I am not a bogan. This simple mantra of non-association is maintained despite my presence at the AC/DC concert at Western Springs on Thursday night.Along with 50,000 other black-singleted souls, I paid my monies and allowed my consciousness to be captured by the simple chords of an extraordinarily simple band.
I also consumed sufficient illegal substances – mostly passive cannabis smoke – that I was random associating long before dwarf guitarist Angus Young did his striptease act. Quite why a skinny, pasty 55-year-old feels the need to disrobe in front of adoring fans remains one of life's mysteries. Quite why ostentatiously heterosexual men roar their approval is another.
But then Young can do anything he likes. This tiny Aussie is the star of the show. His mimicry of the devil schoolboy has driven AC/DC to be the most successful band in the world. They lack the pretension of U2 and the hit pedigree of the Rolling Stones, but they are the supergroups' equal and more besides.
They would need to be. Western Springs is a chaotic venue and there are none of the niceties of the all-seated shows so common of pop performances.
But then AC/DC don't do pop – dirty deeds done cheap is their credo, although $160 a ticket isn't as cheap as it used to be.
Without doubt, they are also a white band. Although their audience ranged over two and possibly three generations, one can't help notice the contrast of white faces and black singlets. Heavy metal is white boys' music the same way that rap is South Auckland's sympathy.
It is also the 1970s made manifest.
Perhaps that explained all us fifty-somethings in the crowd. Making the horned hand signal on cue from the stage and giving guitar solos a reverence rarely found outside a church.
We were head-bangers for a couple of hours before being returned to the respectability of the real world.
At such times one appreciates the tribal make up of this country. The layers of social stratum and their difference in custom and contempt. And how striking the differences rather than the similarities.
I was struck by the same feeling delivering daughter Lucy to her first day at school.
As in most provinces, I live in a bi-racial community rather than a multi-racial polyglot of an Auckland or Wellington. My community is an obvious blend of Maori and Pakeha as in most of the North Island. It is only in the wider Auckland where Maori are not the second most populous ethnic group.
Indeed, in the new super city, there will be twice as many Asian residents as Maori, and markedly more Pacific Islanders than tangata whenua. European/Pakeha are still the dominant grouping, but it is a dominance in ethnic descent. Which explains the initial sense of dislocation many provincials get when wandering down Queen St. We are not quite the Polynesian capital that we preach.
Certainly not in the decile-10 school that my daughter now attends. For a wee while there it was as if The Midwich Cuckoos had been reborn. Blonde kids with blue eyes, expectant at their new adventure. An order, an atmosphere, a setting that could be only middle-class Pakeha.
Such a contrast from her father's first day. Barely a couple of kilometres down the road at a decile-one school in the midst of state housing. Not conscious of concepts like class or race. Just another anxious kid uncomfortably separated from mum and dad.
But that is the nature of primary schools these days. They are manifestations of our social difference. Even funded differently by the state to recognise that there are those born with opportunity and those without.
Unsurprisingly, the state seeks to compensate the lower decile schools with additional funding and resources. It reasons that the lower the decile, the tougher the teacher's challenge. And the greater the instability. One of my local primary school principals estimates that he will lose half his roll this year to be replaced by more transients.
Such discrepancies have become entrenched in our society. The better the decile, the more their pupils will achieve. It is the most depressing of correlations.
This accounts for some of the unease that primary teachers and their unions have over the national standards. They consider that the results of national testing will entrench the win/lose expectation of their current decile.
Although, surely, this is sophistry. We already know which schools will produce which results by simple association with socio-economic status.
In which respect, many parents already perceive that there are good schools and bad schools. The teacher unions fear the hardening of such perceptions.
Maybe. If Lucy's school actually had more Asian students their success ratio would be even more enhanced. Because it is not simply parental earning status that predicts likely educational success. It is also race. And that is a truth that unsettles policy makers and educators alike.
Why is it that the children of recent Asian migrants, learning a new language in a new country within an alien culture, achieve better pass rates than those whose ancestors arrived a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, a generation ago? Around whose cultures the education system is based and enwrapped?
The answer is simple.
They come from a parental and cultural background that wants success. That has aspirations. That is not hamstrung by past grievances. That does not possess a peer group that loathes excellence and advances mediocrity.
Which possibly accounts for the extraordinarily few Asian faces at the AC/DC concert. They are neither bogans, nor wannabe bogans. Which is a pity. Because they missed a bloody good concert.