Shane on the Wire Chewing the fat When I started my column, calling it Shane on the Wire made sense from a fencing point of view. But a little-known fact, other than family and close friends is also to those highly relevant to the name.
When it comes to me, things are literally down to the wire. I call it fashionably late. Angelina hates me for it and my grown kids will tell me that dinner at their house is half an hour earlier than it actually is. The way I think about it, is why would you want to be the first at a party. Like, who are you going to talk to? The walls? Doesn’t it make more sense to be a little late and have everybody to talk to? You get the idea. And yes, I am once again, a couple of days late writing this. If our editor has cottoned on, she will make my deadline a few days earlier. I can hear what you are all saying. Why not just write it earlier? Trouble is if I do that I might write about the wrong thing. For example: This time I was going to yak about all the issues with trying to live with a broken ankle through summer, and yes, I broke it, but Angelina told me that no one wanted to know how much trouble it was peeing while standing on one leg, and how annoyed I am not getting in any fishing time. I’m sure someone would like to know, but anyway I changed the topic. So, what I have missed while I have been largely laid up though is having the time to chew the fat, thinking about stuff, a bit of selfchat, listening to my own voice, that sort of thing. Some of my best ideas come from my many hours of working time, sometimes with a little bit of quiet music in the earmuffs. Before we started the fencing business, we milked cows for 25 odd years and some of my best thinking time came from long hours in the cowshed. I did a quick work out and it transpired that some 60 thousand hours in fact. That I didn’t believe so I reworked it twice more on a calculator, bugger me, same answer. Can you imagine 60 thousand hours in a cowshed. No wonder I come up with lots of ideas. I have a good mate in the Waikato who calls my ideas progressive. Some of them were epic fails truth be told, but if I didn’t think about stuff during those long hours, I would have gone crazy. Because I’m so good at thinking about stuff, it’s only natural that I also come up with ideas while post driving. So, with the boys both now doing the post driving, I’m missing that time and can’t wait until I’m driving posts again. I actually really like listening to music. I’m stuck in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, but when Angelina and I are in a vehicle together and I have the music down, she knows that I’m thinking about stuff and always asks, “what are you thinking about now?” My default answer is always, ”nothing much dear”. Funny thing is, she has started coming up with ideas while zipping around on the ride on. She usually starts with, “I was mowing the lawns today and got to thinking”. And I go, “mmm”, and she retorts “fine, I’m not telling you then”, so I have to coerce it out of her. That’s fun… Straight posts and tight wires.
Shane Beets co-owns Call A Farmer and builds fences in ‘Northland’.
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ISSUE 64 / MARCH 2022
Shane
WIRED MAGAZINE
