The first 30 years – the informative ones – of one of New Zealand most popular columnists and commentators.

A childhood of fishing, cricket, dogs, games, friends, school, mild molestation, the odd death. The usual stuff. Then the long-haired gloom and vehemence of adolescence, moody, transgressional, writhing with love and sex, the intensity of which eventually receded, but which has continued as a sort of background hiss for the next fifty years.

Joe's famously irreverent prose has been published in more than 20 books. This, his first memoir, confronts and reflects on the journey from childhood to manhood, and his long and fruitless struggle against teaching for a living.