First Man Clarke Gayford ‘I STILL HAVE TO PINCH MYSELF’
Sandwiched in between Sir Robert Muldoon’s desk and shelves of homemade cards with hearts on them, sharing a Zoom chat with Clarke Gayford is something of a tale of two worlds. He’s sitting in the office at Premier House, which is the Wellington home he and his partner, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, immediately shift to when there is a hint of lockdown in the air.
They’ve become more adaptable to what Clarke calls the “30 minutes’ notice to get a bag and get on a plane” chaos. They’ve become more adaptable to a lot of things. “The phone can ring at any moment and things can change quickly,” he says.
“It’s been like that for the past few years. You never get used to it – and humans fall back into their own routines pretty quickly, so having that turned on its head is always quite jarring, particularly when you’ve got a little one in tow.”
And with that reference to their three-year-old daughter Neve, he shrugs, adding, “It works itself out one way or another.”
While the nation was at its last Alert level 4, Clarke started running again for the first time in decades – “an excuse to get out of the house!” – and it was on one of his most recent runs that a thought came up that made
