Kevin Milne - The Life and Times of a Brown Paper Bag

IM IN A SHOPPING mall car park. Owen, my cameraman, starts filming. I randomly select a car, note its rego number, model, make, colour, and walk into an adjacent Postshop. Using that scant information, Im able to download the personal details of the owner off the Motor Vehicle Register. As if that wasnt invasive enough, those details are all I need to now fill out a change of ownership form and have that car put in my own name. All this happens in five minutes and I return to the car, still filming.

When the cars driver, a young woman named Jade, arrives back, I ask her if she owns the car. Yes, I do, she says firmly.

So you are (I mention her name and her address). Shes unnerved. How do you know all that about me?

I dont answer her question but press on. These ownership papers show this cars registered in my name not yours.

Its MY car. Let me look at that. Shes astonished to find Im right. Im going to talk to my father about this. Hes a policeman.

I assured the lovely woman I had no intention of taking her car. But a few days later when Fair Go broadcast the video, our point was made. For months Id been concerned how easy it was for crooks to change someone elses car into their own name and for creeps to find out private, personal details about owners particularly attractive, young female owners like Jade.

As a direct result of that story, a bill was passed in Parliament which will restrict access to the Motor Vehicle Register. I felt pretty clever.

Not long after, late one December Saturday morning, I had to dash from my home on the Kapiti Coast to Levin to pick up a Christmas tree. I had only half an hour till the place closed. I was in a panic because we were also due at friends for lunch. As we were about to set off, my son asked if he could stick the wheelie bin full of rubbish on the tow bar and drop it off at the gate when we drove out. Save him having to wheel it out our long drive later. If you must, I said to him. Just hurry.

I confess to exceeding the 100 kilometre speed limit that morning on State Highway 1, especially in the passing lanes. But just before Otaki there was an enormous explosion gave us all a hell of a fright. I pulled the car over. The kids were first to spot the problem. Dad, you forgot to take the wheelie bin off. Unable to cope with speeds of up to 110 kilometres per hour, the bin, with its axle red-hot, had exploded, catapulting its contents all over the highway though, luckily, not into any other car.

Its difficult to visualise how large an area the strewn contents of one big wheelie bin can cover. While the rest of the family sniggered safely from inside the car, I dashed between oncoming traffic, plucking up the Milnes domestic trash. It seemed mainly soiled disposables our little girl was just two at the time.

I imagined kids in cars, screaming past, yelling to their parents, Hey, wow, that guy gathering up the crap, wasnt that the FairGo guy? Whats his name?

Dont be stupid, son. Thats just a dosser going through trash. You get a lot of it round Christmas. Couldnt be a TV presenter, anyway. They all go to Italy or somewhere for summer.

I mention these two stories because whenever I start to think Im a bit out of the ordinary something ruins it. Even when people try heroically to inflate my ego, it somehow doesnt come off. One day I was walking to work and a guy shouted to me from across the road.

Hey, Ian. Youre a living legend mate. I adore outrageous flattery. If only hed got my name right.

Over 20 years ago, Noel OHare of the Listener put it this way, In an age of glossy packaging, Kevin Milne is a brown paper bag. Bang on. I think it was meant as a compliment and Ill settle for that.

So, welcome to the life and times of a brown paper bag.

ITS 18 MARCH 1949, Lewisham Hospital, Christchurch. The baby my mother thought she was bringing into this world has arrived, stillborn. Naturally, Mum is distraught. The tiny dead boy is taken from her by hospital staff, never to be held by her again, never to be seen again. Its a tragedy and the grieving process begins.

But wait a minute. Whats this? Mums going into labour again. The doctor tells her she must be having twins. This is the first shes heard of it. Shortly after, a second boy arrives. Hes tiny and underweight, just four pounds. Hell have to be kept in an incubator for a few weeks, but hes generally healthy. Thats me.

Mum told me much later in life that when I arrived into this world she was, all at the same time, sad, shocked, bewildered and delighted. Who could blame her?

This story says several things about how long Ive been around and what it was like back when I was born. I arrived when mothers having twins mightnt know it until they popped out. When if a baby was born dead, it was treated as though it had never had a life; it was taken away and secretly buried. There was no goodbye, no name, no funeral, no gravestone. This was later to become an issue for many of the families of these lost children.

About 15 years ago, I was heading home at the end of the day and the Holmes show was on TV in reception. The story that was on stopped me in my tracks. A memorial at Christchurchs Bromley Cemetery had that day been dedicated to all the stillborn babies buried in mass graves there. It would provide a place for families to visit, maybe still to grieve. In the back of my mind, I thought I recalled my mother telling me she believed my twin brother had been buried at Bromley Cemetery.

Next time I was in Christchurch, I visited the cemetery and a wonderfully helpful sexton pulled out some old, leather-bound burial records from 1949. And under 20 March, two days after I was born, was penned in ink with great care: Baby Milne, stillborn, 18 March 1949. Sad, eh? The anonymity of it all. Ive sometimes wondered how life would have been with him as a twin. Fabulous, I imagine. But when I think of how blessed my lifes been, I wonder whether I havent had him alongside me anyway.

My early life as the youngest in a family of five was filled with immense happiness interrupted by dreadful sadness.

We lived in Christchurch. My father, Cliff, had been brought up in North Otago and came from a line of bankers. Dad made a name for himself at the BNZ but not strictly in banking. He played a major part in setting up BNZ Travel, arranging peoples trips around the world. He put his heart and soul into making their journeys memorable and customers loved him for it. Somewhere I still have the autographs of some of the fifties and sixties stars he helped The Howard Morrison Quartet, Lonnie Donegan, and the entire 1961 French touring rugby team. One letter thanking him had an American dollar note included. I couldnt work out why, until I noticed that the signature on the letter was the same as the signature on the dollar.