This boy racer seemed determined to hunt me down for my gesture, but then rudeness or addressing someone too directly are virtually crimes in Dunedin. He gave up terrorising me by exiting the roundabout to Highgate, and I resolved then to give the fingers to other drivers less. Or only to cars with no spoilers.
There are various spots in Dunedin the police tend to catch you driving unlicensed, unregistered and unwarranted and Brockville is one of them, so it pays to keep a profile lower than your tyres.
Another thing Brockville is more famous for than getting pinged by the police is Shayne P. Carter, who didn’t learn to drive until he was middle-aged. He was too busy playing the guitar while crooning and sneering at himself in the mirror to learn anything practical. Imagine growing up in Brockville without learning to drive. Shayne Carter is weird! Someone on Twitter tried to tell me that technically Shayne grew up in Glenross and I resisted doing the sane thing, which was to block her for messing with my narrative.
One thing that would draw more people to Brockville would be if there was a statue of Shayne Carter. Like the statue of Peter Pan in the botanic garden but instead of being dedicated to everlasting youth it would be a shrine to getting your licence later in life.
One thing I know from reading his memoir 147 times is that learning to drive changed Shayne Carter’s life for the better. And that artistic people forget to check if there is water in the car when they are on long trips. Poets almost never drive, which is for the best. Too busy making daisy chains, looking at the lupins and starting fights.
The best place to erect the statue of Shayne is probably the bus stop near the shops in Brockville as a warning to boy racers to pay their fines. But really, the perfect place for Shayne the Bronze of Brockville is the top field.
The top field of Brockville is possibly the bleakest place in New Zealand unless it’s the two days of the year we get proper snow. It’s like Christmas then. In July.
It is also a good place to hide if you are having an affair and too cheap for a motel. So I have heard. Technically, affairs are impossible in Dunedin because everyone knows someone who ... but people persist with them, sometimes even to the social pages, which are also known as the court news.
After the weekend sports are over, the top field is empty. It has a nihilistic energy. There is no there, there. It’s a Dunedin goth music video waiting to happen.
My great aunt says that great art must have swing, it must have motion. So Shayne the Bronze will have to be holding a guitar and his knees will have to buckle like Elvis. It seems certain that Shayne P. Carter would hate Shayne the Bronze but this hardly matters.
Statues are out of vogue politically, usually because they are of white men who razed the very ground they are placed on with just their colonial gaze. But fortunately, Shayne is also Maori, so Shayne the Bronze will be addressing an imbalance. Plus, a lot of brown people live in Brockville, it has been the scene of many hearty nights including the one 21st I was invited to.
My son’s father was wearing a tux with a crisp white shirt and no bow tie, eating meat patties in a garage when Marvin Gaye came on the sound system. I was the only one whooping and he chuckled and let me dance to Let’s Get it On. He was acclimatised to letting me make a dick of myself by then. I was also tormenting an ex to Lenny Kravitz so altogether it was a perfect winter evening to wear just a cardie and a slip dress because I was born here and it makes me hardy to the cold by default.
What I’ve failed to mention about Brockville is the view. One thing Little Sisters did well, apart from death, was lunch. All the residents, even the wheelchair-bound and demented, were seated at tables with placemats, proper cutlery and napkins. The caregivers would act briefly like hospitality staff, even those slyly spooning food into aged mouths with the bibs underneath we had to call feeders because they were not infants.
There was snifters of sherry and an artist making his glass ting with a spoon for a drop of the pinot noir that had been in the fridge for weeks. And spread out before the ancient and not so poor was this city and its sleeping volcanic hills giving way to the sea on all sides except the rising west at our backs.
After a while I forgot about how astonishing the view was. I was too busy working in this suburb dominated by state houses, there at the top of the bottom of the world.
- Talia Marshall
