Paul Holmes: Red bridges, Berlin stand-off and the plot to kill Caesar

President John Kennedy gave hope to the frightened people of West Berlin. Photo / Supplied

Sssshhhh, no politics. It's election day.

My life during the week, which for more than a couple of decades was all mad hurley burley, has become quite calm and simple. Since I finished Daughters of Erebus I find I sleep in, sometimes as late as 8.30 or 9 o'clock in the morning. I still regard this as rather sinful. But, I think to myself sometimes, you deserve a lie-in.

On Thursday morning, before catching the 9.50 flight from Hawkes Bay to Auckland, we lay listening to the patter of an even, continuous rain on the roof and a wind through the trees, looking out to the hills across the valley. The morning was cool but not cold. Early summer cool, that is.

Some months back I became sick of the drab colours in my little office/library. We went to town and eventually chose a bright red. Resene's "Red Pepper", to be exact. I figured we'd need some 12 litres of paint and ordered accordingly.

In fact we needed only about 2 litres. Not my strongest suit, maths. I forgot, in my ditzy calculations, about the wide windows and the sliding glass door. This left me with about 10 litres of bright red interior paint. My wife said quite randomly a few weeks ago, "Why don't we paint the bridges red.

We have a pond, with real wild paradise ducks on it and two white flightless ducks. The pond is covered with red and green duck weed, water lilies flourish in it and it's surrounded by native plantings and willows and the irises are vivid at the moment.

The pond is fed water on one side by a brook running past and water passes back to the same brook at the other end of the pond and we have two wooden bridges that cross both streams on both of which the paint had well and truly worn away.

So out we went with the wire brush and the paint and a couple of brushes and within a couple of hours the first bridge was bright, brilliant red. The execution of the task buggered me rather and I had to sit down for a long time. That was a few weeks ago.

Last week, I took on the second, bigger bridge. Deborah brought down a cup of tea and the doggies and we all agreed that the red bridges looked stunning. Who would ever have thought it. And somehow, Buzzy Boy, my hairless Chinese Crested fellow got red paint all over him.

Anyway, after this second bridge I was so knocked about that I went reeling to the couch in front of the History Channel.

And this week I watched one of the finest documentaries I've ever seen on President John Kennedy. Thorough, measured, with the main players who are still alive and featuring some of the dramatic video footage of the events of the time. It must have been two and a half hours long. I'm talking major.

The documentary played at some length the speech Kennedy made in Berlin in front of a million people. The worries about Russian designs on West Berlin were constant. Berliners, and the entire West, were worried that America had no stomach to protect them. Right there, next to the wall, Kennedy spoke to Krushchev through the German people and uttered the immortal line, "Ich bin ein Berliner".

In other words, attack Berlin, you attack the United States. The eruption of emotion from the frightened people of West Berlin is overwhelmingly moving even today. I sat on the couch in tears, the red bridges for a moment forgotten. When Kennedy was killed, Berliners placed candles in their windows, a sign of personal grief.

Within weeks of Kennedy's Berlin speech he had the Russians agreeing to nuclear weapons reduction talks.

It's amazing what people study. I happened upon a programme in which a senior member of the Roman carabinieri undertakes a study of Caesar's assassination. Man, does he do the research, sitting there in his handsome, smart uniform reading Plutarch and Sutonious and God knows who.

He works out the motive for the killing, how the conspiracy was put together, how many senators jumped Caesar and then studies why Caesar sacked his bodyguard in the last few weeks of his life and ignored so many signs that he was going to be murdered upon his arrival at the Senate.

There was all too much going on for Caesar not to have known what was up. One fellow, a Greek, even shoves a piece of paper warning him of the attack through the curtain of the palanquin carrying Caesar to the Senate. Caesar died with that piece of paper between his fingers.

The Italian policeman presents a very strong case that the ageing Julius Caesar, his epilepsy worsening and shaming him, by doing nothing to destroy the conspiracy, effectively engineered his own suicide. It was his way out. What's more, the murder would make him immortal. He changed his will just weeks before his death appointing his nephew Octavian as his heir. Such was the grief of the Roman people, the Senate could do nothing to stop it.

In other words he established a dynasty. Caesar ended the Republic.

Far out. Oh yes. But for now, give me some red paint and the odd little bridge and the sound of the rain on the roof in the early morning light.