Wellington invasion

The city was invaded this past weekend by countless monks, nuns, bishops, nurses, native Americans, cowboys, aviators, polo players, jockeys, apparitions, braying beasts, bears, outsize birds, even walking talking cream cakes, beer bottles, wads of multi-coloured flounce and much else straight from the world of the weird and wonderful. Yes, it was the weekend of the annual Wellington leg of the international rugby sevens series, which here is always the signal for a fancy dress binge that brings in hordes of revellers and many warmly welcome dollars.

This time there were some differences, however. Never before has a section of the stadium been set aside for those actually interested in what goes on on the pitch. Special tickets were issued for aisles 24-28, called the ‘rugby zone’. Then those under 25, or looking under 25, had to offer proof of their age to get the wristband entitling them to buy beer. You never have been allowed to bring your own booze to the stadium, or any other drinks for that matter, hot or cold, but in the past it was primarily to maintain a monopoly on sales within. (Of course, the pubs in town have done excellent business. As usual.)

Why the sudden change? Well, the international rugby authorities have their eye on Wellington now that this form of the game has acquired Olympic status and is due to be included in the 2016 Games. They certainly don’t want it to gain a bacchanalian reputation and risk being kicked out. So Wellington was warned.

Costume restrictions are not so new. Complete or near-nudity is out - I don’t know whether a fig-leaf bedecked Adam and Eve got in but they did have quite a few leaves between them - so is anything that can be used as, or looks like, a weapon. Costumes that overlap the seat or obstruct the view of others are likewise banned, as are flagpoles more than a metre long, picnic baskets, commercially prepared food (not a mouthful may stand in the way of arena sales), prams and pushchairs. But you can bring an empty water bottle provided it doesn’t hold more than a litre, and fill it inside. Anything in it when you arrive will be tipped out.

There was clearly some improvement. The police say crowds were on the whole well-behaved. There were slightly fewer arrests than usual, fewer people ejected from the stadium, fewer helpless beings needing assistance, though much of the time thousands of seats remained empty while those who should have been keeping them warm were out on the town, where the party always continues after the last whistle has been blown.

So most people were happy.

Postscript. If you happen to care about the result of the 16-nation tournament, England won, edging past Kenya in the final, while a disappointed New Zealand side won the play-off for third place.

Time travel

My latest time-machine travel (see previous post) took me to New Zealand on the first day of this year. It was December 30 when I boarded the plane in San Francisco, the morning of January 1when it landed in Auckland. New Year’s Eve had vanished. Gone without murmur or mention, let alone festivity. The nearest I came to any celebration was the sight of some bedraggled left-over revellers in Queen Street, the city’s main commercial thoroughfare.

Auckland is the country’s biggest urban area by very far, with about a third of the country’s entire population of some 4.4 million people. But it hasn’t been the seat of government since 1865, when the move was made to the more centrally located Wellington, the world’s most southerly capital city, where I have been for the past month. It is built on and between the steep slopes that surround one of the world’s biggest deep-sea harbours. Look up and you can see innumerable private homes and commercial buildings perched on the steep hillsides, often amid greenery. Very attractive – but for the fact that this is very much an earthquake-risk region with no fewer than four fault lines, one of them running through the city.

The last major quake may have been in the 1850s, but there have been two well above 4 on the Richter scale felt here since I arrived and the next really big bang could come tomorrow, next week, in a month’s time or many decades or scores of years from now. This has been known for a long time, of course, but minds have been sharpened by the Christchurch disaster on February 22 last year, when much of the centre of that city and thousands of homes were destroyed, or have had to be demolished. 185 people were killed, 115 of them in one high-rise building. And most of the devastation remains to be seen. And repaired.

A new report into the ability of Wellington to withstand an earthquake on a similar same scale estimates it would cost the economy 37 billion NZD (tens of billions of anyone’s money), that many important enterprises and the Government itself could be forced to leave, perhaps permanently, though little is said about the potentially devastating human cost. 435 city buildings have been identified as being particularly hazardous. Many are located along important roads so that the few routes into and out of the city could be blocked by rubble.

A map has been published marking in red streets at risk from what are termed ‘earthquake-prone’ buildings, while those 'potentially' at risk are in orange. If I look at the street where I am staying and where I am right now (in a high rise building)... I see it is in the darkest of reds.

Hmm...

Cake Tin Sevens

Among several other things, the rules say no nudity or near-nudity, no devices resembling, or which can be used as, a weapon, and, of course, no alcohol. There’s an ocean of bottled beer to buy inside, but don’t try to bring your own because you won’t get it in, a regulation which, I would say, is more strictly enforced than some of the others.
Yes, it has come and gone for the tenth or eleventh year in succession, the International Rugby Sevens weekend in Wellington, when the streets are roamed, the pubs raucously filled to overflowing and the ‘Cake Tin’ as it is popularly known, long since sold out to outlandishly fancy-dressed, overwhelmingly older-teenage and young adult throngs, some with an occasional eye for the rugby, most responding far more enthusiastically, with arms waving, a dark bottle clutched in one hand, hips swaying to the disco music resounding around the stadium at every opportunity, which means very often.
The police were quite happy with the outcome at the end of the first day. Only twenty-eight arrests, mostly for fighting and similar ‘minor offences’ (!), while eighty-two people were ejected from the stadium. Figures for the second day were a little higher, while sixty-to-seventy arrests were made during the all-night street party in town, a result with which the officers of the law were well content.
Afterwards it was congratulations all round. Wellington had done it again. All agree that this weekend is like no other on the International Sevens circuit, which includes Hong Kong and, believe it or not, Las Vegas. The great party had been held once more, with only one dissenting voice to be heard in the correspondence columns of the capital city’s morning newspaper, from a Kiwi resident abroad but who timed his visit home to coincide with the great event. Never again would he subject himself to such a beer-swilling masquerade that used the pretext of the rugby for a rave.
Now most New Zealanders take their rugby very seriously and one can safely assume that other true lovers of the game stay well away, though doubtless following events on the pitch in front of their television sets, where one can assume there is considerably less disturbance. So their voices are not heard in the great chorus of self-congratulations. But wait a moment. Something soon happened to disturb the party-goers and all those who support them - the weekend is worth millions of dollars to the city.
Wellington’s application to hold the New Zealand leg of the Sevens circuit permanently was turned down by the New Zealand Rugby Union Board. The bidding will be open to others after next year’s event, and Auckland and Dunedin have already expressed an interest. This caused great consternation in the capital city, tempered eventually by the confident assertion that no one else could possibly put on such a show.
Auckland and Dunedin evidently can’t rave as well - indeed, their ravers come to Wellington for the weekend and seem happy to continue doing so.

Wellington in February (2)

“Is he stupid, or crazed?” The Minister asks. His words are dutifully recorded in the official proceedings.

Yes, apart from sporting spectacles; Waitangi Day celebrations (to commemorate the signing of a treaty in 1840 under which Maori tribes were guaranteed possession of their lands in return for recognising the sovereignty of the British Crown — except that the Maori translation was not quite the same as the English original, large parcels of land were sold for a song, there were land wars, confiscations, and a Treaty Tribunal set up in 1975 is still trying to sort out the claims); parades, including a colourful one to mark the Chinese New Year; a lot of (free) outdoor entertainment; a Fringe Festival; and the start this time round of the biennial New Zealand International Arts Festival; February is also back-to-school and back-to-work month, for the country’s 121 parliamentarians as well as anyone else.

Another Minister gets to his feet. “It is not fair to call him stupid,” he states. “He’s doing his best.” The object of their derision, on the Opposition benches, seemed to have mixed up the figures for one day with those for a whole month.

With an election due later in the year, political battle lines are being drawn and the tone and temper of debate are not likely to become more genteel. The most frequently heard word in the single-chamber House of Representatives will probably continue to be “Order! Order!” from the Speaker’s chair. On the other hand, its equivalent would be entirely superfluous in the Swedish Riksdag, an outstandingly strong contender for the title of dullest legislative assembly in the western world.

General Elections are held every three years, a period that was abandoned in Sweden in favour of quadrennium polls as apart perhaps from the first year, everyone’s eye was on the next election. In New Zealand it was the voting system that was changed, from first-past-the-post (FPP), with a simple majority required in single-member constituencies as in Britain, to the German system of proportional representation, with each person having two votes, one for a constituency member, the other for a party list.

Parliament has been sitting in Wellington since 1865, when it moved here from Auckland. The present neo-classical building was opened in 1918 and provided with shock-absorbing base isolation in this earthquake-prone area in the 1990s. The Executive Wing, where the Government has its offices, known to one and all as The Beehive, was completed in1982.

The single chamber House of Representatives meets on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with proceedings opened by Question Time, when Ministers answer queries within their field of responsibility. They have been given advance notice, but questions can be followed by supplementaries, constant interruptions and general hullabaloo.

“What does it feel like being a straw clutched at by a drowning man,” the Minister of Finance asks the Prime Minister after she has engaged in a verbal duel with the Leader of the Opposition. Whereupon the Speaker informs him and the House that, “The Prime Minister has no ministerial responsibility for that.”

To be fair, it’s not all at this level and not quite as virulent as when a past and particularly pugnacious PM described the then quiet-spoken Leader of the Opposition as “a shiver looking for a spine to run down!” But to think I was once refused admission to the press gallery because I wasn’t wearing a tie on a hot afternoon. “You have to maintain the dignity of the House,” I was told.

Wellington in February (1)

“What have you got in your bag?” the man asks.

“Nothing that would interest you,” I reply innocently with a smile. On either side of me bags have been opened and people are pouring water from their plastic bottles into containers placed there for the purpose.

He gives me a half-smile back and I walk through, one hand reassuringly pressing my shoulder bag with a bottle of spring water and other sustenance, into my side.

That you are not allowed to take alcohol into the ‘Cake Tin’, as Wellington’s 34,000-seat rugby stadium, also used for concerts and one-day cricket internationals, is popularly known, I was well aware of from past experience. Commercial food isn’t allowed either — in neither case out of consideration for the comfort and well-being of patrons, but solely to ensure they consume nothing but the beer and the junk food on sale inside. But water!!

I suppose those who won’t accept such gangster-like demands, or won’t put up with the disco music played at every opportunity, or the rising level of inebriation among many, mainly young males, in the crowd, vote with their feet and stay away. The New Zealand ‘Black Caps’ were playing England in the first ODI of five, but the ground was far from full.

Anyone who thinks all New Zealanders are cast in the quiet-spoken, modest, unassuming Hillary mould should be in the world’s most southerly capital in February. It starts with the two-day International Rugby Sevens tournament, which is turned into a raucous, fancy-dress, beer-swilling, disco, carnival party, with not too much attention paidto what is going on on the field of play.

People come from far and wide to join in, so there are no unsold tickets for this event, yet the stadium may look half or more empty at times. Play may be in progress, but in town you can see little knots of multi-coloured pirates, mini-skirted policewomen, cudgel-carrying Flintstones, escaped prisoners, overgrown babies, suspiciously masculine women and female-like men, dubious-looking clergy, representatives of unknown religious orders, a band of Polynesian Islander ‘doctors’, or Doctours, and many other outlandish figures in the streets and pubs. It’s almost a relief to note there are also normally-dressed people going about their normal business.

The stadium regulations were tightened this year. Dress standards were introduced: no bare bums, minimalist male Boran costumes, fig leaves or potentially harmful accoutrements, although most inflatable swords and the like seem to have made it inside.

The final consumption tally was impressive: 30,000 litres of monopoly-sales beer, 20,000 stadium hot dogs, 21,500 pies and 10,000 hamburgers. Nobody has kept count of what was consumed at the bars, pubs and fast food outlets in town, but it could hardly have been less.

When it was all over there were congratulations all round on the success of the event. Naturally, the organisers were happy, but the police also expressed satisfaction with crowd behaviour. Only 30 people were arrested inside the stadium during the two long days, a further 76 ejected. The party doesn’t stop when play ends, however, and another 32 were taken into custody in town by seven o’clock the next morning, mostly for being drunk and disorderly.

The prelude is a parade through town the day before the real business starts, with teams from all the competing nations on floats, flags flying, bands playing, drums beating, people lining the street and office balconies, hanging out of windows, waving, clapping, cheering, and ending with presentations of each team in a crowded Civic Square.

The cricket is a pale imitation. There’s no trouble at all getting tickets, much less fancy dress, but lots of bottled ale and a growing volume of noise as the day wears on. One young man, standing a little unsteadily in the aisle just below me tries to coach a group of his companions in the kind of protracted, rising call to make as the bowler runs up to bowl. A greatly overweight young gentleman, briefly absent on urgent business, brushes past him with a fresh supply of bottled beer peering from his pockets.

“Give us a smile Ryder,” one wag booms at a New Zealand boundary fielder, who turns and obliges. Jubilation. (A newcomer to the team, he is later to put his international career on the line as a result of his own drunken antics.) Meanwhile, the England players perform as though in a collective stupor, giving the home crowd even more to hoot and howl about.

There are fewer Mexican Waves than I have seen here in the past, less assorted rubbish thrown into the air as the wave goes round. But I leave the Cake Tin with one thought uppermost in my mind: if it’s the cricket or sevens you’re really interested in — watch it on the box.