Saturday Morning With Jack Tame

I was taken aback by how long it had been since I’d last come to town.   It’s amazing how time creeps up on you like that. One minute you’re at Grandma and Grandad’s place every few months, knocking around with your siblings. The next you’re going through Grandad’s drawers, packing him a bag of his most precious possessions. The next, you realise it’s three years since you even drove down his street.   State Highway One was an absolute shocker. I was driving the old straight line, heading South from Christchurch. Rolleston, Dunsandel, Rakaia. The storm was fierce. There was surface flooding and the rivers were up which obviously made things worse, but some of the potholes were so large they could’ve swallowed the irrigators that usually crawl the paddocks on either side of the road.     Those irrigators have brought a lot of prosperity to mid-Canterbury. But not on Grandad’s street. His place was an old state house on what Dad always called the wrong side of the tracks. Given the main trun