I love bumblebees.
As a child I used to carry them around on sticks after lifting them from the perennial cornflowers (Centaurea Montana) which grew near our house.
Cruel probably, given that bumblebees need to eat almost continually to keep warm. (Bumblebee researcher and writer Dave Goulson says a bumblebee with a full stomach is only about 40 minutes from starvation and if she runs out of energy she cannot fly to get more food).
It is their very bumbliness which is so endearing (and deceptive, since they have great navigation ability, although I am not sure what the attraction was in my bathroom).
But last week, the bumblebee couldn’t do much for my spirits.
I entered the week on the back foot, already aware of a nagging background sadness and feeling that things were not right, courtesy of grief, that sneaky companion I know so well but which somehow still manages to surprise. I had not expected to feel so miserable weeks after the death of a 90-year-old friend.
But I did, and that heightened my irritation about everything else.
And there was plenty to be irritated about.
What does the swing to the right in the local government elections indicate? I fear a great leap backwards to paying lip service to climate change measures, an increase in cycleway bashing, a lack of urgency in improving public transport and kowtowing to anyone desperate for the continued domination of the private motorcar.
The ludicrous idea that the design of George St might be revisited to see if it can be changed to honour the mighty car is a case in point, as is the new Christchurch’s mayor’s stance on cycleways and transport. It beggars belief that cycleways are not universally embraced in such a flat city.
Depressingly, a minority of electors in our biggest city chose the bombastic and abrasive Wayne Brown as mayor — who said, when he supposedly thought he was off-mic, that the first thing he would do as mayor would be to glue little pictures of a senior journalist on urinals "so we can pee on him".
Where does such crassness come from? A heightened view of his own importance, perhaps. A few days ago, without seeming to have done any research into the issue, Mr Brown was calling for something to be done about cellphone dead spots in Auckland. Horror of horrors, he had missed some calls on the campaign trail. (Given his penchant for rudeness, those callers might be grateful.) Is this the most pressing issue facing Aucklanders?
Later in the week, when broadcaster Kim Hill mentioned on air she had not had Covid-19, a listener felt the need to text in their idea of an explanation — that if this person had seen Kim in the street, they would have crossed the road to avoid her. Did that texter sit back and revel in their "cleverness" when that was read out? Why should people in the public eye just doing their jobs have to shrug off such casual nastiness?
There was also the embarrassment of our former prime minister Sir John Key creating international headlines for all the wrong reasons after telling an online series Both Sides Now he would have voted for Donald Trump had he been in the United States in 2016.
"I’m not saying that would be the right decision but I’m just saying that’s what I would have done."
He has never voted anything other than right was his rationale. Is this the example of how to vote responsibly we might hope for from a former PM? Choose a left or right side and then mindlessly vote for that side no matter what their policies are or how repugnant the leader is (although he did indicate if they got too crazy he might not want to vote). Mind you, he is famously vague about his stance on the 1981 Springbok tour (when he was a university student), so perhaps we should not expect too much.
Don’t get me started on the re-emergence of dog whistler Winston Peters, or the hysteria being stirred up over moves to reduce emissions on farms. Let’s chuck the political football on this around for a few more decades because there is no urgency about any of this stuff, is there? Let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
If I find it infuriating as a baby boomer, how does this inaction seem to young people?
It doesn’t bear thinking about, so I am applying the theory that doing something kind might make me feel better. I am planting some Centaurea Montana for the bumblebees.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
