My friend Nicola and I were out for dinner in town the other night. It was dark, cold and miserable and we were huddled by the ticket machine at the south end Victoria St car park, both of us bereft of coins for the slot. The machine also wasn't accepting my plastic card, or anyone else's.
It wasn't a good start to the evening. There was a small queue, and we stood to one side while I scrabbled in the bowels of my handbag for coins that may have eluded me. I was just wondering about upending the bag on the ground so I could sift it properly when a young woman in the queue stepped forward, pressed $2 on us, and said something like, "here, have this on me".
We thanked her profusely, and promised we'd do the same for someone else next time such a situation arose. While not wanting to quote the cheesy-but-heartwarming movie Pay it Forward, it did seem an appropriate thing to say.
I've not yet had the opportunity because I'm still in debt to thoughtful people: a week or so later when I drove into the same car park, a woman who was exiting rolled down her window and spontaneously handed out her parking ticket. "There's still an hour to go on this," she said. "Help yourself."
They're small gestures, but they leave you with a smile on your face; they are the perfect counterpoints to the doomsayers who say all is not well with our world, that we've misplaced our ability to connect with others.
I listened to one such doomsayer last weekend at a conference in Wellington, a guest speaker who repeated this myth that we've lost our sense of community in New Zealand, that the glue that holds people together has gone soft and we're too focused on ourselves.
I'd like them to meet the Kawhia people who restored a World War I memorial lychgate at the town's Anglican church, and celebrated with a beautiful rededication ceremony. It is another angle on a close-knit town that's been in the news over some challenging stuff recently.
I'd like them to go out with the St Vincent de Paul volunteers who do a nightly food delivery around the streets of some of Hamilton's lower-income suburbs, dispensing sandwiches, fruit, friendship and Milo to kids who relish the extra snacks and the camaraderie in their neighbourhood. It would be good for the doomsayers to meet the spunky kids as well as the volunteers.
I'd like to take them into the 40-year-old Purple Patch store in Barton St where women sell lovely handmade knitting and sewing; their strong friendships and a sense of collective good underpin this unique venture. A trip to the streamlined Waikato Hospice campus on Cobham Drive would be enlightening, too. Among other things, they could see the results of a huge, generous regional fundraising effort.
And maybe they could squeeze in a visit to Pirongia woman Pamela McCarthy who volunteers for Freeset, an organisation that rescues prostitutes from the notorious red-light district of Kolkata in India. Last year McCarthy raised $74,000 for these women.
That's just a handful of the things I see in my daily life. There are plenty more community efforts like this. On a bigger scale, the neighbourhoods of Christchurch and the West Coast (the latter in the wake of the Pike River mine disaster) have countless stories to tell about people helping each other out.
The world, of course, is not perfect and for every good news story there is almost certainly a bad news event, and some people do become isolated from others.
But I would argue that our sense of community still strongly exists. It may not be centred on the rural hall or the local church or even service groups any more, but it evolves and adapts to different circumstances, reinvents itself as needed.
Nowadays it might mean handing a stranger a $2 coin with a smile in a public carpark, or working in a community vegetable garden that can help feed many families, or ambling around Frankton Market, Cambridge Market and similar places. Catching up with old friends, making new ones, while you do the shopping.
Over months of writing stories for a recent Times series on suburban Hamilton streets, our reporting team saw that neighbourhood relationships are still pretty strong. In the first street I visited, an Indian woman pointed to each house from her front gate, described who lived there, and talked about the shared Christmas meal they all enjoyed each year.
Neighbourly relations are certainly doing fine where I live. Last Sunday afternoon when I got back from the conference in Wellington, my neighbour Diana came over with a bowl of homemade vegetable soup for my dinner. It was delicious, comforting. I'd have liked the man who said we've lost our sense of community to have had some of it as well.
First of all, we concentrate on Sunday's action and our nap selection is our old friend Marchese Marconi, trained by Aidan O'Brien at Listowel. Having started the season getting beat at long odds-on in Dundalk, he has since notched up a double on his favoured heavy ground and he will get similar conditions again today. He was given an initial rating of 87 going into his last race and despite winning that conditions race by an easy six lengths, the handicapper has given him a chance and left him off the same mark for today's contest, his first handicap.
He should easily capitalise on that before moving up the ranks. Whilst he is a long way below yesterday's Derby winner Ruler Of The World there are similarities between the two. They both share the same sire in Galileo, both horses are trained by Aidan O'Brien and both are unbeaten in cheekpieces! That may not be the end of it either as Marchese Marconi might just win the Derby as well, except in his case it may be the 'Pitmen's Derby', aka the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle at the end of the month. Today is his trial for that so expect him to take it in style.
Yesterday, the Tabor/Smith/Magnier alliance brought us the aforementioned Ruler Of The World at Epsom and today they bring us the slightly less imperiously named Ruler Of France at Listowel. The David Watchman trained two-year-old ran a cracker behind Expedition at Limerick a month ago. He should go on and win this today, despite the presence of yet another Aidan O'Brien trained Galileo and a decent prospect of Dermot Weld's that finished third in a Leopardstown maiden which has subsequently worked out well.
If anything, the fact that these two powerful stables are represented in the race should ensure that we get a better price on Ruler Of France. Aidan O'Brien's colt will need to be very smart to beat our selection on his debut whilst the trip should stretch Weld's horse on breeding so Ruler of France gets the next best selection today.Click on their website www.smartcardfactory.com for more information.
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