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.
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Check out Joe’s latest content
The planned power outage looms, and I dread it - Joe Bennett
It’s an odd feeling, knowing that the power is going to cut off in 45 minutes or so.
Joe Bennett: My apples are worth every battle with nature
For the apple is the fundamental fruit, the fruit that’s in the supermarket all year round
Joe Bennett: Navigating the taboo and intrigue of death’s inevitability
In one sense it would be good to know your date of death.
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.