bio, sort of..

I was born in Southland New Zealand in 1939 & my greatgrandmother a midwife travelled from Nightcaps to Mataura to do the honours. As there was no spare bed in the cottage for her she went home after the birth & that was that. I went to Mataura when I was a music student @ Otago U to work in the meatworks because I needed the money but also to have a look at the place where I was born. The meatworks killed mostly lambs for export. Apart from the primary school, a railway station & a shopping strip & a good swimming pool there wasn't much else. My parents were called by god to move somewhere else soon after I was born & they got called to go all over New Zealand while my brothers & sisters & I were growing up.

I started school in Green Island near Dunedin. It isn't an island at all & the only thing I can remember about that is when I was 5 a dental nurse pulled one of my teeth & that hurt like hell. I did a couple of years at Sydenham Primary School near the railway line in Christchurch. I got Scarlet Fever & was stuck in hospital for 3 weeks. All I can remember about that is the cheerful window cleaner who chatted with us sick kids. One morning he got a big surprise. The window slammed down & he fell off the ladder down a few floors & left finger behind stuck there. That must have hurt like hell.

We ate a lot of bread & dripping with pepper & salt while WW2 was on & when I was 7 I was so skinny that the school was going to send me to a health camp but god called again I missed out & we went to Grey Lynn, Auckland. We did the trip crammed into a small car that smelt of fumes & there was a lot of stopping & throwing up all the way there.  We lived in Baildon Road that was opposite the dump when we got there & we were forbidden to go there but we did & we found a manhole & climbed down the tunnel & shouted. The echo was great. Someone said not to go there if the was any rain around because we could get sucked out to sea.

We stayed in Auckland for 5 years & then moved to the Waikato on to the farm. We got to see sheep getting their throats cut out in the paddock & sometimes got the job of burying the guts. I played footy too, rugby - that is a religion that everyone in New Zealand actually believes in. When I was 16 I went to Southland to help my uncle Lex with the bees. We went trout fishing between yards. Lex had promised auntie to never swear again so when he was really bothered he would say 'STONE THE CROWS!" When I got online & was asked for an alias I remembered that & thought, what do crows do when they get stoned? They fly .. so I became 'crowsfly.'