about me
My parents, Ngaire Broad and Brian Bell, met in the place they both worked at the time, and I was conceived following a Christmas work party, where no doubt large quantities of alcohol were consumed. My parents married not long after and I was born around 9.30pm on 27 September 1955.
For the first few months of my life, while my parents saved for their first house, we lived in the "sitting room" at my paternal grandparents house in Otahuhu, in South Auckland, where my Dad and his brother had grown up. Our first home was in a new subdividion in the suburb of Mt Roskill, Auckland, built by the company my parents worked for (Fletcher Construction). It was where I spent the first six years of my life, started school and learnt to be scared of dogs when a neighbourhood dog unexpectedly jumped up at me from behind while I was out mowing the lawn with my toy lawnmower.
I now love dogs, having since got over most of my childhood fears. Dogs seem to like me too - at least, the well socialised ones do. Most of my very best friends have been canine.
When I was six we moved to Rotorua where my Dad had got a promotion to regional sales manager. He spent most of his week on the road, selling products to timberyards and hardware stores, so it was pretty much just my Mum and me most of the time.
My parents separarted when I was nine years old and I was bundled off to live with my grandparents in South Auckland - back to where I had started. As an only child I guess it was harder than if I had had a sibling to share my grief with, but as they say "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger". That's not true. I learned that adults often don't realise the impact a broken home has on the children caught up in the mess.
When I started school a few weeks after my relocation, I was so quiet and withdrawn that the teacher assigned me to a desk on the far right wall of the classroom. I later realised that the class had been streamed so that the most acdemically bright kids were on the left side of the classroom, closer to the window. During the first week or so the teacher gave me a book of short stories to take home and read (presumably over several days or weeks even). When I returned the next day and announced that I had read the entire thing the previous evening, the teacher doubted me and quizzed me intently about random stories through the book. When it became obvious that I had easily read and comprehended every story, I was summarily moved to a new desk in the second row from the window. I was one of those uncommon children who thrived at school, albeit quietly.
My Nanna and Poppa became my defacto parents and their Otahuhu house was my home, pretty much for the next 20 years.
My Dad had been in a band when he was younger (named Ace High Rhythm I seem to recall). Although how he managed that, knowing only three chords (C, F and G7) and one strumming pattern, I'll never know. His sole guitar was a legendary plywood Tex Morton acoustic. He had an electrican friend make up a stylus-like guitar pickup cable which had a spike to shove into the wooden body, and adapted an old radio with a 12 inch speaker cabinet so he could plug in to amplify his sound.
I borrowed this guitar when I was about 11 and he taught me his three chords and showed me how to tune it. Equipped with an old guitar tutor book, I taught myself the chords to Home on the Range and never looked back. My Dad bought me a 3/4 size Suzuki acoustic for my 12th birthday.
I wrote my first song when I was 17. It was something about a vase which had sat on the mantlepiece for many decades and one day fell and smashed into a thousand pieces. A metaphor for the impermanence of existence; a song that I have since lost, so has become a metaphor for the impermanence of our artistic creations.
Around the same time I wrote a very simple, childlike composition called Pretty Belinda. Inspired by the folk/pop singer Donovan's Jennifer Juniper, which had the lyrics:
Jennifer Juniper lives upon the hill,
Jennifer Juniper, sitting very still.
Is she sleeping ? I don't think so.
Is she breathing ? Yes, very low.
I re-recorded that song as with the lyrics:
She lives down by the river
She lives down at the pond
She is friends with all the tadpoles
And she knows each by its right name
She isn't a girl, she isn't a fish
She's a mermaid - Pretty Belinda
Since that time I have written over 120 songs, now releasing them as 10 albums consisting of 12 songs each ... and there are more in the pipeline.