That Guy: Forget about the h, let's think about the p

Many people choose to focus on the region's 'h' problem; the 'p' problem is too difficult. Photo / Kenny Rodger

Opinion

I was going to write a column about the ridiculous "h" situation in Wanganui. My clever plan was to write an entire column whereby I replaced every second letter in every word with the letter "h".

It would have been hilarious, but then while browsing through Friday's NZ Herald, I noticed that former columnist of the year Jim Hopkins had beaten me to it.

Jim had done the very same thing and, to be honest, had done a far better and subtler job than I would have done. He was actually quite witty about it, using words that sounded like they could have an "h" in them but don't, and he was still able to meander in and out of other topics while doing so. It was a master class in creative writing.

I was simply going to re-type Deborah Coddington's column, putting an "h" into every second letter of every word.

It would have been interesting to read them back to back to see which one was better. We could have run a spot-the-difference competition.

The winners would need to detect three major differences:

- My column would have had 765 more "h"s in it.

- Deborah's would have had about 450 more words in it, as I seem to be getting less and less column space.

- Finally, hers will probably have a nice photo with it and mine doesn't any more, probably a direct result of having less column space.

The actual task of rewriting Deborah's column with heaps of "h"s in it was never going to be an option as she was unwilling to send me a copy of her column before deadline, and nobody at the office was willing to do an "inside" job.

So my clever idea of using heaps of "h"s in my column was put on the backburner, mainly because I lacked the co-operation of other people within the paper and because it was totally unoriginal.

This is one of the disadvantages of being a columnist for a Sunday paper: all the good ideas have already been taken. It is a bit like trying to be in a band nowadays ... all the best songs have already been written by the Beatles.

In retrospect, putting "h"s in words that don't normally have them for an entire column was probably well beyond me, so at the end of that day I couldn't really be phucked.

For me it comes down to a case of priorities. Wanganui has an "h" problem but like many other New Zealand cities and towns it also has a "p" problem. The question really should be which one do you tackle first, or can these problems be attacked simultaneously?

One has to remember that although these two problems sound similar, they are, in fact, poles apart. This is why many people choose to focus on the region's "h" problem; the "p" problem is too difficult.

I think the furore surrounding the "h" problem suggests that the "p" problem might be the easier of the two to address. This begs another question: Should we drop the "p" in "p" and insist on calling "p" by its correct name, methamphetamine?

That is the original name for it, and it is only through laziness that we have begun to call it "p". Many people around towns like Wanganui have grown up with "p" so I can understand why they still insist they have the right to call it by that name, but that doesn't make it right.

Perhaps this is where a compromise can be made. We can trade one letter for the other. We can put the "h" back in Wanganui if we can take the "p" out of it - the town that is - and if possible the word methamphetamine. It shouldn't be too hard; after all it's just a letter.