I got tagged for this by my expat mates Clint Heine and Rob Good.
The rulz are:
1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules
3. Share seven random or weird facts about yourself
4. Tag 7 random people at the end of the post with their links
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
1 When I was 16 I went out on one date with the very nice and ultra-bright 15 year old niece of a Christchurch Labour MP. She has since become a writer and biographer and is reportedly now gay. I’ve often wondered…
2 I often write on the verge of tears.
3 My life is full of strange coincidences. When I was researching the Socialist Unity Party hard-out, I was bugged for years by the identity of a Christchuch party member named W Collins. I eventually found a letter in the National Archives that gave his full name as William or “Bill” Collins. He’d written the letter from his home at 28 Stapletons Road-the very same house I was living in at the time.
4 An even better one occurred on March 5th 2002 at 1.45pm on Kelburn Parade outside Victoria University. I was on a research trip to Wellington and had just been to Vic clubs day. Before flying to Wellington, I had a very strong intuition that I would meet up with two old friends-Sarah G and Meredith S, who I hadn’t seen for years. I was talking to my wife on the cell phone when Sarah G walked down the road to me.
After she left, I turned around and the very next person to walk up the road was Meredith S.
5 In 1989 I organised a visit to NZ by Soviet dissident poetess Irina Ratushinskaya.
A former gulag inmate, Irina was sent to the West for medical treatment and then stripped of her Soviet citizenship by smilin’ Mike Gorbachev.
Irina got to know both Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan well.
I also spent a lot of time with John Van de Ven, a former SIS contact who had trained in Moscow as a make believe communist. John had gotten to know a very senior Soviet official-Gennady Yannaev. In 1991 comrade Yannaev led a coup against Boris Yeltsin and became leader of the Soviet Union for one day.
So I was one degree of seperation from three of the most powerful political leaders on the planet.
They didn’t return my calls.
6 I met my wife Tracey when I picked her up from the side of Lincoln Road, opposite Addington Raceway at 10pm 16th December 1988. I was driving a taxi.
7 I’ve never smoked dope.
Tagged Not PC, Andy Moore, Liberty Scott, Madeleine, Mickey, Lindsay Mitchell
good on ya Trevor. I’ll reply on my Star Studded Super Step blog though…