Joe Bennett
Northern Advocate columnist
Joe Bennett is an author and columnist who writes the weekly A Dog's Life column in Saturday's Northern Advocate.
We are your advocate, Aotearoa. Uncovering stories that matter, asking hard-hitting questions of those in power, live-blogging sport events, monitoring the highs and lows of the NZX and providing Premium expert opinion and analysis. Bringing you distinctive, quality journalism and breaking news from across New Zealand and around the world. With specialists working together to create indepth reads, engaging video, and unmissable podcasts.
Check out Joe’s latest content
Opinion: The enduring charm of handwritten letters in a digital age
Posting a letter today is compared to riding a penny-farthing.
Joe Bennett: The memories that come during a simple shave
OPINION: Once in Vancouver and once in Dubai I paid to be shaved.
Joe Bennett: The simple black-and-white photo evokes powerful nostalgia
The photo is a sermon on the passage of time.
Joe Bennett: Rates rise as councils prioritise poetic pursuits
The council hired a poet, adding his work to the latest rates demand.
Spending a penny for the toilet door - Joe Bennett
There is a manly pleasure in striding into a door department and saying, ‘I want a door’.
Joe Bennett: The poetry of a shopping list
From coffee to Hayfexo: Exploring humanity through a Tuesday shopping list.
Joe Bennett: Cape Palliser’s wild beauty and the story of Colenso’s Deliverance Cove
Castlepoint's perilous beauty: A tale of explorers and dramatic coastal views.
Unpacking the myths behind Good King Wenceslas
After his death, Wenceslas was considered the model of what a good king should be.
Joe Bennett: How a chance meeting made a hash of a drug-smuggling friend's life
OPINION: Chance leads to prison for Sammy, a former schoolmate turned hashish smuggler.
Joe Bennett: Birds and the human touch - a delicate dance of fear and desire
A chaffinch hesitates to eat, torn between fear and desire, as Joe Bennett watches.
Joe Bennett My to-do list nightmare: The tasks that won't go away
OPINION: I've learned to live with my to-do list and its nagging reminder of incompletion.
Joe Bennett: The pub can be a sanctuary from wellness trends and a source of joy
OPINION: Order another round before health and safety meddlers take the pub.
Joe Bennett: A trip to the optometrist
OPINION: Shortly thereafter I ordered my first pair of prescription glasses.
Teaching writing in a digital age: The struggle is real - Joe Bennett
OPINION: To teach a writing course today feels like a subversive act.
Clearing cricket of sexism: Join the mission - Joe Bennett
Long-time cricketer urges change, denouncing sexist language in cricket's rules and terms.
Joe Bennett: The only immortality worth striving for is creating that which outlives you
Joe Bennett reflects on life and the modern digital archiving of information
Joe Bennett: Confronting the fear of dogs and how to outwit a charging dog
OPINION: Joe Bennett recalls learning how to outwit a dog
Joe Bennett: ‘The Odyssey is a floating gated community. Its moat is all the world’s oceans’
The Odyssey's customers are not passengers. They are residents. They live on board.
Joe Bennett: Embracing life’s little moments of happiness
OPINION: Joe Bennett on the anatomy of a moment.
Haunted in the aisles: Joe Bennett’s 'scandalous' supermarket moment
Opinion: There was fire behind her eyes. She wasn’t happy.
Joe Bennett: Honesty and manners: A social lubricant that respects differences
OPINION: We are all different, and manners respect difference.
Joe Bennett: The sportive spectacle of sweaty seniors' squash
With 137 years between them, Joe Bennett and his friend Fred play squash.
Joe Bennett: Birds are the beasts we see the most and fear the least
OPINION: Joe Bennett muses about birds after watching them springing about in a tree.
Joe Bennett: The passage of time in our minds is all around us
OPINION: Memories - the rich window of the past.
Joe Bennett: Rooting for the underdog in an Olympic sport that “feigns death”
Joe Bennett on watching the final of the women’s 10-metre air rifle competition
Joe Bennett: Thw world has glimpsed the future, and its called CrowdStrike
OPINION: The recent global technical outage showed our dependence on electronic systems
Joe Bennett: Despite the clamour of the internet and the universality of the cellphone, there remains a thirst for literature
OPINION: Last weekend Joe Bennett proposed The Best Bits of Shakespeare at an event.
‘One pleasure of being on holiday is watching others work’ - Joe Bennett
Joe Bennett on enjoying his time in Türkiye
Joe Bennett: From one side of the world to the other
OPINION: After just 13 hours the detritus we had generated was impressive.
Joe Bennett: There are those who enjoy shopping and those who do not
OPINION: Shopping is not for everyone
Joe Bennett: Collectors of a feather could flock together
Opinion: I still don’t understand why the people in the auction room applauded.
Joe Bennett adds plantar fasciitis to his vocabulary
Opinion: Joe Bennett got plantar fasciitis after a squash game
Joe Bennett: I unscrew the cap and immediately I am back in a dressing shed before a rugby match
Opinion: Excuse me while I reminisce.
Joe Bennett: We need another name for our phones, here’s some suggestions
OPINION: Today’s mobile phone barely ever makes a phone call.
Joe Bennett: Possums are eating my apples
OPINION: It’s years since I ate a home-grown apple, because of the possums.
Joe Bennett: The fundamentals of writing a song
Opinion: Joe Bennett found four fundamentals to writing a song.
Joe Bennett: What Henry the seagull may be teaching us about our own delusions
Why seek to please a gull that would cheerfully eat our eyes?
Joe Bennett: Oldest man on the planet tells it like it is
OPINION: John Tinniswood, of Stockport in England, is now the oldest man on Earth.
Joe Bennett: Spotting the signs of suburban symbolism
OPINION: At the age of 66, columnist Joe Bennett washed his car for the very first time.
Joe Bennett: Ovally displeased with the evolution of the word oval
OPINION: The word oval is an imprecise term.
Joe Bennett: Why the dishwasher has become the bane of my life
The device is advertised, of course, as labour-saving, but how much labour does it save?
Joe Bennett: I haven’t got a bad back and it will soon get better
OPINION: And the plain fact of the matter is that I’ve got an excellent back.
Joe Bennett: Toad in the hole makes the ordinary extraordinary
I have loved toad in the hole for as long as I can remember.
Joe Bennett: Technology is always changing and change is daunting
Opinion: People feel powerless before it and threatened by it.
Joe Bennett: Time flies, and sometimes you can see it on the move
OPINION: Nothing new in any of this, of course.
Joe Bennett: Instinctively we go to the beach when it is hot
Opinion: The sun and heat drive us to the beach.
Joe Bennett: Dogs, traffic jams and the lessons about life they teach us
Opinion: Dogs are better at seeing only the here and now.
Joe Bennett: My burning yet fruitless hatred for flies
They say a nice person wouldn’t hurt a fly. I am not a nice person.
Joe Bennett: Words do not belong in bed, they are for the daytime
OPINION: "We love to sleep. To deprive someone of sleep is a form of torture."
Joe Bennett: Fishing for teeth an encouraging start to the new year
I would be invested only in the novelty of fishing for these items, and novelty wears off.
Joe Bennett: Here comes the... solar flare
OPINION: I have just discovered there is such as thing as a solar cycle.
Joe Bennett: Let’s hear it for the house sparrow
Perhaps the most famous sparrow of all is an imaginary one.
Joe Bennett: Stones still rolling with the ages - somehow
OPINION: If girls had come for the music they wouldn’t have drowned it out with screaming.
Joe Bennett: Butter can be a slippery slope, but a glorious slippery slope
The modern day Puritans are desperate to interfere with our diets.
Joe Bennett: We can leave our mark to fill the sudden blank death leaves
Opinion: An alumni magazine sparked within Joe Bennett a revelation about death.
Joe Bennett: The poets' poignant reminders about death
OPINION: Listening to them would do us good. We would live better.
Joe Bennett: From rugby to the gentrified streets of Havelock North
Joe Bennett's weekend in Havelock North.
Joe Bennett: Here we go, it’s bird-in-the-garage time
This time of the year there are young birds about.
Joe Bennett: Challenging denim jeans' status as a symbol of Western freedom
Jeans blossomed by being emblematic of youth, glamour and American prosperity.
Joe Bennett: Is our smokefree crusade just a vanity project?
'What a virtuous little nation we are.'
Joe Bennett: On the summit of victory after plumbing the depths
OPINION: Suddenly the grey and greasy chuckled all away.
Joe Bennett: This is the wild wonderful coast
OPINION: It is a constant reminder of the earth’s massive forces, of our impermanence.
Joe Bennett: Eat your heart out Shakespeare!
OPINION: The mangled grammar, the weird ‘take with’: where was this going?
Joe Bennett: A burger lawsuit - what could be more American?
There are probably as many personal injury lawyers in the US as there are burger joints.
Joe Bennett: Let me introduce you to the culinary delight of Pork Bennett
OPINION: It is neither fancy nor difficult to make. But it turns my knees to jelly.
Joe Bennett: No cattle beast in history ever did such a thing as this
Some trampers had all the gear, others none. I lay in between.
Joe Bennett: My building plans were a snow-go
Opinion: The sheer fatigue of building melted away when the stunning snow arrived.
Joe Bennett: At the age of 66 I feel like a child again
The railway tracks we run along are laid down young and very hard to leave.
Joe Bennett: A deeper dive into what the return of seals really means
OPINION: Seals are popping up everywhere - even Bunnings Warehouse in Whangārei.
Joe Bennett: The question's meaning was unmistakable - something catastrophic had happened
It was clear he was pleased to be speaking truthfully about the hardest subject.
Joe Bennett: In this world fast runners do not always win the races, and the brave do not always win the battles
OPINION: Atheist Joe Bennett says humans are a species just like ants.
Joe Bennett: The mystery of the bowls shoe and the money
OPINION: Whose was the money? And what was it doing in a bowls shoe?
Joe Bennett: The plumber’s mission, to defy water, to hold it in check, to enable a world
OPINION: Plumbers are the true water gods of the world.
A cautionary tale about vacuuming - sort of
A trip to a garden centre has Joe Bennett thinking we can't spot dangers ourselves.
Joe Bennett: Signs everywhere, but what do they all mean?
OPINION: Implicit behind these signs is a desire to render us ruly, Joe Bennett writes.
Joe Bennett: My favourite work from late novelist Martin Amis
Columnist Joe Bennett on the best work of late novelist Martin Amis.