This book is part memoir, part urban tale with beginning, middle and end. It's the story of a place and the people who lived there and a family and of what happened to them in the radical changes of the 80s and 90s. It's also a story of New Zealand over the last two decades; what they have won and lost. It is a celebration: a funny, colourful, and raucous at times traffic tale with an ultimate redemption. New Brighton, once Christchurch's most bustling suburb was the only place in the country where shops opened on Saturdays. Businessmen were wealthy, locals were not. The place was self contained: they had everything they needed. Why go to town? They has their own high school, the biggest rugby club in Canterbury, biggest surf club, lost of shops, a cinema and the pier, the centre of their lives. The author grew up in a 'chaotic' family: five sons, one daughter. His mother was an accountant, his father left school at 14, became a fighter pilot during the war in the Pacific and bent on the peaceful life, returned to New Zealand to surf and make home brew. Running through the story is the author's friendship with Colin and how that friendship formed them both, how they were shaped by the times, the placed they lived and the people. That friendship came to a cataclysmic end three years ago; a shared lifetime ruined by chance and betrayal. Bruce and his friend Colin were two very different people who difference grew more significant as they got older. The only thing they had in common was their shared love of where they'd come from. Bruce found peace and affirmation in Colin's company; he has no idea what Colin found in his. Bruce still lives close to his beloved New Brighton and he spends a lot of time there on the pier.
