Beauty in the Ashes

INSPIRED ISLAND BAY SINGER-SONGWRITER

Island Bay resident Donna Muir says the songs that make up her first album are message driven.

‘I guess that I have something that I want to communicate. On the surface, ‘Beauty in the Ashes’ is about suffering and grief.

I tried to write about suffering and loss. I think a lot of the songs will have a high degree of resonance with people who have struggled with this in their lives.

Hopefully though there is a degree of redemption and hope – out of the ashes.

Singing is a way to communicate about people’s difficulties, to make a difference in people’s lives – and possibly encourage some kind of change.

It has been really good to have a creative project”.

‘Beauty in the Ashes’ was released by Jayrem Records on 2 August 2010. It had been recorded over a five year period.

Donna wrote the lyrics and melodies, and her singing tutor Jonny Spence wrote the music and arranged and produced the album.

“I started off with five of my own songs and five covers but ended up with 13 of just my own”.

Donna’s husband Peter, who plays the drums on the album has always encouraged her – sometimes with a critique and sometimes with constructive advice.

Donna, Peter and her group recently performed her album songs for the local community at St Hilda’s Church, Island Bay.

“It was very much a local thing with friends, family and neighbours. It was a wonderful evening. It was a lovely warm environment”.

WONDERFUL LADY – AND OUR CLOSE NEIGHBOUR ACROSS DERWENT STREET

Donna Muir is of Scottish and Maori (Aitanga a Hauiti / Ngati Porou) descent has a background that includes shearing gangs, missionary work, studying drama (and acting), vocalist for Wellington band Salt Licks - and working as a dedicated mid-wife.

She is also a competitive and winning Lyall Bay surfboarder.

Donna's husband Peter is a great builder - he built our new barbecue deck!

Details of her album and how to purchase it online can be found at the Black Seeds Website at:

http://blackseeds.amplifier.co.nz/artist/60271/donna-muir.html

[Interview notes courtesy of Agnes Ginestet, CityLife News, 30 June 2010]

Island Bay / Southern Ward - It's just So Beautiful !!

PHOTOS FROM 2010 'PAUL WADE-BROWN MEMORIAL PHOTO COMPETITION'

Wakefield's land development theories & that 'restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism’

SOME MORE GRIPES ABOUT EDWARD GIBBON WAKEFIELD

As even the most casual reader will easily deduce, I am not exactly a fan of Wakefield. He was a parvenu toff, a property developer and a real estate agent. Well that’s a pretty good start. But he was also an abductor (and potential child abuser) who believed that the law could be bent by fraudulently obtained signatures and that ‘possession was nine tenths of the law’.

Beyond these basic imperfections, I also have some serious concerns about the errors and consequences of his land development theories, his views on working people (or ‘mechanics’ as he preferred), and his total disregard for native land rights. In all of these areas, there were consequences for New Zealand that continue to play out today.

I’ll deal with the second two issues in a subsequent post, and concentrate on land development and Wakefield’s invisible and dead hand on New Zealand society in this one.

WAKEFIELD’S LAND & SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT THEORIES

As I showed in my previous post, Wakefield believed that it was dangerous to let a colonial society evolve naturally on an open frontier, noting that:

‘An abundance of land produced a people, like what the Canadians will be, and in the United States Americans are – a people who, though they increase in number make no progress in the art of living.’

His answer was to restrain the allocation of land, impose a threshold price, and release land in limited quantities to wealthier immigrants who brought capital with them.

Regardless of his apparent objectives, it was always clear that he had no understanding of practical farming, of the importance to farmers and pastoralists of variations in land quality or of the very different challenges posed to agriculturalists in environments as varied as those of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Like many a good bureaucrat, he plucked regulations and charges out of his hat.

In New South Wales, he successfully promoted raising the price of land from five to 20 shillings an acre but pastoralists began to squat ‘illegally’ farther afield, and settlement became more dispersed. In South Australia, he argued for a price of 12 shillings per acre and resigned when his recommendation was overruled.

In Canada, he opined that crown lands should be sold at $2.00 an acre although alternative American lands were available at $1.25.

Beyond that, his theories are of course nonsense in economic terms. So let’s pay a brief visit to a real economist – and one of my great heroes – Johann Heinrich von Thünen.

A REAL LAND ECONOMIST AND THE VIRTUES OF AN OPEN FRONTIER

Johann von Thünen (24 June 1783 – 22 September 1850) was a Mecklenburg estate holder and practical farmer who had also studied at Göttingen university. He is credited with being the first in the field of spatial economics but he also developed the essence of marginal productivity theory (i.e. that successive increments of inputs are beyond a certain point met with successive decreases in unit outputs).

As if that is not enough, his ideas also have a serious claim to being one of the wellsprings of empirical econometrics (testing theories mathematically using statistical evidence).

In his book The Isolated State (1826), drew on the work of the English economist Ricardo and suggested that land development could be analyzed by assessing the respective influences of:

1. basic land productivity (what Ricardo termed the ‘original and indestructible powers of the soil’)
2. the combination of labour and capital in the form of a ‘production function’ for a commodity (that represented the most appropriate form of cultivation).
3. variations in effort, technology and management (what we can call for the purposes of this assessment ‘non-factor productivity’)
4. net received / farm-gate prices (that is the prices that famers actually receive)

Von Thünen then proceeded to develop a theory of what would happen during the settlement and development of a uniformly fertile and otherwise undifferentiated plain, if influences 1-3 were held constant but net received prices were allowed to vary as a consequence of the cost of transporting commodities to a single central market / city.

This state of affairs was not completely unrealistic in an era when the frontier of settlement in North America was continuing to move forward into open land that was suitable for cultivation using European techniques.

In the original Isolated State the model generated four concentric rings of agricultural activity:

1. Dairying and intensive farming lying closest to the city, as high value and recurrently demanded but weighty and perishable products like vegetables, fruit, milk and other dairy products had to be delivered to market quickly
2. A second ring producing timber and firewood for fuel and building materials. Wood was a very important fuel for heating and cooking and is very heavy and difficult to transport so its production was located as close to the city (an arrangement that still applies in many cases in the Third World)
3. The third zone consisting of extensive fields crops such as grain. Since grains last longer than dairy products and are much lighter than fuel, thereby reducing relative transport costs, they could be located further from the city.
4. Cattle production / ranching was forecast in the final ring. Animals can be raised far from the city because they are self-transporting and can walk to the central city for sale or for butchering.
5. Beyond the fourth ring lies the ‘wilderness’, which is too great a distance from the central city for any type of agricultural product.

Now it doesn’t take much imagination to see that as the population of the Isolated State grows, the frontier will be pushed back at first by the ranchers (as is currently happening in the Amazon Basin) and then by the cultivators.

And von Thünen went on to argue that the availability of virgin land would determine the ‘natural wage’ of the community. That is the floor wage that would have to be paid to prevent landless labourers from upping sticks and moving to the frontier to build their own log cabin or bough shed and knock down the Backwoods or the Bush or run some cattle or sheep in the wilderness.

A process which, despite the machinations of Wakefield, is still evident in New Zealand in the form of roads named after the ‘lines’ that the pioneers first cut to mark their boundaries.

So here we have a land development situation where enterprise can be rewarded and economics alone shapes the development of society. And we can now splice in the ideas of Frederick Jackson Turner (November 14, 1861 – March 14, 1932).

Turner was an influential American historian who is best known for his book, ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’, the basis of which is generally known as the ‘Frontier Thesis’.

It argues that ‘the existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development’ ...

‘and that coarseness and strength combined with acuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical inventive turn of mind, quick to find expedients; that masterful grasp of material things... that restless, nervous energy; that dominant individualism’.

And Turner goes on to explain that:

‘the American frontier is sharply distinguished from the European frontier -- a fortified boundary line running through dense populations. The most significant thing about the American frontier is that it lies at the hither edge of free land”.

“The Atlantic frontier was compounded of fisherman, fur trader, miner, cattle-raiser, and farmer. Excepting the fisherman, each type of industry was on the march toward the West, impelled by an irresistible attraction. Each passed in successive waves across the continent.

Stand at Cumberland Gap and watch the procession of civilization, marching single file-- the buffalo following the trail to the salt springs, the Indian, the fur trader and hunter, the cattle-raiser, the pioneer farmer --and the frontier has passed by. Stand at South Pass in the Rockies a century later and see the same procession with wider intervals between.

The unequal rate of advance compels us to distinguish the frontier into the trader's frontier, the rancher's frontier, or the miner's frontier, and the farmer's frontier. When the mines and the cow pens were still near the fall line the traders' pack trains were tinkling across the Alleghanies, and the French on the Great Lakes were fortifying their posts, alarmed by the British trader's birch canoe.

When the trappers scaled the Rockies, the farmer was still near the mouth of the Missouri.”

So there we have it really, Wakefield not only wanted to rule out free enterprise and the Kiwi battler at the stroke of a bureaucratic pen, he also would have been happy to snuff out the pioneer spirit. Whether this has inflicted any permanent damage on the New Zealand national psyche, I leave the reader to judge.

POSTSCRIPT

I will add a couple of things though. It is ironic but perhaps all too predictable that we as a nation are preoccupied with buying and selling property – such that we have borrowed upwards of $150 billion from foreigners to fund the buying and selling of houses and farms among ourselves. And that we constantly struggle to involve ourselves in more productive activities and to earn our way in the world through innovation and enterprise.

As I have commented elsewhere, there is an old saying to which I was introduced when I arrived in Wellington, which is that ‘if you want to run a small business in New Zealand, you had better start by buying a big one’.

So it was with considerable surprise that I found out, during PD Soccer one Saturday morning with Theo, from the Scots grandfather of one of the players, that he spent the better part of his retired life cruising the world on luxury liners.

He had made some money as a butcher in Silverstream and had begun to build up businesses that he then sold on. This led him into property investment and property development and a relatively opulent old age.

The trick he told me was simply to ‘buy and sell property in New Zealand’. Well, I have no doubt that Edward Gibbon Wakefield would pout a malevolent smile at this point if he were around to reflect on the society that he helped to procreate.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield – New Zealand’s Seedy Founding Father

WALKING UP FROM THE HARBOUR TO WAKEFIELD HOUSE

My previous posts on the re-development of Wellington’s waterfront have kicked me into writing about New Zealand’s early settlement – and the attempted imposition by the founding fathers of shabby gentility and conformity at the expense of enterprise and innovation.

When I kept a workplace in town, I used to regularly walk up from Lambton Quay (the shoreline in 1840) by way of Woodward Street to my office in Wakefield House on The Terrace. The existing 8-storey Wakefield House stands on the site of the house that was built by one of the city’s earliest and ostensibly illustrious citizens 'Colonel' William Wakefield.

It was he who commanded the first fleet organized by the New Zealand Company and, having been a soldier with Portuguese & Carlist armies in the period 1832 - 1837, he built his house on the sandy heights that commanded a direct view of the comings and goings in the harbor. It was also strategically placed opposite the Maori Pa at Kumutoto but separated from it by a ravine and stream (the line of which is now followed by Woodward Street).

The house was as near as Wellington ever came to having its own fort or castle knoll.

Whether by accident or design, the local Maori did not take to the new building or their new neighbour and their numbers soon became depleted.

And it was in the house though that William’s brother Edward Gibbon Wakefield died on 18 May 1862. He even trumps his brother in reputation and has been credited as being New Zealand’s ‘Founder’, no less.

So I was walking in the footsteps of a great man, up from the old beach at the harbour’s edge to the sandy terrace above – at least according to the conventional history books (and I have to say that the New Zealand histories appear to lead the way here searching desperately for a hero - albeit a reputedly repentant kidnapper).

Well, I have at least two gripes about the hagiography. In the first place, it seems to me that he was an unreformed swindler who merely substituted virgin lands for virgin heiresses. And secondly, I have a strong objection to the shoddy land development policies that he espoused, which purported to deliver structured societies in settler colonies at the expense of battler backwoodsmen (and which rode slipshod over native land rights).

There again, I have to admit also to a certain amount of animosity stemming from a Northerner’s distrust of parvenu toffs from the South of England, as the heiress that he abducted was a Cheshire wench.

And it is perhaps remarkable that first-footer Northern Lad and Whaler-Trader Dicky Barrett piloted the first ominously-named settler ship ‘Tory’ past the reef that now bears his name - without deliberately wrecking it.

Dicky could, I feel, have been forgiven for regaling Colonel Wakefield with the words that were overheard back in a pub in Melbourne in the 1960s, as a Northerner responded to an effete Southerner fronting up to the bar with:

‘I’ve come twelve thousand bloody miles to get away from bastards like you – and I still can’t!’

So let’s start by getting the kidnapping on the table.

THE CHESHIRE CONNECTION - THE SHRIGLEY ABDUCTION

Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a London land agent's son (good start eh?), was born on March 20, 1796.

Even his grandmother Priscilla had her doubts from the start, writing in one letter: “My mind is painfully engaged with the perverseness of dear little Edward – his obstinacy if he inclines to evil terrifies me’.

He was unsurprisingly a poor student and was expelled from his school in Edinburgh, with influence being exerted to get him a job in the Foreign Service in 1814. However, his sponsor wrote:

“I can tell you very little respecting Edward Gibbon Wakefield; his conduct is wholly inexplicable. He despises his father’s advice, he laughs at his opinions; he talks largely of being in his own hands, and independent of his father…. I wish his father could make up his mind to see only a common man in him”. [Francis Place, (1815)].

At the age of twenty he eloped to Scotland with a 17-year-old heiress, Eliza Pattle. Luckily for him, her parents accepted the marriage and settled £70,000 on the young couple. However, Eliza died four years later after giving birth to her third child in 1820.

Then Edward tried to break his father-in-law's will and was suspected of perjury and forgery.

In February of 1827, 31-year-old Edward then conspired with his brother William Wakefield to get his hands on the person and inheritance of a 15-year-old schoolgirl Ellen Turner by lying to her and her guardians at her school in Liverpool.


He apparently based his plan to marry Ellen on the expectation that her parents would respond as Eliza's had.

Ellen was the daughter and only child of William Turner, a wealthy resident of Pott Shrigley, Cheshire, England, who owned calico printing and spinning mills in Blackburn, Lancashire. At the time of the abduction, Turner was a High Sheriff of Cheshire. He lived in Shrigley Hall, near Macclesfield (see pictures below).

Ellen was told that her father William Turner had become paralyzed and wished to see his daughter immediately. Later Wakefield informed Ellen that there was an agreement between two banks that some of her father's estate would be transferred to her or, to be exact, her husband.

He also said that his banker uncle had proposed that Wakefield marry Ellen, and that if she would agree to marry him, her father would be saved. Ellen allowed them to take her to Carlisle. There they met William Wakefield, who claimed to have spoken to Mr. Turner and that Mr. Turner had also agreed to the marriage.

Wakefield then married Ellen at Gretna Green and took her off to France, telling her that she would meet her father there.

But unfortunately for Wakefield, William Turner was made of sterner stuff than Eliza Pattle’s father. He had apparently expected that William Turner would accept the marriage rather than face a public scandal. Instead, Turner went to London and asked for help from the police.

There he learned that his daughter had been taken to the Continent. Turner sent his brother to Calais, accompanied by a police officer and a solicitor. There they soon found the couple and Ellen expressed pleasure at seeing her uncle, subsequently discovering the truth of the whole affair.

However, Wakefield claimed that since they were legally married, she could not be taken from him by force. In spite of this the French authorities interviewed Ellen and finally let her leave the country with her uncle. Wakefield, trying to make the best of his situation, wrote out a statement that Ellen was still a virgin and left for Paris.

The consensus of society was that:

“His sole motive was of the most sordid and vulgar description. In order to possess himself of the fortune of a mere girl, whom I had never seen, he did not scruple to employ falsehood, fraud, cruelty and the vilest hypocrisy, in feigning a passion he could not have entertained” [‘The Kaleidoscope’ (1827)].

BROUGHT TO HEEL

The English police issued warrants for the Wakefields' arrest and William was arrested in Dover a couple of days later. William and the Wakefield’s stepmother Frances were taken to Cheshire and then committed to Lancaster Castle to await trial.

The trial of William Wakefield began on 21 March 1827 with great publicity - but without Edward Wakefield, who was arrested later. On 23 March 1827 all three defendants were put on trial in Lancaster. The jury found all of them guilty the same day. They were committed to Lancaster Castle a day later.

On 14 May the Wakefields were taken to the Court of King's Bench in Westminster Hall in London for sentencing, where William claimed that he had been working under the guidance of his brother. Both were put in prison for three years, with Edward being incarcerated in Newgate prison and William in Lancaster Castle.

Since the marriage apparently had not been consummated, Parliament annulled it immediately.

POSTSCRIPT

Somewhat subdued by his experience, Wakefield appears to have transferred his affections from maidens to the virgin lands of the colonies (of which more later).

However, he did pause to write about prison reform and the desirability of abolishing the death penalty, noting the succession of prisoners at Newgate who were executed for minor offences.

From a modern stance, one can only marvel at the blatant bias in the judicial system that condemned men to death or transportation for offences like petty theft or poaching while the wealthy and influential suffered minor sentences. Wakefield did not comment on this anomaly.

It is perhaps something of a shame then that he was not transported for seven years to New South Wales to gain some first-hand colonial experience. And that he did not then settle as a trader like Dicky Barrett and become a friendly ‘Pakeha’ who abducted but then successfully married one of Te Rauparaha’s daughters. Wow that really would have been a risky venture but it would have given him a sounder claim to have been New Zealand’s 'Founding Father'!

As it was, I fancy that Edward spent his declining years at 90 The Terrace mulling over his various falls from grace. I suspect that he would have happily swapped his bungalow in a colonial backwater for Shrigley Hall but that would have required an altogether more fortunate outturn from this “tale of anguish, deceit and violation of the domestic hearth”.

A Fine Expanse of Water

BEAUTY AND COMMERCE

On the 20th September 1839, the English ship Tory passed through what is now known as the Tory Channel into Wellington Harbour, as the vanguard of what first became a stream and then a flood of settlers landing from the literal ends of the earth.

But it was fortunate for the imperious immigrants that there was already a rough and ready 'Pakeha' available to guide the first colonists past treacherous reefs into the harbour. All landed safely thanks to the renegade Geordie whaler-trader Dicky Barrett.

Charles Heaphy, an altogether more refined Englishman who was artist, draughtsman and later explorer to the expedition, wrote of the intrusion:

‘As we worked our way up the anchorage, the noble expanse of water, surrounded by a country of the most picturesque character formed a scene of almost indescribable beauty – certainly far surpassing that of our English lakes’.

Colonel Wakefield, the leader of the frock-coated freebooters, was more prosaic and saw instead:

‘a fine expanse of water over the whole of which is anchorage ground and where no inconvenience could arise to any vessel taking the usual precautions’, and he predicted that it would become ‘a great Emporium of trade’.

So the continuing stoushes between Wellington City Council’s Development organization ‘Wellington Waterfront’ and the citizens’ watchdog Waterfront Watch on the trade-offs between profit and public space could have been foreseen even 170 years ago.

But the recent re-emergence of Wellington Harbour’s beauty is something that is in its own way quite remarkable. Changes in commercial patterns and imperatives have allowed the landscape to recover – and have turned what had become an industrial eyesore in a Dirty Old Town into a jewel.

Interesting though to look back to see what things used to be like.

Wellington - What's first: Lively or Liveable?

There are a growing number of decisions by Wellington City Council that expose a rift between encouraging outside visitors to the benefit of the businesses and meeting the needs of local residents in a caring and cost-effective way.

Take the brand shift from the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary to ‘Zealandia’ as a case in point. What started as a wholly laudable attempt to create an urban refuge for native wildlife, to the benefit of both birds and residents has become transformed into an ‘attraction’ to lure high-spending outside visitors - accompanied by a $10 million interest free loan funded by ratepayers and a rise in fees from $28 for adults, $14 for children and $70 for family passes.

And the ongoing shift in the rates burden from commercial to residential rate payers makes it much more difficult to justify for shifting spending away from community facilities to ‘attractions’. In the coming year, homeowners are likely to see a 6.5% real increase in their rates while rates in the commercial sector will be close to zero.

Equity alone suggests that gold-plating costs should lie primarily with those that they benefit in the business sector - and that greater care in spending is due to homeowners who are being co-opted as funders and guarantors.

Not only that, the market for ‘attractions’ is limited and often a matter of beggar-thy-neighbour politics that only benefits a limited number of local businessmen. Wellington steals the Wearable Arts Show from Nelson; Auckland tries to steal the Rugby Sevens from Wellington. And so it goes on, there is no overall gain – just a reallocation of spending.

As for international visitors, there is increasing evidence that events like the South African Soccer World Cup and the forthcoming London Olympics put frightening amounts of public money at risk for very uncertain and sporadic returns. In fact one recent study has cast doubt on the possibility of any net benefits from these kinds of shenanigans in most cases, particularly in a world economy with tightening travel budgets.

So let our outside visitors share what we can reasonably afford to provide for our residents – investments that reflect community values and that meet local needs and aspirations. After all, this is probably what most outside visitors are seeking – the possibility of sharing something local, real and thoroughly Kiwi – which of course also includes Zealandia’s native birds.

Also give residents a break from funding big ticket ‘attractions’. It is time in the current economic climate to close off the wish-list for the while in favour of making sure that our local communities can work together and thrive. Let’s park any talk of a $26 million Marine Education Centre or the current Mayor's favourite an Ice Rink, until we can properly fund libraries and integrated public transport.

And please, we don’t need a statue or work of art in every nook on the Waterfront when communities like Berhampore are desperate for Council assistance in tidying up leaky and derelict buildings that tear the heart out of local enterprise and community self-confidence.

'Love will tear us apart' - the Wellington link

While contemporary emotive links between Cheshire and New Zealand are a bit sparse, those that do exist are musical but melancholy.


THE WELLINGTON ‘IAN CURTIS’ WALL

A wall on Wallace Street in Wellington, New Zealand, had the words "Ian Curtis Lives" written on it shortly after the singer's death. The message is repainted whenever it is painted over. A nearby wall on the same street on the 4th January 2005 was originally emblazoned "Ian Curtis RIP", later modified to read "Ian Curtis R.I.P. Walk In Silence" along with the dates "1960 - 1981" (sic).

Both are referred to as "The Ian Curtis Wall". However on Thursday 10 September 2009, the wall was painted over by Wellington City Councils anti graffiti team. The wall was chalked back up on 16th September 2009, even if the dates had been muddled - Curtis was born in 1956 not 1966. The Council may now just turn a blind eye. The wall was repainted on the 17th September 2009 - this time with correct dates.

IAN CURTIS

Ian Kevin Curtis (15 July 1956 – 18 May 1980) was the vocalist and lyricist, as well as occasional guitarist and keyboardist, of the band Joy Division, which he joined in 1976 after meeting with Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook at a Sex Pistols gig. He was born in Old Trafford, Manchester but lived the greater part of his short life in Macclesfield, Cheshire.

He grew up in Hurdsfield, an area of Macclesfield, and from a young age he exhibited talent as a poet. Proof of his ability was his admission at the age of eleven to The King's School, Macclesfield with a scholarship. Despite this, he was not a devout student and did not further his education after receiving his O-levels.

From his high school days, his ambitions and hopes were focused on the pursuit of art, literature and, most importantly, music. Curtis was employed in a variety of jobs, including as a civil servant in Manchester and later in Macclesfield.

He was influenced by the writers William S. Burroughs, J. G. Ballard and Joseph Conrad (the song titles "Interzone", "Atrocity Exhibition", and "Colony" coming from the three authors, respectively), and by the musicians David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Jim Morrison.

In 1976, Curtis met two young musicians, Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook, at a Sex Pistols gig, who told him they were trying to form a band; he immediately put himself forward as a vocalist and lyricist. The three of them recruited, and sacked a number of drummers before settling on Stephen Morris as their final member. Initially, the band was called Warsaw before changing its name to Joy Division in 1978, due to conflicts with the name of another band, Warsaw Pakt.

The name "Joy Division" stemmed from the sexual slavery wing of a Nazi concentration camp in the 1955 novel The House of Dolls, and was thought to have been pitched by Curtis.

After starting Factory Records with Alan Erasmus, Tony Wilson "signed" the band to his label (although apparently no contracts were ever actually signed - despite the story of Wilson signing a contract in his own blood).

While performing for Joy Division, Curtis became known for his quiet and awkward demeanour, as well as a unique dancing style reminiscent of the epileptic seizures he experienced, sometimes even on stage. There were several incidents where he collapsed and had to be helped off stage.

Curtis's writing was filled with imagery of emotional isolation, death, alienation, and urban decay. He once commented in an interview that he wrote about "the different ways different people can cope with certain problems, how they might or might not adapt." He sang in a bass-baritone voice, in contrast to his speaking voice, which was higher pitched.

Earlier in their career, Curtis would sing in a loud snarling voice similar to shouting; it is best displayed on the band's debut EP, An Ideal for Living (1978). Joy Division had its sparse recording style developed by producer Martin Hannett, with some of their most innovative work being created in Strawberry Studios in Stockport (owned by Manchester act 10cc) and Cargo Recording Studios Rochdale in 1979, a studio which was developed from John Peel investing money into the music business in Rochdale.

As detailed in Debbie Curtis's Touching from a Distance, Curtis was staying at his parents' house in Macclesfield at this time and attempted to talk his wife into staying with him on 17 May 1980, to no avail. Debbie left him in her house overnight while she left to do some errands. Genesis P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle claimed in a 2006 interview that Curtis would sometimes phone him during the night and sing the Throbbing Gristle song "Weeping" — a song about suicide — to him.

In the early hours of 18 May 1980, Curtis hanged himself in the kitchen of the house that he and Debbie had occupied in Macclesfield. He had just viewed Werner Herzog's film Stroszek and listened to Iggy Pop's The Idiot.

At the time of his death, his health was failing as a result of the epilepsy and attempting to balance his musical ambitions with his marriage, which was foundering in the aftermath of his affair with journalist Annik Honoré. His wife found his body the next morning.

Curtis's memorial stone, which is inscribed with "Ian Curtis 18 - 5 - 80" and "Love Will Tear Us Apart", was stolen in July 2008 from the grounds of Macclesfield Cemetery. The missing memorial stone was later replaced by a new one.

Settled in New Zealand - 'Kiwi as'

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).