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SocietyNovember 27, 2022

Essay on Sunday: Surrendering to the sea

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When something is terrifying and out of your control, sometimes it’s best to immerse yourself even if you can’t tell what’s under the surface.

Illustrations: Naomii Seah

When I was a teen, I almost drowned. 

It happened in the calm seas of Auckland’s North Shore: the favourite haunt of my high-school days. My friends and I were on the edge of the wharf at Mairangi Bay, where people often jumped. It was the sort of Kiwi summer experience I longed for, sipping Coronas and baking in the hot sun as ecstatic friends made cannonballs and slipped between pier struts like pink eels. 

But at the time my life was far from the yellow-tinted exuberance of Coca-Cola ads which, looking back, were probably the basis for this ill-fated fantasy. And perhaps I should’ve known what might happen: there was a prophecy in the sort of grey summer day that made the sea look like wet concrete. The wind was up, and it was cold. But I was determined to jump the wharf and enjoy it. 

I had dragged my friends out with this goal in mind. The three of us stood on the edge, looking over our toes to the opaque surface below. The struts of the pier seemed to plunge into nothing, and none of us felt like jumping. 

“I’ll just check how deep it is,” said the most sensible of us. I watched her wade in from the top of the pier, which might as well have been the edge of a cliff.

“Jump!” She called, giving the thumbs up, treading water. Beside me, my other friend braced herself. I watched as the ocean swallowed her with a loud splash before she bobbed back up, shivering. The two of them encouraged me from the water.

“C’mon, you’ve got this!” I stood on the edge, trying to work up the courage. I pumped my arms, did mini-jumps, closed my eyes. My friends struck back to shore. A moment later I decided: it was now or never. I flung myself into the sea. 

As soon as the water closed over my head, I panicked. I opened my mouth to scream. The brine hit the back of my throat. I swallowed, choking, wondering if I could drink the ocean dry. I kicked toward the surface. There was water in my nose; a pressure in my sinuses. The wind was picking up, and it was getting choppy. I began to rethink my decision. I gasped for a mouthful of air and was slapped by an oncoming wave. I closed my eyes and sunk deeper beneath the surface. In the darkness I imagined a cavernous abyss beneath me, though the most rational part of me knew we weren’t far from shore. I thrashed wildly, struggling against nothing. In the next moment, I felt my friend’s arms circle me. 

I often think of that moment when my anxiety flares up. All the same systems kick into gear. Turns out anxiety and drowning have the same symptoms: pounding heart, restlessness, a need for air. 

The accepted wisdom is that the best way to overcome fear is to confront it. But most things I’m scared of are harder to confront than my fear of deep water. How do you confront the lingering suspicion that you’re a bad person, destined for failure? How do you confront the fear that you’ll always be alone, that no one will ever really know who you are? How do you confront self-doubt? Of course, there’s the little things: I throw myself into new hobbies; I spend time alone; I do yoga; I practise affirmations; I seek counselling; I pursue friendships; I have new experiences.

But there are times when these fears become all consuming because there are no fundamental answers. Definitions of success shift and move, relationships change and grow, self-esteem and mental health fluctuate. 

But the sea is constant.   

Although I’m afraid of deep water, I’ve always been drawn to the ocean. I think it’s because when I’m near the sea, the illusion of control becomes a little more translucent, a little more apparent in a way it usually isn’t. When I stand on the edge of the world and look out over its expanse I know that the ocean is vast and indifferent and mysterious and powerful. It knows things I could never dream of.

And maybe that fear and love go hand in hand. One of my favourite sensations is to stand in the shallows of the hot West coast and feel the sand pull out from under me, threatening to sweep me away. I know then, that I am small. Everything shrinks in comparison. I recognise that there’s only so much I can control: when and where I go into the water; when to swim and when to float; my breathing — my emotions. 

As for many others, the pandemic years were hard for me. The first lockdown was particularly isolating. I had made the snap decision to lock down with a new partner, who was away for most of the day as an essential worker. The future seemed unstable, and the unknown was overwhelming. In the absence of certainty, I decided to start swimming. 

We were locked down beside Lake Dunstan, a man-made lake in the deep south of Te Waipounamu. It was shallow where we were; you could see right to the bottom, where long strands of kelp waved and danced. A slow-flowing tributary led out to the churning waters of the Clutha. So it wasn’t the ocean, but it was a start. 

I started small. There was a stretch between two piers, barely 50 metres long. I sat on the edge for a while, swinging my feet in the pale blue. The water robbed my skin of its usual depth; my feet looked alien, detached from the rest of me. I did the first lap in a doggy paddle. I tried my best not to think about what might be hiding in the long seaweed. Half-way, my courage failed me and my breathing quickened. But I made it to the pier, exhausted and shaking. I turned to examine the water behind me. It was still, and devoid of life except for the dark kelp fronds waving lazily. 

I did the next lap in backstroke. High above, the sun watched me from a cloudless sky like a singular eye. I focused on the sensation of the water on my skin, which swirled around me as I kicked my feet, pushing myself onward. As I reached my arms overhead, droplets of water fell on my forehead and cheeks, which were growing red from the sun above. I began to feel more confident. But again, my courage failed me near the end. It unnerved me that I couldn’t see where I was going.

A few days later, we spied eels in the water: big ones. Although I knew they’d be unlikely to hurt me, I didn’t swim there again. 

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Like the sea, my anxiety ebbs and flows. But whenever I feel particularly brave, I’ll go for a swim in the ocean. 

I never go very far out, and I never swim for very long. For me, it’s an exercise in confronting fear more than it is a physical one. First, there is the fear of the cold water on my skin as I wade in. Sometimes small victories are important. Then, there is the fear of kicking off the bottom and surrendering myself to the unknown — especially when the water is murky. Then, there is the thump, thump, thump of my heart, which becomes louder and more insistent as I move through the water. Every stroke, every wave, every breath is thrown into vivid relief. Life feels larger than life. 

Finally, when it gets too much, I remember how to float. I slip onto my back, breathing deep into my belly. Inhale: watch as my abdomen inflates above the water-line. Listen to the seagulls overhead. Feel the wind and sun on my face and the water’s full-body embrace. Exhale into a slow surrender. 

Keep going!
Pete Taylor, the man behind the Santa Parade floats. (Photo: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)
Pete Taylor, the man behind the Santa Parade floats. (Photo: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)

SocietyNovember 26, 2022

One man makes the Farmers Santa Parade floats, and he’s been doing it for 50 years

Pete Taylor, the man behind the Santa Parade floats. (Photo: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)
Pete Taylor, the man behind the Santa Parade floats. (Photo: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)

Hundreds of performers, dozens of volunteers, and (hopefully) a whole lot of sunshine make up the Farmers Santa Parade, but they’d be nothing without Pete Taylor.

In 1934, when the first Farmers Santa Parade – or “Santa’s Grand Parade”, as it was known then – made its way along Queen Street, the floats were drawn by horses and tractors, and the characters waving from them included Waggles and Goggles and The Big Fiddle. Today the floats are a bit more high-tech, but they remain the highlight of the annual parade. Where else but Auckland’s main street a few weeks before Christmas can you see a flying horse, a giant tyrannosaurus, or a sleigh pulled by reindeer, dolphins and a kiwi? 

While many of these floats are now familiar to Aucklanders, most of them aren’t aware that almost all of them are created by one man, in a workshop located barely a kilometre from the parade route. His name is Pete Taylor, and he’s been the man behind the Santa Parade for 50 years.

The view inside Pete Taylor’s Newtown workshop. (Photo: Sam Brooks)

Just under the bright yellow Golf Warehouse sign in Newton Gully is the closest thing you’ll find to Santa’s Workshop in the CBD, albeit one that probably smells a bit more like paint and melted plastic than the one in the Arctic. At Pete Taylor’s workshop, a massive dragon sits next to a flying Pegasus, just a few metres away from six fibreglass reindeer and an angel waiting to be put on top of a Christmas tree. 

“It’s one day of glory, and nobody knows what the hell goes into it,” says Taylor of parade day – this year’s is on Sunday, November 27 – as he shows me around his collection of spectacular floats that are paraded through the CBD for just a few hours each year.

Taylor’s history with the Santa Parade stretches back to 1972, when he was employed in Farmers’ display department and was offered the opportunity to work on the parade. At the time it was a small operation consisting of a designer/artist, a builder, and Taylor and one other assistant.

“I didn’t know a hell of a lot to start with, to be perfectly honest,” Taylor recalls. “My dad had taught me a lot about building, I was half good at drawing, but I wasn’t really experienced.”

Pete Taylor triumphantly atop one of his floats. (Photo: Supplied)

What goes into a Santa Parade float has changed massively in the half century that Taylor has been making them. Back in the 70s he’d start by making a wooden frame on which he would staple wire netting, and then cover it with papier mache. “I used to use a lot of crepe paper,” he says. “If I was doing a fairy queen float, and I wanted to make pink clouds or whatever, I’d put my wire netting, my wooden frame, and then get these crepe paper flowers and twist them all around.”

The floats, he says, were “very labour intensive and very vulnerable to the weather”. Now they’re made from a mixture of fibreglass, chip board and polystyrene. They’re designed not just to withstand the weather but withstand time – “forever and a day”, as Taylor puts it.

Floats take part in the annual Farmers Santa Parade on November 26, 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. (Photo: Hannah Peters/Getty Images

In the old days, a lot of the floats were self-propelled – they had a car driving underneath them, built into the float – but as time went by, they would end up having mechanical problems. Nowadays, they’re all pulled by cars, often supplied by local Toyota dealerships.

Each float can vary from six metres long to well over 10 for one of the headliner floats, and can weigh up to three tonnes. Those headliner floats, like the one that Santa and the grand marshal are on, can take anywhere from three to five months to complete, and are designed to be used for several parades before being retired. 

Despite the months of work that go into each creation, Taylor wishes he could do more. “I always used to feel disappointed because you had to stop at a certain stage of the float. I could go on and on, but there’s just not the time.”

There’s a parade to get ready for.

The float from which Santa will wave from in tomorrow’s Farmers Santa Parade. (Photo: Sam Brooks)

In the early days Taylor and his small team would drive the floats from the workshop to the parade route themselves. “Quite often, there’d be rain and some of the papier mache would fall off the floats, so we had a day to repair them. Most of the time, we were very very lucky!” 

These days he has a team of around 10 – including his ex-Air Force brother-in-law, a mechanic, and a civil engineer – to help move the floats on parade day. The big challenge is actually getting the massive floats out of Taylor’s workshop, a very careful game of reverse Tetris. 

While they usually start the move-out at 5am, “if the weather’s wet, we might hold off because we don’t know whether it’s going to turn, really howl, or not. You don’t want to get them all outside, go to all that… and then go, oh no, we’ve got to take them back in.”

They try to get them to their starting location in the CBD by about 10am. That gives them another three hours before the parade starts at 1pm, but it’s time they need. “It’s just a logistical nightmare,” says Taylor. “Once you get all the floats down there, you never know what damage they’ll have … and you’ve got to fit the damage up.” For more delicate floats, he’ll take the more easily damaged parts off during the move, and re-attach them before the parade. (Pegasus, for instance, gets briefly dewinged.)

A Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Gingerbread man, peacefully co-existing in Pete Taylor’s workshop. (Photo: Sam Brooks)

After touch-ups and repairs, the floats are good to go and Taylor can watch the parade, an event that has always been a family affair. Back in the early days he sometimes performed as King Neptune, and all three of his kids have participated in the past. This year, he’s looking forward to seeing two of his three grandchildren waving from a float – a perk of being related to the man who made it.

When the parade is over there’s a kilometre-long trail of floats to get back into the workshop – another game of Tetris. By the time they’re all put away, it’s about six in the evening. The floats are ready to be dismantled, recycled, or kept maintained for next year’s parade.

Taylor will be working on that one too, and he doesn’t see himself going anywhere anytime soon. “There are times when I go, shit, I can’t wait to finish that in the morning,” he says, looking proudly at the very float that his grandkids be on later this weekend.

“I don’t know whether an accountant gets that feeling looking at a spreadsheet.” 

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