KEY POINTS:
At this moment, somewhere out in the wilds of Auckland, is a newspaper subeditor who is experiencing a frustrating wait for this column.
Actually, he or she could be in Northland, or Methven, or Sydney or Bangalore, or wherever the current location du jour for outsourcing might be. I have no idea.
This person is waiting, that is all I know. Waiting because yet again, this column is late. It usually is.
In person I am punctual, but I'm hopelessly tardy in print. I have a good excuse today, however. Well, if not a good one then a new one at least.
This is actually the second incarnation of this column. The first one I had to scratch because I foolishly wrote it all about the leaders' debate so it can't be published on the day of an election.
You will simply have to take my word when I say it was the best thing I've ever written and the world is considerably poorer for its suppression.
But the paper can't use it, and so I become that most reviled of creatures: the columnist without a column. An opinion-maker with no opinion, a voice with nothing to say.
That is nothing new, you can argue. I am frequently in the position of having absolutely nothing of any interest or importance to say.
I hear as much from the gentle souls who take time out from their no-doubt busy and exciting lives to email me at length in order to point out my myriad limitations, not only as a writer, but also as a human being.
I don't mind the emails, in truth. At the very least, they're proof that someone reads this page besides my family. Some of them start off a discussion, and some of them make me think, but above all they remind me that a column is something written to be read by other people, and not just the 700-word equivalent of a nice long relaxing look in the mirror.
Some of the emails are just plain hilarious, of course.
There was the gent from Avondale who wrote to say he liked my views on Catholicism but found the lipstick in my author shot "a little bit whorish, perhaps?" Noted.
Or the kind friend who likes to send me the entire text of the Treaty of Waitangi, in English and te reo, every Saturday morning without fail. No comments, no signature, just Te Tiriti in a PDF. There are the dirty ones as well, one-handed typists for whom my lipstick is obviously just whorish enough.
There are the ranters, who simply address to me whatever cause or conspiracy is consuming them with godly fire, and the nitpickers, who delight in pointing out any and all discrepancies, inconsistencies and outright mistakes in whatever piece of writing I submit.
That bunch had a great day's hunting a few months back when I made my first, but I'm sure not my last, monumental cock-up as a columnist.
In the course of several redrafts of a column about the oratorical prowess of President-elect Barack Obama, I somehow managed to attribute a speech by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower.
A very odd mistake to make, I know, they're hardly similar or contemporaneous in any way. I blame the preponderance of Ds in both names, and besides, I'd had my head so well and truly turned by the rock-star speechifying of Obama that I hardly knew my own name, let alone those of the 32nd and 34th Presidents of the United States.
In the good old way of such things, I celebrated the realisation of my mistake by sitting bolt upright in bed at 4am and roaring. By then it was too late, of course, the damn thing had gone to press and a gaffe of that magnitude was never going to go unnoticed.
And it didn't. Ranting, raving, sexually deviant and Treaty-obsessed though my constituents might be, I can't fault their grasp of American history.
One hundred and forty-seven of them, in total, took the opportunity to get in contact and point out my error, something they did with varying degrees of sublety, tact and downright contempt. The 142nd and 143rd were at least kind enough to preface their letters with "you probably know this already but now, but ... "
It did nothing to mend my shattered ego, but it was nice all the same. It's interesting, though, what gets people excited; woe betide if you mix up your presidents, but I said V.S. Naipaul was dead in a column I wrote last year, and no one even noticed.
It's the political big-noters who get your attention, obviously; the Nobel Laureates, not so much.
The experience, in any case, was enough to render me superstitious about writing columns about Obama, which is why the second incarnation of this column does not devote itself to him, in spite of the truly momentous, epoch-making importance of his win.
So we learn from our mistakes. In this case, I learned that people do actually read this column, and some of those people are very singular indeed.
I also learned that people love it when you make mistakes, if only because it means they can correct you. The lot of the columnist, I suppose.
It was the same when I did talkback radio, but at least now my readers' responses don't engender in me the sort of heavy depression that only the knuckle-dragging imbecility of talkback callers can inspire.
And fewer people write to me from prison now that I'm not doing midnights-to-dawns any more.
(Favourite line: "Don't worry, I won't stalk you when I get out. Ha! Ha!" [smiley face icon].)
Oscar Wilde is right, though. The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. Better to be reviled than irrelevant any day. That's what I'm telling myself at least.
If you're reading this online, the email link is at the end of the page. Go on, knock yourself out. The carapace is coming along nicely this weather. I can't wait to hear from you. No more treaties, though please, I'm all stocked up now, thanks.
