Now Voyager: Post Mortem

The Candlelight is over for another year and the lessons have to be learned. We had the best speaker on the day, one of the most sought after in the world, effectively, in Justice Michael Kirby, and the attendance was only around seventy. I mentioned this to my young friend Jevon on the bus this morning, and she nonchalantly said, 'Ooh, that wasn't too bad'. But that is from a Kiwi who doesn't expect anything too much. I expected a full house, after all, last year we had one, and it was only I who was the guest speaker. Michael Kirby, an accomplished orator, gave a great address and I hope it will go down on record that he did.

I must admit it was an exhausting day, as I picked him up at Wellington airport after midnight on Saturday, no problems there, the flight arriving half an hour early but I had checked it beforehand. I then dropped him at the Copthorne Hotel on Oriental Parade and went home but couldn't get to sleep till about 4am. Took a valium but it didn't help. Up at seven to be the chair at the Q & A breakfast Body Positive had organised at the hotel. I got there early and everyone, except Michael, was there. He had slept in!

Anyway, the Q&A went well and everyone was happy and we repaired to Te Papa to hear the dissertation on the AIDS Quilt and prepare for the morning's ceremony. But yet again, Te Papa failed as no chairs were in place - Nikkie said she was short-staffed. Not good enough I'm afraid. That museum has got a serious problem with its staff. Luckily our volunteers got together to put out the chairs and about twenty minutes late the Quilt Project began.

On to the main ceremony and all speakers, including the choirs, performed very well, with the standout speech being Michael's, followed closely by Dame Margaret Sparrow speaking humourously on the history of contraception and the role it played in the AIDS epidemic in New Zealand. Lots of stories about female condoms and how they were not used.

We finished off the morning with a quick cup of tea and some heavily iced cup-cakes in the ante-room, cakes that were too sweet for some, including the newly vegetarian Michael. We were both tuckered out and I was then to ferry him back to the airport for his return trip home. But first he politely requested to spend a few quiet minutes on Oriental Bay beach where he wanted to say goodbye to his Spanish lover, with whom he had spent a honeymoon about fifty years earlier at this same place. The Spaniard had only last weekend passed away with pancreatic cancer in Madrid. It was a touching moment of remembrance for him and one he wanted to spend alone.

I had suggested to Ron that Body Positive give him a small gift, but he refused my offer of Jack Body's recently published biography saying that he was passionate about Bach cantatas, so today I am seeking a suitable CD to send to him in Sydney where one day on my return, we may catch up again.

All in all, the Memorial had a modicum of success, but not in numbers. I would not think he would be likely to return to this event in 2016 given the few people who showed up so I may suggest that next year Auckland might invite him as they have a much larger population of people affected by hiv/AIDS and there is a greater need for someone like him to speak.

But thank you Michael for making this somewhat arduous trip to deliver an excellent timely reminder to the few who were there, to remember our passed-on friends and colleagues from this once terrible, but now manageable, AIDS epidemic.

Jack Body, justly eulogised again