Garth George: Just one of those days of murder, tragedy and mayhem

Tuesday was one of those days. It started badly, thanks to the Herald, the reading of which left me profoundly sad and wondering what on earth we've done to warrant such a litany of murder, tragedy and mayhem.

Then I had to go to a funeral of a bloke I had known for years and who died long before his three score and 10, and it didn't help that on the way I heard on Coast FM an old song which instantly transported me back to one of the darkest and most hopeless periods of my life.

Isn't it odd how even a fragment of music, or a smell, or a taste can rocket us instantly into a recollection of people and places, sometimes a pleasant one but, more often that not, one we wish had been permanently deleted from memory?

It never ceases to fascinate me how the human mind can file away a lifetime of experience and pop out a fragment unasked when a sensory or emotional trigger sets it off.

I am grateful that when this happens the particular poignant memory has been overlaid with a whole bunch of new information and experience which enables me to interpret it and put it in perspective, and quickly send it back where it belongs - out of sight and out of mind, until the next time.

My friend who died was one of the most engaging, beguiling and likeable rogues I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, an accomplished skier and yachtsman and, among a wide range of other talents, an aficionado of luxury automobiles.

But for all the time I knew him he battled twin demons of alcoholism and profound clinical depression, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

In the end, not long after coming out of yet another period of darkness and despair, he was felled by a fatal stroke - here one minute, gone the next. Which, I think, is the way he would have wanted it. But not at age 48.

He left us all - family and friends - a message, printed on the back of the order of service, a quote from the English philosopher and clergyman Henry Scott Holland: "Death is nothing at all. I have slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you and you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still."

Way to go, Jon.

Meanwhile, all over the North Island the Herald moved out of letterboxes, dairies, bookshops and supermarkets, its bold lead headline bellowing, "Woman chased before being stabbed to death".

And we read of the death of a mother of six who had taken out non-molestation, trespass and protection orders.

Which - and this is by no means the first time this sort of thing has happened - makes the law look an even bigger ass than usual and confirms our growing despair over the capability of those charged with enforcing it.

Page A4 tells us under the headline "Jury told of bashing death" of another fatal crime of passion.

Page A5, under the headline "Light burns bright for dead father", records the death by brutal bashing of a Waihi identity; alongside that "Woman charged with child's murder" records a tragedy in Gore in Southland, the town in which I was born; and alongside that "Accident takes life of brave achiever" tells us of the death in a road crash of a woman who leaves a husband and five children.

Page A7 "Trial starts in double killing" records the opening of the trial of a Port Waikato man charged with stabbing two men to death; and right under that "Man predicted his murder, court told" records the opening of a trial of two men on the West Coast accused of killing (and burying) a transient man.

And this is just in New Zealand.

Back to the front page for the news that "Hostages taken as gunmen hit US consulate", the latest terrorist incident to hit Saudi Arabia; and on A7 we're told that "Global crimes threaten the Pacific", which quotes the Secretary of the Pacific Forum as saying that transnational crime poses severe challenges for law enforcement agencies throughout our part of the world.

The front page of the world section records the ghastly details of the death by friendly fire of US Army Ranger Pat Tillman, who gave up a multimillion-dollar football career to serve his country.

And on B3, buried downpage, is an item telling us that some 45 million children around the world will die in the next 10 years because developed countries have reneged on their pledges to commit 0.7 per cent of GDP to foreign aid. (Although we're not mentioned, they include New Zealand.)

By this time, in spite of an emotional detachment acquired over 45 years in journalism, I'm really beginning to wonder afresh what this nation and the world are coming to and whether we will ever get our act together.

But don't take any notice of me. Tuesday's Herald also tells us that when it comes to trust, in the public estimation in Australia journalists are right down there with real estate agents and car salesmen in a survey of 28 professions.