The womanwho took on the scourge of the suburbs
Ican think of few miscreants more moronic than boy racers and their preoccupation with petrol headonism.
For decades, they have been the scourge of the suburbs, keeping residents awake at night and hospitals busy on the receiving end of their terrible accidents. One would have thought that their ardour for the wheel would have diminished with the rise in petrol prices, but it seems nothing will deter them.
Nothing, that is, save for Nelsonian neighbourhood heroine Andrea Warn, who after six years of having to endure their asinine antics in her street, managed, with the help of a city council engineer, to get the better of them by designing bespoke ‘‘boy racer catchers’’.
Not to be confused with the Child Catcher, that sinister character of Chitty Chitty Bang
Bang fame, who was employed to snatch and imprison children from the streets of Vulgaria, Warn’s boy racer catcher was made of tussock grass and rock strategically placed on the street’s ‘‘drifting’’ corners.
Over a six-year period, Warn had counted no fewer than 25 crashes on her street and registered a top speed of 97kph. Since the invention of the BRC (the Boy Racer Catcher), the street’s residents can at last fling open their windows of a summer night to enjoy some uninterrupted shut-eye.
Many a long and short winding road that once lay as straight as a die has had to bend to the expensive chicanery of planter boxes and the hiccup of speed bumps, built to impede the pace of the boy racer. However, it doesn’t matter how many roads are altered, where there’s a wheel there’s a way – till, perhaps, the invention of the BRC.
If only boy racers could develop a passion for the electric bike. I’m sure we could tolerate a wheel stand or two, and who knows, with their penchant for vehicle modification they might stumble upon cutting-edge advances in power saving.
In the meantime, pity the farflung backblock where the hardcore boy racer migrates to and where, overwhelmed by his own immaturity, the hoon feels free to act out his compulsion to do burnouts and play chicken, till he exhausts himself and loses the plot.
What a shame we can’t conscript BRs into the army and send them off to the Ukrainian front, or do our variant of a 501 and export their ilk to Australia, that uncouth now-distant cousin of ours who has, from the bully pulpit of ScoMo, done its best to destroy any last vestiges of Closer Emotional Relations while it pays glib lip service to the Anzac spirit. New Zealand still smarts from the 2005 snub of former prime minister John Howard, when he shunned the New Zealand Anzac ceremony at Gallipoli, choosing instead to barbecue on the beach with Aussie soldiers.
Australia should be careful how it treats its only ally at the bottom of the world as the globe undergoes fast-changing geopolitical realignments.
For all its faults – Britain Brexiting, and now the possibility of France Frexiting if Marine Le Pen is elected – the European Union knows the value of safety in numbers and maintaining respectful relations with neighbours. Even though it’s one big messy family, needs must: they have to get on with each other, no matter what.
Without the burden of land borders and a lonely dot in the Pacific, New Zealand, long on the receiving end of the increasingly indifferent and disrespectful cold shoulder from Australia, has every reason to feel like an only child with no-one to cuddle up to.