An ODE TO EDEN PARK

Look Mum! I'm in the paper!

A few days into Lockdown, I wrote and recorded a little tribute to New Zealand's National Stadium, Eden Park supporting its application to host up to 6 concerts a year. The video was widely shared and was picked up by stuff.co.nz. (WE WON!)

After close to 30 years living and working in London, Hamburg and Berlin, my British wife and I packed up our Habitat crockery and John Lewis sofas and relocated to New Zealand. Back in 1990 when I departed these shores, the Northern Motorway finished at Sunset Road, the average Auckland home cost around $135,000, and Mike Moore was, albeit briefly, Prime Minister. No-one had heard of a flat white, most people drunk wine out of a box and All Black test matches were an afternoon fixture. Yep, things had certainly changed. The only constant seemed to be Birkenhead Transport’s fleet of buses. And Eden Park

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My childhood was one of those idilic Hawkes Bay ones - grazing knees and picking corn only interrupted by the odd earthquake drill. When I was 13, my folks dragged the family from the base of Sugar Loaf up to Auckland for a more metropolitan experience. There followed 4 short years at Westlake Boys on the Shore before heading off on a 30 year OE. The closest I ever got to Eden Park back then was during school holidays stacking shelves in a hardware store on Great North Road. Now though, 3 decades later, I live just a quick jog round the corner from the National Stadium. I hear every try scored and each boundary struck. Eden Park's lights even illuminate my kitchen on match day. And I bloody love it. Sure, the One-Dayers, Test Matches (and hopefully concerts!!) are great, but Eden Park is so much more than each individual event held there. She's History. She's Anticipation. And She's People. Us. She's Our Eden Park. And this is my tribute to her.