Christopher Cape: Yellow fleets and knotted knickers

Car wreck, Saddle Rd, two years on. Photo / Christopher Cape

OPINION:
The world is a mess. In this throwaway society humanity seems intent on cluttering the world with junk. In recent international news one of the world's biggest container ships, the 220,000 tonne Ever Given ran aground across the Suez canal, blocking all marine traffic. History repeats itself obviously.

In 1967 hostilities, labelled the Six-Day War, broke out between Egypt and Israel. Egypt scuttled ships, a bridge, sea mines and other assorted paraphernalia in and across the Suez Canal blocking it to shipping. Fifteen international cargo vessels were trapped in those waters, in the Great Bitter Lake and Lake Timsah for eight years between 1967 and 1975 while the adversaries wrestled for supremacy.

Those stranded ships became known as the Yellow Fleet. The last 15 months have been tough on everyone. World trade has been disrupted and it seems humankind has major difficulty reaching consensus and agreement on anything. Riots over lockdowns in Britain, human rights abuses in China, political unrest in Myanmar, African conflicts, North Korea testing ballistic missiles and political dissension in the USA.
Why do Republicans detest Democrats? You'd think they'd unite for the good of the nation.

Life goes on. New Zealand is not immune. Labour's governance is criticised, dare I say smeared, by National. They with the biggest stick presume to own the greatest clout without asking for, or giving, reasoned argument for their stand. Politics and fiscal manipulation sully the waters of vaccine production and distribution. Somehow humanity seems to be too easily distracted from the primary mission, which is to restore physiological health to people and thereby sort out their economic needs. Vis a vis, would you rather be healthy and poor, or rich, sick and dead?

New Zealand is certainly in a fortunate situation with border restrictions and MIQ facilities keeping the virus off New Zealand streets. It is easy to forget that the pandemic is real and Covid can be life-threatening. The world is a mess. Life is difficult, as M Scott Peck pointed out in his book The Road Less Travelled…. The past year has been difficult and the economic results of that fact were pressed home for me over the last week or so. Covid has messed up supply lines. Economics and trade have suffered. Imports are delayed. Stocks are limited.

Shopping is a minefield and time-consuming, as I discovered looking for jeans and shoes. In 2019 I bought jeans made in Bangladesh from The Warehouse. During lockdown, last year, I needed new ones so I bought two pairs of the same size, but different brand, made in Thailand, online from The Warehouse. They didn't fit. I couldn't exchange them because of lockdown protocols so I gave them to the Sally Anns. I bought new ones last week off the shelf from The Warehouse. They fitted me and they were on special, made in China. I bought four pairs in case there was another pandemic and lockdown.

I'd trudged, searching, through Kmart but their stock was cheap, incoherently labelled with nothing much in my size. There was less stock in store than was evident on their website. Shoes were another matter. I needed comfortable casual ones. It was a minefield too as far as sizing goes. My sizing had to be translated from NZ to USA to UK. Apparently the difference between NZ and UK is 1.5. I bought end of line Hush Puppies (a UK brand made in Thailand) size 12 on special – the last in stock. Alas, life used to be so simple. It's hard slog, this road less travelled, looking for quality. You've got to keep your eyes open.

The Saddle Rd connects Ashhurst to Woodville above the Manawatū Gorge, which is now permanently closed. Over the last two or three years the Saddle Rd has become a graveyard for cars. A few months ago I recall counting, in one trip, at least six wrecks lying in varying states of disrepair off the side of the road.

The one pictured here has been there for at least two years. I know because I photographed the fire tender above the crash scene at the time. This past week there were four, and one in a ditch near Woodville. These rusting hulks have littered the landscape for months. Whether the cause was medical misadventure, wild speed, or drunken stupor is pure conjecture.

The point is someone has to be accountable, and take responsibility to clean up the mess, whether it is junk cluttering the highways and byways, or shipping magnates with massive container ships blocking waterways, or pharmaceutical companies squabbling with politics over market share. Somewhere along the path, and soon, the greater good of the planet and humanity has to be recognised and acted on if we are to survive. Playing the blame game is time-consuming, gets us nowhere, and the virus keeps reinventing itself. A new double variant was recently discovered in India. We need to act now. Eight years is a long time and if we can't learn lessons from history we'll be hitting the replay button before we know it.