Time flies when you're having fun, so it surprised me to realise that this month marks my 800th column for The Weekend Sun.

I started these columns in 2003 and have been producing them every week since then, aside from one four week holiday and the occasional Christmas break. There's also been the odd column pulled at the last minute.

Over that time I figure I've put down slightly over half a million words – roughly five 400-page novels - on the highs and lows of local music and whatever other entertainment ephemera has registered on the radar at the Watusi Country Club, or before that Castle Watusi and The Watusi Spiritual Retreat. Three homes, in sixteen years. I guess I'm not as peripatetic as I imagined.

I must give credit where it's due and thank publishers Claire and Brian Rogers who started this whole she-bang. Brian was the first person to turn me down for a job in the newspaper biz.

That was a long time ago, way before The Weekend Sun, but even then Brian and Claire had a dream.

I applied for a job as a copy reader. I was young and unemployed, and with my generally anally retentive personality was a wiz at checking spelling and punctuation. Which was, before the days of personal computers and spell-checks, what a copy reader did. Check stuff.

Overqualified

I didn't know Brian and he didn't know me but he very sensibly didn't hire me. I'd like to think it was because I was overqualified.

The only thing I did know was that he was something of a local drumming hero. In the aural archive of local musical stories is the legend of the show when his band supported Split Enz. Exact details have been lost in the mists of time but many still contend that Split Enz were so astounded by the unique musical style of their support act that it inspired their consequent musical direction and rise to international fame. Who knows...

Brian and Claire's vision eventually started in a little house down The Avenues. The Weekend Sun was born.

I believed then that it was a brilliant idea, a badly-needed, locally owned publication. And I still think so.

At the end of 2002 they approached me to write an entertainment column, preferably something funny. And I tried to do that. But I soon realised that writing humorous stuff would just mean doubling up since Brian had firmly taken the lead in the 'funny opinionated column” stakes with his Rogers Rabbits. Dammit.

Music and film

So I wrote about music and film and any temporary obsessions, and left the funny stuff to the expert.

To close column number 800 I'd just like to thank Brian and Claire for dragging me into this, and thank all the editors who have from time to time saved me from myself. Columns have occasionally been pulled, some attacking the other paper or insulting politicians, one rather enthusiastically supporting cannabis reform (got in a bit early with that one), and as recently as a couple of weeks ago I made some probably libellous comments about a local personality which hit the cutting floor.

Most importantly, thank you all for reading. And thanks for the emails: it's pleasing to know that people are interested in the titbits of information and opinion I've been putting out there. Thank you even for the abuse, most of which was, I'm sure, richly deserved: it is heartening to know that there are people here passionate enough about music to disagree about it in extreme terms.

Mostly though it's been an absolute pleasure to watch and comment as the music scene has changed and grown. I hope to keep doing it for a while still but who knows? This is an unpredictable world and we must live every day with kindness and hope and as if it might be our last.