Pamela Wade: Remember, sometimes it is better to travel in hope than to arrive

COMMENT

My new teapot has been a great disappointment to me. It has a pleasing shape, tones in well with my kitchen decor and is a great pourer: all in all, it leaves nothing to be desired. And that is the problem.

Finding such a paragon among teapots was no easy task. It took years of browsing in china departments, searching for the perfect marriage of features that were readily available individually but elusive in combination. It was my personal Holy Grail, and the quest for it gave me a purpose and a pleasure that are now missing from my life, which feels emptier in a small but significant way.

So I know how Peter Jackson feels. He and his film's 11 Oscars, me and my teapot: we have both learned the hollowness of fulfilment. He may not realise it yet, buoyed still by the euphoria of the Hollywood ceremony and the swamping of the stage by excited Kiwis clutching golden statuettes, but it will come.

Back home in a few months, he will collapse into his armchair one evening after a hard day directing the big monkey, gaze up at the awards gleaming on the mantelpiece, and wonder, where to now?

How do you top The Lord of the Rings? The simple answer is that you cannot. Peter Jackson will never again work on such an epic scale, never again attract so much attention, never again reap so many rewards. It just can't be done.

If anyone doubts the penalty of such success, they have only to ask themselves whatever became of James Cameron after his Titanic glory, which also scored 11 Oscars. King of the world? I don't think so.

Fortunately, we can trust our Peter not to buy into that sort of arrogance. He will undoubtedly just continue to do the best job he can on all the movies ahead of him. He will undoubtedly turn out some stunning work, as well as some that is, inevitably, less wonderful - but never again will the planets be in such a favourable conjunction as they were for the Rings trilogy.

After such a dizzying success, nothing else is going to come close.

Sofia Coppola should be glad that she did not score the hat-trick with her movie: at least she has something still to aim for. So does Keisha Castle-Hughes, who is in the happy position of having graduated from Keisha Castle-who to someone with a bright future ahead of her for which everyone is prepared to wait.

The trouble with such success is that it can be crippling, either because of one's own fear of failure, or others' impossibly high expectations. Peter Jackson is lucky that he will be working outside the claustrophobic and merciless Hollywood world, where they take no prisoners. And being a sensible and down-to-earth man he will probably set the last seven years' work and their golden reward aside as the sort of thing that comes but once in a lifetime, be glad to have experienced it, and just get on with his job.

Let us hope that the same can be said of the rest of us. As a nation, we are not much used to success. The danger is that it has gone to our heads and, like other drugs that deliver an unmatchable high, already got us addicted to the buzz and the thrill.

Our last national triumph was the America's Cup - and think how sour that whole thing became after the euphoria of the first win. It degenerated into infighting, bitchiness and accusations of betrayal. There was no way we were going to be able to hang on to the ugly thing forever; we did well to defend it successfully once but were just not able to let it go gracefully.

Peter Jackson, now the tallest poppy in the land, will be up against the same sort of thing on the release of his next movie, and the one after that, and the one after that. If they are only ordinarily successful, the Americans will simply remove their funding. But the New Zealand public will, on past showing, flay him alive for not measuring up to the Rings.

It has been a long seven years for Peter Jackson and his team, and they fully deserve their glorious success. But perhaps they have been a little premature in celebrating the end of the journey. It could be that the hardest part is still to come.