Short, controlling and abusive.

Weatherston stabbed and cut the stunning 22-year-old Dunedin student 216 times in January 2008 after a short, controlling and abusive relationship.

During his trial he revolted Kiwis by trying to claim she had provoked his murderous rage.

Sophie Elliott's Auckland-based cousin Linda Curtis said she had recently stopped sobbing "every other day" over losing her cousin in such horrific circumstances but the TV2 weeknight drama had made her "re-live" the nightmare.

Shortland Street student Sophie McKay, played by Kimberley Crossman, had recently entered into an on-screen relationship with lecturer Ash Fuller (Bryce Langston), which has been short, controlling and abusive.

Sub splutters: Shortland Street stalker storyline shocks fans, family. Just in case you did not get the message, that this story is really important because it is about Sophie Elliot and Shortland Street (tragedy + celebrity = significance), I have emboldened the key adjectives.

Give it to the Soft Boys

Mr Wilder said he had taught the teenager - who transferred from nearby De La Salle College last year - and planned to talk to him about his faith.

"I must say when it first happened I wondered what God was doing and then I suddenly realised he performed a real miracle," he said.

God is a funny chap, isn't he? In a very real sense. What is He trying to tell us, by performing the Miracle of the Apartments. Is He telling us that it is more holy to attend a private Anglican school than an Integrated Catholic one? Or is He gently chiding the boy's parents for having a denominational bob each way? Or for living in Manukau City? He moves in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform, does God.

But then, what of the other boys at King's who were not favoured by God? He clearly was not feeling very wonderous when that boy was falling from the overbridge. He was not in a miracle mood when the other one was drinking himself into a coma. And not only did He allow that third boy to be killed by a rare virus, but He created the virus in the first place.

Yet, there is consolation. It is not just boys at private schools who suffer so. In fact, God is far more unsparing to the children of the poor, many of whom suffer hunger, disease, abuse and early death. Just the other side of the walls of King's College is the vibrant and underprivileged community of Otahuhu. Just over the road from Decile 10 King's College is Decile 1 Otahuhu College. Despite the strong Christian faith of many of its students, they have a far greater possibility of suffering disease, disadvantage and premature death than the boys of Kings's College.

And (here comes the twist) when God moves in such mysterious ways as to snuff out the lives of the poor kids, the New Zealand Herald hardly notices.

Island life

After the impact, which left him with a lump on his head and needing to see a chiropractor for a sore neck and back, the boy stumbled backwards into a small tree while still clutching the chihuahua.

"I turned around and said 'you can't hit a child on the head with a stick'. He said 'it doesn't matter because it will never hold up in court'."

Chiropractor, chihuahua, small tree... it's not exactly life on the streets is it? No, it is life on Waiheke and it held up in court. Interestingly enough, not so long ago Mr Ceralamus was served with a trespass notice, by Woolworth's. I am sure Uroskin will be able to explain all this.

A short post about mining

The announcement from Brownlee and Conservation Minister Kate Wilkinson represents a major defeat for Brownlee, who first floated the proposals last September, initially encountering only muted opposition.

However, the leak in March of proposals that included mining on Great Barrier Island and Coromandel Peninsula spelt their death-knell.

Brownlee announced instead that the government would now pursue aero-magnetic surveys of mineral potential in Northland and the South Island West Coast, both areas where communities and local councils are believed to favour the extractive industry developments.

They will have their revenge. Aero-magnetic surveys will be conducted. Minerals will be found and extracted. You have been warned.

It is at times like this that I regret not having more knowledge of the Fantasy genre. I am sure there must be many a saga in which an enormous, hideous creature seeks control of mineral resources. If you, gentle reader, know of one such creature, do tell.

The First Brutalist

As early as 1871, in a debate on concrete at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London, Sir Arthur Blomfield advocated off-the-form surfaces without the need for plastering. He stated that construction joints and formwork marks should be used to give colour and texture to the concrete surface. His ideas were advanced for the time and went unheeded for the next 60 years.

Thornton, Geoffrey G.
Cast in Concrete :
Concrete Construction in
New Zealand 1850-1939.
Auckland: Reed, 1996. p10

Cut your hair

He's also extremely funny, as evidenced by the piece from which the book takes its title. It contains the following advice: "Never follow an artist who describes his or her work as dark"; "No band does anything new onstage after the first 20 minutes"; and "The band with the most tattoos has the worst songs". He nods: "It's the sheer volume of tattoos that's the problem. It's not like the old days, when maybe someone from the Sensational Alex Harvey Band would have maybe an anchor on his bicep. It's full body now. So obviously the bands are in the tattoo parlour a lot. I think they should be in the practice room."

Robert Forster writes, and sings:

It's time to get a hat

I write like
James Joyce

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

With thanks to Mr Dentith, who writes like Oscar Wilde.

Dream in beige

As Rod Serling might say, you have just entered the Learning Quarter:

Auckland's Learning Quarter is a world-class centre for education, research and commercialisation and the key to fuelling Auckland's future success.

Across the globe, governments are joining forces with their learning institutions to stimulate economic growth and help shape local and national development. Here in Auckland, AUT University, Auckland City Council, The University of Auckland and Committee for Auckland have formed The Learning Quarter partnership to stimulate learning, research, cultural and business experiences in the city.

Through The Learning Quarter partnership and the development of The Learning Quarter Plan, the partners are committed to working jointly and sharing and leveraging resources to attract high-growth businesses, investment and talent.

Located in Auckland CBD, The Learning Quarter covers the city campuses of The University of Auckland and AUT University. It is a great asset for Auckland to have two of the country's high achieving universities located in the CBD. This makes The Learning Quarter a cornerstone in Auckland's attraction to local and international businesses, potential students and residents.

The Learning Quarter is a vibrant place with a stimulating environment, rich heritage, a strong history of achievements, significant open spaces and landscapes (such as Albert Park), unique cultural facilities and a diverse range of events and activities.

To facilitate the engagement of the time-poor, I have highlighted the most obvious examples of corporate flannel in a pleasingly retro shade of beige.

City of Facades

Perhaps, on reflection, more could be said about Mr Paul Holmes and his opinions on the sheds of Queen’s Wharf.

You will recall that Mr Holmes recounted how he was living for a few months in an apartment on Prince’s Wharf from which overlooked the sheds.. And the mighty Paul Holmes looked down upon these works and despaired.

They are pointless. They are nothing. They are not something anyone is ever going to drive past and gape at in wonder, crying out, "what foresight our forefathers had in designing and building such celestial constructions". I accept there might be features within those buildings that are worthy of conservation. Certainly, the Historic Places Trust, whoever they are, think so. I imagine, however, that its members are the kind of people who look down their noses at rugby and the delights of the common people, generally. I may be wrong but I have very keen instincts.

The members, all 25,000 of them, might be feeling a little uncomfortable. But they will be in good company. My keen instincts tell me that many of us, in the next twelve months, will be accused of hating on the rugby and the simple pleasures of the good keen ordinary kiwi battler, whenever we suggest that perhaps things are getting a little out of hand. It will be the local equivalent of the question that Tea Partiers ask liberals: “why do you hate our troops?”

Look, we need to maximise the human, commercial and tourist advantage of the last great world-class sporting event we will ever be able to afford, and if that means spending millions on a temporary building that will be obscured by cruise ships parked either side of it, then we should not die on a hill. Nor should we muddle on saying no to possibilities. Is that clear?

And what about those flash architects, then? Where the bloody hell were they? Probably they were skulking in jazz clubs, listening to be-bop, taking uppers (and downers), reading poetry; or building high-rise slums.

Wait, there’s more. What about those Auckland politicians, then? They were offered wondrous possibilities: a stadium that appeared at night; that would float miraculously on the water, while thousands of boats and yachts watched its great moments on television.

But then, because of the deliberately designed lack of impotence and decision paralysis of the divided nature of the conurbation, and because all of the local bodies became suspicious of each other, they became suspicious of everything, it was a structure that caused our governing bodies to look for the angles, not the opportunities.

It all makes perfect sense. Of course, had the likes of Mr Holmes devoted a little more of their time and effort to talking about the state of our city, then perhaps the high-rise slums might not have been built and some of the treasures might have been kept. I'm just saying, as they say. All of a sudden, the fate of a couple of sheds on a wharf has assumed national significance, because we are worried about what people from Overseas might think about us. But had we spent a little more time talking about our buildings, we might have a little more to show them. We could have shown them Broadcasting House in Durham Steet (not Lane), from where Mr Holmes made his breakfast broadcast. It was, as Peter Shaw describes it in his New Zealand Architecture from Polynesian Beginnings to 1990, "Auckland's finest Modernist building." It was also "inexplicably demolished in 1990." We might also have been able to show them a little more than the facade of the Jean Batten Building, which is all that remains. The destruction, of a Category 1 listed buiding, was done not in the bad old days of the 1980s but in 2008, and with the cooperation of the Historic Places Trust. Yet scarcely anyone paid any attention. The replacement building, the Deloitte Centre, also occupies the space where the Victoria Arcade once stood.

A couple of Comedy Festivals ago, I was in an audience at the Classic with my friends Ben and Heather. The Australian comedian on stage did the usual round of asking people what they did for a living. When it came to me, I told him I was an architectural historian, a response which would throw most stand-ups. But he had seen the Queen's Head across the road, and the blue glass po-mo tower built on top of it. He wondered why we did this to our old buildings.

I had no reply.


Here's some old Australian buildings:

Kathryn says the darnedest things

So, on Nine to Noon, Kathryn Ryan is talking to Lloyd Spencer Davis, an renowned expert on penguins, about his Search - for meaning and the like. And she says to him "your Search isn't black and white."

Today's in-store special: the Spencer Davies Group; spot the penguin.