Roger Moroney: Enjoyment at breaking point

There is only one thing better than being able to build something - and that is being able to pull something apart.

Tear it down. Destroy it. Wreck it. Shred it. Demolish it.

You remember how it was at the beach when you built a great and grand sandcastle, complete with flagpoles crafted from twigs, seashells for windows and with sculpted towers at each corner.

You'd spend an hour building it then spend about three minutes launching a sustained rock and stone missile attack upon it - complete with sound effects.

This was not wanton vandalism or a sign of a disturbed psyche though, for there was a practical and commonsense side to it. If you didn't blast the thing to bits the returning tide eventually would, so why should King Neptune have all the fun?

When our son was about 10 he and I dismantled an old step-thru scooter I'd bought for about $40 and run into the ground as a backyard play-thing (there is a photo of me somewhere crashing it). We took off the handlebar controls and the levers, then the bar itself and the instrument pod. Then the plastic bodywork and the wheels and fenders and stuff.

Then we got to the engine and the drive-shaft and didn't have the right tools to get them apart.

So we got the hammers and axe out and beat the thing to death. He loved it - almost as much as me.

His mother was not impressed, though, when we did the sump in and oil flew everywhere - but I called it collateral damage. She called me something else.

The following day was also great fun because we got to throw all the bits that would snap and bounce over the side of the rubbish tip.

The old landfill is like a playground with attitude for little kids. You see them practically begging their fathers to let them throw the things in the trailer that would shatter. It used to be the best free show in town.

Which brings me to the spark which ignited this destructive slab of prose: The best free show in town.

For several days last week the demolition lads chipped and chewed away at the concrete and steel-trussed heart of the old Commercial building in Hastings St. Two great excavators, which, had they been adorned with painted jaws and talons, would have looked like giants from Lord of the Rings, hammered the heavy walls apart. Slabs and boulders fell and crashed about them as fluoro-vested hobbits hosed down the dust.

I had to stop and watch, because that's not something you get to see every day. And I was not alone - there were about 25 others. Some had taken up prime viewing positions and were seated upon chairs as they clearly intended watching the whole performance.

The only sore point to it all was that it was happening outside of school holidays. Had the schools been closed you'd have needed a battalion of street marshals down there to keep the order. The kids would have been five or six deep and equally awed parents would have built temporary banked seating to cater for those at the back.

Wreckage on a grand scale is, indeed, awesome. You could hear the occasional "whoa!" and "crikey!" and other colourfully descriptive phrases as the pieces fell.

It was the same when they decked the old Cossie Club. There were more people lined up across the Parade watching the demolition than there were watching the kids spectacularly scooting the jumps at the skate park.

So there's an idea as a seaside attraction. Design and build a great castle out of plaster blocks and timber and stuff which can be built in just seven hours. People would stop and watch in fascination as volunteers put the thing up in next to no time. Then, every afternoon at 4pm, you get two big machines to come in to bash it to smithereens. Believe me, the crowd would be huge.

Building is good. Breaking is better.

Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.