The write stuff

Columnist and author Joe Bennett turns his observational powers and sharp sense of humour onto his younger self in a memoir of his first three decades.

- SARAH CATHERALL

At the age of 30, Joe Bennett arrived in Lyttelton and moved into the cottage where he has lived ever since.

This is the point where the English-born columnist and author concludes his just-published memoir, From There to Here. It might seem unusual to stop an autobiography halfway through a life, but Bennett explains that most of the adventures that make interesting reading happened in his earlier years.

He finally settled down when he chose New Zealand as his home, and he's happier for it. "Until then, everything I owned you could get in a suitcase and a half," he says.

"My feet had always itched. Then I chose to come here, and it felt like a watershed. I bought a house, got a dog, and then it was all over. It seemed like a break in my life.

Everything built up to that age and I've been resident in one place ever since." For 25 years, Bennett has made a living as a writer, penning 20 non-fiction books, thousands of syndicated newspaper columns and one novel. When we speak, he sits in his Lyttelton home, on the brink of his 66th birthday. He is about to go on a holiday up north and has just finished a column for a newspaper about scientists recreating mammoth meat. The week before he'd had ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot making headlines, in his sights.

I can't see him to talk about his memoir because he can't work the Zoom link. He speaks about technology with the same fiery ranting that infiltrates his columns, a view that many of his fellow Boomers may relate to. "Technology makes my head boil. I would rather it wasn't there. It's a diminished world that kids come into."