Mountain Scene - My inspiring wish-list for 2013

I got new sheets, the Richie McCaw book (talks way too much about the bloody Crusaders so I had to stop reading it), socks, undies, more grey hair and a bit of a beer gut for Christmas this year. 

Quite typical but hardly inspiring so it seemed apt to wish for a few things that would inspire me a little more in 2013 and here they are.

•  The New Zealand Transport Agency wake up and realise that Queenstown needs a two-lane bridge over the Kawarau River. There are more lanes going into Oamaru ...  
  need I say more? Toll those JAFAs for their own roads and give us a new bridge.

• NZ Idol, X Factor and NZ’s Got Talent merge into a three-part, 30-minute non-primetime mini-series out of recognition that NZ doesn’t really have the talent to support one show let alone three. The gaps in programming to be replaced by The Krypton Factor 2013 and a non-PC old school remake of Top Town with stubbies and moustaches as compulsory uniform items and Judy Bailey as a co-host.
• One Direction go the wrong direction along with their fans and end up marooned at sea for ever, along with Justin Bieber, the cast of Twilight and True Blood.
• Hank Moody comes back from the dead and they make several more seasons of Californication.
• A real winter that makes snow guns and exaggerated snow reports redundant.
• Skinny jeans go out of fashion along with flat brim hats, baggy snowboard pants and any other impracticable wastes of shelf space.
• Hallensteins to go back to selling clothes that I can wear without feeling like a goth or boy band groupie.
• The public and the NZ Rugby Union to get back in behind provincial rugby’s ITM Cup and in particular my beloved Stags. Oh, and a few bonus point wins would also be nice.
• A relaxation of Queenstown’s archaic inner-city noise limits.
• Speight’s shelves the recent ‘Knowing what matters’ campaign and gets back to its roots with grunty Southern Man adverts and Daggy on horses. That last ad almost made me cry, it cut me deeper than the time Tip Top got rid of banana choc-chip ice cream for a few years.
• Real Journeys to bring back Speight’s on all their excursions. Surely they cannot sell an authentic Southern experience without it, plus it makes it a dry trip back on the Earnslaw after a weekend hunting.
• Organised pub crawls become extinct.
• John Key, Destination Queenstown and Air NZ announce a new partnership to increase tourism numbers to Queenstown from Scandinavia. The marketing would be skewed to the female backpacker market of course. 

Mark writes a regular column for the Mountain Scene - View HERE