I first visited New Zealand for the Xmas of 1980-81 when we brought Matt to see his grandparents Denis and Noleen Cunningham. Thereafter we made fairly regular visits from Manila. However, it was something of a shock to settle here in 1991.
My dilemma is illustrated by my faux pas at a Treaty of Waitangi Workshop that I attended under the auspices of the Ministry of Energy. We were asked to separate ourselves into two groups at opposing ends of the room – Maori and non-Maori. The non-Maori were then asked to divide into native born and immigrant. The immigrants were then asked why they came.
My reply, which it turns out was unwelcome, was ‘because it’s like Australia’.
While I still miss the laconic humour and optimism of the Australians, I have come to increasingly value the quiet decency of New Zealanders.
Dianne and I settled at 18 Glasgow Street, Kelburn and Matt and Pete have always had this as their home. Sadly, Dianne and I parted in 1993, our relationship having been considerably frayed by the stress and insecurities generated by living for so long in Manila.
Then the pressures of maintenance payments and my inability to sell the UK house led me to take up an attractive offer from the large US IT company EDS to join their new EDS Management Consulting Company. Unfortunately, the local company collapsed after 6 months in 1994 as a result of restructuring and poor marketing and performance – and this smashed my dream of starting afresh in a new organization as I had done with Dar Al-Handasah.
The upshot was that I faced 50 as a single and unemployed outsider in Wellington’s small and closely-held job market.
Starting my career again from a low base has been a considerable challenge. In retrospect, this has also been the most rewarding era of my life. It taught me the importance of being able to deal sensibly with relative failure by working quietly towards long-term goals while fostering robust wellness and happiness.
In the period 1995-1998, I did a wide variety of things – with a mix of voluntary work and contracting – I was what is known as a Portfolio Worker.
Some of the interesting assignments include helping a Samoan Men’s Group Folau Alofa tender for work on domestic violence counseling with the Departments of Courts and Corrections; teaching a course on Employment Relations to eleven ‘unteachable’ 17-year old girls at Wellington Girls High School (I saw one of them recently, Maxine – she is running a café at Paraparaumu); and helping Airways Corporation to initiate its later very high profile overseas franchising operation.
I also continued my interest in Labour Party politics and stood briefly as a candidate for the Regional Council in 1998. Looking back, this kind of hand to mouth existence was very good for me. It has helped me to put career issues into better perspective and to start to accept the fact that I may not be able to reach all the goals that I once set for myself. However, there were continued money worries – particularly prior to the commencement of my ADB pension in 1999, and this led me back into overseas consulting.
One of the attractions of coming to New Zealand from a career viewpoint had been the chance to learn about and participate in the Public Sector Reform process that had commenced in 1984 under the Lange Government.
When I therefore had an opportunity to participate in a public sector reform project in Jamaica in 1998, it seemed to be a marvelous opening that could tie together my New Zealand and overseas experience (I had previously spent time with the Jamaican Administrative Staff College in the early 1980s, as part of a collaborative programme with the University of Bradford). The assignment involved restructuring the Planning Institute (central planning office) and the Ministry of Works.
While the project did not run smoothly, it gave me the confidence to return to overseas consulting and I soon took up a whole string of assignments with the Asian Development Bank in Bangladesh and the Philippines. It was great fun being back in Manila, where I still had many old friends like Tom Crouch, Ken Grumley, Ian Gill, John Cole and Ross Clendon. Strange also to hash again in half-forgotten places, drink again in half-forgotten bars and discover one again beach resorts like Matabungkay and Montemar.
Manila was much the same though more crowded, more congested and more polluted. Nevertheless, the thought crossed my mind that I should make a new life out of development consulting – maybe moving back to live in Manila (with the consequent risk of going, in Northern Territory parlance, ‘troppo, combo and plonko’).
However, the chance of remaking my life in Wellington came up when I secured a full-time job with Housing New Zealand Corporation.
One of the great attractions of Wellington was the possibility of further developing my interest in Buddhism. From 1991 to 1994, I had been involved with the local sitting group or sangha of the Zen Mountains and Rivers Order (Japanese tradition) Then, Marion Bond and Colin Pratt, long-time friends from Manila, arrived in Wellington and set up a Shambala group (Tibetan tradition) that I was rapidly and happily conscripted into.
Nowadays I (very irregularly) attend courses and weekends with both groups. It was while assisting with a Shambala training weekend that I first met a very attractive young lady, whole head was closely shaved at this point. Through our common interest in the dharma, we met again at a Zen service. This led on to more social outings and eventually Jane came to stay with me in my bachelor pad Flat 22, 42 Vivian Street, Central Wellington.
It was from the start a close and deep relationship and Sam started his existence in the flat, after we had both decided that we would love to have a child together. However, it was clearly not practicable to have a baby in a one bedroom flat and we then bought 368 The Parade, Island Bay / Tapu-te-ranga).
Although it had been intended that our first son Samson Ross Johnson Bodkin should be born at home, this did not happen due to minor complications, and he was born in Wellington Women’s Hospital on 24th November 2002. Sam was named with his grandfather Horace in mind. If Horace and Meg had had a son, he would have been called Sam. As Samuel is quite a common name, Jane and I decided to go for the more uncommon form Samson. The Christian name Ross comes from Jane’s brother who was killed in a mining accident at Parkes, N.S.W. exactly 4 years prior to the date of Sam’s birth.
Sam is a Bodkin because it is a rare and dying name in New Zealand, and Jane and I had a deal that any girls would be ‘Johnsons’ and any boys would be ‘Bodkins’.
Sam’s brother Theo Robert Johnson Bodkin was born at home on 18th February 2004, weighing 8lb 4oz. The name Theo just appealed to both of us but the ‘Robert Johnson’ component stems right back (through my father’s elder brother who held the forename) to my great grandfather Robert Edwin Shorrocks - referred to as Robert Edwin Johnson in grandfather Harry’s marriage certificate).
This links us to the rise of the industrial North of England in the 19th Century as Robert Edwin’s father and grandfather were both Salford Brushmanufacturers. The Shorrocks family in turn appears to have originated in central Lancashire (probably as pastoral farmers) and can be tied uniquely to Shorrock Green in the Ribble Valley. Beyond we can surmise links to the Celtic-speaking Brigantes tribe who gave the Romans are fairly hard time and beyond them to the pre-history of Britain and the ‘Mammoth Hunters’ who followed the tundra fauna north from Iberia some 8,000 years ago.
Over the last few year, I have been fortunate to be able to enjoy a varied and interesting reprise to my career. This has included by spell as a Senior Policy Analyst with Housing New Zealand Corporation (with a secondment to the Ministry of Health), and an appointment as a Principal Adviser with the NZ Ministry of Transport.
In 2007, I returned to economic consulting full-time with the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and much enjoyed the variety of local assignments (and desktop work on the Jordan National Investment Strategy). However, when Jane was promoted to the post of Clinical Nurse Supervisor and offered a full-time role with the Central Community Mental Health Team in Wellington, I decided to step down to look after Theo (who was still nearly a year away from primary school).
Since then, as the boys are now both in school, I have started to re-activate my overseas consulting with assignments so far (to November 2009) in India, Botswana and the Philippines (ADB).
Looking back at our more immediate family history, I suppose it exemplifies many of the struggles that beset all families – the losses and gains, ups and downs. However, I think that we were somewhat unusual in having a double line of war-service bereavements – with the loss of my grandfather David Clarke in 1918 (aged 30) and the loss of my own father Jay Johnson in 1943 (aged 33).
This definitely led to the family adopting a stoic and pessimistic view of the future. My reaction was to get out and do as many different and interesting things as I could. I did not expect, on past form, to live much beyond my early thirties and I thought that I had better make the very best of life’s opportunities. Now, I feel, as Louis Armstrong said that ‘if I had known that I was going to live so long, I would have taken better care of myself’.
I was also unusual in having two fathers – being the posthumous son of an academic and the stepson of a very practical hardworking dairy farmer. It tried for years to reconcile the two strands – for example, in undertaking a PhD on the Cattle Industry in the Northern Territory. In the end, I think that I have decided to just be myself – that, I guess all that any of us should do – try to be genuine, strive to awaken and create as little bad karma as possible in other people’s lives.
There is the Buddhist philosophy creeping in – but my stepfather Horace also tackled the same issues, saying 'what's right is right; what's wrong is nobody's business'; ‘quietly do your best, angels can do no more’; and ‘what goes over the horse's back, comes out under its belly’ (in other words, in different ways in the long-run, life tends to reward good with good and bad with bad).
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