The Secret Diary Of Steve Braunias - by Steve Braunias

Monday

I’ll be right. Wait and see. Didn’t sit through Lundy trial in Summer of Hope writing award-winning pieces (You might well hope - Ed.) because I’m not the finest legal commentator in the media. They’re wrong. I’m right. He’s not guilty. Didn’t do it. Not fat. Never fucked hooker. Loved wife. And Amber. Jewel of a name, that. 

I’ve written a book out of a lamington. Watch. Ernest stole my style. Hemingway. This is the piece. Pinched that. Nobody appreciates. Scrummage. Sewage. Shortest story. Saddest story for sale baby’s shoes never worn. I cried. Lit a fag. House caught fire.

Tuesday

Currie kneels by my desk. Rare visit. “Take a boat to Mexico, Oh My Greatest Scribe.” A well-deserved junket, I tell myself, since he stole that Wolfson from my hands (you can't win it twice - Ed). I picture cruising, alcohol, gazing seaward and composing my peerless prose.

Original Me: I walked the Great South Road and made readers swoon with images conjured.

Intrepid Me: I paced the Waterview Extension and was illusory with ants. Ants, I alone got down among the workers. The Young Man and the Ant.

Fearless Me: I talk to the lonely. Me. Record their everyday banality. The Scum Also Rises.

I use my one cassette. I wipe it clean of each interview. I re-use, then re-interview, then wipe it clean again. One cassette. One Man. One Braunias. One Genius – wiped, reused, wiped, reused - my only tool. One cassette; one man; one recorder; brilliance has no ceiling. 

Currie said: “I want you in with that live sheep export. You’re chasing dags. Talking footrot, finding facial eczema. Pregnancy-testing ewes.

“Scram.”

Wednesday

Readers & Writers Festival. My element. One problem. Hemingway, ahem, Braunias, shares the stage with no man. A mistake, surely, I am scheduled to appear with someone called David Slack. Who is this? I Google. Writes obituaries and thinks that is funny? Calls himself satirist.  Example:

Faaark. 

Thursday

Wintec. My happy place. Clear blue skies. Warm and dry. Baby journalists come here to listen to Bishop Braunias. Ego Journalists queue to speak to baby journalists. Onanist members of the Facebook Kiwi Journalist Association think it matters. Nobody else cares.  A child who never wants to work in the industry again reminds me I came second in Best Blog to some c*** (edited - Ed) I had never heard of. Unbelievable.

Friday

Tidied up my Wikipedia entry.  Add in my employers.  Too many to remember. Read everything I’ve written for the past 100 years including my books, “Madman: Inside Steve Braunias”, “How to Watch a Steve Braunias”, “Steve Braunias I have Known”, and “Steve Braunias of the Week”.

Or Some.