Just as the death of her two global loves has made Elspeth McLean feel less secure, deaths linked to global business make her uneasy.
Until four years ago, global love had been good to me.
It was the best kind of love, allowing me to adore two men simultaneously without knowing either of them.
I never had to worry about their snoring (and apparently at least one of them had this endearing trait) or the possibility they might develop beer guts while their eyebrows became hanging gardens and their ears caves for two hairy little pets.
There was no possibility of domestic violence and their behaviour with the television remote control was never my concern.
If they became grumpy old men, given to making loud derogatory public comments they believed were sotto voce, I was spared that embarrassment.
In turn, my appearance, my behaviour, indeed my very existence, remained a mystery to them. I could let myself go as far as I liked and they would never be moved to comment.
Somehow, I felt everything was slightly better in the world because of them.
Then they spoiled it by dying.
The first to go was Red Adair, trouble-shooter extraordinaire.
Red popped up on my television screen whenever there was an oil fire to be fought, and the sense that everything would be all right washed over me like a little oil gush.
In 50 years he fought more than 2000 fires.
He was no oil painting - short, with slicked back hair (heck, he had to do something with all that oil he saved) and from a distance I could cope with the fact some poor alligator had to die for his boots.
There was something reassuring about a guy whose favourite clobber was red overalls and who could borrow a mate's shoe-lace for a tie when his open-necked shirt didn't make the grade at a posh hotel.
I knew he wouldn't keep me waiting while his nail polish or fake tan dried.
The only red thing Red apparently didn't like was red tape, and as his mate Dave Ward said, "he blasted his way through a whole lot of that".
And now, just four years after his death, film star Paul Newman is no longer here.
Of course, he was a hunk. Those eyes, that finely chiselled face.
But it wasn't that which really grabbed me. I liked the fact he didn't chase headlines.
He had grown old with a beautiful forthright woman, his second wife Joanne Woodward whom he married in 1958.
During that time they had to cope with repeated rumours they were about to split up, prompting them once to take out a newspaper advertisement on the subject.
It appears they had disagreements from time to time. What couple doesn't? Joanne was keen on ballet. He liked car races and fights.
Joanne's grandmother suggested the test of a marriage was whether you could enjoy talking to your spouse across the breakfast table for 50 years. I like to think that's a test Paul passed with ease.
His philanthropy also appealed.
He was co-founder of Newman's Own, which makes foods and has given more than $US250 million ($NZ390 million) to charity since it was set up in 1982.
Enjoying global love has made me understand the attraction of global business.
Making money in far off lands is surely much more romantic than doing it in your own backyard, where you might be forced to worry about whether the workers are living in squalor or you are ruining the environment.
If you run into a spot of bother or two you can blame it on the foreigners' systems which, naturally, are not up to the standard of ours.
You don't need to think too hard about whether what you are selling is worthwhile, and whether the way it is sold in that faraway place would be tolerated in your country.
You know that your fellow citizens back home, who are tying themselves in knots worrying about such things as whether they are killing the planet by using supermarket bags, will be happy as long as the big bucks are rolling in.
But just as the death of my two global loves has made me feel less secure, deaths linked to global business make me uneasy.
Should we be asking if New Zealand should be involved with selling infant formula to poor foreign women? Are formulas marketed overseas in a way which would not be allowed here?
Wouldn't knowing that only four years ago in China at least 12 children died after being fed fake formula make any foreign company realise the risks involved and make them scrupulous about quality control?
Perhaps Fonterra and friends could learn from the Newman's Own motto "shameless exploitation in the pursuit of the common good".
In the meantime, if you find out anything untoward about Red or Paul, keep it to yourselves.
Global love, like global business, does not thrive on scandal.
- Elspeth McLean is a Dunedin writer.
