We tend never to mention the people who do the actual work for CAFCA and Watchdog. These are not Committee members or volunteers but commercial enterprises with which we have a business relationship and pay the going rate. But we’ve had very productive dealings with these people going back decades, they provide a service that has often gone above and beyond, and they have become mates.

I want to single out Keith Miskimmin. Watchdog has been printed at a major central Christchurch institution since 1997 and for all of that of that time Keith was the head printer. He retired earlier in 2016, aged in his late 60s (the April Watchdog was the last one published on his watch). So I’d been dealing with Keith for nearly 20 years. For all of that time he was extremely good at his job, Watchdog was produced fast and always as a good quality job (it’s a big job; we’re one of their biggest cash customers, maybe the biggest, actually).

Keith always went the extra mile to get it done in time for us – every Christmas there was always a rush to get the December issue printed before they closed for a couple of weeks (often he only had a couple of days left in which to do it). We didn’t always meet that annual deadline but if we missed it, he ensured it was always his first job to be done when he went back to work in January.

Ours was a business relationship, which is as it should be. We never discussed politics or anything of concern to CAFCA (I have no idea what he thinks about any of that) but we always had a good old yarn about rugby or cricket. We went through a lot together in those decades – regular changes of equipment (which affected the size of Watchdog) and one prospect of outsourcing the institution’s printing (didn’t happen).

Like everyone else in Christchurch we were both deeply affected by the 2010/11 catastrophic earthquakes. For the first five days after the February 2011 killer quake, we had no power, water or toilet at our home. Every stage of the food cycle, from cooking to excretion, was a problem. So, the weekend after the quake Becky and I went to the city’s biggest mall to have something to eat. The food court was even more jampacked and deafeningly noisy than usual – half the city seemed to have the same idea as us. But above the roar of the crowd I heard somebody shout my name. It was Keith and we were both delighted to see each other alive and well.

For a while there he had to work inside the fenced off central city, with soldiers manning the cordon. But that didn’t stop him printing Watchdog as usual, just a couple of months later. The printery survived the quakes but the land underneath it was definitely compromised – I was once invited to witness the floor shaking several metres away after a couple of packets of paper were dropped on it.

Nor did I regularly deal with Keith only in connection with Watchdog – since 2003 the Anti-Bases Campaign’s (ABC) Peace Researcher, which I co-edit, has been printed there. I also used to edit a third newsletter – the Philippines Solidarity Network of Aotearoa’s (PSNA) Kapatiran (Solidarity), which Keith printed for around a decade before I decided, in 2009, that producing the two newsletters that are actually part of my paid work was all that I can manage.  Of course Keith did not do it single handed – he headed a team, all of whom I’ve worked with since 1997. Special mention must be made of Alan Armstrong, who retired a couple of years ago, and Susan Sell who, having been there longer than either of the men, is now the head printer.  I look forward to continuing to work with Sue for years to come.

Photocopying

While I’m handing out plaudits I must mention the separate business that has handled all of CAFCA’s photocopying (and some printing) since the 80s. It has also done all of ABC’s copying for donkey’s years, plus any copying that PSNA has needed doing. In particular, I must mention Ray Leonard, with whom I worked since the 90s and who retired a couple of years ago. Ray always went that extra mile, whether we gave him lots of big jobs (I’m thinking of all the paper I took around the country on my 2014 national speaking tour) or the dreaded annual fiddly job of making multiple copies of newspaper clippings of all different shapes, sizes and quality so that I can send those copies to the Roger Award judges as the evidence against that year’s finalists (as they also print the Judges Reports for us, they are among the few outsiders to know in advance who has won the Roger Award each year).

As with Keith, Ray was a bloke’s bloke – every time I saw him we had a very detailed and animated discussion about rugby. The quakes badly affected that Sydenham business - the September 2010 one flattened their building (they became a poster boy for that quake in the media). Undeterred they moved across the street and carried on. After the February 2011 quake the street, Christchurch’s main one, was closed off and patrolled by soldiers in armoured cars – customers could only access the building from the rear. Becky and I were in there one time, during the chaotic early days after that quake, when an officious Army officer came in demanding to see the written proof that they were allowed to be open. He was sent away with a flea in his ear.

Ray has gone but Jeff, Andre and Ella continue to provide excellent service. To those who have retired - Keith Miskimmin, Alan Armstrong and Ray Leonard - I say a heartfelt thank you for your decades of service to CAFCA, Watchdog, ABC and Peace Researcher. More than that, it has been decades of friendships. Good mates, good memories. Sadly now though, whenever I get any printing or copying done, I’ve got nobody to talk to about rugby.