Waihi's Rocket Park
John goes down the slippery slope of bad behaviour!
THE CRIME and SENTENCE
In an earlier post I told of losing my drivers licence after having a couple of beers too many at my favourite bar in Katikati one hot Wednesday afternoon last January and then driving home via a police road block on highway 2 especially placed to catch just such people as myself.
Busted!!
Eventually I had my day in court and as well as losing my licence for a year and a day I was sentenced to 150 hours of community service.
On the appointed day I had my friend Sandra drive me to Paeroa to the Probation Office and there I explained to the good folk in charge of my sentence how lucky they were to have such a rare and especially fine variegated species of mural artist on their books and what wonderous things I could do for the local community.......
In formal no-nonsense prison guard speak I was informed that I would be on the chain gang for at least a month (at least one day a week labour in service of some community organization or other) and then we would see what we would see..
I see said I. Yes. Yes of course. Sir.
THE CHAIN GANG!!
Well I really enjoyed the chain gang, the work was good exercise and the company great as everyone of my workmates, guys and girls of all types and ages, were all there because they had fucked up in one way or another and there was no bullshit or judgement and we all got on with enjoying our days work and chipping away at the hours we owed the community.
A typical day would be a van load of us arriving at a local small communities' war memorial hall early on a cold Winter's morning with a trailer load of gardening and scrub cutting and lawn mowing tools and we'd all get dirty scratched and blistered and leave the place looking a whole lot better than we found it. Satisfying work actually and no shortage of good humour...
A PLAN IS BEING HATCHED!!
After a month or so in the trenches I told my gang's boss of my local councillor's favourable attitude towards me painting a mural for the community.
A CUNNING DISGUISE IS CAREFULLY MAINTAINED ...
Because of my punctuality and reliability I was given my head, so to speak, and I used my newly returned head to finalize where and what and do some design drawings and submit them for approval to a meeting of ward councillors.
THE PLAN..
Waihi's rocket park rocket will be made more of a feature with the addition of two large portholes through which can be seen the rocket's crew comprising of my neighbours Leah and Kevin's son Daniel age7 and my pal Georgia's daughter Amelie age 5 and my grandson Mateo age 2 and a half inside the rocket preparing to take off.
Kinda cliche but very cute.
Along with this I will be making some changes to the rocket's colour-scheme: red nose cone and silver gantry tower. At present I await the delivery to the studio of two large sheets of thin galvanized metal for me to cut to shape and paint the porthole murals on. These will then be riveted on the rocket.
And my debt to society will be paid. Yay!
WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE NEXT EPISODE BOYS AND GIRLS??
WILL ALL BE REVEALED??
WILL THERE BE A HAPPY ENDING??
At a meeting of local Ward Councilers this design idea of mine was chosen to enhance Waihi's Rocket Park, a job I was going to do for free as part of my Community Service sentence that a judge gave me for a drink driving conviction. Unfortunately the people in charge of supervising my sentence had me work out my time helping out at the local Marae instead.
