I Feel Fine

Until I get attacked by a swarm of bees

The Beatles were singing I Feel Fine on the radio on the Top Twenty at the end of November 1964, it resonated with me because it was summer, and we were finally moving to our new home, which sounded like it wasn’t going to be awesome, and would be laying down roots for the next phase in our lives. The song hit number one on the Top Twenty as we were settling in.

Like so many top songs it starts with a hook that you instantly recognise. In this case, it is the first note with some feedback that was created by accident when John Lennon turned his amp volume up too high. He liked it and kept it in. I guess the fans liked it too.

Our new home had been arranged for us by the Auckland Museum, where my father would work for the next 20 or so years. It was a great fit for us. I was really happy that we had left Birkenhead and looking forward to some stability in my life. In less than 7 years I had lived in 6 houses in 2 countries. As I wrote in my song ‘Life is Simple When You’re Five’, “As soon as he has made new friends, he’s leaving them behind”.

I’m still scanning pictures I found when my father passed away a couple of years ago and I haven’t found any pictures of the house or the yard yet. The surroundings have changed dramatically since then, with infill housing replacing the native forest. Even the road name has changed.

Back then it was 1A View Rd. View Rd was surrounded by native bush, as was the property we were renting, but inside the unfenced garden was grass and every kind of fruit tree you could imagine. We had apples, pears, oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruit, guava. We even had a fig tree. I had never even seen a fig before. The flavor grew on me. I never had to go inside and announce that I was hungry.

It’s funny, I don’t remember the inside of the house, other than the party line phone on a shelf in the hall. Our phone number was 503M and if the call was for us, it was two long rings. Our neighbors the Budgens were 503R and their bells tolled short-long-short when a call was for them.

Sometimes if we were outside and the phone was ringing, we or they would yell out to say the phone was ringing for them. We couldn’t use our phone if they were on the line, and etiquette was that you would pick up the receiver and say “working”. If someone was already on the phone, they would respond with “Yes, thanks” and you would quietly put the receiver back on the hook.

There was no dial. If you wanted to call someone, you would pick up the receiver, and an operator in the exchange would see a light on their switchboard, put a plug in the appropriate socket, and ask, “Number please?”

The Budgens were great neighbors although I sometimes wonder if they could have destroyed the local forest with their antics on Guy Fawkes night. As a British colony, New Zealand has its annual fireworks and bonfire event each November 5th, commemorating the day when Sir Guy Fawkes was caught attempting to blow up Parliament.

The Budgens owned a construction company and had welding equipment and gas in bottles. On Guy Fawkes night as well as ordinary fireworks, the highlight of the nights was when they would blow up balloons with hydrogen, wrap them up in newspaper, and put a little petrol on the paper. They would then light a bit of the paper with a match and let the balloons rise into the sky, where they would explode with an almighty BANG!, blasting pieces of burning paper down above the rainforest. Through luck rather than design, there were never any dangerous fires.

Beyond the fruit trees, our house was surrounded by native bush. There was a creek which was home to many eels and fish and lots of tracks. I had lots of adventures and one day discovered that there was a track that led all the way to my new primary school. Walking along the chickenwire fence I discovered a hole just below the grey concrete pad around the swimming pool that was big enough for me and my bag to get through. Sometimes on a sunny day, I would walk to or from school through the bush without ever having to set foot on the road.

Speaking of fish, my father took up taxidermy as a bit of a hobby. In his role at Auckland War Memorial and Museum, he was called on to preserve all manner of wildlife, including birds, fish, and the famous turtle given to the Queen of Tonga by Captain Cook in 1777.

There were many keen game fishermen in the area, and I think it might have been Mr. Budgen who first asked my father if he would mount a striped marlin that he caught on a fishing trip. Well nek minit, people from all over the place are coming to us, asking my father to preserve their catches to hang on the wall in a man cave or fishing club. Below is my little brother showing off one of the fish as it was being picked up.

While the smell from under the house where my father worked on the catch wasn’t great, the whole neighborhood got free fish for dinner whenever one of these jobs came up. The fishermen weren’t interested in the meat, just the trophy.

I only have one unhappy memory from our time at that address. Fruit trees are of course propagated in part by bees. I guess I don’t remember much about the inside of the house, because I was always outside playing and having adventures. One day I was out in the garden climbing a flowering fruit tree and accidentally disturbed a bee hive. I didn’t even know it was there, but I quickly found out.

Clad in only my shorts, I ran screaming to the house, being chased and stung by a swarm of bees. I remember the burn of the stings as I was running, glancing behind me and seeing they were chasing me, like Alfred Hitchcock’s Birds. Then I found myself lying on top of a bed, as my father tried to remove the pulsating venom sacs from my skin, one by one, with a pair of tweezers. It was agony and many times as he would pull a sting out, it would release a last spiteful pump of venom.

I don’t remember a lot after that. I was picked up by an ambulance and spent a couple of days in hospital. Whatever resistance I might have previously had for bee and wasp stings was gone forever. The last time I was stung, was while picking tobacco in Motueka in the late 1970s.

The bugger got me in my thumb, which ended up swelling to the size of my whole hand and it felt like my hand was going to split and explode. I dozed my way to A&E and my head blew up like a red balloon, with a tongue to match. When I got home from A&E I spent the best part of a week sleeping, with my hand resting in a sling dangling from the window latch above my bed. I had a bottle of some sort of medicinal alcohol and had to keep applying it to the bandage, as it had a cooling effect while the alcohol evaporated.

I’ve only been stung once more since then, this time in the back while riding a motorcycle. My girlfriend got help for me and once more to an Accident and Emergency for a long sleep. We smoked cigarettes back then and my first thought was that she was holding the lit end of a smoke against the skin of my back. I’m not sure how it was supposed to have gotten underneath my leather jacket, but I got off that bike very quickly. The doctor said that each time I was stung in the future, the risk of anaphylaxis would be worse. I was signed up for Medic Alert and wore a bracelet for many years. By rights, I should carry an EpiPen, but not having been stung for so many years and the cost of the pens, I have become relaxed, which I admit is not super smart.

That’s the legacy of my first home in Auckland. It was a happy home for a few years until we had to move again. My parents would never own a house again after we left Christchurch. I’ll update this post if I find any more photos from that great house.

I shared some memories of the school when I was interviewed by some students for a commemorative video to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Titirangi School.

I do have one more memory of that house. We never had much in the way of money, not that 7 or 8-year-old me needed it. But one day I asked for some pocket money and my father asked me what I thought I could do to earn some.

Maybe it was the influence of the comic books I enjoyed but before you knew it, I had picked loads of lemons, made lemonade, set up a stand, painted a sign, and was selling glasses of lemonade to people walking past along the road at the top of our driveway.

Over the years I have seen other kids do this, sometimes fundraising for charity, sometimes they were the charity. A couple of people bought drinks from me, and then the local doctor’s son who lived a few houses up the road on the other side came along. He was a couple of years older, much taller than I, and perhaps being jealous that I had made a few cents. He told me to take it down and not do it again, assisting me by throwing the lot on the ground and smashing a glass in the process. We suffer from Tall Puppy Syndrome in New Zealand at times, and I guess he was starting early, coming from an ‘entitled’ background.

The next day he came over with his parents, to apologize, after his sister told said parents what he had done. Suffice it to say that we never became friends. My early career in the hospitality industry ended as quickly as it began. My entrepreneurial instincts would continue.