By Anzac Day this year, it was clear our sacrifices during lockdown were paying off. I remember standing at my gate on Anzac morning, and I thought of my grandad Norman Verrall. He was orphaned in 1918, when the Spanish flu killed both his parents. I know he had a tough childhood in foster care in Auckland. He joined the navy for World War II and served on HMS Leander in the Pacific and Indian oceans. I thought about how our country had asked him to risk so much when he had so little. Grandad returned from the war to work stoking the boiler at Christchurch's Firestone factory, a duty he shared with Norman Kirk. I often imagine Big Norm had Norm Verrall in mind when he said all people need is "to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have [clothes] to wear, and they have to have something to hope for." Us grandkids called grandad "Plum", for the proud fruit tree he tended at the back of his mint green State house in Sydenham. 