LEAD STORY: Good act costs a leg

ROGER MORONEY
STEPPING in to help break up a vicious fight has cost Art Deco Weekend co-ordinator Peter Mooney the use of a leg.
Nine days out from the region's biggest and most colourful festival of the year, Mr Mooney was today coming to terms with a broken left leg - and the prospect of having to delegate work and ``sitting down and selling tickets'.
While the injury was a serious blow to his usually frantic and full-on approach to the big weekend, he was taking it as philosophically as he could.
There was talk of ``Murphy's Law' and how he had given out ``plenty of borax' to other people over the years and now some had come back and bitten him.
While he was able to keep smiling and stay relatively upbeat, the circumstances which led to the injury were anything but pleasant.
He had been at the Topp Twins concert at Ngatarawa Winery last Sunday when he heard a child yelling.
The child was with one of two women who were going at each other in a fight.
``I've no idea what it (the fight) was all about but it was the very upset child I was concerned about.'
He and another man stepped in and separated the scrapping pair, but as he was getting up from restraining the woman she pushed at him - sending him reeling backwards.
Mr Mooney thinks she may have had one of her feet on his left foot. ``I went over backwards but my foot stayed put.' The woman was later spoken to and taken from the scene by police who had been called.
``There was a certain amount of `bugger!' afterwards,' Mr Mooney said when he realised the implications of what had happened.
Asked exactly what had been broken he laughed and replied ``the tibia of fibia or fibula or something.
``Whatever ... there's plaster from my toes up to the bottom of my knee.'
The leg will be X-rayed again next week and may require re-setting and even pinning. He faces six months in a cast. ``All I have to do now is stop it from swelling ... so it's feet up.'
He will, however, investigate the adoption of some sort of Art Deco accessories for the plaster.
Although carving pediments and pendants, in the style of the architecture of the central city, is probably out of the question.
But he will have mobility - through a scooter being loaned to him.
``I hear it's been souped up ... a few donuts will be in order,' he laughs.