No, I wasn’t planning some sort of twilight years/twilight zone running away to join the mighty Black Ferns, or even a wannabe golden oldies version. Rugby looks like fun from the depths of the sofa, but I still remember all the bone-crunching, thudding and grunting heard from the sideline when I attended matches in person. Nor am I keen to endanger my few remaining functioning brain cells by getting concussion.
I was following a delighted girl skipping and twirling her way along the newly refurbished piece of George St before its opening last week. She was determined not to stand on the cracks on the intricate paving design.
I so wanted to skip along behind her, but possessing all the clumsiness of a koala, without the cuteness, I knew there would soon be a rolled ankle, a wrenched knee, another arm injury, a face plant, or all of the above, within seconds. Not only would I have stepped on several cracks, but some of them might also have been filled with blood. Come to think of it, rugby might have been safer.
Still, if I had had my wits about me, I would have dragged Cr Brent Weatherall away from his diamond dusting to let him witness the joy of that small girl.
I could also have told him that when I was idly wandering around the revamped street during the week, I overheard several spontaneous comments about how great the development was.
Funny that now he is a councillor and the bit outside his shop is finished, Cr Weatherall seems much happier about it all.
He is still concerned about the street’s functionality, presumably for those in vehicles, but since vehicular access has been limited for months perhaps people have become accustomed to not driving down there. Maybe some of the people who used to drive past his shop have realised they do not really need to. Isn’t that a good thing? Aren’t we supposed to be getting people out of using cars unnecessarily?
I wonder if he ever got around to apologising for his childish behaviour, which apparently included mocking up a picture of previous mayor Aaron Hawkins on a dartboard and posting it on social media, followed by the installation of the infamous sandwich board outside the shop showing Mr Hawkins was banned.
Did he ever consider the wider impact of that sign? Mr Hawkins has spoken of his young son trying to read the sandwich board. How does a child make sense of that?
And what was Mr Hawkins’ sin, exactly? Leading a council which had consulted widely on improving the street where Mr Weatherall plies his trade, and which then voted to proceed with it. Preposterous.
I would be surprised if the foot traffic to Cr Weatherall’s shop is not considerably increased under the new layout, although there may be some prospective customers who might have been permanently put off by the jeweller’s previous petty behaviour. Them’s the breaks, as Boris Johnson would say.
It is disappointing too to see our new mayor Jules Radich feeling the need to talk down the improvements and raise fears about their impact on the very day he officially opened the first section.
He said the critical thing was that the redevelopment enhanced the economic viability of the street but went on to talk vaguely of other pedestrianised areas elsewhere where (unspecified) dangers resulted in high-quality retailers vacating, resulting in an area with "cheap shops and high crime".
He did not want to see this development heralding a change from George St being regarded as a premier shopping destination for Otago and Southland to a street of second-hand shops with the bigger retailers moving out to Andersons Bay or somewhere else.
Perhaps I have been concussed without knowing it and my brain is not functioning as it should, but why would this snazzy development make that happen?
In the same breath, he said George St was one of the last remaining high streets in New Zealand and we needed to preserve it.
A little more enthusiasm for it from the city’s mayor might help that.
His damning with faint praise on the opening day just seemed ludicrous.
He might have got away with silly scaremongering about crime in George St during the election campaign, but he should put that behind him now he has the grasp of the mayoral chains.
As that little twirling girl might have told him (if she was also into butchering songs),"Jules, it’s all about the joy, ’bout the joy, not trouble".
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
