Dialogue: On second thoughts, flying is just the ticket

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

Most mornings I tootle along Tamaki Drive to the city at 60 km/h or a shade over that and I'm in the slow lane, mown down by bullying 4WDs or by low-slung zippy little black or red numbers playing dodgems, most of them doing well over 70 km/h.

So when I get a bill for $80 for doing an official 63 km/h along the broad, pretty well empty thoroughfare of Kennedy Rd in Napier last week, I'm aghast. Aren't the rules the same everywhere? I can't remember the last time I got a speeding ticket, so maybe I should stay in Auckland where travelling under 50 km/h might well get you the fingers.

Two days later, I'm coming home when, between Hamilton and Auckland, I move out into one of those short passing-lanes to zip past a couple of cars I've been trailing for quite a while. I have a powerful car and when the conditions are good, I like to cruise the open road at 100 km/h or a fraction over.

The drivers of the cars ahead of me were the stop-go sort - one minute they're on 80 km/h because of a short bend in the road and the next on 90 km/h before hitting the brakes at another approaching bend. They're very hard to drive behind for any length of time.

I moved out and put my foot down. I noticed my speed got up past 110 km/h as I slipped by the second car, moved back into the inside lane and dropped back towards 100. What I hadn't noticed was a police car coming the other way until he turned on his spangled rooftop and his siren, did a u-turn and set out after me.

I'm insatiably curious, so for just a fraction of a second I wanted to hit the accelerator to see what would happen.

But I knew from experience that sort of experiment can go horribly wrong. Many years ago, a group of us who worked a late-night shift for the New Zealand Press Association in Wellington would save our taxi allowance by walking several miles home in the early hours of the morning. The police patrols would often enough pull up beside us, chattily ask who we were and where we were going, and sometimes even give us a lift.

A colleague wondered, as he walked around Oriental Bay one morning at 2 o'clock, what would happen if he started to run as a patrol car pulled in to the curb. So he did. He was a big, uncoordinated guy with a shambling run and what he didn't know was a robbery involving grievous bodily harm had occurred in Roseneath a couple of hours before, a rare event in those days.

The constables raced after him, tackled him hard, pushing his face into the gravel to stop him getting up, then slipped on handcuffs. They took him to the station, questioned him closely, put him in a cell and telephoned the NZPA news editor at home at 4 am to confirm his identity. It was, he said later, a sorry experiment he did not wish to repeat.

So, like any sensible citizen, I pulled over as the policeman glided up behind me. His manner was grave but polite and he offered to let me see the camera evidence of my speed. I said I knew what speed I was going but asked how one could pass another car on a lane that wasn't very long without briefly exceeding the speed limit.

He listened dispassionately and said he was going to issue me an offence notice anyway, showing me the list of charges, noting my speed was 116 km/h and the price went up at 115 km/h. He didn't even smile when I suggested I should probably be charged with driving without due care and attention for not seeing him coming.

The bill was $120.

But that incident was sweet compared with the attitude of Management when accounts-settling time arrived. You see, I could have flown Auckland-Napier-Wellington-Auckland on my errand but was so affronted at the have-to-fly price (within seven days) I stubbornly decided to drive. All in all, the flying and accommodation would have cost me $700 or $800 and I'd have been away one or possibly two nights. Driving, I was away three nights and four full days. The whole affair, I had to admit - only to myself though - had been a boondoggle.

As Management pointed out much more icily than the policeman had given me his bad news, the drive and accommodation would have been about the same except for the time wasted and the $200 speeding fines, which she felt morally should not be recouped from our company but paid for personally.

The lesson is: it is not only safer to fly than to drive, it's cheaper unless you have a lot of time available and inexhaustible patience.

One thing though: I knew I'd have motel-room time on my hands and I noticed before I left home that last week was the 250th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, so I took my Golden Treasury, by F.T. Palgrave, and reminded myself by reading it each night what a near-perfect little gem it is. You know the one: "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ... "

No verse reminds me of the pathetic vanity of human aspirations for power than this, except maybe Shelley's Ozymandias of Egypt.

It's years since I picked up Palgrave and it was such a pleasure to go back. Try it.