle motifs to the disordered timeline. 

Some people will love this film, such as those with an eye for the strange and a strong ability to suspend their disbelief. Others may get tired or frustrated not knowing what’s real and what’s fake. The ending isn’t happy, nor is it particularly sad. With Sarah as the narrator it’s up to the viewer to decide what’s real or fake down to the final shot. But what’s certain is it will leave you with a lot of questions about what reality really is. 

It’s also a really interesting look at mental illness portrayal that mainstream film doesn’t usually delve into in this way. It’s easy to see why Horse Girl was a Sundance selection, and hopefully, it’s one that Netflix watchers will give a chance.

Verdict: 4 stars

Who will enjoy it? Anyone who likes a challenging watch that leaves questions unanswered. This film is going to leave you with a lot to process and allows you to come to your own conclusions about Sarah’s reality.

You can watch Horse Girl on Netflix now.

The Spinoff guide to air travel etiquette

You may not be punching strangers’ seats, but there’s plenty of other behaviour that is guaranteed to make your fellow passengers seethe with rage. Here’s how to travel by plane without making people hate you.

You’ve probably seen the video: a woman leans back in her reclined seat as a man punches the back of her headrest. Punch, punch. Punch, punch. Punch, punch. It’s a hypnotic, horrifying depiction of quietly psychotic male rage. The ensuing ‘debate’ over who was right and who was wrong – the reclining woman or the man literally punching at the back of her head – has an obvious answer, but it’s also highlighted the fraught ethical minefield that is the economy class cabin on a long haul flight. Who gets the armrests? Can I wear bare feet? Do I have to switch seats just because someone asks nicely? Below, we answer your most pressing air travel etiquette questions once and for all.

@BravoAndy Here’s a great jackhole! He was angry that I reclined my seat and punched it about 9 times – HARD, at which point I began videoing him, and he resigned to this behavior. The other jackhole is the @AmericanAir flight attendant who reprimanded me and offered him rum! pic.twitter.com/dHeUysrKTu

— wendi (@steelersfanOG) February 9, 2020

Reclining

The reclining woman/punching man uproar has distorted people’s understanding of what should be a very simple dictum: Recline at night. Sit up during the day. If you find this rule hard to remember, ask yourself: is this a part of the day when I would normally be lolling around like a Roman senator at dinner? If not, sit your arse up straight. And if someone in front of you does recline and you’d prefer they didn’t, be an adult and ask them politely to give you more room.

Carry-ons

You may only put one carry-on bag in the overhead locker. You must put it in length-ways, not horizontally, and you must use the locker above your seat unless it’s completely full. And if you’re travelling alone and your case is too heavy for you to lift into the locker unaided, you’ve packed too much. Rethink your packing list, spring for checked luggage, or get into a relationship, stat.

Armrests

As a window-seat-sitter, it pains me to say it, but the armrests – yes, both of them – belong to the middle seat. It’s only fair.

Feet

Socks yes, bare feet no, and if you’re worried even in the slightest that your feet might smell, bring clean socks to change into. Do not slide your feet between the headrests. Do not stick your feet into the aisle. Do not, for the love of god, give your friend a pedicure. Here I need to make a confession: until the internet told me otherwise, I believed it was fine to wear socks into the bathroom. It’s not, unless you’re OK with using your feet as some kind of ultra-absorbent urine-and-faeces mop. And I shouldn’t have to say it, but you should never, under any circumstances, wear bare feet into a plane toilet. Who raised you?

Hair

Congrats to the ponytailed young woman in seat 22B. You’ve invented a whole new way to be awful at 35,000 feet. pic.twitter.com/VWTPMI5JrM

— Dante Ramos (@danteramos) March 29, 2016

Only a truly evil person who knew that scissors can’t be brought into the cabin would ever dare. If you ever encounter a situation like this (and it’s not as uncommon as you might think), the only correct response is to quietly open your tray table, carefully arrange the strands back in place, and close that table up nice and tight. Then sit back and wait.

Window shades

Just because you’re in charge of it doesn’t mean you have the right to lower it during daylight hours. All that wondrous, cloud-refracting, quasi-celestial high-altitude light belongs to everyone in your row, so suck it up and bring an eye mask if you plan to sleep before the sun goes down.

Food

You may not bring on board hot food of any kind, even if that rule would prevent this gripping story of a teenager, her burgers and a nation-spanning mystery from ever happening at all.

Stop press: My colleague Simon asks, “Is it OK to ask for two meals? Asking for a friend.” Yes, it is OK to ask for a second meal, but only at the end of the meal service when everyone else has been fed. If meal trays have not yet been collected, don’t get out of your seat to go hunting for seconds – use your buzzer to call the attendant.

Switching seats

People for whom you are obliged to give up your seat: elderly people, parents of young children, people who need a new seat because of health reasons. People for whom you are not obliged to move: honeymooning couples, tall people, people who’ve dreamed all their lives of seeing Manhattan from a plane window (reserve a window seat next time, sucker). Of course, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t move – you are a good person with a kind heart, after all – just that you don’t need to feel bad about saying no.

Unacceptable. (Photo: Getty Images)

Sleeping

You may wake up a sleeping seat-mate if they’re invading your space (nobody should be expected to put up with a stranger’s head on their shoulder), if they’re snoring so loudly you can’t hear the quiet bits in 1917, or if you need to pee. You may not wake them up to let them know the meal trolley is coming by.

Drinking

Do not get lit on a plane. You wouldn’t get drunk and rowdy on the bus or in a coffee queue, two other places where you’re surrounded by stressed-out strangers who just want to block out the world/infuse caffeine into their bloodstream in peace. As on land, so in air. You may think you’re hilarious when drunk but trust me and everyone unlucky enough to be seated near you – you really, really aren’t.

Disembarking

Hey, if you want to pop up like a meerkat sensing danger the moment the seatbelt light is turned off, knock yourself out. Given that it can take anything up to half an hour to disembark an international flight, your behaviour is befuddling but ultimately harmless.

But no matter how desperate you are to abandon the travelling trash heap in which you’ve been imprisoned for the past 12 hours, you still must respect the Sacred Order of the Airplane Rows. No rushing down the aisle with your suitcase in hand because you are a Very Important Person. No tutting behind someone taking an extra 10 seconds to get her bag down. No queue jumping, period. The rare exception is when you are in danger of missing a connecting flight – in which case you may ask politely to go ahead. As in all things plane etiquette-related, a bit of calm communication can go a long way.

Robinson on her new EP and learning not to worry about what happens next

Earmarked for big things since she left high school, the ‘Nothing to Regret’ singer has been dealing with the weight of expectations for a while now. With her debut EP just released, she’s OK with where she’s at.

Given the circumstances, Robinson is surprisingly relaxed. It’s early afternoon on a swelteringly hot mid-February day in Auckland, one which for her has already contained a red-eye flight from Nelson and a full morning of radio promo. If she’s at all exhausted, though, it doesn’t show. “If you’re bored, you just drink some water! It’s like healthy boredom, you know?” she enthuses, toting an already half-empty one-litre bottle and seeming altogether more concerned with the virtues of hydration than any potential anxieties about the occasion for our meeting. And with said occasion being the release of her Watching You EP, a first-ever collection of songs after almost four years of well-received (and often internationally successful) singles, she’d be well within her rights to be slightly tense.

It may be the water, or the blessedly temperate air conditioning in Sony Music’s central Auckland offices, but as we talk it feels more likely that her seeming calm reflects instead a deep confidence in what she’s put together. And while Watching You is a reasonably lean listen, its four songs each coming in around or just under the 3:30 mark, the EP signals not just an early milestone in her still-young career, but a significant forward step in her craft. 

Between the subtle evolutions-on-existing-themes of ‘I Tried’ and first single ‘Don’t Say’, and the show-stopping torch song that is EP closer ‘Watching You’, there’s very little here that’s been heard from Robinson before. It’s a growth of which she’s extremely conscious. “On my phone there’s just so many voice memos of like, really old things,” she explains, “I think it’s so cool that I can always go back to those, but it’s really exciting to me that these songs are really the last two years of my life. I think they’ve been essential in character development for me; just growing up and being an adult now … it happened fast.”

That sudden epiphany as to the passing of time may be something of an early-20s cliche, but in the case of Robinson, she may also have a fair point. While she’s London-based now, splitting her time between studio sessions and increasingly prominent tour support slots, the Robinson story started in earnest in the relatively recent past – and like so many others in Aotearoa music, at Rockquest. An admittedly shy year 12 student at Nelson’s Garin College, the not-yet-mononymed Anna Robinson was encouraged by a music teacher into performance. She formed a duo with friend Olivia Nott – younger sibling of Broods’ Georgia and Caleb and ONONO’s Jono – with the pair ultimately reaching the competition’s national final in 2014, but it wasn’t until her own songs came to the attention of Ashley Page, co-founder (with Joel Little) of tastemaking Auckland pop micro-label Dryden Street, that things really started moving for Anna.

“I had left school, but I still had songs up online, and I think Ashley just stumbled across them,” she explains, “and we just started working together after that.” She made the move from Nelson to Auckland to work with Dryden Street, a decision which necessitated not only a significant physical relocation, but which also meant developing her songwriting practice from a solitary endeavour to something much more collaborative. 

“When I first started properly writing as, you know, Robinson, the first year of that was really development in the sense of just trying to figure out what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to portray myself as an artist,” she says of the period. “I’d been working by myself for such a long time that it was so cool to be able to go and write with other people and experience that. I was building up this big bag of songs, just writing so much music. And then I wrote ‘Nothing to Regret’.”

By any metric worth measuring, that song blew up. An anthemic and universally relatable ode to the mundanity of workaday life and the commensurate fleeting joy of the weekend, it’s racked up close to 90 million Spotify streams in the two years since its release – for context, outside of The Naked and Famous’ generational banger ‘Young Blood’ and most of the back catalogue of actual international festival headliner Lorde, that’s a mark basically unheard of for a New Zealand artist. And while subsequent releases haven’t scraped those same heights, she still boasts more than 1.7 million monthly listeners on Spotify, a large number of those coming from outside of Aotearoa. But just as that kind of success can be a motivator, it can just as easily seed anxiety.

“There was a time when I was just constantly checking the numbers,” she recalls, “Like I honestly couldn’t believe it. [Earlier single] ‘Crave You’ got a million streams, and I just thought that was insane, but then ‘Nothing to Regret’ blew that away. It’s so crazy, that’s so many people. And it’s funny, because you get to that point and you just want to outdo it. Like, “Where’s the next song? What’s the next song? I need to write something better than that.” You can get caught up in this whirlwind of just trying to please everyone that I think you can get out of touch with the reason why you’re doing it.”

Remembering why she’s doing it was a major spur in the creation of Watching You. Although she’s clear in her ambition for the project, she makes clear that reconciling the drive for professional success with her artistic imperative has helped her to better understand what she’s trying to achieve with the project. “I think that if I’m in it because I love it, and I’m writing songs because I love music and because I’m getting across my feeling and my message to the world,” she explains, “that has more of a chance to connect than if I was like, “I’ve got to write this song because this is what people like.”

“I think [that mindset] has helped me through so much anxiety that I’ve had over the last few years, which I think a lot of people deal with; “I should be here,” or “I should be doing this.” But, in any walk of life, any job you’re in, there’s so much pressure. And I think sometimes the only way through that is to sit with a feeling and try to figure out why you feel it.”

That realisation and its attendant security seem to be coming at exactly the right time for Robinson. As well as the EP release, in March she’ll embark on her first ever headline tour of the country, taking in shows in Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and an appearance at Wellington’s Homegrown festival. She’s at an interesting stage in her career, one illustrative of the complicated calculus that determines success for contemporary musicians – taking only stream numbers into account she’d sit comfortably in the absolute top tier of local pop acts, but despite her play counts eclipsing those of local demigods Six60 and matching closely with the likes of Mitch James, The Drax Project and Benee, she’s something of an untested property with local audiences. 

If the artist born Anna Robinson is carrying any major anxiety either about the tour or the release, though, it doesn’t show. Never not effusive through the half hour we spend together, as our interview comes to a close she lands on a thought which feels, in context, like something of an informal mission statement. “Even if one person connects with this, that’s such an exciting feeling for me. Because I just love thinking about how my favourite artists have made me feel, and how music has been such a big comfort for me over the course of my life, going through different experiences. Music helps me through that, so I’m like, if I can give that same thing to someone else, that’s just the most amazing feeling. Yeah.”

This content, like Robinson’s Watching You EP, was produced with the support of NZ on Air. Stream the EP here, and see Robinson on tour this March.

Review: High in the gods for David Suchet – Poirot and More

Linda Burgess climbs the eternal staircase at the Opera House in Wellington to watch the virtuoso actor. At the interval her legs are aching. But in the second half, magic happens.

There’s one person wearing a face mask, just the one, and it turns his face into a disposable nappy with two scared eyes above. His eyes roam the theatre. Oh hell, is he looking guilty? After interval he’s gone. Just his leaving makes me aware of a tickle in my throat. Oh God, I’m going to cough. Ahem ahem. I’m going to cough and if I do, this mixed group of Wellingtonians and people who’ve come in from the hinterland – well, they could turn, I could be like Simon from Lord of the Flies as they swoop on me in their gold sandals, floral frocks and quirky skirts and hunt the virus, kill the virus, slit its throat.

We’d bought our seats late, on a whim, we’d come in from the garden and driven down to Ticketek, crazy with the knowledge that we live in this city of culture and never go to anything except movies at 3pm on Sundays. We’re going to go to David Suchet – Poirot and More not because – well sort of because – he’s Poirot, but mostly because I saw him a few years back in a documentary about The Orient Express. I liked him. And that was enough for the madcap decision to visit Ticketek. I never expected Robert to agree.

Expensive seats, even though they were up in the gallery, because it was pretty much sold out. The gods, it used to be called, and if I’d remembered that I could well have just continued looking to see if the hydrangeas needed deadheading rather than getting in the car with our credit cards. My thighs will cringe for months at the memory of creeping down those steep steps without even a rail to hold on to. Given the paranoia about health and safety in Wellington, how has the Opera House got away with it? Aren’t several of those even slightly wobbly on their pins – as in, theatre goers in general – cartwheeling involuntarily down those steps on a weekly basis?

We make it to our seats, second row, and it’s hot up there. Oh God it’s hot. Those in the know have brought smart little fans with them, Japanese, Samoan, there’s quite a range. Those mad enough to buy the programmes that their kids are going to have to chuck in the recycling when they die, are using them to create a draught, but those of us too cheap to spend even another cent just sit remembering teaching in a prefab at Palmerston North Girls High in high summer, when our fringe stuck to our forehead and the back of our neck where hair met skin became unbearably damp and sticky.

There’s so little room, it’s economy class Air NZ without the free wine. We’re both quite compact people: how can anyone who’s not a hobbit bear it? There are empty seats behind us and at interval, I crawl on my hands and knees to get somewhere with some space, somewhere, anywhere, that is not directly behind the man with the big head. Ahhh. An aisle seat, I can stick my feet out on the stairs and get a tiny bit comfortable.

A killjoy by nature, I’ve liked the first half, sort of. The audience is thrumming with happy appreciation. I’m in competition with the man in front, murmuring the answers to Suchet’s semi-rhetorical questions in an obnoxiously know-it-all way. The person in the distance, who is Suchet, is quite a presence; he tells a great anecdote and he’s made me laugh, which is a good start. But amusing anecdotes do not an amazing evening make. At the interval we agree that if you compared home on comfy sofa, or in spacious seats at cinema, with being with the real deal, then…

But after the interval – long enough for those prepared to mount those steps to buy posh, enviable iceblocks – things change. My feet are up, which always helps, but best of all, Suchet turns the evening into something precious. He gives us what he was always going to: the “and more”. He moves beyond charming, chuckle-rousing tales of his mother and old dears from Sussex and how people can’t quite work out if Suchet and Poirot are the same person, and he puts himself to work. He gives us a masterclass in how an actor inhabits a role, abandons his own personality and takes on another. How to use a different voice from one’s own, how to use a different walk. He uses heavenly words like alliteration, onomatopoeia and iambic pentameter. He talks about how it’s all there in the script for the actor, if the writer is good enough. Especially if the writer is Shakespeare. He briefly goes bananas when he entreats the entire audience to go home and write, write, clearly unaware that in Wellington everyone already does. There he is, the perfect balance of natural talent, of skill, of insight, imagination and hard hard work.

He explains, he performs; he tells and he shows. He’s Macbeth at the death of his wife. He’s Caliban when his island’s invaded. He is the most majestic talent you could ever hope to see.

I feel sad, I say, that these days there are kids who’ll never do Shakespeare. Thanks to being an English teacher once, I know all those plays, I say, as if he needs to be told. We go back up those bloody awful steps, mentally rejoicing that we’ll never ever see them again, then it’s down, down, down all the stairs – how high we must’ve been! – with just the pressure of the bodies fore and aft holding us upright. Though not just the bodies fore and aft, but that happy floating feeling you get when you’ve had a damn fine time. Been in the presence of genius. Been, as it turns out, a total pushover. And, as a bonus, escaped being quarantined. Out the door, thank God, away from the flood of too many people and too much excited chatter and into the warm, muggy, wet-ish, windy-ish Wellington night.

David Suchet – Poirot and More is in Christchurch tonight and in Auckland on Saturday February 22.

The subtle art of not giving a fuck about swearwords in book titles

After years of swearword-emblazoned book covers, are readers all out of fucks to give about bad language?

Since Adam Mansbuch’s 2011 bestseller, Go the Fuck to Sleep, book titles have been swearing profusely to grab audience attention. The author followed up on the winning formula with You Have to Fucking Eat and Fuck, Now There Are Two of You.

Book covers compete with a barrage of information and images, so it’s no wonder many writers resort to shock tactics. It works. Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck is testament to this, selling 2 million copies and being translated into 25 languages. Without the “Fuck” this would very likely have been a different story.

Presumably hoping to ride on the back of this success, upcoming book releases include titles like Fuck Happiness and The Middle Finger Project.

In the English language, at least, fuck and other words on the more extreme end of profanity are the last frontier of using language to shock. In 2020, we find ourselves in a place of extremes so they come in quite handy.

But with so many fucks on book covers, where do writers go from here to express our fear, horror, rage and disgust?

Heard it all before

Eventually we become desensitised to the overuse of words. Shit, a taboo for older generations, is now so lacking as an obscenity it is written on the covers of notebooks and pencil cases available in stationery chain stores popular with schoolchildren, such as Typo.

According to a 2019 ABC study of 1,538 subjects, Australians are seeing and hearing more coarse language than they did five years ago, both in the media and in public.

“In line with this normalisation of coarse language, concerns relating to the use of coarse language in the media have diminished over time,” the study found. Of people studied, 38% were offended by coarse language on TV, radio or the internet in 2019, compared with 47% in 2011.

Tennis, one of the last bastions of politeness, does constant battle with players like Nick Kyrgios who rack up massive fines for dropping the F-bomb on the court.

Fines, like detention, seem to be on the train that has left the station when you consider reputable online booksellers currently carry almost a hundred books with fuck in the title. Most of these are self-help books, because we are, obviously, quite fucked and need help, and cookbooks, such as Yumi Stynes’ The Zero Fucks Cookbook. Kitchens seem to be a hotbed of fucks, a trend set some time ago by Gordon Ramsay.

Meaning and language are in a constant evolution and can act as a moral barometer. Expressing the fears and horrors of her times 200 years ago, author Mary Shelley created a “fiend”, formed through “unspeakable” horrors. Some initially derided the work as “disgusting”, but the extremes of her Frankenstein left an impact on literature and society of mythic proportions, without resorting to profanity or cheap tricks. She left the unspeakable to our imaginations, yet it broke boundaries and challenged our understanding of life and human nature.

In 1959, the unabridged edition of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover was published with several instances of fuck. The edition was banned. In 1963, fuck was included in the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, triggering complaints to schools, libraries and the police.

Taboos and standards are forever in flux and younger generations always seek a boundary to break through. In our times of consumption and greed, we are eating our way through those boundaries at a great rate, along with as many of the Earth’s resources as we possibly can.

What now?

Several hundred book covers later, fuck is completely worn out.

Sure, there is still coarser language that will work for a few years until it also becomes a meme; until we wear it out as a book title or, perhaps, if we think too hard about what it means and how we might use it.

Language can only evolve creatively with a dynamic culture, deep education and critical practitioners of the literary arts, within and outside of the academy. Words are weapons; they are our way of making sense of life and without them we are unspeakable.

Language and how we use it really matters. It creates knowledge, culture and community. If we are to navigate our way through the future and avoid reaching a place of anarchy, we need a language for it.

Resorting to coarse language on book covers could be a symptom of society’s collective misery, but it could also be attributable to the starvation of the arts by government and a desperate need to grab readers’ attention. If literature loses the power to shock then it loses an important mode of engagement, according to postcritical theorist Rita Felski. It’s enough to make you want to swear and curse and scream. Unfortunately, as a word to save for extremes, we have really fucked up fuck.

---

Donna Mazza’s new novel has an f-word in the title but it’s Fauna.

Donna Mazza, is a senior lecturer in creative arts at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cheat sheet: Farmers celebrate a major biosecurity success story

The dreaded pea weevil is no more in the Wairarapa, after a successful eradication effort. So why does this matter? 

OK, what on earth is a pea weevil?

It’s a type of leaf beetle, so not actually a weevil after all, but the name is the name. Basically it gets into pea plants while they’re growing, and their larvae then ruin the crops by chewing through them. It’s a pest, it wasn’t wanted in the Wairarapa, and now it’s gone.

Gone seems good?

Gone is great. After pea weevils were found in the Wairarapa in 2016, it basically resulted in the industry being halted in the region. Peas couldn’t be grown on farms, nor could they be grown in home gardens, across the entire region. Previously, the Wairarapa had accounted for about 10% of the country’s pea production, so it was pretty serious. The eradication effort relied on the food sources for the critters being removed, and had it failed, it could have put a serious dent in the $130 million pea growing industry.

Can we really be sure it’s gone?

Yes, because with biosecurity risks like this MPI have to be absolutely sure before they declare victory. But now, with no new finds across two whole seasons, biosecurity minister Damien O’Connor says the eradication programme has been a success. He also paid tribute to growers who led a lot of the efforts to get rid of it, saying “we had an outstanding level of awareness and support within the community for our approach to ban the growing of pea plants and pea straw.” Some farmers had to make major sacrifices to make it possible. Checks on pea seeds and exports from the Wairarapa will continue next season just to make sure.

How did the eradication actually work?

Along with the bans on growing peas, there were also bait plants used. The weevils would set up shop inside one of those bait plants, and then be destroyed before they could complete their life-cycle. The eradication was possible in part because the Wairarapa is a relatively geographically isolated region, because of the mountains around it.

What makes this eradication particularly special is that it is believed to be a world-first for this particular pest. There are pea weevils all over the world, and as we can see from the ongoing M Bovis outbreak, once something gets established, it can take an immense amount of time and money to get it out again. That eradication is currently expected to take about a decade, so getting the pea weevil in and out within five years is pretty impressive.

So what happens now?

Well, pea growers can go back to growing them, basically. The ban on pea plants and pea straw has been lifted, both for home gardeners and commercial growers.

And in the intervening couple of years, the prospects for pea growers have become very interesting. That’s because of the explosion in popularity of peas as a source of alternative proteins – if you’ve ever eaten a Beyond Meat Burger, you’ll have tried pea protein. There’s a slight note of irony there for the New Zealand farming industry, in which many meat growers see alternative proteins as an existential threat. But these sorts of food trends are probably inevitable anyway, so for pea growers it’s probably better to be ahead of the curve rather than behind it.

In fact, they are now hugely important crops for sustainability. That’s because of their ability to take nitrogen gas from the air, along with needing much less water to grow relative to other staple crops. They’re immensely versatile and lend themselves very well to being broken down into component parts, like pea starch which can be used to make noodles. And with a bit of butter and a mint leaf, they’re also delicious as a side dish.

Disabled voices on Peter Singer: ‘Who’s actually listening to this guy?’

Controversial Australian philosopher Peter Singer is coming to New Zealand in June. While he believes in reducing suffering for all humans and animals, his views on disability have sparked widespread alarm and condemnation.

Utilitarian and moral philosopher Peter Singer is best known by many for the parable of the drowning child, a thought experiment which equates ignoring a drowning child to not spending your disposable income on reducing poverty, thereby saving the same theoretical life. It’s a greatest hit from his public speaking repertoire that he compares to The Rolling Stones having to play ‘Satisfaction’ night after night.

In the disabled community, Singer is most famous for believing that parents should be allowed to kill disabled newborns.

Singer will be speaking in Auckland in June, one of four Australasian dates being promoted by ThinkInc, an “intellectual touring company” based in Australia.

An Evening with Peter Singer will cost you between $60 and $160 with all profits going to Room to Read, a literacy programme for girls. According to the Humanitix website, a $160 ticket gets you a “post-event professional photo op with Peter Singer, reception with drinks and canapes.”

Singer is the Ira W DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and a Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne, and he has been a contentious figure for a very long time.

After his appointment to Princeton in 1999 was met with an outcry from the disabled community, one New York Times piece noted “Mr Singer is not easily categorized.” He has advocated for veganism and animal rights since the 1970s, and for people giving away as much income as possible to poverty relief agencies (Singer and his wife donate 40% of their income). He founded The Life You Can Save, a foundation which identifies the most effective charities for poverty relief, and the Great Ape Project which seeks to confer the same legal rights of humans on chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans.

He believes we are duty-bound to relieve suffering. This beneficent logic extends to involuntary euthanasia for both cognitively impaired adults and disabled infants.

In 1979’s Practical Ethics, Singer wrote that the value of a life should be based on “rationality, autonomy and self-consciousness”:

“Defective infants lack these characteristics. Killing them, therefore, cannot be equated with killing normal human beings, or any other self-conscious beings.”

And then: “Human babies are not born self-aware, or capable of grasping that they exist over time. They are not persons [therefore] the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”

He doesn’t draw the line at severe cognitive impairments, he also includes those with diagnoses such as Down syndrome, spina bifida and haemophilia.

Singer then argues that if parents can replace the baby with a non-disabled one then a ‘net good’ has been achieved, as the ‘healthy child’ would be happier than a disabled one.

Where the argument falls down, according to disability advocates and his many critics, is that definitions of ‘good’ and ‘happy’ are subjective and that Singer is woefully under informed about the lived reality of disabled people’s lives.

In a now-famous piece for New York Times Magazine, writer, activist and attorney Harriet McBryde Johnson wrote about being invited by Singer to speak at Princeton University. Johnson, who passed away in 2008, was a wheelchair user with neuromuscular disease.

She noted: “We take constraints that no one would choose and build rich and satisfying lives within them. We enjoy pleasures other people enjoy, and pleasures peculiarly our own. We have something the world needs.”

Singer and Johnson formed a complicated relationship, and after finding that she liked Singer despite being “a proponent of genocide”, she concluded:

“To justify my hopes that Singer’s theoretical world – and its entirely logical extensions – won’t become real, I’ll invoke the muck and mess and undeniable reality of disabled lives well lived. That’s the best I can do.”

Attorney and activist Harriet McBryde Johnson wrote a powerful piece for New York Times magazine in 2003, titled Unspeakable Conversations, about her encounter with Singer after he invited her to speak at Princeton.

Red Nicholson, an Auckland educator, writer and podcaster, agrees visibility of the lived disabled experience is the way to fight stereotypes such as those being espoused by Peter Singer. “Part of my approach to combating narratives like this is to tell different and better stories.”

When faced with the prospect of speaking out against Singer, he says he finds it hard to navigate the tension between giving too much oxygen to those with harmful ideas, and letting people get away it.

“I don’t know what it is about pseudo-intellectual old men but I just don’t take them very seriously, so when I heard about [Singer] I thought ‘Oh god, who really cares. Who’s actually listening to this guy?’. But it turns out quite a few people are. That’s probably the thing that woke me up and made me feel like I should get involved in this kaupapa a little bit.

“We certainly run the risk, if we make a big song and dance about it, that we get the Jordan Williams’s and David Seymours on our case and all of a sudden Peter Singer becomes the hero of the free speech brigade. But at the same time, if we let a guy come to New Zealand and speak about how we should kill disabled babies, and we sit there and go ‘oh well, maybe no one will listen to him’, that feels naïve.”

Nicholson fears it’s not the immediate reaction to the talk but the seed it might plant that has the most potential for harm.

“I don’t think there are many people who would hear ‘we should kill disabled babies and replace them with normal ones’ and go, that sounds reasonable. I don’t think there are many people that would be on board with that.

“All that would need to happen is for there to be a financial meltdown and all of a sudden government finances are stretched and it comes out that disabled people cost the taxpayer this many millions of dollars and we become targets for the next round of beneficiary bashing. It wouldn’t take much for more people to jump on that bandwagon.

“That’s what I worry about – less about the impact tomorrow but the potential for kōrero like this to live freely in the world to fuel fires later.”

On the subject of what happiness looks like for the disabled community, Nicholson is unequivocal that Singer is ignorant.

“No one that I know who is disabled wishes they never lived. If you look at conventional framings of disability it’s all like, suffering, hardship and pity and charity. But no one I know with a disability feels that way about themselves… My disabled friends are the most kickass, fun, ambitious, exciting, exuberant bunch of people I know. Some able-bodied people I know are way more miserable about the most mundane stuff.”

Grace Stratton, founder of the All Is For All fashion and media empire says that she and other disabled people she knows experience happiness in the same way as non-disabled people. “Is happiness a constant state? No. Some days are better than others, and the reasons I might be unhappy often have nothing to do with my disability. I might have just had a bad day.”

She says the times she gets most frustrated have nothing to with her diagnosis. “There are days when I think, it would be a lot easier to do this activity if I could walk, but the fact that I’m having a difficult time has to do with how we’ve made that activity inaccessible. Most of the difficulties I face as a disabled person aren’t because of my diagnosis, they’re because we don’t consider disabled people when we design systems and programmes or build cities. That makes my life harder, not the fact I have cerebral palsy.

“It’s the social model. If we designed better we’d all be able to lead better, happier, less frustrated lives and contribute equally.”

Suzi Jamil is the owner and director of ThinkInc, who are touring Singer. She declined to comment for this story, saying she had nothing further to add to her comments to Newshub in which she said that “without reading the length and breadth of his work I don’t think it’s fair for people to be judgmental of out of context comments”.

Aden Miles, director of communications for the Cerebral Palsy Society New Zealand, thinks the problem with saying that his most widely shared, and clearly unambiguous, quotes are out of context implies that there is a good context in which to place them.

“One of the biggest issues that we have with Professor Singer’s comments is that he doesn’t give them context himself. Since the 70s, he’s had the tendency to offer his opinions on disability-related issues whether they’d be issues of life quality or consent. It is true that I haven’t read every single word he’s written on the topic, but his quotes and underlying belief structures are powerful and destructive on their own.

“The problem is that he doesn’t fully flesh out his views on disability at all. He uses our community as an example of his wider belief systems around happiness and quality of life. I would be more inclined to believe we were taking things out of context if he ever bothered to actually give a context to his disability statements. Bizarrely, he doesn’t seem to understand the power he wields in this circumstance.”

Disability advocate Dr. Huhana Hickey (Ngāti Tahinga, Tainui, Ngai Tai) says that Jamil’s comments assume disabled people haven’t read Singer’s work extensively.

“I have, as have others, as he has been spouting this same message for over 40 years, influencing morals and ethics. Professor Shelley Lynn Tremain is a disabled philosopher and one who can answer in the discipline he speaks from better than I can. She has challenged him over the years as well. I remember his appointment to Princeton in 1999, where disabled protested against him globally.”

Even though Singer’s logic echoes that of Nazi eugenics and the WWII T4 programme that killed and experimented on disabled people (Singer lost three grandparents to Hitler’s concentration camps), he denies that his logic can be applied to race or gender. In his conversation with Harriet McBryde Johnsnn he told her preferences based on race are unreasonable. Preferences based on ability are not because disability makes a person “worse off.”

Hickey finds that Singer’s arguments also fall short on matters of cultural context and preference.

“Some cultures view disabled as a gift, others find their own fears and misunderstandings drive their own concepts, so one can’t apply a one shoe size fits all. For instance, Singer has a real issue with intellectually disabled and sees them as valueless, yet here in New Zealand we have the first Sir with an intellectual disability – Sir Robert Martin– who has proven his value and worth and earned the honour due to that work. He is far from valueless.”

Come June, there will be pushback to Singer’s appearance in Auckland. Red Nicholson says that plans are already underway for a disruption of some kind and that able-bodied allies are encouraged to join. “We have to be good allies for each other. I hope other communities that can relate to or feel empathy for this kind of kōrero get behind the movement too.”

Grace Stratton, like Nicholson and Hickey, won’t advocate for ‘banning’ Singer – but she says those who are interested in attending should think before they buy tickets. “It’s a similar realm to Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneaux in that it’s about a ‘supreme race’, in this case able-bodied people are framed as superior. From a human rights and free speech perspective of course he should be able to come. It’s not my place as an individual to infringe on someone’s right to free speech.

“That’s the technical answer I suppose. My personal feeling though is that if people are going to buy tickets, I would say there are so many other causes and people who you could spend your money on.”

The Bachelorette NZ Power Rankings: Send in the intruders

Alex Casey delivers her seventh power rankings for The Bachelorette NZ, where a group of intruders have herniated the competition’s intestines forever. Click here for previous instalments. 

Welcome back to The Bachelorette NZ, where everything is made up and every man is suddenly named Mike. Intruders! Five of them! A whole boy-band’s worth! Mike! Micheal! Mac! Mork! Mindy! Chucking in a few more piping hot fellas into this here man soup has caused more than a few dramas this week.

It began with ‘Operation Stingray’ which saw the oldies punk the newies in a huge way, telling them that they were going on a group date and then revealing that they were not going on a group date. 

There was a lot of subsequent talk about “the culture” built up in the house so far, and even more time devoted to talking about how Elliott (returning Bachelor) had basically ruined it all because he thought the prank was too mean. I don’t know boys, the culture seems stronger than ever from where I’m sitting (trust falls in the pub, Monopoly Deal with the lads, tie dye shirt supply flowing like yoghurt.) 

On with the rankings.

ELIMINATED: Magic Marc

Marc didn’t seem too bovvid with getting the biff this week, I wish him all the best repairing all the shirts he has ripped on this show and trust he will give them a good alpha-dog ironing too. 

INTRUDED: Michael

Not overstating even a smidgeon when I say that Michael, the humble kūmara farmer from Dargaville, is the best thing that has ever happened to be. He is THE purest expression of Kiwi blokedom to ever grace our screens, he talks like his jaw is wired shut and he is “fully eh, fully” ready to find love. 

INTRUDED: Mike

If Michael is the classic Kiwi farmer, then Mike is the classic guy wearing linen on the Viaduct who looks like he owns a yacht and probably those fluffy Gucci slippers that Mike Hosking has. He’s an ex-Olympic sailor and the ex-husband of Chelsea Winter, and if that’s not enough to get you a nice spot at Soul Bar then I don’t know what will. He survived Lesina’s probing questions and came away with an early rose, so I’d say she’s… on board. 

RETURNED: Elliott

As any Christopher Nolan stan will know, every great magic trick consists of three acts – the pledge, the turn and the prestige. Elliott’s limp tissue rose (the pledge) and subsequent disappearing act (the turn) in episode one was merely a distraction from his inevitable shock return (the prestige). Truly a master of the form. 

And what a return it was, loping in like a “big drunk puppy” (Lily’s words, not mine) and immediately starting some shit on his single date. He made Lesina ‘block up his bald head, he gave her a nickname (Shoey, inspired by her last name Schuster) and inadvertently started a sick new drinking game where you have to do a shoey every time he calls Lesina ‘Shoey’. 

Unfortunately there is about as much chemistry between these two as there is between slosh of Baileys and a sneaker, but Elliott seems like he is gearing up to be Mole Pt 3: The Naked Mole edition. He spent ages talking about where Lesina was at with the other men, and his fierce loyalty (“pranking is mint, but that’s not on”) bode well for his mole future. 

INTRUDED: Mac

Okay, is anyone going to call out the fact that just as we lost Mr Wedge only for him to be replaced with a guy who likes to be called MACCA???? KFC is quaking in its 11 herbs and spices at this level of brand infiltration, but not as much as this poor nervous cherub. 

INTRUDED: Richie

It’s like the old adage says, there’s no point crying over spilt milk when instead you can use the opportunity to launch a successful drop crotch pant company. Classic yarn. Everyone thinks Richie is hot, from Lily to Lesina, to the empanada overlord of Argentina. “He’s like a normal guy but in a non-normie way,” said Lily after their single date, where they spent a lot of time baring their teeth to one another in an act that I understand is called “smiling”

LESINA’S LADS

4) Tavita

Nothing bigger boo boo than Tavita’s hernia coming out of the wood work and starting shit again this week. “My hernia is on my mind too much,” Tavita confessed to the cameras before returning to the centre de emergencies once more. Noooooo herny lalas nooooo. 

Tonight’s episode finished with what seemed a lot like an ultimatum for Lesina – send Tavita home for surgery or keep him here and have him (literally) spill his guts. Pray for Tavita. 

3) Steve

This week Steve went off his absolute nut at Aaron again for interrupting his time with Lesina, and then decided to assert himself as top dog by wearing his coveted footy shirt won during the challenge last week. Get the man a bloody vape.

2) Logan

He got mercilessly owned after Lily called him Aaron during the “love tea” challenge, but that didn’t stop Logan calling 0800 KISSATHON and getting some crucial mouth to mouth with Dr Lesina. “It wasn’t as dry this time” said Lesina. Wow, is this Fifty Shades or what????

1) Aaron

Lesina took Aaron on a single date this week to go and look at some art, but not before some saucy off-camera pashing in a hallway. Aaron loved to look at the art! Especially the art with the letter A on it! A for Aaron! A for Art Green! A for ‘Amazed’ by Lonestar! A for Acapella rendition! A for A declaration of love??????? A for Aaron has lost it and I am loving it. Here’s a perfect tweet btw: 

The way it should have happened #TheBacheloretteNZ pic.twitter.com/1eqdrNnqId

— Cameron Nealie (@CameronNealie) February 16, 2020

To top off a perfectly intense date, Aaron gave Lesina her favourite print from their graffiti walk, and wow what a Piece it was. 

LILY’S LARRIKINS

5) George

Ever wonder where the Nirvana baby is now? 

4) Jesse

Jesse boasted about having a radio degree this week, which could come in useful because I fear that his frequency has recently switched from AM (amorous mon amie) to FM (friends, mates). 

3) Liam

Liam got whisked away on a single date to concoct a “frozen hangover” gelato with Lily. He had some weird chat about how he has put pressure on past partners to change, but has then been annoyed that they changed for him. It culminated in the hottest pillow talk of all, which somehow still got him a rose???

2) Terence

If there’s one thing that ladies love, it’s a guy who never, ever, ever forgets that she owes him a kiss from a weird speedboat bet that happened weeks ago. Girthy ol’ Terence tried to shoot his shot on a rooftop above the cocktail party, hoping Lily would settle her debts. And she… did? 

She must like him a bit, because it was truly a smoocherino so awkies that Tavita’s hernia woke up and phoned the hospitable on itself. 

1) Quinn

I used to think Quinn would be quinning the quompetition because of all the quissing. But now that Richie is on the scene, I’m not so sure. Quold be trouble afoot. 

The Bachelorette NZ Power Rankings: Send in the intruders

Alex Casey delivers her seventh power rankings for The Bachelorette NZ, where a group of intruders have herniated the competition’s intestines forever. Click here for previous instalments. 

Welcome back to The Bachelorette NZ, where everything is made up and every man is suddenly named Mike. Intruders! Five of them! A whole boy-band’s worth! Mike! Micheal! Mac! Mork! Mindy! Chucking a few more piping hot fellas into this here man soup has caused more than a few dramas this week.

It began with ‘Operation Stingray’ which saw the oldies punk the newies in a huge way, telling them that they were going on a group date and then revealing that they were not going on a group date. 

There was a lot of subsequent talk about “the culture” built up in the house so far, and even more time devoted to talking about how Elliott (returning Bachelor) had basically ruined it all because he thought the prank was too mean. I don’t know, boys, the culture seems stronger than ever from where I’m sitting (trust falls in the pub, Monopoly Deal with the lads, tie dye shirt supply flowing like yoghurt.) 

On with the rankings.

ELIMINATED: Magic Marc

Marc didn’t seem too bovvid with getting the biff this week, I wish him all the best repairing all the shirts he has ripped on this show and trust he will give them a good alpha-dog ironing too. 

INTRUDED: Michael

Not overstating even a smidgeon when I say that Michael, the humble kūmara farmer from Dargaville, is the best thing that has ever happened to me. He is THE purest expression of Kiwi blokedom to ever grace our screens, he talks like his jaw is wired shut and he is “fully eh, fully” ready to find love. 

INTRUDED: Mike

If Michael is the classic Kiwi farmer, then Mike is the classic guy wearing linen on the Viaduct who looks like he owns a yacht and probably those fluffy Gucci slippers that Mike Hosking has. He’s an ex Olympic sailor and the ex-husband of Chelsea Winter, and if that’s not enough to get you a nice spot at Soul Bar then I don’t know what is. He survived Lesina’s probing questions and came away with an early rose, so I’d say she’s… on board. 

RETURNED: Elliott

As any Christopher Nolan stan will know, every great magic trick consists of three acts – the pledge, the turn and the prestige. Elliott’s limp tissue rose (the pledge) and subsequent disappearing act (the turn) in episode one was merely a distraction from his inevitable shock return (the prestige). Truly a master of the form. 

And what a return it was, loping in like a “big drunk puppy” (Lily’s words, not mine) and immediately starting some shit on his single date. He made Lesina ‘block up his bald head, he gave her a nickname (Shoey, inspired by her last name Schuster) and inadvertently started a sick new drinking game where you have to do a shoey every time he calls Lesina ‘Shoey’. 

Unfortunately there is about as much chemistry between these two as there is between a slosh of Baileys and a sneaker, but Elliott seems like he is gearing up to be Mole Pt 3: The Naked Mole edition. He spent ages talking about where Lesina was at with the other men, and his fierce loyalty (“pranking is mint, but that’s not on”) bodes well for his mole future. 

INTRUDED: Mac

Okay, is anyone going to call out the fact that we lost Mr Wedge only for him to be replaced by a guy who likes to be called MACCA???? KFC is quaking in its 11 herbs and spices at this level of brand infiltration, but not as much as this poor nervous cherub. 

INTRUDED: Richie

It’s like the old adage says, there’s no point crying over spilt milk when instead you can use the opportunity to launch a successful drop crotch pant company. Classic yarn. Everyone thinks Richie is hot, from Lily to Lesina, to the empanada overlord of Argentina. “He’s like a normal guy but in a non-normie way,” said Lily after their single date, where they spent a lot of time baring their teeth to one another in an act that I understand is called “smiling”

LESINA’S LADS

4) Tavita

Nothing bigger boo boo than Tavita’s hernia coming out of the woodwork and starting shit again this week. “My hernia is on my mind too much,” Tavita confessed to the cameras before returning to the centre de emergencies once more. Noooooo herny lalas nooooo. 

Tonight’s episode finished with what seemed a lot like an ultimatum for Lesina – send Tavita home for surgery or keep him here and have him (literally) spill his guts. Pray for Tavita. 

3) Steve

This week Steve went off his absolute nut at Aaron again for interrupting his time with Lesina, and then decided to assert himself as top dog by wearing his coveted footy shirt won during the challenge last week. Get the man a bloody vape.

2) Logan

He got mercilessly owned after Lily called him Aaron during the “love tea” challenge, but that didn’t stop Logan calling 0800 KISSATHON and getting some crucial mouth to mouth with Dr Lesina. “It wasn’t as dry this time” said Lesina. Wow, is this Fifty Shades or what????

1) Aaron

Lesina took Aaron on a single date this week to go and look at some art, but not before some saucy off-camera pashing in a hallway. Aaron loved to look at the art! Especially the art with the letter A on it! A for Aaron! A for Art Green! A for ‘Amazed’ by Lonestar! A for Acapella rendition! A for A declaration of love??????? A for Aaron has lost it and I am loving it. Here’s a perfect tweet btw: 

The way it should have happened #TheBacheloretteNZ pic.twitter.com/1eqdrNnqId

— Cameron Nealie (@CameronNealie) February 16, 2020

To top off a perfectly intense date, Aaron gave Lesina her favourite print from their graffiti walk, and wow what a Piece it was. 

LILY’S LARRIKINS

5) George

Ever wonder where the Nirvana baby is now? 

4) Jesse

Jesse boasted about having a radio degree this week, which could come in handy because I fear that his frequency has recently switched from AM (amorous mon amie) to FM (friends, mates). 

3) Liam

Liam got whisked away on a single date to concoct a “frozen hangover” gelato with Lily. He had some weird chat about how he has put pressure on past partners to change, but has then been annoyed that they changed for him. It culminated in the hottest pillow talk of all, which somehow still got him a rose???

2) Terence

If there’s one thing that ladies love, it’s a guy who never, ever, ever forgets that she owes him a kiss from a weird speedboat bet that happened weeks ago. Girthy ol’ Terence tried to shoot his shot on a rooftop above the cocktail party, hoping Lily would settle her debts. And she… did? 

She must like him a bit, because it was truly a smoocherino so awkies that Tavita’s hernia woke up and phoned the hospitable on itself. 

1) Quinn

I used to think Quinn would be quinning the quompetition because of all the quissing. But now that Richie is on the scene, I’m not so sure. Quold be trouble afoot.