Sinclair on life: A local honour to cherish

By PETER SINCLAIR

"How on earth did it happen to me?" is the question you ask when you find yourself, in a definite state of bemusement, on the Queen's Birthday Honours list.

Honours were not something I had ever given thought to, really, if only because I never saw myself as the sort of person who would get one. When the lightning strikes, of course, one is naturally ... well, honoured.

Whenever I had paused to think of them, it seemed to me that in their new look they had also gained at least the beginnings of a new relevance.

What we lost on the musty pomp and tatty circumstance of bygone centuries we more than regained in a fresher vision of our place in the world.

People who objected to the new system, it seemed to me, were the same crowd who were vaguely ashamed of the way we talked.

Well, I love the New Zealand accent, and I am proud of my Order of Merit.

I haven't actually received it yet, but I am told that it's nice: silver-gilt, with the motto - tohu hiranga (to achieve excellence) - set in green enamel.

It is worn from a red ribbon on the left lapel or tied in a bow on the left shoulder.

To say I lead a sheltered life these days is to understate the case, so I can't see myself at many functions of the kind where you feel half-naked without an Order. But I don't care - I shall wear it around the house if need be, at least until the novelty wears off.

I was made an officer of the Order for services to broadcasting, and I like to think that the honours and appointments committee had Telethon in mind when they decided to give me the nod.

For I can honestly say that if there is anything in my life, looking back, that brings me nothing but a quiet and unalloyed sort of pride, a feeling of "Well done!" from myself to myself, it's the part I played in those glorious explosions of national niceness.

But, "It will never happen to me," I hear some readers cry in despair. "I probably won't get so much as a gold star when the chapter of my life is written."

To you I say: "Don't feel ticked off just because you missed out. Help is as close as the internet. Perhaps you should take a more direct shot at goal with one of the useful title-brokers you will find there like, say, British Feudal Investments (www.nobletitles.com).

"Enjoy the privileges, powers, prerogatives and pre-eminences accorded to the nobility," it says temptingly - and you don't need so much as a drop of blue blood, just a working credit card.

They offer a full range of "Baronies, Viscountcies, Lordships of the Manor, Marquisates and Principalities." You can elevate yourself into Baron Bassingbourne for $US44,600 ($108,310) or, more economically, Laird of Inver-eagles for a mere $3950. And the Marquis of Mangere certainly has a ring to it - get in quick.

There are plenty of leftover titles from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, too, if you fancy being the Duke of Schweidnitz ($19,000), and some fine Balkan titles are going for a song - the Barony di Carbino is yours for $3000 if you don't mind sounding like an Italian entree. I'll think I'll stick with my Order of Merit.

For me, the real reward came in my inbox - dozens of e-mail messages from readers and listeners. One of the sweetest and most typical came from Sandra Lee, remembering her own past when she and brother Billy used to listen to me on the Sunset Show going about a hundred miles an hour with the Beatles belting out Love Me Do.

They used to tune in after school on a tiny old white Bakelite transistor radio in the days when any transistor at all was really something (later their dad won a snazzy black model on Selwyn Toogood's It's in the Bag).

And when I think of those two little Maori kids atop a sunlit hill in Porirua all those years ago, heads together to catch the faint threads of sound from their prized transistor - and of all the other kids like them - suddenly I realise why my medal means so much to me ...

* pete@ihug.co.nz