It’s almost as good as a trip to Europe – Paris and London – replete with car chases, the main scenic attractions, historical buildings. Your film, should you decide to accept it on a Friday Night – Mission Impossible-Fallout. It’s a big film, non-stop action, appropriately big plot – Nuclear bombs to be detonated at three religious sites – and bonus, scenes filmed gloriously in the Southern Alps of the South Island. A helicopter chase through the mountains and valleys – borrowed partly from Bond’s Spectre opening scene – but much more too, and like the best promo for New Zealand tourism.
There’s talk we might have a “bubble” with Australia. That would be a great start to get trading and tourism kick started. It would also be a great lifting up of the ANZAC spirit. Relations at a political level with Australia have been under strain recently. It would be the ideal ANZAC announcement. Two great friends as one.
They’ll be no ANZAC parades but we’ve been told to stand by our letter boxes as a mark of respect in the morning. It’s one of the few times we can feel united in the horrors of wars fought in the past by mostly young men – just boys really – who sacrificed their lives, mostly unknowingly until the end, to create a better world. It’s easy to think the world isn’t a better place – there’s plenty wrong, but there’s also plenty that’s right.
I’m not sure if standing by the letterbox does it for me in an apartment with a panel of letterboxes by the main entrance. On the way into the lift I’ll hit “G” say “At the” and the lift will give it’s sober “going down” and I’ll say “of the sun and in the morning. We will remember them.” I think this almost every time I get in the lift, it’s the way the lift voice says it, so now’s my chance to bring the whole building into thoughts I’ve had for ages.
And I really do think about those sacrifices and hope that once again we can make some good by rebuilding the ANZAC nation back. My paternal grandmother born in Tasmania in 1902, also on a 13th, would be proud of the thought. She’d also smile at the lift sequence. She’d know I meant no disrespect, which I don’t.
So maybe COVID-19 can be an ANZAC force for good.
Stephen
Stephen Drain's Leadership Blog 