Dick Hubbard, founder of Hubbards Foods in Auckland, and Mayor of Auckland City from 2004 to 2007.
70.
This made no sense to me, a guy
who every weekday lay in bed
all morning, and maybe, at most, gave Lion Red40
a disproportionate supply
of what he earned – but who, in fact,
could not care less if food was packed
with ‘Clipboards’41 or game-cards; if color and fizz
were added to water; or why it is
some bars of soap produce more lather
than others (if truth be known, I’d rather
take a swim than shower). Some knots
in my brow must have published these thoughts.
40 A New Zealand beer produced since 1907, using New Zealand hops. Initially known as Lion Beer, it became popularly known as Lion Red based on its red-colored label and can. Lion Breweries responded by officially changing the brand’s name to Lion Red in the mid-1980s.
41 Even my Kiwi friend struggled with this reference but finally sent me some copies of ‘Clipboard’, a newsletter which appears in a popular New Zealand breakfast cereal called Hubbards (the founder of which, Dick Hubbard, was the mayor of Auckland). The newsletter is filled with all sorts of bantering clichés, letters from readers (and eaters) and the type of homilies you might find stitched in needlepoint, framed and hung in a house inhabited by a spinster and her cat. An example from Clipboard 69: ‘The most important things in life are not things.’
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