Mike Bodnar
Samples of Writing Work
1. From the Intranet of Land Information New Zealand (a government department), explaining the importance of branding to staff…It's the look...
Why does branding matter? Because it reinforces who we are, what we're providing, and announces "This is Landonline".
If you've ever wondered about the value of branding, think about Levi's, Coke, Shell, McDonald’s, Nike or the All Blacks. Each conjures up an image of something—perhaps quality, strength, taste, success (or not—depending on how the All Blacks have been doing!) or service.
Landonline is a relatively new 'brand' on the market, and while we don't for a moment imagine it's up there with BMW or Air New Zealand, we do think it's important to present a consistent image.
Consistency is most obvious in the "look and feel" of Landonline-related imagery. If you examine the Landonline 'merchandise' such as the stickers, mouse pads, fact sheets, posters and so on you'll see the dark red and green colours are consistent throughout, the Landonline typeface is the same, and the logo used in all cases.
After a while, good service and quality result in increased 'brand equity.' That is, the brand carries a perceived value (Gucci luggage, Tag Heur watches, and Bollinger darling, for example). Once that happens the copycats come out and imitate the real thing, which is why you can find 'Lacoste' polo shirts for under $10 in Bangkok. It's also why branding in the form of trademarks and logos is fiercely protected.
It's possible there might soon be other web-based land information services, which might overlap with Landonline in some of their products. Therefore it's important that we make an effort now to ensure that the look and feel of Landonline—the original, groundbreaking, hard-wearing, fully washable and state guaranteed brand—is consistent.
So, if you're presented with the opportunity to use Landonline branding—say in a newsletter or a poster for the front counter—check out the Style Guide first. If you have any questions relating to branding, contact Landonline communications manager Mike Bodnar.
2. A science feature for the Bay of Plenty Times newspaper"Discovering the Arc"
By Mike Bodnar, on board RV Tangaroa, 6 October 2004
When the New Zealand scientific research vessel RV Tangaroa docks at Tauranga on Sunday 17th October, it will bring with it a shipload of new knowledge and discoveries.
The ship, and its complement of 27 scientists, has been on a 'plume mapping' expedition—using sophisticated sonar and in-sea sampling equipment to better understand the Kermadec Arc.
It’s along this tortuous scar, stretching from the Bay of Plenty to Tonga, that the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates are unceasingly engaged in an undersea struggle for power.
The Australian plate is winning, forcing the Pacific plate into submission, and down into the earth’s crust. An occasional fall or knockout sometimes registers in New Zealand as an earthquake, a reminder from this volatile zone that it’s there, even if we can’t see it.
The Arc comprises the Kermadec Ridge, the Kermadec Trench, and an associated line of underwater volcanoes, many of them hydrothermally—and occasionally volcanically—active. Here and there the volcanoes poke their heads above water, as with Mayor Island, White Island, and further north the Kermadec Islands—Curtis, McCauley, and Raoul. But for the most part they’re under the sea, though not as invisible as they used to be.
Thanks to state-of-the-art sonar technology originally designed for military purposes, scientists can now 'swath map' the sea bed, building up images and gathering data on what lies beneath using Tangaroa’s multibeam mapping system. Interesting features, such as volcanoes, are then followed up with closer on-site investigation.
The multibeam system—attached to the hull of the ship and managed from a computer control room on board—sends out 135 simultaneous sonar 'pings', returning detailed information which computer programmes can translate into full 3D images of the seabed. This enables scientists to map sections—or swaths—of the seabed up to five kilometres across, building a picture of the undersea landscape, at a resolution high enough to be able to clearly make out hills, ridges, valleys and, most interesting of all, volcanoes. Much of it looks like what you might see from the Mars Orbiter.
When a volcano is revealed, the data is examined for indications of emissions or plumes, which is where the expedition gets its name: NZAPLUME III—standing for New Zealand and American Plume Mapping Expedition.
Led by New Zealand’s Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS), the NZAPLUME mapping began in 1999, and when Tangaroa docks on the 17th it will conclude the third expedition in the series. It is being conducted in association with the National Institute of Atmospheric and Water Research (NIWA), America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the Australian National University.
Since leaving Wellington on 23rd of September the ship has mapped and sampled its way up the northernmost third of the Kermadec Arc, and has found many signs of hydrothermal activity, as well as discovering previously unknown volcanoes, including one the size of Wellington harbour (called, temporarily, the Monowai Caldera).
When any such discovery is made, Tangaroa stops and lowers a stainless steel mainframe called MINTS (for Marine In-situ Tracking System). The frame is a sort of deep water 'sniffer' that can be dropped on a cable to remotely collect samples and information from (and sometimes in) a crater or cone.
MINTS is the brainchild of Gary Massoth, formerly with NOAA and now with GNS.
On the day of the Monowai Caldera discovery Massoth, standing beside MINTS before it was lowered down to the massive volcano, said excitedly, “It’s a huge caldera; we have no idea what’s on this cone in the middle… it’s new to all of us, there’s no model for this one!”
MINTS’ onboard sensors can detect plume activity, and its sample bottles—which descend into the depths fully open – can be remotely triggered from the onboard control room to close off at strategic points, trapping samples of seawater and whatever they contain.
NZAPLUME III is led by Dr Cornel de Ronde, Principal Scientist with GNS. He too was in awe of the Monowai Caldera, and said although surveys had been conducted right up to its rim in 1998, nobody knew it was there.
“It’d be like saying, ‘Oh look at Ruapehu, isn’t that lovely?’ then turning behind you and seeing the Grand Canyon!” he said. “This was completely and utterly an unknown. Truly a new discovery.”
As a specialist in offshore minerals, he’s particularly interested in the chemical content of plumes from active vents and volcanoes. Much of the Kermadec Arc lies within New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone, and while there might not seem to be a lot to our economic advantage, that’s not taking into account what’s potentially coming out of, or is scattered around, the underwater volcanoes.
Previous NZAPLUME expeditions have shown the Kermadec Arc plumes to be rich in dissolved iron and manganese, along with lesser concentrations of copper, zinc, and lead. The possible economic benefits of these resources remain unknown at this stage, but the more the NZAPLUME series discovers, the more information New Zealand has in order to make future strategic plans and decisions.
Some of the onboard data analysis is being undertaken by students, including Shay Houia, a third year Bachelor of Environment Science student with Te Whare Wananga O Awanuiarangi at Whakatane.
“It was the chemistry and biology that drew me to the course, ’cos I’m just a bit of a science geek anyway,” she bubbled. “With chemistry I was right into ‘let’s make things fizz and blow up’… that kind of really got me into it.”
But as part of the team on Tangaroa analysing samples brought up from the deep, she’s now the one who’s fizzing.
“I’m getting more than I hoped for. I actually find the discovery of volcanoes is just the buzz, the one! I think I’m just excited by the fact that I’m on the boat that found them, you know? Let alone being part of the team that’s actually analysing the samples coming up. It’d be a total buzz if I was doing nothing!”
Meanwhile, under the sea, there are other, much smaller “scientists” living and working in and around the volcanoes, according to Chris Daughney, a GNS geomicrobiologist who’s also on board.
Daughney’s specialist area is Extremophilic Microorganisms for Metal Sequestration from Aqueous Solutions—a long name for what is basically a study of how some bacteria can remove metals from waste products.
He’s been studying thermophiles, microorganisms that live in high temperature environments—for example around volcanoes and active vents. These might, he said, prove more efficient at separating out—or sequestering—metals than organisms presently used for that purpose.
Daughney’s been exploring some of New Zealand’s more unusual environments in the hope finding such organisms, with the aim of testing them out to see how they might behave in a bioreactor.
“There’s really not a heck of a lot known about this,” he said. “If we’re successful here then we’ll have what the Foundation [for Research, Science and Technology] likes to call a 'knowledge platform', so we’ll know enough to take us to the next step. And I envision the next step would be the construction of thermophilic bioreactors that are targeted towards specific types of waste.”
In New Zealand, that includes waste such as the arsenic discharged into the Waikato River—a natural but unwanted by-product of geothermal power generation. Boron and nickel are waste products of South Island coal mining, while zinc, copper and lead can be found in municipal waste. Daughney said that knowing more about how microbes work in high-temperature environments such as around volcanoes, and how they can interact with metals, could lead to more efficient control of waste products and reduced environmental impacts. He said GNS is interested in finding biotechnological ways of controlling such by-products.
“If we can figure out how the microbes are interacting with the metals in generic test-tube environments… and do computer modelling… then we’ll be in a position to build some of these bioreactors. I’m hoping we’ll have some kind of prototype up and going in the next few years.”
3. Sample of speculative article for a science fiction magazine"A Collection Out of this World"
Avid science fiction reader Mike Bodnar beams himself to Liverpool to uncover the secrets behind one of the best collections of SF in the universe…
John Wyndham looked critically at his manuscript. He scanned the lines of the first page, reached for his pen, and with two bold strokes crossed out the opening paragraphs. He felt they needed a bit more mystery, a slower, more captivating start to what would eventually become (though he perhaps didn’t realize it at the time) one of the most significant science fiction novels of the twentieth century.
The blue cross on the typed manuscript of The Day of the Triffids is fascinating, and I’m drawn to the words it deletes. Yes, he almost certainly thought they overstated the case, his introduction too-boldly declaring that a 'great calamity' had put an end to the world. In the published work our own awareness of what’s happened builds with the lead character’s awakening, at an altogether more leisurely, more engaging, and more terrifying pace.
That I’m able to gain a privileged look into Wyndham’s mind is thanks entirely to the foresight of The Science Fiction Foundation Collection, the largest collection of material relating to science fiction in Europe and one of the most important globally.
Housed as part of the University of Liverpool’s special collections, the Science Fiction Foundation’s library and database have become an indispensable resource for anyone undertaking an MA in Science Fiction, which the University of Liverpool offers. It’s an important academic collection, but even for those with a more casual interest in sci-fi, the 30,000 or so books, magazines, documents and other items provide a fascinating opportunity to boldly go where few have been before.
On the bridge of this particular enterprise is Andy Sawyer, a quiet, thoughtful librarian but also an enthusiastic science fiction fan who is lucky enough to be the Administrator of the collection. He’s also Director of the MA, and teaches science fiction at the university. It seems like the dream job.
Andy looks over my shoulder at Wyndham’s manuscript and the deleted paragraphs, and launches into teaching mode. “It’s not clunkingly bad, but it’s not arresting. And so he’s crossed it out. And we can see bits where he’s added little phrases, crossed other things out…”
He turns the page with relish. “There’s a bit here on the second page which is almost the finished first line: ‘The day outside didn’t sound at all right. The noises it made were even more like Sunday than Sunday itself.’ ” We both pause to reflect on the quality of the writing.
Now, here I was, four years after her death, and she was the one being seen dead out with me. Those really were her ashes in the bag, and I was taking her home, or at least to a place in Ireland where I knew she’d spent many happy times as a child, and by all accounts the happiest days of her life.
(Continued… but no room to reprint the whole article here…)
4. Travel feature published in The Dominion-PostBoating Uphill
By Mike Bodnar
Of course you can’t boat uphill because water doesn’t slope. But that was the challenge facing the English canal-builders of the 18th century, and yes, they solved it. Downhill too.
Thank heavens they did, because today the water-borne adventurer in England, Scotland and Wales has over 3,000 kilometres of inland waterways to play with, uphill and down dale. And play I did recently, for three whole weeks.
I first took the tiller of a narrowboat over 20 years ago, for a brief four-day trundle up the Staffordshire-Worcestershire canal, a there-and-back jaunt through some pretty countryside, but one that also earned me a telling-off within five minutes of setting out. A man working on his boat shouted, “Oi, he’s fallen off!” as I passed.
“Who?” I asked, knowing that nobody had, but slightly alarmed anyway.
“The water-skier!” he replied. It dawned on me about an hour later that he was really telling me I was going too fast.
Which is an issue. You don’t travel on a narrowboat (not a “barge”, they’re working cargo boats, not pleasure craft) with the aim of getting anywhere quickly. Anyway, most hire boats have governors on the engine to prevent you going at full throttle, but really… look at it: a leafy green corridor of trees, with squirrels, herons, swans, kingfishers, moorhens… or open farmland with sweeping hillsides of ancient oaks. Why would anyone want to rush through that, or zoom past a 14th century pub reputedly haunted by Lady Jane Grey?
So this time, remembering the snide water-skier remark, I treated myself an extended odyssey of three whole weeks to do what’s known as the Four Counties Ring. I also travelled really really slowly.
The Four Counties takes in some of England’s most charming countryside, meandering through Worcestershire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and Shropshire. I chose an anti-clockwise route starting from Stourport-on-Severn, up through Stoke-on-Trent, left at Middlewich, detouring to Chester in the north, and back down the Shropshire Union canal. My highway was a muddy-brown watery road, my vehicle a 62-foot (about 19-metres) narrowboat called Chase End, and my maximum speed was – seriously – no more than about five kilometres an hour.
A 62-footer is rather large for solo skippering, but my plan was to have friends join me along the way. The boat would sleep six with ease, and came fully equipped with gas stove, fridge, kitchen, bathroom with toilet, (including a small bath and shower), a saloon/lounge area – even central heating. It was like a floating motel, only narrow. It was also a marvel of lateral thinking and adaptability; tables dismantled to become beds, wardrobe doors could be swung open to close off a corridor, providing privacy. Every bench seat doubled as a locker, and storage was more than ample.
The boats are narrow simply because the canals are mostly narrow, often only able to accommodate two craft abreast (and in a few places only one).
One of my ‘crew’ asked me one day why the canal seemed to forever wind its way backwards and forwards, snaking through the countryside. Given that it’s man-made, she wondered why the canal hadn’t simply been built in a straight line.
The answer is that the early canal builders, in order to save money and labour, built the canals to follow the level contours of the land. This meant a longer journey, but also meant the canal could remain level. However, every now and then the engineers were faced with the challenge of a changing level in the land, so they built brick-lined chambers between the two different levels with gates at either end. The chambers – or locks – could then be flooded or drained according to whether a boat needed to rise or fall to continue its journey.
That was in the early 18th century, and today the lock system remains a marvel of engineering, and a unique aspect of canal travel. It’s also one of the few opportunities for some physical exercise, because someone has to hop off the boat and use a winding handle (called a windlass) to raise (or lower) “paddles” to let the water in or out of the lock.
Of course, at the speeds you travel on a narrowboat, there’s always the option of getting off and walking along the tow-path. (Chances are you’ll get to the next pub first!)
Most canals have a tow-path alongside because the original working boats were horse-drawn. Where the path goes under a bridge you can usually see an iron bar secured to the side of the brickwork, with deep grooves in it – worn over years by the ropes pulling the barges. Today though it’s usually diesel power that gets you places, but the grooves are a charming reminder of the canal’s hey-days.
It was spring as I travelled, the trees in full spring-growth, and the wildlife abundant. One of the cutest was the moorhen, a sort of water-borne pukeko, only smaller. It looks comical as it paddles along because its head bobs back and forth, due to the fact that it doesn’t have webbed feet. Its claws are more suited to walking across weed, sticks and other canal greenery, which is where it builds its nest, usually only just above water-level. These perilously-perched homes are another reason why excessive speed isn’t welcome; any wash from a rapidly-moving boat would swamp the nest.
In fact, travel too fast and you’re also likely to incur the wrath of another species, the often-spotted angler. Predominantly male, these can be found particularly at weekends, with their fishing rods across the canal. They’re used to boats and will raise their rods out of the way as you approach, but they certainly appreciate your slowing down even more as you pass.
So, although I cruised slowly, taking three weeks to do what usually takes only two, the time flew by. I carried a borrowed bicycle on the roof of the boat so that I could pedal into nearby towns for supplies, I occasionally moored up for two days at a time and went sight-seeing, and of course there were the pubs (the canal guide books are really useful for knowing when your next refreshment stop is!).
By the end of it I felt part of the more permanent canal community rather than a day-tripper or hire-boat skipper, and was reluctant to leave Chase End at her berth at Stourport.
Next time maybe I’ll give myself six weeks. After all, no hurry, eh?
ENDS.
WORDCOUNT: 1,070
Canal Boating Fact File
Canal boats can be hired throughout the UK and Ireland, but the majority of hire companies are in England.
The hire season is from March through to October, though some firms operate all year round. Peak season is from late May to early September.
Hireages usually start on Fridays or Saturdays. The most common hire period is one week, though many firms offer mini-break deals (about three days), and even day-hires. Some late booking deals are also available.
The principal hirer usually has to be aged over 21.
A 38-foot narrowboat sleeping four can range from £487 per week in March to £724 in mid-July/August.
For a 56-foot narrowboat sleeping six in mid-July, you might expect to pay between £700 and £800 for a week’s hire.
Larger boats can cost up to £1,450 per week mid-peak season.
These are basic prices; there’s also a £40 compulsory accidental damage waiver insurance, and there might be other charges. A deposit (varies, often 25%) applies at time of booking.
Some firms provide a grocery shopping service so that your boat is fully stocked according to your needs from the first day (you pay for the groceries, but they will likely do the shopping for free).
The hire should instruct you how to drive the boat and operate the locks. Someone might even accompany you for the first hour or so of your journey to show you what to do.
The hire fee usually includes all diesel fuel and gas (for cooking/heating), linen and all necessary on-board equipment. For extended hires you might have to pay for refuelling, and maybe a pump-out of the toilet tank during your journey. Diesel and pump-out services are widely available.
Useful links:
Inland Waterways Association:
www.waterways.org.uk/
IWA’s links page is very useful, with lots of boat hire firms in the UK and Ireland:
www.waterways.org.uk/links/boathire.htm
5. Travel feature for The PressShhhh! It’s a secret…
By Mike Bodnar
When Russia was bristling with intercontinental missiles during the Cold War the British, living on the edge – literally and figuratively – were understandably nervous.
Away from the public eye an enormous amount of preparation was undertaken by the British government to prepare for what would likely be the real “war to end all wars”. Across the nation, hidden nuclear monitoring sites were built, and away from strategic targets underground bunkers were constructed, designed to withstand nuclear strikes and equipped to be self-contained for those who might have to hole up inside them while the deadly weapons rained down from above.
Today, one of the top secret establishments of the Cold War is a secret no longer. Hack Green nuclear bunker, in a remote spot in rural Cheshire, was declassified in 1993, and has thrown open its blast doors to become an award-winning tourist attraction. For Hack Green the war is over.
Nothing could illustrate the changed nature of the Cold War threat more than road signs in the nearby town of Nantwich showing the way to the “Secret Bunker”.
It’s just a few miles south of the town, and a reasonably safe distance from any potential nuclear target. The closest destinations marked on the Russian tactical strike maps would likely have been Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester – important industrial and commercial centres – but Hack Green is surrounded by fields, and its nearest neighbours are less-than-strategic cows and sheep.
The communications mast is the only thing that gives the location away at a distance. The building itself, still surrounded by a razor-wire topped chain-link fence, is relatively low, but that’s because most of the 35,000 square-foot complex is underground.
It was at Hack Green that regional government was expected to continue operating in the event of a nuclear attack. The bunker was equipped with its own water supply, heating and air-conditioning systems, dormitories, showers and toilets, decontamination facilities, a hospital, stocks of food and medical supplies, and of course the operational rooms themselves – communications, radar, planning, administration – all below ground and protected by tonnes of reinforced concrete and massive blast doors.
Hack Green’s history is laid out from the moment you enter. It was originally a Second World War RAF base, one of a network of fixed radar bases scattered around Britain, designed to give early warning of enemy aircraft attack.
After the war the radar installations were upgraded with more long-range capability, and by 1958 Hack Green had become part of the UK Air Traffic Control system, serving in a joint civil and military capacity. Its role was diminished however, and in 1966 the facility was closed down.
But Hack Green’s role wasn’t over. With the proliferation of intercontinental ballistic missiles in Russia, the threat of nuclear strike was very real, and the British government drew up plans for the country’s survival in the event of a nuclear attack. These included the establishment of eleven secret Regional Government Headquarters (RGHQs), semi-underground or underground bolt-holes where regional government, civil defence and military personnel could survive and operate, hopefully to re-establish control and order following the nuclear devastation.
Hack Green was one of the RGHQs and was rebuilt and re-equipped at a cost of more than £32 million. It became fully operational in 1984.
Fortunately for the people of Britain, and the rest of the world, the Cold War was finally defused and international agreements saw the downsizing of nuclear arsenals and the eventual destruction of nuclear weapons and missiles. The Berlin Wall fell, and with it the threat from the East. Hack Green’s role as an emergency RGHQ was over.
As you enter the bunker today, you are reminded that it wasn’t only the Russians that contributed to the frostiness of the Cold War. On display is a WE-177B nuclear missile – a British missile. At 400 kilotons it’s 10-times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Signage advises that it’s been “made safe”. It’s amazingly – and scarily – small. Nearby is a nuclear warhead from a British Trident submarine.
But perhaps the starkest reminders of how seriously the Cold War preparations were taken are the previously secret films prepared for use on the public TV channels in the event of a nuclear attack. Hack Green has two audio-visual rooms, and the harrowing black and white images of some of the footage are not for the faint-hearted.
The sterile coldness of the facility’s underground corridors, the sombre rooms with desks laid out and labelled for the various heads of civil defence and regional government staff, the chilling countdown clocks showing the ‘Time to Impact”… all serve to paint a picture of what could only be described as remote optimism.
As I traipsed around the bunker’s many rooms, I wondered how those who would have had priority access to such a facility would have felt; those military and civil personnel who would be safe and self-contained inside, yet always knowing that above ground their friends and families would be starkly exposed, naked and unprotected against the nuclear horror.
Hack Green serves a useful educational purpose today, even though many of its rooms have been turned into display areas for military and other Cold War-related paraphernalia – and the ubiquitous shop is a bit tacky (aren’t they all?) – but as a grim reminder of how seriously the British took the threat of a nuclear attack, it’s worth targeting.
More information including admission prices and opening times: www.hackgreen.co.uk
ENDS. WORDCOUNT: 909
6. Travel feature for The Dominion PostStand and Deliver
For Mike Bodnar, the highlight of a recent visit to London was being part of a test audience for some new comedy material by Lenny Henry…
Lenny Henry is larger than life. As we sit expectantly – about forty of us in a jaded room above The Bathhouse, a pub off Tottenham Court Road – the first we see of the comic is his hand waving to us from behind the door.
And then he’s in – right there, live and direct, dressed in a natty dark pinstripe suit. Without hesitation he’s shaking hands with those of us in the front row, finding out our names, politely saying hello, asking what we do for a living.
“Humour resources?” he queries Chanel sitting next to me. “Humour resources?”
“Human resources,” she corrects him.
“Chanel… that’s a nice name. Could have been worse… your parents could’ve called you aerosol or summink…”
He converses with Imran on my right, Brent further along, and Alison from Montreal, who’s taking time off from organising a “butch art exhibition”. Let’s not even go there…
Henry is a big comedian, in both senses of the word. He has a new TV series underway through production company Tiger Aspect (which also produces wife Dawn French’s comedy The Vicar of Dibley, Murphy’s Law, and the esoteric League of Gentlemen). Today we’re a ‘test audience’ for him to try out some of his topical gags on before he records his weekly TV show the following day.
Michael Jackson is a prime target of course (coming out of his court trial “whiter than white”…), as is a lot of the more local British news, such as a proposal to extend school hours to match the regular eight-hour working day so that parents don’t have to worry about childcare arrangements.
“ ’Ello, Mum?” Henry pretends to be on a mobile. “No sorry, I just cannot make bath time tonight. I have wall-to-wall meetings…”
Imran proves to be the biggest and loudest laugher in the audience, which has Henry applauding him and inviting him to the taping of his show.
The comedian explains to us that his scriptwriters are sitting at the back of the room (which, referring to the floral wallpaper, he says looks like someone has just planted a virus in a corner and let the pattern run free), and that they’re there to judge our reactions to decide what stays or goes for the TV show.
He also explains why he’s using an autocue for the scripted gags, and makes no apologies. ‘Tommy Cooper used to do it… Billy Connolly…” and to make us all more at ease he impersonates them reading an autocue. We laugh. Imran collapses… just like that.
In fact, as the hour goes on, we find ourselves laughing more at his between-gag ad-libs than the scripted material. That’s not to say we don’t find the topical stuff amusing, but to be honest, having Henry deliver his lines over our heads as he reads the material off the autocue is at odds with his face-to-face in-your-face ad-libs. He is a genuinely funny entertainer, and cruelly targets anyone in the audience, including the woman who he discovered tearing up a receipt while he was delivering his gags. ‘What are you doing? Pay attention!”
No doubt once the material is recorded for TV you won’t be able to see his eyes move across the autocue and it will look as though he’s looking straight at his audience. No doubt it will be convincing, it will work, and it will be funny. You might even hear Imran hooting.
As I get ready to leave at the end of an excellent value (£2.50 – about NZ $6.50) hour, I thank my lucky stars that I closely read London’s indispensable Time Out magazine that led me to find Lenny Henry at the Bathhouse. It beat the London Eye and the Science Museum hands-down.
By way of a farewell, Chanel sitting next to me says, “Well, that’s a different way to spend your lunch hour, innit?”
Oh yes.
ENDS.
WORDCOUNT: 674
7. Feature article for The Shed magazineLeft-handed handyman
By Mike Bodnar
I park at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac in the northern Wellington suburb of Papakowhai. Inside the garage of number 16 I can see a workbench, a lathe, and on the floor a power hacksaw. Things are looking promising.
Trevor Nixon – shock of white hair and broad smile – emerges. “That’s what I call my little helper,” he says, indicating the hacksaw machine. He made it himself, which, I soon learn, should come as no surprise. I glance around, and admire the wood lathe along one wall. But, wait… there’s more.
“This isn’t the workshop,” says Trevor. “That’s out the back…”
We stroll up a path to the real thing, an Aladdin’s cave of every imaginable machine, tool and gadget. “I’m quite a squirrel,” Trevor admits, almost apologetically.
But the surprises aren’t over. As he shows me around I discover that much of what I’m looking at has been made – or at least improved – by Trevor himself. It seems I’m standing next to a one-man DIY factory.
“If somebody says something can’t be done… you know, I just want to do it.”
He demonstrates a remotely-operated milling machine, with an almost dismissive air as though anyone could make such a thing. But as the tour continues, it’s obvious that such capability requires a special sort of mind, which this man has.
“Here’s my baby,” declares Trevor, pulling a sheet off a mystery object. “An injection moulding machine made up out of scrap bits. When I say scrap bits, it was a twin-tub washing machine.”
I can recognise the chassis of the twin-tub, but the rest is a mystery; yet it works. He hands me a sample product – a plastic sleeved washer of some sort. “I had a hundred of these to make the other day.”
By now I’m thinking that Trevor must have been a brilliant scholar, excelling in technical drawing, with a degree in engineering, but in fact that’s not the case.
“I got strapped every day in standard four for spelling. Every day! In standard five and six they gave up and sent me off to mow lawns when English lessons were on!” he laughs. He says secondary school wasn’t much better, and that tertiary education wasn’t an option.
“I ended up in the Post Office Radio Section where they made things that couldn’t be bought,” he recalls. It was, he says, the epitome of Kiwi ingenuity. “What I didn’t realise was that the blokes I was rubbing shoulders with – I thought they were ordinary normal people – were top-line people really.”
Recognising that his Post Office future would likely involve being tied to a desk, and also that he was essentially doing two jobs – his daytime government role and his after-hours fixing electrical appliances – he decided to reconcile his life.
So he left and formed his own company, Electronic Maintenance Ltd, eventually servicing and installing TVs, washing machines, television antennas, VCRs… even burglar alarms.
“The first day after I left the Post office was the only one I ever worked eight hours; after that it was 12 to 14 hours a day for the next 29 years!”
Eventually Trevor found that competition from “the big guys” got too much, and he decided to call it a day. Or so he thought. He was persuaded to help out at Tawa-based electronics firm Deltec, where he spent the first seven or eight years of his “retirement”.
He remembers Deltec as “very much an innovative company”, which suited his problem-solving nature perfectly. “I was like a loaded gun, doing all things the wrong way round!” By which he means he’d see a challenge, grasp it, solve it, make a prototype and present it to the factory. None of this logical progression stuff where you’re expected to present the concept first, apply for permission to follow it up, create strategies and budgets – that’s not the way Trevor works – or has ever worked.
“I built a special cable-stripping machine,” he recalls. “I made one, not electrically, but with air, like a steam engine, driven off a compressor. Then later on they made a couple of computer-controlled ones that were better, but I made [the original] at home here and developed it. And it really saved the factory [money] because they had so many cables to strip.”
And he has a theory as to what makes a good problem-solver: “Being left-handed is the main thing.” It seems like a throw-away comment, but in fact Trevor recalls that an inordinate number of employees at Electronic Maintenance were indeed left-handed.
He finally left Deltec and these days is a full-time tinkerer, manufacturer and repairer.
I ask Trevor about some of the projects he’s worked on, but over a span of more than 50 years there are so many he finds it a challenge to pinpoint them all. “You know, you do things for people, make things and fix things, and then they’re gone.” But when he does drag up a few memories, it’s an eclectic and fascinating mix.
For example, in the Cook Islands in the early 1950s there were very limited facilities for photography, so he made his own enlarger. Resources were so scarce he had to build his own furnace to melt down a couple of pistons from an old diesel engine to make the frame for the enlarger.
Also while there he made an electric piano from scrap to form a harp of 60 guitar strings combined with capacitors and an RF circuit, powered and hooked up to a keyboard.
In the 1960s he built his own jet boat by hand, and recently constructed a weatherproof canopy for his present boat. That’s not to mention adapting the steering and throttle so the boat can be controlled from the front rather than the back.
At the moment he’s making a bench-mounted polisher for a friend using a motor recycled from an electric garden chipper.
Not all of Trevor’s handiwork is industrial. In his lounge the coffee table, twin standard lamps, ceiling lamps, desk, TV stand, curtain rods and telephone table are all from the hand of T. Nixon Esq. The surface of the desk is from an off-cut of the kitchen flooring, the decorative ends of the curtain rods from photocopied leaf shapes cut out from old oven trays. On the curtain rods the plastic curtain rings were made, of course, using his plastic injection moulding machine.
When I ask him how he manages to bend the steel for the shapely legs of the coffee table he casually says he uses an old car jack. Might have guessed it wouldn’t be a proprietary steel bending machine…
As we end the visit, Trevor reflects, “I feel I’ve done the maximum I could do with my life.”
But I’m not so sure. On his c.v., under the heading ‘Current Position’ it says, Retired?
Hardly.
ENDS. WORDCOUNT: 1,138
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Last updated 28 June 2005 NZST
