"Phones" published August 5

There are three things in life which never happen. The first is having an overwhelmingly positive response when someone calls while you are on deadline to check “you’re happy with our service.” The second is having an overwhelmingly positive response when you’re on deadline and that person is calling from Telecom. And the third is being haunted by that phone call for months, day and night, dreaming and awake, so scary was your conversation.
Her name was Tania or Stacey or something like that. I told her I was unhappy paying hundreds of dollars a month for a phone line, broadband and two cell phones. I told her I couldn’t understand my bill no matter how many times I tried to analyse it Why is it that when you flick it over it is upside down and you have to turn it around and then you forget what you were looking at? And why is it 20 pages long? Why do 1D, 1W, 9D, and 9F in the “type of call” column all mean “mobile to mobile” What’s the difference? What do all my “plans” actually mean? I can’t remember. Tania or Stacey “pulled me up” on her screen. There was a silence. “It’s your cell phone, you’ve already spent $100 this month,” she announced.
“But I don’t use it that much, maybe you need to put me on another plan.”
Silence. Pause.
“Umm, look I’ve got to go into a meeting, I’ll call you back in an hour.”
Tania/Stacey never called back. I waited with an anticipation I found hard to justify to myself in my most confident moments. Why did it matter? Surely Tania/Stacey wasn’t keeping anything from me, like the fact that I was being ripped off and Tania/Stacey’s job was to upgrade me to spend more, not save me money. A nagging feeling planted itself on my shoulder from that day like some consumer time bomb ticking away. In moments of reason at 4am as I lay awake pretending to read but really wondering why she never called back I thought that perhaps the meeting she was called into could have been her last because she was fired for going too easy on the customers. Or maybe she was pregnant and working from home to make ends meet and she went into labour and obviously couldn't call me back.
There was nothing for it but to consult the kids. Not that any of them is particularly skilled in translating Telecom phone bills or was at all interested in a discussion as to why Tania/Stacy never called back. But they did know about Other Network charges. The fact that all my girlfriends, and therefore the ones I chat to are 021 people. When you’re an 027 calling 021 costs more than my life is worth.
“Change to Vodafone,” they announced on their way out the door oozing their particular brand of youth, vitality and cool.
But therein lies the rub. At the caravan only 027 works and I need that for my nifty email connection so that I can work and no one knows I’m actually down there. It’s amazing how many business conversations you can have in the gaps between seagull calls, crashing waves and camp mates dropping off buckets of kiwifruit.
Then Matt, the kids’ friend who just flew up from Dunedin for the holidays gave me the solution. Two phones. One for my 021 friends on prepay the other my 027. It’s not the most environmentally friendly option, he pointed out, but it saves you money. And as he actually flew the plane he just arrived on, I figured he knew a thing or two.
So the two phone option was adopted at the cost of $110 which I would no doubt save in a matter of weeks.
“Gosh it’ll be a bit embarrassing when both of them go off at the same time while I’m out at lunch,” I chortled to my daughter as I headed out to lunch.
“Has anyone seen my extra phone?” I yelled the next morning.
It was gone. It disappeared at lunch and SPQR report that it hasn’t turned up in the little draw under the cash register which so often minds the things I leave behind. I had used the phone for 24 hours.
I now have another one bringing the total money saving exercise into the red at -$220. Which will actually take months to make it worth my while even with my $6 Best Mate deal.
That’s the sort of thing I like to think Tania/Stacey would have warned me about if we’d ever got to have our chat.

"Status" published July 29

Just once in my life you would think it possible to do something a little unusual and not have it become a trend. I’ve been catching buses consistently for 10 whole days. I’ve stood in the rain and waited for 20 minutes, I’ve caught the wrong one and I’ve forgotten to ring the button for my stop. But generally I’ve become quite the buster, complete with my 10 pass ticket and smug saving the environment face.
Distressingly I was recently in a very posh restaurant (having caught the bus and arrived a little early) and overheard a table of well heeled businessmen earnestly discussing their recent bus trips. The men had “my car cost as much as a small house” written all over them but they were telling tales of hopping on not one but two buses to get about the place. Surely rich white men were untouched by such hippy talk as using public transport? Surely my bus experiences were mine and mine alone not to be messed about with by people of that class and status? When my companions joined me one of them looked over at the table and explained away my dilemma.
“They own Stagecoach,” he announced in a matter-of-fact tone only news readers possess.
Obviously they’d been indulging in a fun corporate exercise of “getting down with the customers” and were celebrating in the relative safety of a restaurant none of their customers could afford.
But good on them. The more people who catch buses the better because then we might get more of them, on time and going our way more frequently. We’ll reduce traffic congestion, save petrol, and operate like a proper metropolitan city. We might also get buses free for students and old people which would be super.
There are some of us who adore public transport. I’ve been to Europe six times and never caught a taxi. Not even from the airport. Which sometimes means you’re in a carriage with dope smoking Nigerian teenagers who live in the outskirts of Paris, but they seemed quite nice. They were certainly laidback.
It also means you sometimes get told the train you’re on is the right one when it’s not. But how often do you get to see a quaint old train station in the middle of Sicily while a young woman (who later reveals she is a geriatric neurologist) screams at the top of her voice in staccato Italian at a station master to get her the right train and get it now.
But back in New Zealand if everyone becomes busters, there will be the problem of status anxiety. Without the buzz of sliding into your heated leather bucket seats, firing up the V8 and cruising around the streets in a car designed for fording rivers rather than negotiating traffic islands at an average speed of 40km, how are people going to know that you’re important? How will they know that you have six figure salary, a seven figure house and a really small penis?
I’ve been working on it. First you must wear your money in accessories. You don’t just plug into a 1GB iPod you have the mega 80 GB version. You also have headphones at least the size of your head if not bigger and every accessory you can find from skins to armbands. People will take one look at you and see the equivalent of at least a BMW 3 series or an Audi A4. But add a Blackberry and get busy with your emails and you can shift all the way up to a Porsche or even a Rolls Royce phantom if you score yourself a Vertu or an iPhone.
Then there is the problem of maintaining your status as in individual. By necessity public transport means you are not alone. You may have to sit next to a fat person or listen to rowdy children…yuck! But please don’t return to the solo haven of your vehicle. Consider this a good chance to mix with the “real” people and drop in funny anecdotes at work just to show that you’re “in touch.” You can even afford to become a little supercilious with it now you’re officially a buster.
And if you’re not a status seeking wanker, then it may be necessary to advertise your less materialistic attributes by reading intelligent literature. A newspaper is a good start, a Jane Austen if you’re into attracting the ladies, but why not go the whole hog and grab yourself a copy of “A Life Stripped Bare, my year of trying to live ethically” (available at all good Trade Aid shops.)

Age published July 22

I turned 45 on Thursday the same week that cute little weather girl Toni Marsh was furiously trying to tell everyone she was no where near 40. Apparently she’s nearly 39 and someone had to rock up to Births, Deaths and Marriages to find out. I’m okay about admitting my age because secretly I know people really think I’m 35.
This year I’ve even started growing the grey streak back into the front of my hair, just so people will look at me and say: “Well she must be 45 she has that grey streak, if she was 35 she’d be dying it.”
And actually I’m more likely to tell people I’m older than I am because I can never quite remember what year I’m in or what year I was born.
I’m also quite happy for someone to look up my birth certificate to prove that I’m 10 years older than I am but to save you the bother it was July 19, 1962, North Shore Hospital. You’ll notice my name was originally Wendy, but it was altered to Wendyl when I was 10 months old. I tell people my parents had a huge weekend and decided to invent a new name for me. They deny this furiously (the bit about the huge weekend, the name is quite obviously made up) and while we’re at it Mum would like it if I mentioned something positive about her for once. She won at bridge this week. Got a silver cup and $50.
That same week I was also struck for the very first time with the knowledge that I had at least 40 years still to go if you take the average life expectancy for a Kiwi woman is 81.9. I’ve added 3.1 years for good behaviour. What an awfully long time to fill when you’ve already got a career, given birth four times, learned how to cook, sew, garden, read without moving your lips and have decent sex. What will I do with those 40 years? I’ve started doing the crossword.
Someone suggested affairs with younger men are all the go when you have a bit of time on your hands. I asked my husband what it would be like from the man’s point of view to watch an older woman take her clothes off in front of you. Would she be best to insist on lights out, take some E so that it didn’t really matter or give him a guided tour to the scars your life has left on you? Fell off the bike coming home from tennis, first baby stretch marks, second, third and fourth baby stretch marks, skin cancer removal, episiotomy scar times four. My husband suggested leaving out the episiotomy because young men don’t know what that is.
I had a dinner for my birthday. The friends I invited were different from the friends I invited the year before and the year before that. Some were the same, obviously I don’t go through friends quite that quickly, but none of them were at my 35th birthday. Age does that.
I refrained from screaming in a pissed way at my birthday lunch with the girls that I’d “bought myself Botox for my birthday!” as I once heard an older women in full flight at SPQR. If I did that I’d then have to scream: “And in 10 years when my liver gives up trying to cleanse my body of botulism I’ll die!”
At 45 my body has never been better. Not in a Nicky Watson tanned and terrific way,but in a healthy way because age tells you that it’s best if nothing goes in without evidence that it was created naturally. And that it’s quite good to do some exercise every day. A cold or flu contemplates settling in for a week of battle with my immune system and runs screaming from the room after 24 hours. And my body and brain have spent enough time working together that they combine to get me home before I start making a fool of myself in public places.
But the best thing about being 45 was turning up for a photo shoot for former editors of the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly where I was admonished by another former editor for not following the brief of wearing “black and white.” I hadn’t read the brief; at 45 you read books, not briefs. But it didn’t matter because at 45 you don’t have to do white. You can do whatever the f..k you like. Toni Marsh might quite like that when she gets there.

"On Being Interesting" published July 15

The long cold days of winter are threatening to turn us all into tiresome, jumper wearing people with nothing better to do than read books in front of the fire, slow cook pieces of meat which should have been fed to the dog but masquerade as comfort food, and start doing the Herald crossword. By July it always becomes essential to find ways to make yourself more interesting when you are forced out into the cold and exposed to others. Here are some ideas:
If you’re a girl shave your head for charity and post a picture of yourself on the net. Guaranteed to generate a few gasps from your friends and colleagues but highly unlikely to get you laid in the very near future. In fact not even the near future, try next winter when you’re hair has grown an inch or two.
Tell everyone you’re on the Global Poverty diet. You’ve just read the No Nonsense guide to World Poverty and were so moved by the story of Farida Bibi from a village on the Bay of Bengal whose family chews rags to ease the hunger pains that you can no longer put anything in your mouth without tasting rags. You’ve already lost two kgs and you’re having talks with a publisher about a possible book deal. It could go global.
Consider the vest. A bullet proof vest sends a really intriguing message that you’ve just popped in from a hostage siege or perhaps you’re a duck hunter who is worried his mates might mistake you for a duck. Either way it makes for fairly interesting conversation and you can even buy one on Trade Me at the moment – closes tonight 6.31pm, $1 reserve. Or how about a visibility vest? Available at all good $2 shops this says you have an important job on the roads, you’re an ambulance driver or you lead the walking bus to school. All interesting pursuits guaranteed to keep the conversation flowing for a while and always leads to a spirited discussion on fluro choices for winter: yellow, orange or pink.
Email all your friends You Tube clips. Nothing says “interesting” quite like clips of TV shows they’ve never seen, or indeed never wanted to see. But it proves that you are “up with what’s happening” along with the other 100 million people who log on every day.
Email your friends obscure websites like www.librarything.com where you have catalogued your entire book collection, complete with the cover art and you just wanted them to know how many books you have. Fascinating and good for insurance purposes if the house burns down. You can also tell them a bit about yourself such as the fact that in the last year you’ve given a voice to the disposed homeless defended the dignity of the old and helped the anger of the young grow into understanding. Not to mention turning dreams of a future into a living experience and assisted others to connect and walk the talk.
Start “accidentally” wearing your work photo ID outside of work. It’s a great conversation starter as everyone in the pub reminds you you’ve got it on, it sends the message that you are employed and that you work for a really big firm and the words “Accounts Dept” or “Call Centre” are too small for anyone to read from a polite distance.
Don’t wear black. Nothing says “positive attitude” and “sunny disposition” quite like a splash of orange and lime on a dull winter’s day. You may be confused for Theresa Gattung “kicking back”, but hey you were noticed.
Get drunk. You’ll be interesting for approximately one hour so do realise that after that you need to get home fast to your comfort food, your fire and a soothing dose of Coro St.
Start a blog. I did (www.wendylnissen.blogspot.com) and the abuse was so overpowering I had to block the comments section for a few days just to get over it. The only person who was a bit nice to me confessed on another blog that he was just sucking up so I’d put his blog address in this column and get him a few more hits. It’s an ugly world but go there and you’ll at least have something to talk about even if your self-esteem has been reduced to the level of the rags starving children suck in India.