How Men Do Shopping Malls
15th December 2007
For the last thousand years or so our urban landscape has been dominated by cathedrals. Today our dominant architectural form is the shopping mall.
There are many similarities between the mall and the cathedral. Both capture the prevailing values of their age – religion or consumerism; both are market places of a sort, their halls filled with celestial music and their display cases rich with icons.
But there is one crucial difference. The cathedral was an overwhelmingly male environment. The shopping mall is not.
Almost every man I know dreads going to a shopping mall. Males possess a deep, instinctive aversion to these glass and concrete celebrations of consumer joy. The men one sees in shopping malls are desperate creatures: huddled forlornly over cardboard coffee cups in the food court or trailing disconsolately behind revved up wives and girlfriends. The mall reduces the male to chauffeur, shopping trolley and cash cow.
Many of us come up with pretty good avoidance strategies, golf being the most common. Christmas, however, usually defeats us.
After years of careful study I’ve come up with a foolproof way for men to do shopping malls, so tune in guys and I’ll talk you through it.
Let’s start with the universal law of men and Christmas shopping. Despite having an entire year to carefully plan a shopping list the male never has a clue what he is going to buy. You must never enter a shopping mall in this state. Give yourself some time to think about gifts before you are confronted by the dread of all male shoppers – choice.
What I do is park half a block from the mall. The few minutes walk is plenty of time to get my ideas sorted.
It also gives me time to scout the fringes. There are always a few shops on the outer perimeter of a mall that are accessible without being sucked into the vortex. These can be a godsend for males.
If you can combine fringe shops with high speed purchasing – the natural reflex of the male – you are well on the way to success. I’ll give you an example. Last Saturday I conducted my annual visit to a mall. Through accidents of history I always go to The Palms in Christchurch. I arrived without a thought in my head of what to buy for whom. I parked and walked – still no inspiration. I rounded a corner of the building and there was my perfect fringe shop – Dick Smith.
As I passed its doors the vision of the perfect gift for Sylvia lit up in my head. I weighed it up, made my decision and entered the shop. This took about three nanoseconds. Inside the shop I wasted no time trying to find the product myself. A nice young man took me directly to it. We discussed the various models and options, I selected the one I wanted, paid for it and was back on the street within three minutes.
A problem with malls is that they never stay the same. I am sure The Palms has been rebuilt annually for the past ten years. The landmarks I relied on last Christmas have vanished this year. The exits have been moved, entire corridors have been added. There was always a sports shop (another high-value location for male gift shopping) just to the right of the main entrance. Now there is a clothing boutique (low value!).
In this confused state last Saturday I made a tactical error. I headed for the landmark big box retailer, in this case K-Mart. Every mall is anchored by one or two of these monstrosities. They squat like gargoyles at the most prominent places in the mall, highly visible and almost always a disaster for male shoppers.
They are staffed by dull youths dressed in ill-fitting corporate polo shirts earning $3.00 an hour. These kids are locked away in dark cupboards each night so they possess the complexion of three day old rice pudding and the mental acuity of a vacuum cleaner. They know absolutely nothing about anything in the shop, and furthermore they don’t care. Ask them a question, they shrug their shoulders, say you should “talk to John” and vanish.
On Saturday I was looking for a badminton set. I searched haplessly through K-Mart for 15 minutes, finding neither John nor badminton. I left empty-handed, to the disdain of the young man on security watch at the front entrance.
As well as failing to master the geography of malls I have never developed a resistance to the sensory bombardment of these places. I become hyperactive and over-excited. They should install Ritalin vending machines for people like me, but that’s the last thing they want to do - hyperactive people spend more money.
In this condition it’s vital for the male shopper to know when to cut his losses. On Saturday I stumbled across Rebel Sports, secured the badminton set, flashed through Whitcoulls and was back on the pavement without suffering permanent damage. A Salvation Army Band was playing at the exit. I put $10.00 in their bucket, sent up a small prayer of thanks and thought of cathedrals.
Happy Christmas.
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Thursday, December 06, 2007
One Good Tern Deserves a Plover
I have endured some good-natured teasing from friends and acquaintances this week over a photograph of myself and Sylvia that appeared in Tuesday’s Guardian. If you did not see it – and I hope you didn’t – it shows us ankle-deep in the Ashburton River, dressed in gaiters, tramping shorts and (in my case) my daughter’s wide-brimmed school sunhat. Sylvia is peering through binoculars at an imagined point of focus somewhere off to the right, while I gesture wildly with out-flung arm, like Michelangelo’s Adam straining towards God.
A nineteenth century portrait artist would have painted out the river and invested the pose with a heroic Byronesque quality. In reality it was more like one of those satirical greeting cards. I imagine the caption: “after being lost for weeks in the wilderness Sylvia and Peter were astonished to see the same costume-hire shop they’d started from.”
Let me say that the photograph had a more serious purpose than simply to display us as objects of ridicule. We were on the Ashburton river to help with the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society’s annual bird count. I must also add that the photograph is completely fraudulent. At that time our involvement with Forest and Bird had been all of five minutes. We turned up to help with the bird count purely on a whim only to find ourselves hustled into the limelight by Ashburton’s merciless paparazzi.
Neither are we ornithological by nature. Any interest I had in birds was extinguished by a childhood in poultry. My father kept hundreds of hens, to whom I was enslaved as egg-collector, muck-raker and slaughterer; an experience that scarred me for life. Sylvia, growing up in the shadow of Liverpool’s docks, believed wildlife existed only in picture books until she came to New Zealand.
But we are fond of the outdoors and we joined the bird count mainly for the pleasure of spending a day strolling down the river. My expectations of actually counting birds were very low. Years of tramping have taught me that there are few birds in New Zealand’s great outdoors. There is a gulf between the iconic image of New Zealand as a country teeming with exotic bird life and the reality of bush and mountain landscapes where nothing moves or twitters except the occasional wood pigeon or fantail.
Like many who enjoy the mountains and bush my imagination has been captured at times by stories from early settlers in New Zealand describing vast flocks of wildfowl, forests shaking with birdlife and the deafening peal of the dawn chorus. A childhood hero was Richard Henry, New Zealand’s first genuine wildlife ranger, who fought the rising tide of rats and stoats in a doomed effort to save the kakapo of Dusky Sound.
For years I foolishly allowed myself to believe that the decimation of our native birdlife was firmly in the past. The publicity attached to heroic “snatched from the jaws of extinction” stories of the takahe, the kakapo and the Chatham Islands Robin suckered me into believing our wildlife’s darkest days were over.
Only recently, when I realised it has been years since I saw tui on Banks Peninsula, did I discover that life for our native bird populations is as bad as it has ever been – and often worse.
And we – humans – are the problem. We’re not always the immediate cause of birdlife decline - I believe the tuis of Banks Peninsula were devastated by the big snow of ’92 – but our activities, especially the destruction of habitat and food sources, are behind all the disasters.
Nowhere is this more true than in Canterbury where only tiny scraps of indigenous habitat remain and native birds eke out a poor existence on the fringes of highly modified environments. Efforts to revive and extend native ecosystems, creating ‘islands’ of bush and wetland that enable remnant populations of birds to connect, are taking shape and need urgent support.
With all this in mind we were delighted to find that the Ashburton River bed, while not exactly teeming with birdlife, is home to more varieties of birds than I imagined. By the end of the day I had recorded 19 species of birds, some in quite large numbers.
I enjoyed myself. I can now tell a tern from a plover, a stilt from an oystercatcher. I know that blue herons are really called white-faced herons and that a dotterel is not a thrush.
I discovered too that on a fine spring day, with wildflowers abundant and the sound of birdsong in the air, the Ashburton River bed possesses greater charm than I imagined. It will never become a tourist attraction but it’s a fine place to spend a little time, even in a silly hat and gaiters.
I have endured some good-natured teasing from friends and acquaintances this week over a photograph of myself and Sylvia that appeared in Tuesday’s Guardian. If you did not see it – and I hope you didn’t – it shows us ankle-deep in the Ashburton River, dressed in gaiters, tramping shorts and (in my case) my daughter’s wide-brimmed school sunhat. Sylvia is peering through binoculars at an imagined point of focus somewhere off to the right, while I gesture wildly with out-flung arm, like Michelangelo’s Adam straining towards God.
A nineteenth century portrait artist would have painted out the river and invested the pose with a heroic Byronesque quality. In reality it was more like one of those satirical greeting cards. I imagine the caption: “after being lost for weeks in the wilderness Sylvia and Peter were astonished to see the same costume-hire shop they’d started from.”
Let me say that the photograph had a more serious purpose than simply to display us as objects of ridicule. We were on the Ashburton river to help with the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society’s annual bird count. I must also add that the photograph is completely fraudulent. At that time our involvement with Forest and Bird had been all of five minutes. We turned up to help with the bird count purely on a whim only to find ourselves hustled into the limelight by Ashburton’s merciless paparazzi.
Neither are we ornithological by nature. Any interest I had in birds was extinguished by a childhood in poultry. My father kept hundreds of hens, to whom I was enslaved as egg-collector, muck-raker and slaughterer; an experience that scarred me for life. Sylvia, growing up in the shadow of Liverpool’s docks, believed wildlife existed only in picture books until she came to New Zealand.
But we are fond of the outdoors and we joined the bird count mainly for the pleasure of spending a day strolling down the river. My expectations of actually counting birds were very low. Years of tramping have taught me that there are few birds in New Zealand’s great outdoors. There is a gulf between the iconic image of New Zealand as a country teeming with exotic bird life and the reality of bush and mountain landscapes where nothing moves or twitters except the occasional wood pigeon or fantail.
Like many who enjoy the mountains and bush my imagination has been captured at times by stories from early settlers in New Zealand describing vast flocks of wildfowl, forests shaking with birdlife and the deafening peal of the dawn chorus. A childhood hero was Richard Henry, New Zealand’s first genuine wildlife ranger, who fought the rising tide of rats and stoats in a doomed effort to save the kakapo of Dusky Sound.
For years I foolishly allowed myself to believe that the decimation of our native birdlife was firmly in the past. The publicity attached to heroic “snatched from the jaws of extinction” stories of the takahe, the kakapo and the Chatham Islands Robin suckered me into believing our wildlife’s darkest days were over.
Only recently, when I realised it has been years since I saw tui on Banks Peninsula, did I discover that life for our native bird populations is as bad as it has ever been – and often worse.
And we – humans – are the problem. We’re not always the immediate cause of birdlife decline - I believe the tuis of Banks Peninsula were devastated by the big snow of ’92 – but our activities, especially the destruction of habitat and food sources, are behind all the disasters.
Nowhere is this more true than in Canterbury where only tiny scraps of indigenous habitat remain and native birds eke out a poor existence on the fringes of highly modified environments. Efforts to revive and extend native ecosystems, creating ‘islands’ of bush and wetland that enable remnant populations of birds to connect, are taking shape and need urgent support.
With all this in mind we were delighted to find that the Ashburton River bed, while not exactly teeming with birdlife, is home to more varieties of birds than I imagined. By the end of the day I had recorded 19 species of birds, some in quite large numbers.
I enjoyed myself. I can now tell a tern from a plover, a stilt from an oystercatcher. I know that blue herons are really called white-faced herons and that a dotterel is not a thrush.
I discovered too that on a fine spring day, with wildflowers abundant and the sound of birdsong in the air, the Ashburton River bed possesses greater charm than I imagined. It will never become a tourist attraction but it’s a fine place to spend a little time, even in a silly hat and gaiters.
Monday, November 19, 2007
The Passionless People?
17th November 2007
Thirty years ago the New Zealand journalist and broadcaster Gordon McLauchlan wrote a book called The Passionless People in which, with surgical precision, he laid bare our shortcomings and rubbed salt into them.
‘The outstanding characteristics of the New Zealander,’ McLauchlan spat, ‘are his drab sameness and his emotional numbness, his inability to relate one to another with warmth, and his fear, even horror, of change.’ Don’t feel smug, girls, he meant you too.
McLauchlan castigated us for having no moral or social philosophy and no dreams beyond a slavish devotion to materialism. Our society was wholly divided among factional pressure groups ‘which exert their power almost exclusively for selfish needs without any sense of a total community.’
To read his book today is a slap in the eye for aging liberals like me who hark back to pre-Rogernomics New Zealand as a place of social justice and equal opportunities. ‘It all went wrong in the dreadful 80s,’ we whine, ‘when we sold our souls to the market place and pawned our ideals for the quick fix of consumerism.’ To believe McLauchlan we were as venal and self-centred thirty years ago as we are today.
McLauchlan’s writings from the 70s, and my own misgivings about the state of society today, may be nothing more than the lurch as one hits the downdraft of middle age. I notice in myself how thinning hair and narrowing prospects slide easily into cynicism.
But I’m intrigued by the word ‘passion.’ Are we a passionless people? In my memory the 70s brimmed with passion, usually in the back seats of cars. There we casually flipped the noun into a verb. We pashed.
Today we claim passion in all things. I have attended three secondary school prize-givings in the past week where speaker after speaker has exhorted our school leavers to embrace life with passion.
The message is getting through. The CVs I’ve been reading from beginning teachers ooze passion at every pore. These brave young people are passionate about all sorts of things: netball, snowboarding, various educational theorists, their cats, children and, mercifully, teaching.
This is commendable but I don’t think it’s what McLauchlan meant. He would say we have become too glib with the word, harnessing it to serve ego and ambition. In his mind the passion we lack as a people is not the passion of individual pursuits but of engaging with others at a level that transforms relationships and, eventually, society. According to McLauchlan we need to become ‘people-orientated’ and ‘express our emotions.’
McLauchlan is not the first or most recent person to chide kiwis for lacking strong emotions. But while we are not usually comfortable with those among us who lay their feelings bare, as Tame Iti would vouch, I find it hard to accept that we do not possess strong emotions nor find ways to express these to the common good.
Here’s a case in point. I visited the Christchurch A&P Show on Thursday and found myself, as usual, absorbed by the wood-chopping. As a spectator sport wood-chopping has remained unchanged since my youth, except that the singlets are now blue where once they were black. It is everything McLauchlan complained about: pragmatic, physical and monosyllabic – an emotion-free zone. The focus is firmly on log and axe, human interaction is minimal, victory is largely unremarked.
But for me wood-chopping oozes passion; you just have to look carefully for the signs. There is passion in the total focus on the task and the close camaraderie of a common purpose. Above all, there is passion in the relationship between man, axe and log. These large, rough men handle their axes with gentleness and reverence. They treat the logs with the respect accorded to a worthy adversary. When the whistle blows and the call is made to ‘step to your logs’ they lay the edge of the axe to the wood so tenderly. Then the count, heft and swing; the arc of the blade through the air and the first bite into the grain.
In a different culture these axemen would be bullfighters. They would wear tight, sequinned bolero jackets and small pointy shoes. They would pirouette and twirl their red capes, every movement perfectly balanced and crackling with emotion.
Gordon McLauchlan yearned for immigrants from rich and self-confident cultures whose influence would presumably arouse some passion in us and make us better than we are. Thirty years later his solution seems naïve. We look out at a world where even the oldest and most self-assured cultures are just as capable as ourselves at messing things up. Often those societies that seem most passionate are also the most destructive.
As a society we may continually struggle to express ourselves. We may seem dull compared to more flamboyant communities. But to say we are passionless is to confuse decoration with substance.
17th November 2007
Thirty years ago the New Zealand journalist and broadcaster Gordon McLauchlan wrote a book called The Passionless People in which, with surgical precision, he laid bare our shortcomings and rubbed salt into them.
‘The outstanding characteristics of the New Zealander,’ McLauchlan spat, ‘are his drab sameness and his emotional numbness, his inability to relate one to another with warmth, and his fear, even horror, of change.’ Don’t feel smug, girls, he meant you too.
McLauchlan castigated us for having no moral or social philosophy and no dreams beyond a slavish devotion to materialism. Our society was wholly divided among factional pressure groups ‘which exert their power almost exclusively for selfish needs without any sense of a total community.’
To read his book today is a slap in the eye for aging liberals like me who hark back to pre-Rogernomics New Zealand as a place of social justice and equal opportunities. ‘It all went wrong in the dreadful 80s,’ we whine, ‘when we sold our souls to the market place and pawned our ideals for the quick fix of consumerism.’ To believe McLauchlan we were as venal and self-centred thirty years ago as we are today.
McLauchlan’s writings from the 70s, and my own misgivings about the state of society today, may be nothing more than the lurch as one hits the downdraft of middle age. I notice in myself how thinning hair and narrowing prospects slide easily into cynicism.
But I’m intrigued by the word ‘passion.’ Are we a passionless people? In my memory the 70s brimmed with passion, usually in the back seats of cars. There we casually flipped the noun into a verb. We pashed.
Today we claim passion in all things. I have attended three secondary school prize-givings in the past week where speaker after speaker has exhorted our school leavers to embrace life with passion.
The message is getting through. The CVs I’ve been reading from beginning teachers ooze passion at every pore. These brave young people are passionate about all sorts of things: netball, snowboarding, various educational theorists, their cats, children and, mercifully, teaching.
This is commendable but I don’t think it’s what McLauchlan meant. He would say we have become too glib with the word, harnessing it to serve ego and ambition. In his mind the passion we lack as a people is not the passion of individual pursuits but of engaging with others at a level that transforms relationships and, eventually, society. According to McLauchlan we need to become ‘people-orientated’ and ‘express our emotions.’
McLauchlan is not the first or most recent person to chide kiwis for lacking strong emotions. But while we are not usually comfortable with those among us who lay their feelings bare, as Tame Iti would vouch, I find it hard to accept that we do not possess strong emotions nor find ways to express these to the common good.
Here’s a case in point. I visited the Christchurch A&P Show on Thursday and found myself, as usual, absorbed by the wood-chopping. As a spectator sport wood-chopping has remained unchanged since my youth, except that the singlets are now blue where once they were black. It is everything McLauchlan complained about: pragmatic, physical and monosyllabic – an emotion-free zone. The focus is firmly on log and axe, human interaction is minimal, victory is largely unremarked.
But for me wood-chopping oozes passion; you just have to look carefully for the signs. There is passion in the total focus on the task and the close camaraderie of a common purpose. Above all, there is passion in the relationship between man, axe and log. These large, rough men handle their axes with gentleness and reverence. They treat the logs with the respect accorded to a worthy adversary. When the whistle blows and the call is made to ‘step to your logs’ they lay the edge of the axe to the wood so tenderly. Then the count, heft and swing; the arc of the blade through the air and the first bite into the grain.
In a different culture these axemen would be bullfighters. They would wear tight, sequinned bolero jackets and small pointy shoes. They would pirouette and twirl their red capes, every movement perfectly balanced and crackling with emotion.
Gordon McLauchlan yearned for immigrants from rich and self-confident cultures whose influence would presumably arouse some passion in us and make us better than we are. Thirty years later his solution seems naïve. We look out at a world where even the oldest and most self-assured cultures are just as capable as ourselves at messing things up. Often those societies that seem most passionate are also the most destructive.
As a society we may continually struggle to express ourselves. We may seem dull compared to more flamboyant communities. But to say we are passionless is to confuse decoration with substance.
Trevor Mallard – From Dead Duck to Albatross
3rd November 2007
I have never thrown a punch in anger and have only been on the receiving end once. That was when I eleven and had been a smart arse to Bruce Brown at school.
He said he’d sort me out and at the end of the day he invited me, this is true, around the back of the bike shed. I followed him around the back, a bit bemused by it all, and copped his fist full in the face.
I sat down in consternation and started crying. So did Bruce – he’d connected with my cheekbone and I think it hurt him more than me. There we sat, looking at each other, tears streaming down our faces. After a while we got to our feet and went off to our respective homes. We were so embarrassed neither of us ever said a word about it to anybody else.
Oh, how Trevor Mallard must be wishing he’d chosen a quiet bike shed or a bit of long grass where he and Tau could indulge their tie-grappling and face punching.
Like most stupid behaviour, it is not the action itself that does the damage. Trevor, I imagine, quietly replays that left hook to Tau’s head with a degree of satisfaction. No, it is being caught that brings shame. Even accepting that adrenalin triumphed over reason in those few critical moments in the parliamentary lobby it is still inconceivable that Mallard would do something quite so stupid in the least private place in New Zealand.
He could hardly deny it and, to his credit I suppose, he hasn’t tried to deny or even defend the act. A week ago he must have thought, as we did, that he was a dead duck, his political career finished. If you punch somebody at work you get the sack, right? There was no way Helen Clark could keep him in cabinet, and possibly even in caucus. Surely she would send him down the road in the footsteps of David Benson-Pope, Taito Philip Field and John Tamihere. She would reason that Mallard’s presence would open Labour to ongoing ridicule and do untold harm to her government’s remaining credibility.
But we were wrong. This week Mallard is resurrected. The cabinet is reshuffled, the deck is dealt and, crikey! there are the same old cards and, grinning up like the joker, is Mallard himself, down from seventh place to tenth but still in the game.
The opposition must be delighted. Mallard’s continued presence in the cabinet, where they can take potshots at him to their heart’s content, simply adds strength to their bow ahead of next year’s election.
The move to keep Mallard is so bizarre I wonder if a more subtle strategy is at work here. I was in England in 2001 when the deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, thumped a young detractor during an election campaign. The media gasped, Tony Blair’s government held its breath and – their ratings went through the roof. Does Helen think Trevor’s tiff will give her government the same bounce? It’s hard to imagine.
Or is there a dark logic in Helen’s choice of portfolios for Trevor in the cabinet reshuffle? Does she think the Environment, Broadcasting and Labour ministries need a pugilistic rev up? Will we see Trevor descend, fists flailing, into the greenie protest movement? He’d probably win a few votes as long as he doesn’t deck a giant snail or tuatara. Broadcasting of course cries out for biffo. Trevor will be itching to take on the journos after recent events and we have a fine tradition of politicians thumping reporters – remember Bob Jones?
But these are frivolous thoughts. In reality, the Prime Minister will rue her decision to stick with Mallard.
In Samuel Coleridge’s great poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor who kills an albatross brings a curse upon his ship and its crew. He is doomed to watch his crewmates die, tormented by thirst and demons. They in turn condemn him to hell on earth by hanging the dead albatross around his neck.
Helen Clark may find she has resurrected her dead duck only to discover she has an albatross hanging around the neck of the Labour government from here to the election.
3rd November 2007
I have never thrown a punch in anger and have only been on the receiving end once. That was when I eleven and had been a smart arse to Bruce Brown at school.
He said he’d sort me out and at the end of the day he invited me, this is true, around the back of the bike shed. I followed him around the back, a bit bemused by it all, and copped his fist full in the face.
I sat down in consternation and started crying. So did Bruce – he’d connected with my cheekbone and I think it hurt him more than me. There we sat, looking at each other, tears streaming down our faces. After a while we got to our feet and went off to our respective homes. We were so embarrassed neither of us ever said a word about it to anybody else.
Oh, how Trevor Mallard must be wishing he’d chosen a quiet bike shed or a bit of long grass where he and Tau could indulge their tie-grappling and face punching.
Like most stupid behaviour, it is not the action itself that does the damage. Trevor, I imagine, quietly replays that left hook to Tau’s head with a degree of satisfaction. No, it is being caught that brings shame. Even accepting that adrenalin triumphed over reason in those few critical moments in the parliamentary lobby it is still inconceivable that Mallard would do something quite so stupid in the least private place in New Zealand.
He could hardly deny it and, to his credit I suppose, he hasn’t tried to deny or even defend the act. A week ago he must have thought, as we did, that he was a dead duck, his political career finished. If you punch somebody at work you get the sack, right? There was no way Helen Clark could keep him in cabinet, and possibly even in caucus. Surely she would send him down the road in the footsteps of David Benson-Pope, Taito Philip Field and John Tamihere. She would reason that Mallard’s presence would open Labour to ongoing ridicule and do untold harm to her government’s remaining credibility.
But we were wrong. This week Mallard is resurrected. The cabinet is reshuffled, the deck is dealt and, crikey! there are the same old cards and, grinning up like the joker, is Mallard himself, down from seventh place to tenth but still in the game.
The opposition must be delighted. Mallard’s continued presence in the cabinet, where they can take potshots at him to their heart’s content, simply adds strength to their bow ahead of next year’s election.
The move to keep Mallard is so bizarre I wonder if a more subtle strategy is at work here. I was in England in 2001 when the deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott, thumped a young detractor during an election campaign. The media gasped, Tony Blair’s government held its breath and – their ratings went through the roof. Does Helen think Trevor’s tiff will give her government the same bounce? It’s hard to imagine.
Or is there a dark logic in Helen’s choice of portfolios for Trevor in the cabinet reshuffle? Does she think the Environment, Broadcasting and Labour ministries need a pugilistic rev up? Will we see Trevor descend, fists flailing, into the greenie protest movement? He’d probably win a few votes as long as he doesn’t deck a giant snail or tuatara. Broadcasting of course cries out for biffo. Trevor will be itching to take on the journos after recent events and we have a fine tradition of politicians thumping reporters – remember Bob Jones?
But these are frivolous thoughts. In reality, the Prime Minister will rue her decision to stick with Mallard.
In Samuel Coleridge’s great poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a sailor who kills an albatross brings a curse upon his ship and its crew. He is doomed to watch his crewmates die, tormented by thirst and demons. They in turn condemn him to hell on earth by hanging the dead albatross around his neck.
Helen Clark may find she has resurrected her dead duck only to discover she has an albatross hanging around the neck of the Labour government from here to the election.
Friday, October 26, 2007
The Taming of Tame
20th October 2007
Act 1, Scene 1:
It is dawn in Tuhoe country. A pale sun filters through morning mist onto dense forest and rough farmland. A NZPost delivery car drives up a winding gravel road towards a battered weatherboard house.
Tame Iti, public nuisance and erstwhile terrorist, stands before the bathroom mirror shaving with a long-handled razor. He is dressed in dirty camouflage clothing and orange day-glo jandals.
Suddenly the bathroom door bursts open. Hone – large, bald and wearing a floral dressing gown – bursts in. The force of his entry causes Tame to cut himself badly with the razor.
“Oh, for f---‘s sake, Hone, this happens every morning. Can’t you enter a room without causing a riot?”
“Sorry, Tame. I just needed to pee.” He looks at the long curved line of blood on Tame’s cheek. “Geez, bro, look at your face. You must be the worst shaver in the world.”
A third large Maori man, Pete, appears at the bathroom door. “Hey, youse fellas, come and see what we got in the post.”
The three men shuffle into the lounge. It is filled with rifles and other small arms. Numerous cases of Tui beer are stacked against the walls. A cardboard box sits on the table.
Tame looks at the address on the box and beams. “Aw, choice! It’s the stuff I ordered from those anarchist mob down in Wellington.”
Pete grabs the box and shakes it. Tame thumps him. “Aue, man! Leave it alone or you’ll get us all blown into the next lifetime.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s full of explosives, bro.”
Hone peers at the box. “The label says it’s full of avocadoes.”
Tame looks crafty. “Pete, get me that book off the shelf.”
“This book? The Weekend Terrorist?”
“Yep. In the back it’s got code names for all sorts of weapons. Check out ‘avocado’.”
“Avocado – grenades!”
“Yep, grenades. Brothers, the revolution is on its way!”
Hone and Pete launch into a stirring haka which shakes the room. They remember the contents of the box and stop. Tame slices the lid off the box with his razor and rummages among the packaging. His eyes light up as his hand closes on an object.
“This is it, fellas. Death to whitey!” He pulls his hand out with a flourish and waves it high.
Hone and Pete are stunned. “Shit, Tame. It’s an avocado.”
Tame is still caught up in the moment. “Avocado, boom!” Seeing their expressions he looks at his hand. He is holding an avocado. “Those dopey, bloody anarchists! Imagine if I’d thrown this at the cops!”
Pete remembers something. “Oh, speaking of cops. The postie said there’s heaps of them gathering at the bottom of the valley.”
Tame is not interested. “Prob’ly after some poor bugger’s dope patch. Hone, see if there’s anything else in that box.”
Hone rummages. “There’s a bag of carrots.”
Tame checks his book. “That’d be the rocket launchers. Any salad dressing?”
Hone pulls out a bottle. “Yep, ‘Country Lite’. What kind of weapon is that?”
“None, we were just out of salad dressing.”
The three men sit dejectedly on the sofa. We hear the sounds of police sirens faintly in the distant but Tame, Hone and Pete don’t notice.
Tame looks around the room. “We can’t be real terrorists if we haven’t got some bombs.”
“We’ve got all these guns, Tame.”
“Yeah, and about 50 rounds of ammo. That’s a piss poor revolution. Nuh, we need some boom.”
Hone grabs a case of Tui’s. “Don’t forget the Molotov cocktails I’ve been making.”
Pete cracks up. “Tui’s Molotov cocktails. Yeah, right!”
“You reckon? Well, watch this.” Hone pulls out a bottle. A piece of paper is twisted into the neck. He lights it and throws the bottle into bathroom. It lands in the shower, smashing. Orange liquid pours out.
Tame dabs his finger in the liquid and tastes it. “What are you on, Hone? This is pineapple juice.”
“Yeah, well they didn’t have any of that Molotov in the bottle store so I thought I’d do pineapple cocktails instead. Not bad, eh? Only, I’m not sure why we’re supposed to light it.”
Tame sighs. Armed police pour over the back fence.
Pete comes to the rescue. “Never mind, bro. I’ve got a secret weapon.” He reaches behind the couch and pulls out a battered guitar. “I found a few sticks of geli up at the works camp and I’ve wired them into my guitar. You name the target, Tame, and I’ll go up there. Third verse of Loyal I hit D minor and the whole place goes sky high.”
“And so will you, bro.”
“Yeah, but I reckon that’s okay. It’s like that guy Al.”
“Al?”
“Yeah, Al Qaeda. That Arab bloke who blew up New York.”
Tame interrupts. “Nuh. No way. No suicide bombing.”
“Why not? I’m happy to die for Tuhoe.”
“Yeah, you martyr yourself for Tuhoe and then what happens? Me and Hone have to take tangi leave and the whole movement grinds to a halt for three months.”
Hone remembers something. “Actually, Tame, I’ll be gone for a few days anyway. I promised my cuz in Petone I’d help him drop a new diff into the Fairlane.”
A tear gas canister sails through the window.
To be continued…
20th October 2007
Act 1, Scene 1:
It is dawn in Tuhoe country. A pale sun filters through morning mist onto dense forest and rough farmland. A NZPost delivery car drives up a winding gravel road towards a battered weatherboard house.
Tame Iti, public nuisance and erstwhile terrorist, stands before the bathroom mirror shaving with a long-handled razor. He is dressed in dirty camouflage clothing and orange day-glo jandals.
Suddenly the bathroom door bursts open. Hone – large, bald and wearing a floral dressing gown – bursts in. The force of his entry causes Tame to cut himself badly with the razor.
“Oh, for f---‘s sake, Hone, this happens every morning. Can’t you enter a room without causing a riot?”
“Sorry, Tame. I just needed to pee.” He looks at the long curved line of blood on Tame’s cheek. “Geez, bro, look at your face. You must be the worst shaver in the world.”
A third large Maori man, Pete, appears at the bathroom door. “Hey, youse fellas, come and see what we got in the post.”
The three men shuffle into the lounge. It is filled with rifles and other small arms. Numerous cases of Tui beer are stacked against the walls. A cardboard box sits on the table.
Tame looks at the address on the box and beams. “Aw, choice! It’s the stuff I ordered from those anarchist mob down in Wellington.”
Pete grabs the box and shakes it. Tame thumps him. “Aue, man! Leave it alone or you’ll get us all blown into the next lifetime.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s full of explosives, bro.”
Hone peers at the box. “The label says it’s full of avocadoes.”
Tame looks crafty. “Pete, get me that book off the shelf.”
“This book? The Weekend Terrorist?”
“Yep. In the back it’s got code names for all sorts of weapons. Check out ‘avocado’.”
“Avocado – grenades!”
“Yep, grenades. Brothers, the revolution is on its way!”
Hone and Pete launch into a stirring haka which shakes the room. They remember the contents of the box and stop. Tame slices the lid off the box with his razor and rummages among the packaging. His eyes light up as his hand closes on an object.
“This is it, fellas. Death to whitey!” He pulls his hand out with a flourish and waves it high.
Hone and Pete are stunned. “Shit, Tame. It’s an avocado.”
Tame is still caught up in the moment. “Avocado, boom!” Seeing their expressions he looks at his hand. He is holding an avocado. “Those dopey, bloody anarchists! Imagine if I’d thrown this at the cops!”
Pete remembers something. “Oh, speaking of cops. The postie said there’s heaps of them gathering at the bottom of the valley.”
Tame is not interested. “Prob’ly after some poor bugger’s dope patch. Hone, see if there’s anything else in that box.”
Hone rummages. “There’s a bag of carrots.”
Tame checks his book. “That’d be the rocket launchers. Any salad dressing?”
Hone pulls out a bottle. “Yep, ‘Country Lite’. What kind of weapon is that?”
“None, we were just out of salad dressing.”
The three men sit dejectedly on the sofa. We hear the sounds of police sirens faintly in the distant but Tame, Hone and Pete don’t notice.
Tame looks around the room. “We can’t be real terrorists if we haven’t got some bombs.”
“We’ve got all these guns, Tame.”
“Yeah, and about 50 rounds of ammo. That’s a piss poor revolution. Nuh, we need some boom.”
Hone grabs a case of Tui’s. “Don’t forget the Molotov cocktails I’ve been making.”
Pete cracks up. “Tui’s Molotov cocktails. Yeah, right!”
“You reckon? Well, watch this.” Hone pulls out a bottle. A piece of paper is twisted into the neck. He lights it and throws the bottle into bathroom. It lands in the shower, smashing. Orange liquid pours out.
Tame dabs his finger in the liquid and tastes it. “What are you on, Hone? This is pineapple juice.”
“Yeah, well they didn’t have any of that Molotov in the bottle store so I thought I’d do pineapple cocktails instead. Not bad, eh? Only, I’m not sure why we’re supposed to light it.”
Tame sighs. Armed police pour over the back fence.
Pete comes to the rescue. “Never mind, bro. I’ve got a secret weapon.” He reaches behind the couch and pulls out a battered guitar. “I found a few sticks of geli up at the works camp and I’ve wired them into my guitar. You name the target, Tame, and I’ll go up there. Third verse of Loyal I hit D minor and the whole place goes sky high.”
“And so will you, bro.”
“Yeah, but I reckon that’s okay. It’s like that guy Al.”
“Al?”
“Yeah, Al Qaeda. That Arab bloke who blew up New York.”
Tame interrupts. “Nuh. No way. No suicide bombing.”
“Why not? I’m happy to die for Tuhoe.”
“Yeah, you martyr yourself for Tuhoe and then what happens? Me and Hone have to take tangi leave and the whole movement grinds to a halt for three months.”
Hone remembers something. “Actually, Tame, I’ll be gone for a few days anyway. I promised my cuz in Petone I’d help him drop a new diff into the Fairlane.”
A tear gas canister sails through the window.
To be continued…
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
You Can’t Stop the Music
I am fond of amateur theatricals and, while there are many incidents in youth that determine the course of a life, I can chart my direction from the moment when, at the age of thirteen, I stepped onto a stage in a pair of white satin pantaloons and a powdered wig.
At a time in life when my peers were chasing a muddy ball around the Tuatapere domain I chased song lyrics and dance steps in the local Memorial Hall, under the measured baton of Mrs Phyllis McClymont, the chemist’s wife.
I was an accidental actor. I found my way into the Memorial Hall through neither audition nor an unquenchable desire to lift the coattails of fortune. No, I owed my lucky break to chicken manure.
I had been barrowing chicken manure on a bleak winter afternoon from our henhouse, across the back paddock, over the road and onto Mrs McClymont’s strawberry patch. Piano music tinkled as usual from the lounge. This was the most tastefully appointed room in Birch Street, perhaps in all Tuatapere. A warbling soprano voice rose above the notes of the piano.
As I slewed past the lounge, my face straining against the ammoniac reek of my barrow, the music stopped, a window opened and Mrs McClymont’s blue-rinse-haloed face appeared.
“I need you,” she commanded.
And that was that.
When I told my parents my father seemed completely unsurprised at my elevation to stardom. He had tremendous faith in chicken manure.
The show in rehearsal was The Gondoliers by Gilbert & Sullivan. I fell at once deeply, passionately and everlastingly in love with G&S.
The music that has profoundly influenced my life has always found me by accident: my sister’s boyfriend reaching blindly into a wardrobe stuffed with LPs and pulling out Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks; the father of a girl I was madly in love with at 21 playing a Mozart piano concerto on a blue harpsichord. Gilbert & Sullivan took me completely by surprise - courtesy of a barrowload of chicken manure.
A hundred and thirty years or so after their invention it is easy to deride Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas.
It’s not so much that they’re old-fashioned. The stories, littered with orphans, babies switched at birth and forced marriages are no different than most Hollywood romantic comedies. The language is stilted rather than archaic and the costumes wouldn’t look out of place at a high school lipsync.
It is the style that outs them as a throwback to an earlier age. They seem as ponderous and declamatory as a traction engine, their humour laboured and their pathos, well, pathetic.
That they are constantly reprised is due to just one thing – the music. The music is fabulous - sly as a courtesan, exhilarating as big surf. My family hates it, of course. To them it is all tiddly om pom and fa la la la. And, yes, it is those things, but allow yourself to sink beneath the frills and the music is deep and rich and full of surprises.
And it is fun to sing because, when stripped bare, it is simply a collection of great tunes. Gilbert & Sullivan were the Lennon & McCartney of their age, producing a catalogue of hits which wove themselves so deeply into our collective subconscious that even now their imprint remains. Few people would not raise at least a flicker of response to the Major-General’s patter or Three Little Maids From School.
Not that I understood all this when I set foot on the stage of the Tuatapere Memorial Hall. Back then it wasn’t the tunes that grabbed my attention.
It was the girls. Yes, there they were, real girls, tucked away among the dowagers, the pirates, the footmen and the minor nobility that populate the world of G&S.
My role in The Gondoliers was to be the Lord High Drummer Boy – this is why I had been summoned by Mrs McClymont. My hopes of impressing the girls soared as I dressed in satin bloomers and powdered wig, only to be dashed on the rocks of choreography.
The girls, you see, were the famous ballet troupe from Blackmount – a district so remote it barely figured on the map but nevertheless produced beautiful and talented ballerinas. My task was to dance a fiendishly complicated Spanish Cachuca with these maidens.
I worked strenuously but I couldn’t do it. The girls twirled effortlessely about me, clacking their castanets and flashing their eyes disdainfully while I plonked around with my half-roll of puppy fat and two left feet.
Mercifully the experience, although it put me off myself for a while, dampened my enthusiasm for neither girls nor G & S.
Next month I will once again sing Gilbert & Sullivan on stage, in the Mid-Canterbury Choir’s winter concert at the Tinwald Hall on Saturday 15th September. We will sing a selection of music from four operas: Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and, happily, The Gondoliers.
I am delighted to rediscover this music after 30 years. It is like meeting an old friend.
I am fond of amateur theatricals and, while there are many incidents in youth that determine the course of a life, I can chart my direction from the moment when, at the age of thirteen, I stepped onto a stage in a pair of white satin pantaloons and a powdered wig.
At a time in life when my peers were chasing a muddy ball around the Tuatapere domain I chased song lyrics and dance steps in the local Memorial Hall, under the measured baton of Mrs Phyllis McClymont, the chemist’s wife.
I was an accidental actor. I found my way into the Memorial Hall through neither audition nor an unquenchable desire to lift the coattails of fortune. No, I owed my lucky break to chicken manure.
I had been barrowing chicken manure on a bleak winter afternoon from our henhouse, across the back paddock, over the road and onto Mrs McClymont’s strawberry patch. Piano music tinkled as usual from the lounge. This was the most tastefully appointed room in Birch Street, perhaps in all Tuatapere. A warbling soprano voice rose above the notes of the piano.
As I slewed past the lounge, my face straining against the ammoniac reek of my barrow, the music stopped, a window opened and Mrs McClymont’s blue-rinse-haloed face appeared.
“I need you,” she commanded.
And that was that.
When I told my parents my father seemed completely unsurprised at my elevation to stardom. He had tremendous faith in chicken manure.
The show in rehearsal was The Gondoliers by Gilbert & Sullivan. I fell at once deeply, passionately and everlastingly in love with G&S.
The music that has profoundly influenced my life has always found me by accident: my sister’s boyfriend reaching blindly into a wardrobe stuffed with LPs and pulling out Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks; the father of a girl I was madly in love with at 21 playing a Mozart piano concerto on a blue harpsichord. Gilbert & Sullivan took me completely by surprise - courtesy of a barrowload of chicken manure.
A hundred and thirty years or so after their invention it is easy to deride Gilbert & Sullivan’s comic operas.
It’s not so much that they’re old-fashioned. The stories, littered with orphans, babies switched at birth and forced marriages are no different than most Hollywood romantic comedies. The language is stilted rather than archaic and the costumes wouldn’t look out of place at a high school lipsync.
It is the style that outs them as a throwback to an earlier age. They seem as ponderous and declamatory as a traction engine, their humour laboured and their pathos, well, pathetic.
That they are constantly reprised is due to just one thing – the music. The music is fabulous - sly as a courtesan, exhilarating as big surf. My family hates it, of course. To them it is all tiddly om pom and fa la la la. And, yes, it is those things, but allow yourself to sink beneath the frills and the music is deep and rich and full of surprises.
And it is fun to sing because, when stripped bare, it is simply a collection of great tunes. Gilbert & Sullivan were the Lennon & McCartney of their age, producing a catalogue of hits which wove themselves so deeply into our collective subconscious that even now their imprint remains. Few people would not raise at least a flicker of response to the Major-General’s patter or Three Little Maids From School.
Not that I understood all this when I set foot on the stage of the Tuatapere Memorial Hall. Back then it wasn’t the tunes that grabbed my attention.
It was the girls. Yes, there they were, real girls, tucked away among the dowagers, the pirates, the footmen and the minor nobility that populate the world of G&S.
My role in The Gondoliers was to be the Lord High Drummer Boy – this is why I had been summoned by Mrs McClymont. My hopes of impressing the girls soared as I dressed in satin bloomers and powdered wig, only to be dashed on the rocks of choreography.
The girls, you see, were the famous ballet troupe from Blackmount – a district so remote it barely figured on the map but nevertheless produced beautiful and talented ballerinas. My task was to dance a fiendishly complicated Spanish Cachuca with these maidens.
I worked strenuously but I couldn’t do it. The girls twirled effortlessely about me, clacking their castanets and flashing their eyes disdainfully while I plonked around with my half-roll of puppy fat and two left feet.
Mercifully the experience, although it put me off myself for a while, dampened my enthusiasm for neither girls nor G & S.
Next month I will once again sing Gilbert & Sullivan on stage, in the Mid-Canterbury Choir’s winter concert at the Tinwald Hall on Saturday 15th September. We will sing a selection of music from four operas: Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado and, happily, The Gondoliers.
I am delighted to rediscover this music after 30 years. It is like meeting an old friend.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Argyle Park Will Dominate Local Election
11th August 2007
There are times when the credibility of local government hangs by a thread, when an issue appears from nowhere and cuts deeply into the tangled knot of factions, interests and overlapping constituencies of small town politics.
The question of whether Ashburton golfers should be allowed to club their way around Argyle Park has reared up with the unpredictable ferocity of a twister. Close to an election it is an issue that has local politicians looking carefully at how the pancake is going to fall – and whether they’ll end up wearing the sticky side.
Argyle Park’s connection with golf (or ‘golf links’) dates back to the early years of last century when local golfers regularly used the area. Many of today’s petitioners believe the park is named from the brand of knitwear that was the preferred attire of early Mid-Canterbury club swingers.
In those days the word ‘golf’ was rarely used. The game was still known by its original title, ‘flog’, and was a much more robust affair than the modern version. Early reports describe frenzied games of flog involving teams of up to 20 players attacking each other with heavy wooden clubs in the muddy paddocks behind Allenton. Matches frequently ended in bloodshed and ‘a good flogging.’
Suburban encroachment eventually severed Argyle Park’s connection with the game until its recent revival as a practise venue for local golfers.
The question now confronting the Council is whether golf can safely co-exist with other uses of Argyle Park. Reports of misdirected golf balls colliding with houses, dogs, garden ornaments and sundry other suburban icons have raised the ire of local residents.
One householder, who declined to be named, described the terror of life in the firing line. “I was hanging out the washing just the other week and I got a golf ball right up my back passage. What made it worse was the golfer went straight in there after it. By the time I got inside the carpet was just a mess of divots.”
Brent Wallop, a spokesperson for GAPS (“Golfers in Argyle Park, Stupid”) says the problems are confined to a small group of freestyle golfers. “These idiots are the petrol heads of the golfing world. In their game the player scores points for taking the least direct route to the pin. They delight in squirting the ball off in all directions. I’ve seen one of these turkeys drive off a tee shot that comes back and lands behind him.”
In a bid to outflank the issue Council is experimenting with bungee golf. In this version of the game the ball is tied to a long bungee cord. When struck, the ball travels the length of the cord then returns at speed toward the golfer, enabling the game to be played in confined spaces.
Speaking from his hospital bed the inventor of bungee golf, Brian Flaws, admits there are a few wrinkles in his idea. “The issue of protective clothing obviously needs thinking through a bit.”
Overshadowing the immediate question of golf is the potentially more damaging issue of allowing access to other sporting and recreational groups that have until now been kept out of local parks.
One of these is the Ashburton Smallbore Rifle Association, ASMAR. Association president, Roger Blasted, takes up the story.
“Since we lost our bid to relocate to Hakatere we’ve been panicking about where we’ll go. If the golfers get Argyle Park that sets a precedent for groups like ourselves.”
Mr Blasted agrees that allowing both golfers and shooters into Argyle Park would be a stretch.
“Some of the trap shooting boys are keen to talk to the golfers about working together. They reckon they could set up at the other end of the driving range and shoot the golf balls while they’re in the air. That would probably save a few windows and dogs. But we’d rather talk to the Council about getting access to another park; perhaps the Domain or Baring Square.”
Other groups with bids in the pipeline include Mid-Canterbury Stockcars, the archery association and the Tinwald Ceilidh Club.
Parks director, Dave Askin, fears for the future of our public spaces if groups such as these become regular users. “I’m particularly worried about the Ceilidh Club. All those Irish dancers will play havoc with our turf.”
Meanwhile the battle lines in the debate are being drawn. Local residents of Argyle Park plan an all-night vigil which will include burning effigies of local golfers.
Brent Wallop says golfers are undeterred. “We’re prepared to go all the way with this. I’ll put 20 guys with putters onto the Council table if necessary.”
With this issue set to dominate the election councillors are keeping their heads down - especially those close to Argyle Park.
11th August 2007
There are times when the credibility of local government hangs by a thread, when an issue appears from nowhere and cuts deeply into the tangled knot of factions, interests and overlapping constituencies of small town politics.
The question of whether Ashburton golfers should be allowed to club their way around Argyle Park has reared up with the unpredictable ferocity of a twister. Close to an election it is an issue that has local politicians looking carefully at how the pancake is going to fall – and whether they’ll end up wearing the sticky side.
Argyle Park’s connection with golf (or ‘golf links’) dates back to the early years of last century when local golfers regularly used the area. Many of today’s petitioners believe the park is named from the brand of knitwear that was the preferred attire of early Mid-Canterbury club swingers.
In those days the word ‘golf’ was rarely used. The game was still known by its original title, ‘flog’, and was a much more robust affair than the modern version. Early reports describe frenzied games of flog involving teams of up to 20 players attacking each other with heavy wooden clubs in the muddy paddocks behind Allenton. Matches frequently ended in bloodshed and ‘a good flogging.’
Suburban encroachment eventually severed Argyle Park’s connection with the game until its recent revival as a practise venue for local golfers.
The question now confronting the Council is whether golf can safely co-exist with other uses of Argyle Park. Reports of misdirected golf balls colliding with houses, dogs, garden ornaments and sundry other suburban icons have raised the ire of local residents.
One householder, who declined to be named, described the terror of life in the firing line. “I was hanging out the washing just the other week and I got a golf ball right up my back passage. What made it worse was the golfer went straight in there after it. By the time I got inside the carpet was just a mess of divots.”
Brent Wallop, a spokesperson for GAPS (“Golfers in Argyle Park, Stupid”) says the problems are confined to a small group of freestyle golfers. “These idiots are the petrol heads of the golfing world. In their game the player scores points for taking the least direct route to the pin. They delight in squirting the ball off in all directions. I’ve seen one of these turkeys drive off a tee shot that comes back and lands behind him.”
In a bid to outflank the issue Council is experimenting with bungee golf. In this version of the game the ball is tied to a long bungee cord. When struck, the ball travels the length of the cord then returns at speed toward the golfer, enabling the game to be played in confined spaces.
Speaking from his hospital bed the inventor of bungee golf, Brian Flaws, admits there are a few wrinkles in his idea. “The issue of protective clothing obviously needs thinking through a bit.”
Overshadowing the immediate question of golf is the potentially more damaging issue of allowing access to other sporting and recreational groups that have until now been kept out of local parks.
One of these is the Ashburton Smallbore Rifle Association, ASMAR. Association president, Roger Blasted, takes up the story.
“Since we lost our bid to relocate to Hakatere we’ve been panicking about where we’ll go. If the golfers get Argyle Park that sets a precedent for groups like ourselves.”
Mr Blasted agrees that allowing both golfers and shooters into Argyle Park would be a stretch.
“Some of the trap shooting boys are keen to talk to the golfers about working together. They reckon they could set up at the other end of the driving range and shoot the golf balls while they’re in the air. That would probably save a few windows and dogs. But we’d rather talk to the Council about getting access to another park; perhaps the Domain or Baring Square.”
Other groups with bids in the pipeline include Mid-Canterbury Stockcars, the archery association and the Tinwald Ceilidh Club.
Parks director, Dave Askin, fears for the future of our public spaces if groups such as these become regular users. “I’m particularly worried about the Ceilidh Club. All those Irish dancers will play havoc with our turf.”
Meanwhile the battle lines in the debate are being drawn. Local residents of Argyle Park plan an all-night vigil which will include burning effigies of local golfers.
Brent Wallop says golfers are undeterred. “We’re prepared to go all the way with this. I’ll put 20 guys with putters onto the Council table if necessary.”
With this issue set to dominate the election councillors are keeping their heads down - especially those close to Argyle Park.
Friday, August 10, 2007
Ashburton’s Black Heart
28th July 2007
The Waiau was a well-muscled river. Conceived in the diluvian depths of Fiordland, nurtured by the great reservoirs of TeAnau and Manapouri, sustained by a thousand streams and creeks, it was a wild beast, an express train and the All Blacks front row all rolled into one.
Even in a dry February it ran two hundred metres wide past my back fence in Tuatapere and deeper, much deeper, than the big kids’ end of the town pool.
In an August storm, when the mountains had vanished for a week behind a veil of nor’west rain, the river was terrifying. It boiled and raged. It conjured whirlpools and vast upwellings driven by forces so great they surged several inches higher than the level of the surrounding waters. Giant tree trunks spun helplessly in the river’s grip, crashed together, flailed at the banks and were swept on.
The Waiau bisected Tuatapere and was the town’s sole attraction; a source of wonder to the child and solace to the angler; a great gulp of water, air and light in the heart of our small lives. It was flanked by native bush, protected in reserves on each bank, the western side broadening to a genuine forest through which a narrow, winding road, umbrella’d by totara and rimu, led to the domain and sports ground.
The bridge across the Waiau bespoke the raw energy of the river. Massive timbers fastened with iron railway spikes tangled together in a fantastic superstructure that soared high above the stream. To us kids it seemed as ancient as the river itself, built by giants. It compressed the traffic into a single lane like a bear hug.
A narrow walkway had been appendixed to the bridge. As a young child I approached that walkway with the same trepidation I felt with my first escalator. The planks had been laid with gaps between so the rushing water was clearly visible. I was both repelled and mesmerised by the sight of the river rushing past a few metres beneath my feet.
The walkway was bounded on the outside by a chain link fence with a wooden rail on which I could rest my chin when I was eight. On the inside I don’t remember any sort of formal fence or rail, just the great pile of the bridge’s timbers. The bridge shook and trembled when log lorries, piled with trunks from the Rowallan forests, forced their way across.
The Waiau was too unruly to suffer a waterfront. Its banks were not lined with promenades and buildings. But although the town had withdrawn to the safety of higher ground the river and its bridge nevertheless formed the centre and fulcrum of the place. We were proud of the river - proud of its beauty and energy.
We called it ‘swift’ – ‘the swiftest river in New Zealand’ - and we honoured it by guarding the forest reserves and beautifying the approaches to the bridge.
The river shaped the town’s fortunes. While it flowed swift and strong the town prospered.
Later, when the waters were diverted through the Manapouri power station and the river dwindled so did Tuatapere. The old bridge was replaced with a functional concrete structure, sawmills closed, people moved away.
I often think of the Waiau and its place in my early life now that I find myself living once again in a town bisected by a river. The comparison isn’t flattering because, even allowing for romantic exaggerations, the Ashburton is a scungy little river compared to the Waiau, and our bridge and its surroundings are shameful.
It is unfortunate that the Ashburton river’s occasional ruptures sufficiently inconvenienced early travellers that Mr Turton was inspired to build his wayside hostelry on its bank. While the town grew around the river it has always defied our small attempts at beautification.
The character of a river can shape the character of a town: think of New York, London and Paris. Even in tiny Tuatapere the Waiau river’s sinuous energy lent us a bit of self-belief.
The Ashburton river has the opposite effect. It depresses, dulls and flattens the character of our town. Recognising this, we have turned our backs on it. Our denial is most evident in the bridge and its approaches which are the black heart of the town - dirty, ugly and bereft of civic pride.
And yet it remains the one part of our community that most of us see daily and which all who pass through Ashburton must endure.
We were ill-served by our founders, who should have built away from the river. They didn’t and we’re stuck with that. We can do little to change the character of the river but we must recognise that the bridge and its approaches are our centrepiece and shopfront. Are we happy to look like a dump?
28th July 2007
The Waiau was a well-muscled river. Conceived in the diluvian depths of Fiordland, nurtured by the great reservoirs of TeAnau and Manapouri, sustained by a thousand streams and creeks, it was a wild beast, an express train and the All Blacks front row all rolled into one.
Even in a dry February it ran two hundred metres wide past my back fence in Tuatapere and deeper, much deeper, than the big kids’ end of the town pool.
In an August storm, when the mountains had vanished for a week behind a veil of nor’west rain, the river was terrifying. It boiled and raged. It conjured whirlpools and vast upwellings driven by forces so great they surged several inches higher than the level of the surrounding waters. Giant tree trunks spun helplessly in the river’s grip, crashed together, flailed at the banks and were swept on.
The Waiau bisected Tuatapere and was the town’s sole attraction; a source of wonder to the child and solace to the angler; a great gulp of water, air and light in the heart of our small lives. It was flanked by native bush, protected in reserves on each bank, the western side broadening to a genuine forest through which a narrow, winding road, umbrella’d by totara and rimu, led to the domain and sports ground.
The bridge across the Waiau bespoke the raw energy of the river. Massive timbers fastened with iron railway spikes tangled together in a fantastic superstructure that soared high above the stream. To us kids it seemed as ancient as the river itself, built by giants. It compressed the traffic into a single lane like a bear hug.
A narrow walkway had been appendixed to the bridge. As a young child I approached that walkway with the same trepidation I felt with my first escalator. The planks had been laid with gaps between so the rushing water was clearly visible. I was both repelled and mesmerised by the sight of the river rushing past a few metres beneath my feet.
The walkway was bounded on the outside by a chain link fence with a wooden rail on which I could rest my chin when I was eight. On the inside I don’t remember any sort of formal fence or rail, just the great pile of the bridge’s timbers. The bridge shook and trembled when log lorries, piled with trunks from the Rowallan forests, forced their way across.
The Waiau was too unruly to suffer a waterfront. Its banks were not lined with promenades and buildings. But although the town had withdrawn to the safety of higher ground the river and its bridge nevertheless formed the centre and fulcrum of the place. We were proud of the river - proud of its beauty and energy.
We called it ‘swift’ – ‘the swiftest river in New Zealand’ - and we honoured it by guarding the forest reserves and beautifying the approaches to the bridge.
The river shaped the town’s fortunes. While it flowed swift and strong the town prospered.
Later, when the waters were diverted through the Manapouri power station and the river dwindled so did Tuatapere. The old bridge was replaced with a functional concrete structure, sawmills closed, people moved away.
I often think of the Waiau and its place in my early life now that I find myself living once again in a town bisected by a river. The comparison isn’t flattering because, even allowing for romantic exaggerations, the Ashburton is a scungy little river compared to the Waiau, and our bridge and its surroundings are shameful.
It is unfortunate that the Ashburton river’s occasional ruptures sufficiently inconvenienced early travellers that Mr Turton was inspired to build his wayside hostelry on its bank. While the town grew around the river it has always defied our small attempts at beautification.
The character of a river can shape the character of a town: think of New York, London and Paris. Even in tiny Tuatapere the Waiau river’s sinuous energy lent us a bit of self-belief.
The Ashburton river has the opposite effect. It depresses, dulls and flattens the character of our town. Recognising this, we have turned our backs on it. Our denial is most evident in the bridge and its approaches which are the black heart of the town - dirty, ugly and bereft of civic pride.
And yet it remains the one part of our community that most of us see daily and which all who pass through Ashburton must endure.
We were ill-served by our founders, who should have built away from the river. They didn’t and we’re stuck with that. We can do little to change the character of the river but we must recognise that the bridge and its approaches are our centrepiece and shopfront. Are we happy to look like a dump?
Friday, July 20, 2007
Privacy No Problem for Digital Natives
According to Frieze magazine 75% of old or unused computers in America remain in the possession of their owners. They live out their days in cupboards, under stairs, in basements and garages.
I suspect the same is true in New Zealand. Do you have an old computer in your wardrobe? I do. And I have a shed full of them at my school.
Old computers are hard to throw away, not because they once cost a lot of money or that we shrink from adding to the trash mountain. We may tell ourselves we’re keeping the old computer to give to daughter or son when they leave home, but we know the last thing they want is a machine boasting Windows95 and possessing the memory capacity of a goldfish.
No, we hang onto our old computers because of the ghosts in the machine; the files that, like the adolescent tattoo or the packet of poems to a long lost lover, would make us squirm with embarrassment if they were revealed. In the wrong hands those files could frame us, defame us or publicly shame us. They could be used to steal our identities, strip our bank accounts, force us from our jobs and destroy our good standing in the community.
Sure, we could crank up that old machine and erase the files from the hard drive, but CSI has taught us that a shadow, an imprint, is always left behind and can be smoothly retrieved by a 12 year old hacker.
One thing I am sure of: the old computers of America and New Zealand do not belong to anybody under 30. They are the property of ‘digital immigrants’ like you and me, the generation for whom ICT was the unexpected complication on our journey, the mob of sheep that blundered into our headlights which we are wildly swerving to avoid.
Like a person who learns a second language late in life, our generation may acquire fluency with computers but very few of us ever gain the deep intuitive understanding that enables us to master the technology. I would never fiddle with the settings on my computer or cellphone as I see my daughters doing for fear that I’d become wedged in some tiny, dark corner of cyberspace and be forever lost.
Our children, the ‘digital natives’ who wear computer technology as comfortably as our grandmothers wore fur coats, have not only mastered this new language, they have also acquired distinctly different views about privacy. They seem delighted to display themselves and their lives in full view of the techno-public.
I was made aware of this by two recent experiences. The first was at the function Sylvia and I hosted for our daughter and her friends prior to the Ashburton College ball. We were struck by their eagerness to have themselves photographed. When I was 18 a photograph was something we shrank from. Photographs could embarrass and incriminate. They could pop up at your 21st and totally spoil the party or, at the very least, land you in trouble with your current partner.
Our children have shrugged off this restraint. They love being photographed and use all the resources at their command to publish their images: attaching them to emails, flicking them to friends via cellphone and posting them on the web.
The second experience was a job application. A teacher applied by email for a position at my school. Along with her CV and application form she encouraged me to visit her website, lodged on MySpace. MySpace is one of several interactive web-based platforms for capturing friendships. They enable users to talk, trade gossip, share stories and photographs.
My reaction to this young woman’s website was pure digital immigrant. I was embarrassed by her personal diary, by the photos of people with their heads down toilets, by her frank revelations of dreams and desires. I was intrigued to read her correspondence with the principal of another school to which she was also applying for a job. It was, simply, too much information.
I suppose the willingness of digital natives to live their lives in public springs not simply from the enabling technology. It arises from the ‘bare it all’ mentality of reality television and coffee table magazines.
But it puzzles me. Do the people who publish the intimacies of their lives on MySpace or Bebo really understand that the information is therefore in the public domain, accessible by anybody who cares to look? Or do they see it as a private transaction between themselves and whoever logs on?
To a digital immigrant it seems fraught with peril. You’ll never catch me revealing myself so publicly.
According to Frieze magazine 75% of old or unused computers in America remain in the possession of their owners. They live out their days in cupboards, under stairs, in basements and garages.
I suspect the same is true in New Zealand. Do you have an old computer in your wardrobe? I do. And I have a shed full of them at my school.
Old computers are hard to throw away, not because they once cost a lot of money or that we shrink from adding to the trash mountain. We may tell ourselves we’re keeping the old computer to give to daughter or son when they leave home, but we know the last thing they want is a machine boasting Windows95 and possessing the memory capacity of a goldfish.
No, we hang onto our old computers because of the ghosts in the machine; the files that, like the adolescent tattoo or the packet of poems to a long lost lover, would make us squirm with embarrassment if they were revealed. In the wrong hands those files could frame us, defame us or publicly shame us. They could be used to steal our identities, strip our bank accounts, force us from our jobs and destroy our good standing in the community.
Sure, we could crank up that old machine and erase the files from the hard drive, but CSI has taught us that a shadow, an imprint, is always left behind and can be smoothly retrieved by a 12 year old hacker.
One thing I am sure of: the old computers of America and New Zealand do not belong to anybody under 30. They are the property of ‘digital immigrants’ like you and me, the generation for whom ICT was the unexpected complication on our journey, the mob of sheep that blundered into our headlights which we are wildly swerving to avoid.
Like a person who learns a second language late in life, our generation may acquire fluency with computers but very few of us ever gain the deep intuitive understanding that enables us to master the technology. I would never fiddle with the settings on my computer or cellphone as I see my daughters doing for fear that I’d become wedged in some tiny, dark corner of cyberspace and be forever lost.
Our children, the ‘digital natives’ who wear computer technology as comfortably as our grandmothers wore fur coats, have not only mastered this new language, they have also acquired distinctly different views about privacy. They seem delighted to display themselves and their lives in full view of the techno-public.
I was made aware of this by two recent experiences. The first was at the function Sylvia and I hosted for our daughter and her friends prior to the Ashburton College ball. We were struck by their eagerness to have themselves photographed. When I was 18 a photograph was something we shrank from. Photographs could embarrass and incriminate. They could pop up at your 21st and totally spoil the party or, at the very least, land you in trouble with your current partner.
Our children have shrugged off this restraint. They love being photographed and use all the resources at their command to publish their images: attaching them to emails, flicking them to friends via cellphone and posting them on the web.
The second experience was a job application. A teacher applied by email for a position at my school. Along with her CV and application form she encouraged me to visit her website, lodged on MySpace. MySpace is one of several interactive web-based platforms for capturing friendships. They enable users to talk, trade gossip, share stories and photographs.
My reaction to this young woman’s website was pure digital immigrant. I was embarrassed by her personal diary, by the photos of people with their heads down toilets, by her frank revelations of dreams and desires. I was intrigued to read her correspondence with the principal of another school to which she was also applying for a job. It was, simply, too much information.
I suppose the willingness of digital natives to live their lives in public springs not simply from the enabling technology. It arises from the ‘bare it all’ mentality of reality television and coffee table magazines.
But it puzzles me. Do the people who publish the intimacies of their lives on MySpace or Bebo really understand that the information is therefore in the public domain, accessible by anybody who cares to look? Or do they see it as a private transaction between themselves and whoever logs on?
To a digital immigrant it seems fraught with peril. You’ll never catch me revealing myself so publicly.
Me and Tommy’s One-Night Stand
From where I stand the Celtic Rugby Clubrooms look like they are on fire. Thin grey smoke streams from under eaves and through a solitary vent in the roof. Bright light flickers yellow and orange through streaming windows, and a loose window frame vibrates to a steady bass thump.
The Celtic Rugby Club is not on fire. This is the Ashburton College after ball party, and I am at the scene as one might be at the scene of a good-natured football riot. The centre of the event is a heaving, pulsing mass of human energy but here, just a few metres away, a sort of objective calm holds the bystanders.
Not that we’re gathering to seek autographs or admire the outfits. We are a safety net discreetly wrapped around the event; a cordon of parents, youth workers and security men whose job is to mop up the drunks, calm down the hot-heads and make sure everybody gets home safely at the end of the night.
There’s not much to do. The kids have arrived, divested of their ball gowns and tuxedos and hauling a small distillery of alcohol (cans only – no glass). They have produced their tickets and disappeared into the now-pulsating club rooms. An orange quarter-moon has set demurely over Allenton, leaving the stars in command of the sky and us below, stamping our feet and hunching deeper into our jackets. As the frost settles on the footy pitch and around my ankles I resign myself to a long, dark, cold and uneventful night.
Then I meet Tommy.
Tommy is one of three large Pacific Island men assigned to our small group to earn us a little respect from erstwhile gate-crashers. We stand together in darkness at the entrance to the car park.
I ask Tommy where he’s from.
“Wellington,” he replies.
I am taken aback by this answer. “No,” I want to say, “I mean, where are you from? Which sun-washed outpost of the tropical Pacific does your brown skin hark to?”
Tommy senses my query and guides me to safety. His parents came from the Cook Islands and he was born here, in Wellington. It is a simple whakapapa and a generous one, forgiving my small-town ignorance.
Nevertheless, I am startled by my presumption. Tommy, the child of immigrants, is as much a New Zealander as me, except his parents came from the Cook Islands, which makes him a Pacific Islander, whereas my parents came from Holland, which makes me a kiwi.
As the long night passes Tommy tells me his story. He came to Mid-Canterbury five years ago with the first group of meat workers brought here by WINZ and CMP. I remember their arrival – the sudden influx of street-wise Maori and PI kids into our schools.
“They brought us down for a week’s trial. We all stayed in the motels across the bridge and it went pretty well. I said to them, ‘can you promise me two things: a job as a slaughterman and a house?’ They reckoned they could, so I signed up there and then. My wife was up in Wellington. She said, ‘if you think it’s a good thing, we’ll come down’.”
Tommy never looked back. “We couldn’t believe it down here. There was so much work – we were never out of a job. In my first off-season I worked for a farmer at Dromore, on the lambing beat. I didn’t know anything about farming but he showed me how to mother an orphan onto the ewe. I told him, ‘all my working life I’ve been killing lambs and now I’m keeping them alive!’ ”
We pace in the darkness at the back of the clubrooms. I notice a small movement against the iron fence and call Tommy over. He shines his flashlight over the fence. “Come on out of there,” he says softly. A young couple emerge from the shadows and, under the beam of Tommy’s torch, walk guiltily to the front of the building. Tommy talks quietly to them for a moment before one of the youth workers escorts them away.
Tommy rejoins me in the darkness. “Thought they’d try to get in, I suppose. I hope someone gives them a lift home.”
Moving to Mid-Canterbury was a culture shock. “We were living in Methven and when we walked down the street people would say hello to us. We’d turn around to see who they were talking to, or we’d look at them to see if they were having us on. Where we come from you just don’t say hello on the street.”
“Now we’ve moved to Ashburton to be closer to the works. We’ve got a lady in the bank who’s helping us save a deposit for a house. She says ‘don’t buy anything until you can afford it.’ You know, up in Wellington nobody would ever think like that. None of us would think about buying a house. The PIs up there, we all spend the money. But it’s different here.”
“A lot of my family are down here now; my brother, and my uncle and others. We’ve got a culture group and COGs is helping us set up an incorporated society. We’ve got a church. When I go back to Wellington I tell them they should come and visit me at home. ‘But you are home’ they say. ‘No I’m not,’ I tell them, ‘my home’s in Ashburton’.”
A group of partygoers spills out of the clubrooms and is shepherded towards the courtesy vans. I ask Tommy if his teenage daughter is here. “No. She’d like to be but I don’t want her near the drink.”
We get busy as the party closes, the courtesy vans fill and we tidy up the strays. I move inside to help with the cleanup. As I leave I notice Tommy and one of his mates supporting the last young drunk of the evening. I pause to watch this large man, an immigrant to our community, gently lift the partygoer into a van and fasten his seatbelt.
From where I stand the Celtic Rugby Clubrooms look like they are on fire. Thin grey smoke streams from under eaves and through a solitary vent in the roof. Bright light flickers yellow and orange through streaming windows, and a loose window frame vibrates to a steady bass thump.
The Celtic Rugby Club is not on fire. This is the Ashburton College after ball party, and I am at the scene as one might be at the scene of a good-natured football riot. The centre of the event is a heaving, pulsing mass of human energy but here, just a few metres away, a sort of objective calm holds the bystanders.
Not that we’re gathering to seek autographs or admire the outfits. We are a safety net discreetly wrapped around the event; a cordon of parents, youth workers and security men whose job is to mop up the drunks, calm down the hot-heads and make sure everybody gets home safely at the end of the night.
There’s not much to do. The kids have arrived, divested of their ball gowns and tuxedos and hauling a small distillery of alcohol (cans only – no glass). They have produced their tickets and disappeared into the now-pulsating club rooms. An orange quarter-moon has set demurely over Allenton, leaving the stars in command of the sky and us below, stamping our feet and hunching deeper into our jackets. As the frost settles on the footy pitch and around my ankles I resign myself to a long, dark, cold and uneventful night.
Then I meet Tommy.
Tommy is one of three large Pacific Island men assigned to our small group to earn us a little respect from erstwhile gate-crashers. We stand together in darkness at the entrance to the car park.
I ask Tommy where he’s from.
“Wellington,” he replies.
I am taken aback by this answer. “No,” I want to say, “I mean, where are you from? Which sun-washed outpost of the tropical Pacific does your brown skin hark to?”
Tommy senses my query and guides me to safety. His parents came from the Cook Islands and he was born here, in Wellington. It is a simple whakapapa and a generous one, forgiving my small-town ignorance.
Nevertheless, I am startled by my presumption. Tommy, the child of immigrants, is as much a New Zealander as me, except his parents came from the Cook Islands, which makes him a Pacific Islander, whereas my parents came from Holland, which makes me a kiwi.
As the long night passes Tommy tells me his story. He came to Mid-Canterbury five years ago with the first group of meat workers brought here by WINZ and CMP. I remember their arrival – the sudden influx of street-wise Maori and PI kids into our schools.
“They brought us down for a week’s trial. We all stayed in the motels across the bridge and it went pretty well. I said to them, ‘can you promise me two things: a job as a slaughterman and a house?’ They reckoned they could, so I signed up there and then. My wife was up in Wellington. She said, ‘if you think it’s a good thing, we’ll come down’.”
Tommy never looked back. “We couldn’t believe it down here. There was so much work – we were never out of a job. In my first off-season I worked for a farmer at Dromore, on the lambing beat. I didn’t know anything about farming but he showed me how to mother an orphan onto the ewe. I told him, ‘all my working life I’ve been killing lambs and now I’m keeping them alive!’ ”
We pace in the darkness at the back of the clubrooms. I notice a small movement against the iron fence and call Tommy over. He shines his flashlight over the fence. “Come on out of there,” he says softly. A young couple emerge from the shadows and, under the beam of Tommy’s torch, walk guiltily to the front of the building. Tommy talks quietly to them for a moment before one of the youth workers escorts them away.
Tommy rejoins me in the darkness. “Thought they’d try to get in, I suppose. I hope someone gives them a lift home.”
Moving to Mid-Canterbury was a culture shock. “We were living in Methven and when we walked down the street people would say hello to us. We’d turn around to see who they were talking to, or we’d look at them to see if they were having us on. Where we come from you just don’t say hello on the street.”
“Now we’ve moved to Ashburton to be closer to the works. We’ve got a lady in the bank who’s helping us save a deposit for a house. She says ‘don’t buy anything until you can afford it.’ You know, up in Wellington nobody would ever think like that. None of us would think about buying a house. The PIs up there, we all spend the money. But it’s different here.”
“A lot of my family are down here now; my brother, and my uncle and others. We’ve got a culture group and COGs is helping us set up an incorporated society. We’ve got a church. When I go back to Wellington I tell them they should come and visit me at home. ‘But you are home’ they say. ‘No I’m not,’ I tell them, ‘my home’s in Ashburton’.”
A group of partygoers spills out of the clubrooms and is shepherded towards the courtesy vans. I ask Tommy if his teenage daughter is here. “No. She’d like to be but I don’t want her near the drink.”
We get busy as the party closes, the courtesy vans fill and we tidy up the strays. I move inside to help with the cleanup. As I leave I notice Tommy and one of his mates supporting the last young drunk of the evening. I pause to watch this large man, an immigrant to our community, gently lift the partygoer into a van and fasten his seatbelt.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Old Mugs Chase Auld Mug
16th June 2007
Headline writers around the country have been celebrating Emirates Team New Zealand’s win in the Louis Vuitton cup. “Airline Snatches Handbag!” is our favourite.
But celebrations have quickly soured with the Auckland City Council’s declaration that it no longer has room to host the event should Team New Zealand return with the Auld Mug.
Since New Zealand lost the cup in 2003 the Viaduct Basin on Auckland’s waterfront has been turned into upmarket apartments. Boatsheds and bleachers have vanished and the display case that housed the trophy now holds a model of a proposed motorway.
Auckland mayor, Dick Hubbard (nicknamed ‘Cereal-Killer’ by Council staff), holds little hope of the event returning to Auckland. “Frankly, we at the Council can’t imagine how we’ll accommodate the America’s Cup back in Auckland. The waterfront’s full. The only place we could redevelop is the container wharf and you saw what happened last year when some bloke suggested building a rugby stadium there.”
Mr Hubbard admitted that the prospect of Team New Zealand regaining the America’s Cup had never occurred to him. “Personally, we at the Council thought they were crap last time and couldn’t see them getting within a bull’s roar of challenging the Swiss. We were quietly relieved. After that last regatta we’d had enough of America’s Cup sailors with their skinny arses and blond tips.”
But the story is about to get messier. In an exclusive interview with The Ashburton Guardian’s Valencia-based yachting reporter, a source close to Team New Zealand has revealed that Auckland City Council staff have suggested to Grant Dalton and Dean Barker that they deliberately lose the final to avoid embarrassing the City of Sails.
The source, who can’t be named because we invented him (should we strike that out? Ed.), describes emails from Council staff offering strategies for losing races.
“Basically, they just lifted our ideas from the last campaign: you know, like losing the mast or filling up with water or putting all the fat guys on the boat at the same time. Basically anything that will slow us down but look like an accident.”
Dalton’s response has been swift. In a circular to crew and supporters he condemned the actions of Auckland officials and threw an invitation to other New Zealand towns to host the next America’s Cup should Team New Zealand beat Alinghi.
“Auckland sucks,” seethed a bellicose Dalton. “They argue about raising water rates but can’t provide a decent bit of water to hold a boat race.”
The prospect of hosting the next America’s Cup has excited local politicians throughout New Zealand. Councillors from Coromandel to Cromwell, with one eye on the forthcoming local body elections, are launching sub-committees and feasibility studies in an effort to lure the glittering prize to their district. Even being land-locked is no deterrent. Ohakune, in the central North Island, has formed a yacht club while the Hanmer Springs Community Board, in what must be the most poorly researched America’s Cup bid in history, has offered to build a new golf course.
In a further exclusive the Guardian can reveal that Ashburton District Councillors are also keen to get in on the act. At a series of late night meetings in Mare O’Malley’s woodshed Councillors have been putting the finishing touches to an America’s Cup bid that will stun both local rate payers and the yachting world. Our reporter, embedded in the hard drive of the District Engineer’s laptop, reveals a startling self-confidence among our leaders that their bid will succeed.
“Mid-Canterbury has a fine sailing tradition,” mayor O’Malley is reported to have said. “I regularly play with boats in the bath.”
Planning has advanced to the stage of selecting a local venue. Early discussions centred on the domain duck pond until ‘Commodore’ Councillor Holmes scuppered that plan with a few photos of America’s Cup yachts and some technical advice.
“They’re quite big,” he asserted.
Other venues were discussed and discarded, including the Rangitata Diversion Race (“too narrow”), Lake Hood (“too flat”) and the Ashburton river (“too upmarket”).
Eventually Councillors decided to construct a purpose-built America’s Cup lake as part of the new swimming pool and sports stadium. That project will be fast-tracked to be completed by mid-2008 should Team New Zealand win in Valencia. With Councillors favouring a downtown waterfront the preferred location for the lake is the block of land between Burnett Street and Walnut Avenue, running from West Street to the top of Alford Forest Road.
Funding for the project will be a one-off special rate of $37,000 per household. Councillor Beaven complained that this would be hard for low income households. His objections were dismissed. “People can either get in behind this bid or start cheering for Alinghi,” growled Councillor Holmes.
The America’s Cup final has just got a lot more interesting.
16th June 2007
Headline writers around the country have been celebrating Emirates Team New Zealand’s win in the Louis Vuitton cup. “Airline Snatches Handbag!” is our favourite.
But celebrations have quickly soured with the Auckland City Council’s declaration that it no longer has room to host the event should Team New Zealand return with the Auld Mug.
Since New Zealand lost the cup in 2003 the Viaduct Basin on Auckland’s waterfront has been turned into upmarket apartments. Boatsheds and bleachers have vanished and the display case that housed the trophy now holds a model of a proposed motorway.
Auckland mayor, Dick Hubbard (nicknamed ‘Cereal-Killer’ by Council staff), holds little hope of the event returning to Auckland. “Frankly, we at the Council can’t imagine how we’ll accommodate the America’s Cup back in Auckland. The waterfront’s full. The only place we could redevelop is the container wharf and you saw what happened last year when some bloke suggested building a rugby stadium there.”
Mr Hubbard admitted that the prospect of Team New Zealand regaining the America’s Cup had never occurred to him. “Personally, we at the Council thought they were crap last time and couldn’t see them getting within a bull’s roar of challenging the Swiss. We were quietly relieved. After that last regatta we’d had enough of America’s Cup sailors with their skinny arses and blond tips.”
But the story is about to get messier. In an exclusive interview with The Ashburton Guardian’s Valencia-based yachting reporter, a source close to Team New Zealand has revealed that Auckland City Council staff have suggested to Grant Dalton and Dean Barker that they deliberately lose the final to avoid embarrassing the City of Sails.
The source, who can’t be named because we invented him (should we strike that out? Ed.), describes emails from Council staff offering strategies for losing races.
“Basically, they just lifted our ideas from the last campaign: you know, like losing the mast or filling up with water or putting all the fat guys on the boat at the same time. Basically anything that will slow us down but look like an accident.”
Dalton’s response has been swift. In a circular to crew and supporters he condemned the actions of Auckland officials and threw an invitation to other New Zealand towns to host the next America’s Cup should Team New Zealand beat Alinghi.
“Auckland sucks,” seethed a bellicose Dalton. “They argue about raising water rates but can’t provide a decent bit of water to hold a boat race.”
The prospect of hosting the next America’s Cup has excited local politicians throughout New Zealand. Councillors from Coromandel to Cromwell, with one eye on the forthcoming local body elections, are launching sub-committees and feasibility studies in an effort to lure the glittering prize to their district. Even being land-locked is no deterrent. Ohakune, in the central North Island, has formed a yacht club while the Hanmer Springs Community Board, in what must be the most poorly researched America’s Cup bid in history, has offered to build a new golf course.
In a further exclusive the Guardian can reveal that Ashburton District Councillors are also keen to get in on the act. At a series of late night meetings in Mare O’Malley’s woodshed Councillors have been putting the finishing touches to an America’s Cup bid that will stun both local rate payers and the yachting world. Our reporter, embedded in the hard drive of the District Engineer’s laptop, reveals a startling self-confidence among our leaders that their bid will succeed.
“Mid-Canterbury has a fine sailing tradition,” mayor O’Malley is reported to have said. “I regularly play with boats in the bath.”
Planning has advanced to the stage of selecting a local venue. Early discussions centred on the domain duck pond until ‘Commodore’ Councillor Holmes scuppered that plan with a few photos of America’s Cup yachts and some technical advice.
“They’re quite big,” he asserted.
Other venues were discussed and discarded, including the Rangitata Diversion Race (“too narrow”), Lake Hood (“too flat”) and the Ashburton river (“too upmarket”).
Eventually Councillors decided to construct a purpose-built America’s Cup lake as part of the new swimming pool and sports stadium. That project will be fast-tracked to be completed by mid-2008 should Team New Zealand win in Valencia. With Councillors favouring a downtown waterfront the preferred location for the lake is the block of land between Burnett Street and Walnut Avenue, running from West Street to the top of Alford Forest Road.
Funding for the project will be a one-off special rate of $37,000 per household. Councillor Beaven complained that this would be hard for low income households. His objections were dismissed. “People can either get in behind this bid or start cheering for Alinghi,” growled Councillor Holmes.
The America’s Cup final has just got a lot more interesting.
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Plandemic Panning
2nd June 2007
When the Man from the Ministry arrived at the seminar he was so encumbered with baggage I thought he was on his way to or from the airport. Apart from the obligatory laptop – the modern manager’s bowler hat and brolly – he carried an oversize shoulder bag and a smaller briefcase.
As we watched – twenty-five primary school principals in a stuffy room on a slow Monday afternoon - he unpacked his bags, producing a data projector, two large speakers and a tangle of cables which he meticulously re-ordered, his face a study in concentration. We waited, trying to guess his purpose.
When all was prepared the Man from the Ministry delivered a short prologue – “You are about to see Operation Cruikshank” – and pressed Enter.
Operation Cruikshank flashed onto the big screen at the front of the room. There was a news desk, a brief opening title, and a severe young woman describing an outbreak of avian bird flu spreading through New Zealand. We crossed to the parliamentary reporter standing in front of the beehive, cut to pictures of soldiers sealing off streets and a selection of closeups showing boxes of medication and white-coated health workers with face masks.
Operation Cruikshank rolled out like a snore. Talking heads from government agencies and security services described how they will react when the pandemic – bird flu or other – reaches our shores. A slightly deranged traffic light flashed coloured security levels as the epidemic expanded – from orange to yellow and final, fatal red.
By the end of the afternoon the authors of Operation Cruikshank had convinced us that when the long-anticipated pandemic strikes we will talk the bloody thing to a standstill.
I have endured several pandemic planning presentations. There is a small, bilious corner of the public service dedicated to, nay, enthralled by the theatrical potential of disaster preparation. It is a bureaucrat’s dream, a fantasy of forms and regulations, of action plans, backups and contingencies, of Orders-In-Council and sirens in the streets.
Civil service planners seem unphased by some small realities: the much-anticipated bird flu pandemic shows no sign of rousing itself and even if it does their plans will never work. On one hand pandemic planning is a no-brainer, on the other it is a hospital pass.
The plans will never work because there seems to be no coherent set of responses to mitigate the effects of a determined virus.
Take the influenza pandemic of 1919, for example. Even with the country on a wartime footing the epidemic went where it pleased. The Man from the Ministry reminded us that we are far less well prepared today.
“Oh, I dunno,” intoned a voice from the back of the room. “They may have had the army, but we have powerpoint.”
And sadly, we do. We have, through the miracle of information technology, the capacity to tie ourselves in knots.
I am exhorted by the Men from the Ministry to prepare a pandemic plan for my school. I am encouraged in this by the provision of hundreds of pages of forms
and spurred by the promise that the Education Review Office, the government’s pitbull, will audit my preparations on their next visit.
There are schools in New Zealand where pandemic planning runs to 40 pages of densely typed procedures, where committees and sub-committees have been formed, wardens appointed and students drilled to divert sneezes into their elbows. When pandemic strikes the students in these schools will be laid waste while staff decipher procedural point 44, sub-clause 23B.
Diligent schools hinge their preparation on sending work home to students. They conjure hopeful scenarios of teachers in their own homes emailing assignments to students, marking the completed returned work and generally carrying on as normal.
The Man from the Ministry burst that bubble. “Keep cyberspace free from unnecessary communications”, he said. With the population at home and the regular infrastructure curtailed the internet will be needed for essential communication. We must avoid overloading it with worksheets. Send home a few paper tasks when the kids leave and forget anything else.
As we suffer this plandemic I regret lost opportunities to join other, more vigorous, branches of the public service. I bet pandemic planning is more exciting for police or firefighters. I bet they don’t have to endure Operation Cruikshank. I imagine them throwing rings of steel around neighbourhoods, storming central city buildings, letting off smoke bombs, squirting fire hoses and shouting “bang! You’re dead!” All this while I sit on my backside in a stuffy room.
I’ve thought hard this week about pandemic preparations for my school. I’ve consulted staff and community and we’ve come up with a plan. It is simple and, we believe, effective.
1. Close the school.
2. Reopen when we’re told to.
That should do the trick.
2nd June 2007
When the Man from the Ministry arrived at the seminar he was so encumbered with baggage I thought he was on his way to or from the airport. Apart from the obligatory laptop – the modern manager’s bowler hat and brolly – he carried an oversize shoulder bag and a smaller briefcase.
As we watched – twenty-five primary school principals in a stuffy room on a slow Monday afternoon - he unpacked his bags, producing a data projector, two large speakers and a tangle of cables which he meticulously re-ordered, his face a study in concentration. We waited, trying to guess his purpose.
When all was prepared the Man from the Ministry delivered a short prologue – “You are about to see Operation Cruikshank” – and pressed Enter.
Operation Cruikshank flashed onto the big screen at the front of the room. There was a news desk, a brief opening title, and a severe young woman describing an outbreak of avian bird flu spreading through New Zealand. We crossed to the parliamentary reporter standing in front of the beehive, cut to pictures of soldiers sealing off streets and a selection of closeups showing boxes of medication and white-coated health workers with face masks.
Operation Cruikshank rolled out like a snore. Talking heads from government agencies and security services described how they will react when the pandemic – bird flu or other – reaches our shores. A slightly deranged traffic light flashed coloured security levels as the epidemic expanded – from orange to yellow and final, fatal red.
By the end of the afternoon the authors of Operation Cruikshank had convinced us that when the long-anticipated pandemic strikes we will talk the bloody thing to a standstill.
I have endured several pandemic planning presentations. There is a small, bilious corner of the public service dedicated to, nay, enthralled by the theatrical potential of disaster preparation. It is a bureaucrat’s dream, a fantasy of forms and regulations, of action plans, backups and contingencies, of Orders-In-Council and sirens in the streets.
Civil service planners seem unphased by some small realities: the much-anticipated bird flu pandemic shows no sign of rousing itself and even if it does their plans will never work. On one hand pandemic planning is a no-brainer, on the other it is a hospital pass.
The plans will never work because there seems to be no coherent set of responses to mitigate the effects of a determined virus.
Take the influenza pandemic of 1919, for example. Even with the country on a wartime footing the epidemic went where it pleased. The Man from the Ministry reminded us that we are far less well prepared today.
“Oh, I dunno,” intoned a voice from the back of the room. “They may have had the army, but we have powerpoint.”
And sadly, we do. We have, through the miracle of information technology, the capacity to tie ourselves in knots.
I am exhorted by the Men from the Ministry to prepare a pandemic plan for my school. I am encouraged in this by the provision of hundreds of pages of forms
and spurred by the promise that the Education Review Office, the government’s pitbull, will audit my preparations on their next visit.
There are schools in New Zealand where pandemic planning runs to 40 pages of densely typed procedures, where committees and sub-committees have been formed, wardens appointed and students drilled to divert sneezes into their elbows. When pandemic strikes the students in these schools will be laid waste while staff decipher procedural point 44, sub-clause 23B.
Diligent schools hinge their preparation on sending work home to students. They conjure hopeful scenarios of teachers in their own homes emailing assignments to students, marking the completed returned work and generally carrying on as normal.
The Man from the Ministry burst that bubble. “Keep cyberspace free from unnecessary communications”, he said. With the population at home and the regular infrastructure curtailed the internet will be needed for essential communication. We must avoid overloading it with worksheets. Send home a few paper tasks when the kids leave and forget anything else.
As we suffer this plandemic I regret lost opportunities to join other, more vigorous, branches of the public service. I bet pandemic planning is more exciting for police or firefighters. I bet they don’t have to endure Operation Cruikshank. I imagine them throwing rings of steel around neighbourhoods, storming central city buildings, letting off smoke bombs, squirting fire hoses and shouting “bang! You’re dead!” All this while I sit on my backside in a stuffy room.
I’ve thought hard this week about pandemic preparations for my school. I’ve consulted staff and community and we’ve come up with a plan. It is simple and, we believe, effective.
1. Close the school.
2. Reopen when we’re told to.
That should do the trick.
Monday, May 21, 2007
The Lessons of Salem
19th May 2007
As a child I was taught not to tell lies: “a lie will always catch you out,” my parents told me. I taught the same message to my children.
Lies, of course, do not always catch you out. Some lies remain watertight. Some even become enshrined as truths.
Fifty years ago Arthur Miller wrote about lies in his play The Crucible, which was brilliantly staged at Trott’s Garden this week by Ashburton College drama students. Miller explored how a lie can take root within a community and spread its branches to ensnare the good, the bad and the indifferent.
The Crucible tells the story of the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, three hundred years ago. A group of young girls, caught dancing in the forest in breach of the puritanical strictures of their community, lie to protect themselves by laying accusations of witch-craft. At first the accused are the powerless and outcast in the community. As the lie gathers strength, nurtured by religious hysteria, it is used to settle old scores and remove rivals.
As the community devours itself confession becomes the only lifeline. If you confess to being in thrall to the devil, declare the priests and judges, you are on the path to redemption. Your salvation will be assured if you help identify the perpetrators of evil.
Eventually hundreds of Salem’s citizens were accused of witch-craft and demonology. Seventy-two were sentenced to death and half of these were hanged.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible not simply to retell an old tale. He wrote it at the height of the Cold War, when America was swept by a wave of anti-communist hysteria. Senator Joe McCarthy conducted an inquisition to uproot communist infiltration of American society and business. ‘McCarthyism’ became a synonym for witch-hunt.
The Crucible reminds us that however civilised we may believe ourselves to be we remain vulnerable to our imaginations. When imagined fears are manipulated into collective hysteria we are no more civilised than the puritans of Salem.
Recent history is thick with witch-hunts. Technology and the instruments of power have enabled many of these to be enacted on a scale unimaginable in seventeenth century Salem.
In the most successful cases an entire nation can be subdued through a regime of terror and lies, where the only safety is to become an informant. Stalin did it brilliantly in the Soviet Union. Hitler, Mussolini and Mao Tse Tung were masters of the craft. The catalogue unfolds - apartheid South Africa, North Korea, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and poor Zimbabwe today.
Even in New Zealand – a relatively level-headed society - we are not immune to witch-hunts. At moments we are as vulnerable as any other community to evil portent, bubbling conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger intrigue and the ever-present threats of our neighbours.
For evidence we need look no further than this week’s press. Sandwiched between David Bain and the budget was yet another story about sexual deviancy and corruption in the police. This time it centred on the viewing of a pornographic video 25 years ago.
At one level the story seems a scurrilous attempt to malign the police commissioner, Howard Broad, who was present at the event. Broad took his cue from Salem, owned up to his part in the incident and re-directed the media’s attention to the real culprits.
The story then focussed on two former Dunedin police officers trading accusations to settle old scores. Then, like all witch-hunts, it grew rapidly into a story of widespread corruption among Dunedin police in the 1980s and 1990s, with harassment and violation of women police officers, stand-over tactics at local brothels and a culture of machismo and bullying.
By day two it was drawing in the Exclusive Brethren, David Bain and suggestions of a cover-up in the recently completed enquiry into police conduct.
Watching this story unfold I was reminded of the atmosphere in Christchurch during the trial of Peter Ellis in the early 1990s. The city was enthralled by the story of sexual abuse of children at the Civic Creche. There were allegations of satanic cults, of secret rooms in the Cranmer Centre where children were detained and abused by leading members of the community. It was rubbish but it poisoned life for a group of innocent people and made many others edgy for years.
The media often plays a mischievous role in these stories. Once a story gathers momentum few journalists pull their punches or stop to consider the veracity of what they are about to print or broadcast.
In Salem it took extraordinary courage to restore sanity. A few leading citizens, accused of witch-craft, refused to lie in order to save themselves. Their executions, patently unjust, jolted the community to its senses.
When faced with a witch-hunt of any sort we must refuse to buy into it. We must not blindly believe the last thing we heard on the news. And we must not tell lies – even to ourselves.
19th May 2007
As a child I was taught not to tell lies: “a lie will always catch you out,” my parents told me. I taught the same message to my children.
Lies, of course, do not always catch you out. Some lies remain watertight. Some even become enshrined as truths.
Fifty years ago Arthur Miller wrote about lies in his play The Crucible, which was brilliantly staged at Trott’s Garden this week by Ashburton College drama students. Miller explored how a lie can take root within a community and spread its branches to ensnare the good, the bad and the indifferent.
The Crucible tells the story of the witch trials of Salem, Massachusetts, three hundred years ago. A group of young girls, caught dancing in the forest in breach of the puritanical strictures of their community, lie to protect themselves by laying accusations of witch-craft. At first the accused are the powerless and outcast in the community. As the lie gathers strength, nurtured by religious hysteria, it is used to settle old scores and remove rivals.
As the community devours itself confession becomes the only lifeline. If you confess to being in thrall to the devil, declare the priests and judges, you are on the path to redemption. Your salvation will be assured if you help identify the perpetrators of evil.
Eventually hundreds of Salem’s citizens were accused of witch-craft and demonology. Seventy-two were sentenced to death and half of these were hanged.
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible not simply to retell an old tale. He wrote it at the height of the Cold War, when America was swept by a wave of anti-communist hysteria. Senator Joe McCarthy conducted an inquisition to uproot communist infiltration of American society and business. ‘McCarthyism’ became a synonym for witch-hunt.
The Crucible reminds us that however civilised we may believe ourselves to be we remain vulnerable to our imaginations. When imagined fears are manipulated into collective hysteria we are no more civilised than the puritans of Salem.
Recent history is thick with witch-hunts. Technology and the instruments of power have enabled many of these to be enacted on a scale unimaginable in seventeenth century Salem.
In the most successful cases an entire nation can be subdued through a regime of terror and lies, where the only safety is to become an informant. Stalin did it brilliantly in the Soviet Union. Hitler, Mussolini and Mao Tse Tung were masters of the craft. The catalogue unfolds - apartheid South Africa, North Korea, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan and poor Zimbabwe today.
Even in New Zealand – a relatively level-headed society - we are not immune to witch-hunts. At moments we are as vulnerable as any other community to evil portent, bubbling conspiracy, cloak-and-dagger intrigue and the ever-present threats of our neighbours.
For evidence we need look no further than this week’s press. Sandwiched between David Bain and the budget was yet another story about sexual deviancy and corruption in the police. This time it centred on the viewing of a pornographic video 25 years ago.
At one level the story seems a scurrilous attempt to malign the police commissioner, Howard Broad, who was present at the event. Broad took his cue from Salem, owned up to his part in the incident and re-directed the media’s attention to the real culprits.
The story then focussed on two former Dunedin police officers trading accusations to settle old scores. Then, like all witch-hunts, it grew rapidly into a story of widespread corruption among Dunedin police in the 1980s and 1990s, with harassment and violation of women police officers, stand-over tactics at local brothels and a culture of machismo and bullying.
By day two it was drawing in the Exclusive Brethren, David Bain and suggestions of a cover-up in the recently completed enquiry into police conduct.
Watching this story unfold I was reminded of the atmosphere in Christchurch during the trial of Peter Ellis in the early 1990s. The city was enthralled by the story of sexual abuse of children at the Civic Creche. There were allegations of satanic cults, of secret rooms in the Cranmer Centre where children were detained and abused by leading members of the community. It was rubbish but it poisoned life for a group of innocent people and made many others edgy for years.
The media often plays a mischievous role in these stories. Once a story gathers momentum few journalists pull their punches or stop to consider the veracity of what they are about to print or broadcast.
In Salem it took extraordinary courage to restore sanity. A few leading citizens, accused of witch-craft, refused to lie in order to save themselves. Their executions, patently unjust, jolted the community to its senses.
When faced with a witch-hunt of any sort we must refuse to buy into it. We must not blindly believe the last thing we heard on the news. And we must not tell lies – even to ourselves.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Maori Kids Are Dumb, Mr V.
Saturday 21st April 2007
The message on the answerphone was brief. “Ollie won’t be back at school this term. Child, Youth and Family pulled the plug and sent him up north.”
Ollie came to our school in February; six years old, Maori, bursting out of his skin.
Ollie was a handful. He was one of those kids that you brace yourself for when you see him coming. His story is sad - and sadly common. His life veers between neglect and abuse, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. He has learned to mistrust the adults who move in and out of his life, and who demonstrate only infrequent and volatile love. His vocabulary is peppered with gang slogans, matched with a swagger masking deep insecurities.
His departure after only one term continues the ongoing disaster of his life. With a child like Ollie it takes at least a term just to calm him down. Now he has to begin that process all over again in a new town, a new home and a new school.
After a few more of these transitions – and there will be more – Ollie will be pretty much lost to education. Even the natural optimism of youth is no protection against constant disappointment and there will come a time when Ollie is no longer prepared to suspend his disbelief in a world that promises so much yet delivers so little.
Earlier this week, in a hotel in Mangere, South Auckland, I sat with 200 other primary and secondary school principals and listened to a speech from Apryll Parata, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary for Maori. She painted the familiar picture of Maori failure in education and chastised us for turning our backs on Maori students. The image was poignant. The streets around us teemed with young Maori and Pacific Islanders but the hotel’s windows faced inward to a courtyard garden and swimming pool.
Mrs Parata did not mince her words. Maori, she said, want the same things as pakeha. They want to live in the confidence of their culture, to actively participate as citizens of the world, to enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Why then, she asked, after 130 years of state-funded education, do we fail to provide young Maori with the means of achieving these goals?
Our failure is all the more regrettable for having one of the best education systems in the world. On average New Zealand students outperform almost all others. But our education system is also one of the most inequitable, with large numbers of students who fail to achieve, many of them Maori.
We sat in that conference room and squirmed under Mrs Parata’s words. There were murmurs of outrage: ‘it’s not our fault, we do our best, we need more resources.’
Mrs Parata was relentless. Maori achievement doesn’t need more resources, she said. It needs a shift of attitude. Maori students fail to achieve because they feel they don’t belong.
Actually, a student’s achievement or failure is determined by a whole lot of things. Schools often let themselves off the hook by blaming poor home life and lack of parenting skills. Parents blame schools for poor teaching and discriminatory practises. Everybody blames the government for poor funding and misguided policy.
In reality a heap of research shows that 50 percent of the variance in achievement among students is simply due to individual ability. If you are a bright kid you are much more likely to succeed regardless of all other factors.
The remaining 50 percent - the achievement factors over which parents, school and society might have some influence – are interesting.
Teachers who blame poor home life for poor achievement should think again. The home accounts for only 6 percent of variance in student achievement.
Parents who think sending their child to a ‘good school’ makes a big difference should think again. The school accounts for only 8 percent of variance in achievement.
The influence of a child’s peers accounts for a further 6 percent, as does the work of school principals. The remaining 25 percent is down to the teacher. A good teacher, it seems, is second only to a child’s natural ability in determining whether that child succeeds or fails in education.
These are generalised numbers and for some children the numbers must vary. Ollie’s chances of success in education are hugely influenced by his home life. It will be difficult for teachers to exert a positive influence on Ollie’s achievement if he continues to bounce from school to school.
Likewise, individual success relies on attitude as well as intellect. Apryll Parata told us that Maori students expect to fail at school, their families expect them to fail and pakeha expect them to fail.
Ollie confirmed that. A few days before the end of term I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I want to ride horses – race them. I prob’ly won’t though.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I’m dumb.”
“Why do you think you’re dumb, Ollie?”
Ollie looked at me.
“Cos Maori kids are dumb, Mr V.”
Saturday 21st April 2007
The message on the answerphone was brief. “Ollie won’t be back at school this term. Child, Youth and Family pulled the plug and sent him up north.”
Ollie came to our school in February; six years old, Maori, bursting out of his skin.
Ollie was a handful. He was one of those kids that you brace yourself for when you see him coming. His story is sad - and sadly common. His life veers between neglect and abuse, in which he is both victim and perpetrator. He has learned to mistrust the adults who move in and out of his life, and who demonstrate only infrequent and volatile love. His vocabulary is peppered with gang slogans, matched with a swagger masking deep insecurities.
His departure after only one term continues the ongoing disaster of his life. With a child like Ollie it takes at least a term just to calm him down. Now he has to begin that process all over again in a new town, a new home and a new school.
After a few more of these transitions – and there will be more – Ollie will be pretty much lost to education. Even the natural optimism of youth is no protection against constant disappointment and there will come a time when Ollie is no longer prepared to suspend his disbelief in a world that promises so much yet delivers so little.
Earlier this week, in a hotel in Mangere, South Auckland, I sat with 200 other primary and secondary school principals and listened to a speech from Apryll Parata, the Ministry of Education’s deputy secretary for Maori. She painted the familiar picture of Maori failure in education and chastised us for turning our backs on Maori students. The image was poignant. The streets around us teemed with young Maori and Pacific Islanders but the hotel’s windows faced inward to a courtyard garden and swimming pool.
Mrs Parata did not mince her words. Maori, she said, want the same things as pakeha. They want to live in the confidence of their culture, to actively participate as citizens of the world, to enjoy good health and a high standard of living. Why then, she asked, after 130 years of state-funded education, do we fail to provide young Maori with the means of achieving these goals?
Our failure is all the more regrettable for having one of the best education systems in the world. On average New Zealand students outperform almost all others. But our education system is also one of the most inequitable, with large numbers of students who fail to achieve, many of them Maori.
We sat in that conference room and squirmed under Mrs Parata’s words. There were murmurs of outrage: ‘it’s not our fault, we do our best, we need more resources.’
Mrs Parata was relentless. Maori achievement doesn’t need more resources, she said. It needs a shift of attitude. Maori students fail to achieve because they feel they don’t belong.
Actually, a student’s achievement or failure is determined by a whole lot of things. Schools often let themselves off the hook by blaming poor home life and lack of parenting skills. Parents blame schools for poor teaching and discriminatory practises. Everybody blames the government for poor funding and misguided policy.
In reality a heap of research shows that 50 percent of the variance in achievement among students is simply due to individual ability. If you are a bright kid you are much more likely to succeed regardless of all other factors.
The remaining 50 percent - the achievement factors over which parents, school and society might have some influence – are interesting.
Teachers who blame poor home life for poor achievement should think again. The home accounts for only 6 percent of variance in student achievement.
Parents who think sending their child to a ‘good school’ makes a big difference should think again. The school accounts for only 8 percent of variance in achievement.
The influence of a child’s peers accounts for a further 6 percent, as does the work of school principals. The remaining 25 percent is down to the teacher. A good teacher, it seems, is second only to a child’s natural ability in determining whether that child succeeds or fails in education.
These are generalised numbers and for some children the numbers must vary. Ollie’s chances of success in education are hugely influenced by his home life. It will be difficult for teachers to exert a positive influence on Ollie’s achievement if he continues to bounce from school to school.
Likewise, individual success relies on attitude as well as intellect. Apryll Parata told us that Maori students expect to fail at school, their families expect them to fail and pakeha expect them to fail.
Ollie confirmed that. A few days before the end of term I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.
“I want to ride horses – race them. I prob’ly won’t though.”
“Why not?”
“Cos I’m dumb.”
“Why do you think you’re dumb, Ollie?”
Ollie looked at me.
“Cos Maori kids are dumb, Mr V.”
The Eels of Ellesmere
Saturday 7th April 2007
Clem Smith pulled 74 tonnes of eels from Lake Ellesmere between early February and mid March. Today however he has just ten, in a small sack he retrieves from tea-coloured water by the boat ramp at Fisherman’s Point.
He drops the sack on the gravel and the children crowd around the writhing slick of eels, delighted and disgusted. The eels are handed around – large eels, small eels, green and silver and purple as deep as aubergine. The big ones are females, Clem explains, filled with eggs and ready to swim to Samoa where, with their smaller mates, they spawn and die.
A hand from the back of the group – how big is the biggest eel you’ve ever caught? Clem is thoughtful. He has a photo, he says, taken in 1959 of himself with an eel twice his size. “Of course, I was smaller then myself,” he grins shyly.
The eels are returned to the water where they quickly vanish. Children drift off to skip stones across the water or fossick among the debris at the lake’s edge. Their beach combing is purposeful – a teacher-inspired scavenger hunt that could win them valuable group points. One boy drags an ancient neoprene diving boot from the mud and holds it aloft. “That’s not what I need” – he consults his list – “what I need is a sock.”
Since January I have travelled daily to my new job at Southbridge School. I am enjoying the experience, although it is a little unnerving to cross the Rakaia and leave behind the familiar networks of Mid-Canterbury. I have discovered there is a membrane, permeable but nevertheless real, that separates our side of the river from the wider world.
I am also discovering another corner of Canterbury that I have never before explored. This school camp at the corner of Lake Ellesmere opens my eyes to new perspectives that are all the more startling because they lie within the scope of familiar landmarks. There is Banks Peninsula, the Torlesse Range, Mount Hutt and, far off, Mount Peel – all familiar but slightly different from this new angle.
The daily experience of driving a few kilometres from the main highway brings me to understand a poverty of experience.
The journey of my life has been traced, by and large, along the narrow strip of State Highway 1. From a Southland childhood I ventured up the road to spend my student years and early working life in Dunedin, followed by a decade each in Christchurch and Mid-Canterbury.
Some of my earliest memories were formed along this route. I recall the Kilmog as a rain-drenched gravel road viewed from the back seat of the family Volkswagen in the early 60s. I bought my first twin-cone ice cream at Ashburton’s Snowdrop dairy in a breath-taking sprint from the railway station while the Southerner paused, southbound, about 1974.
And in all these journeys I have hardly strayed from the narrow path. I have explored no more than half a dozen of the countless side roads along a hundred kilometres of main highway north or south of here. I have not the faintest idea what lies behind the main streets of Dunsandel or Temuka. I presume not much, but I am poorer for that conceit.
If it were not for my new job I would probably never have visited Southbridge or spent these few days at the corner of Lake Ellesmere. I am glad I did – it is country that needs a few days to appreciate.
Like much of the Canterbury coastline it is not pretty. The land is laid bare, its ribs of gravel and sand exposed by low, knife-edged winds that fillet the best of the soil and vegetation, leaving a hard scrub of box thorn, lupin and gorse.
The lake itself is slumped and flaccid, sprawled like a victim. The settlement at Fisherman’s Point seems, at first glance, to echo the mood of the lake. Its fifteen or twenty houses appear to have long since lost their battle with the elements. Damsel flies swarm thickly around the water’s edge and the scrubby farmland is home to half-wild pigs and a scatter of malnourished cattle.
But a closer look reveals small treasures. Ngati Moki marae, where we stayed, lies in the elbow of a spring-fed stream that is as fresh and clear as mountain water. The gullies are moist and fruitful, filled with raupo and flax and a rustling busy-ness of waterfowl.
There is a muted but tenacious narrative in the broken dinghies and tumbledown shacks, and a more ancient story in the earth ramparts of the old pa.
If all this is to be discovered on one side road I begin to imagine what I may find if I explored others. What mysteries and pleasures lie behind Waikouaiti, Clinton and St Andrews? What undiscovered hinterlands lie within this strip of island I call home?
Perhaps it is time I found out.
Saturday 7th April 2007
Clem Smith pulled 74 tonnes of eels from Lake Ellesmere between early February and mid March. Today however he has just ten, in a small sack he retrieves from tea-coloured water by the boat ramp at Fisherman’s Point.
He drops the sack on the gravel and the children crowd around the writhing slick of eels, delighted and disgusted. The eels are handed around – large eels, small eels, green and silver and purple as deep as aubergine. The big ones are females, Clem explains, filled with eggs and ready to swim to Samoa where, with their smaller mates, they spawn and die.
A hand from the back of the group – how big is the biggest eel you’ve ever caught? Clem is thoughtful. He has a photo, he says, taken in 1959 of himself with an eel twice his size. “Of course, I was smaller then myself,” he grins shyly.
The eels are returned to the water where they quickly vanish. Children drift off to skip stones across the water or fossick among the debris at the lake’s edge. Their beach combing is purposeful – a teacher-inspired scavenger hunt that could win them valuable group points. One boy drags an ancient neoprene diving boot from the mud and holds it aloft. “That’s not what I need” – he consults his list – “what I need is a sock.”
Since January I have travelled daily to my new job at Southbridge School. I am enjoying the experience, although it is a little unnerving to cross the Rakaia and leave behind the familiar networks of Mid-Canterbury. I have discovered there is a membrane, permeable but nevertheless real, that separates our side of the river from the wider world.
I am also discovering another corner of Canterbury that I have never before explored. This school camp at the corner of Lake Ellesmere opens my eyes to new perspectives that are all the more startling because they lie within the scope of familiar landmarks. There is Banks Peninsula, the Torlesse Range, Mount Hutt and, far off, Mount Peel – all familiar but slightly different from this new angle.
The daily experience of driving a few kilometres from the main highway brings me to understand a poverty of experience.
The journey of my life has been traced, by and large, along the narrow strip of State Highway 1. From a Southland childhood I ventured up the road to spend my student years and early working life in Dunedin, followed by a decade each in Christchurch and Mid-Canterbury.
Some of my earliest memories were formed along this route. I recall the Kilmog as a rain-drenched gravel road viewed from the back seat of the family Volkswagen in the early 60s. I bought my first twin-cone ice cream at Ashburton’s Snowdrop dairy in a breath-taking sprint from the railway station while the Southerner paused, southbound, about 1974.
And in all these journeys I have hardly strayed from the narrow path. I have explored no more than half a dozen of the countless side roads along a hundred kilometres of main highway north or south of here. I have not the faintest idea what lies behind the main streets of Dunsandel or Temuka. I presume not much, but I am poorer for that conceit.
If it were not for my new job I would probably never have visited Southbridge or spent these few days at the corner of Lake Ellesmere. I am glad I did – it is country that needs a few days to appreciate.
Like much of the Canterbury coastline it is not pretty. The land is laid bare, its ribs of gravel and sand exposed by low, knife-edged winds that fillet the best of the soil and vegetation, leaving a hard scrub of box thorn, lupin and gorse.
The lake itself is slumped and flaccid, sprawled like a victim. The settlement at Fisherman’s Point seems, at first glance, to echo the mood of the lake. Its fifteen or twenty houses appear to have long since lost their battle with the elements. Damsel flies swarm thickly around the water’s edge and the scrubby farmland is home to half-wild pigs and a scatter of malnourished cattle.
But a closer look reveals small treasures. Ngati Moki marae, where we stayed, lies in the elbow of a spring-fed stream that is as fresh and clear as mountain water. The gullies are moist and fruitful, filled with raupo and flax and a rustling busy-ness of waterfowl.
There is a muted but tenacious narrative in the broken dinghies and tumbledown shacks, and a more ancient story in the earth ramparts of the old pa.
If all this is to be discovered on one side road I begin to imagine what I may find if I explored others. What mysteries and pleasures lie behind Waikouaiti, Clinton and St Andrews? What undiscovered hinterlands lie within this strip of island I call home?
Perhaps it is time I found out.
The Modest Air Symposium
Saturday 10th March 2007
A small group of children gathers around the pile of wooden blocks and planks that forms a ramp on the footpath. One stoops to adjust the arrangement of timber.
Thirty metres along the footpath Hazel circles lazily on her bicycle, like an aircraft in a holding pattern. She is a blaze of red on the suburban street: red bicycle, red helmet, red school uniform.
There is a brief command from the group – a signal. Hazel turns, purposeful now, aims her bike at the heap of wood and pumps her legs on the pedals. The bike wobbles and straightens, accelerating. The children stand back, eyes fixed on the ramp.
Hazel hits the ramp hard, the bicycle lifts, clears the top of the pile and, for a perhaps a metre, is airborne, with Hazel standing tall and angled like a ski jumper, hands gripping the handlebars, eyes fixed on the end of the street.
The bicycle lands hard on its front wheel. Hazel pulls up in a skid, turns and pedals calmly back to the group which has gathered around the ramp again. There is a brief, subdued conversation and another child peels out of the group towards the take-off point.
This is the Modest Air Symposium, a small society of neighbourhood children whose wooden ramp has become a fixture on the footpath outside my house.
The game originates from the summer holidays when Nick, our 8 year old neighbour, found some off-cuts of timber and piled them up to make a small ramp for his bike. He tinkered with the size and shape of the ramp and gradually accumulated more pieces of timber to expand it.
For the first couple of weeks Nick played alone, as he usually does.
One evening Nick was away and the kids from across the road, who moved into the neighbourhood a few months ago, brought their bikes over to play on the ramp.
A few days later I noticed Nick and the neighbours were playing together on the ramp. By the following week they had been joined by two more children who live around the corner.
The group has remained constant. Every evening when I come home they are playing on the ramp with their bikes. Sometimes the ramp relocates to the other side of the street.
On the face of it the purpose of their game is to ‘get some air’. Snowboarders at Mt Hutt and skateboarders on the local half-pipe aspire to ‘big air’ – high, sustained periods of flight. Hazel’s work off the small wooden ramp qualifies as only ‘modest air,’ although I am sure it is no less exhilarating for all that.
But I notice the game has many more dimensions than the simple thrill of defying gravity for a second or two. Its main purpose seems to be a fascination with the technology of the ramp; moving and changing the wooden blocks for new effect.
Within this purpose there is a metaphysical dimension expressed in the demeanour of gravity and deep discourse among the children as they rearrange the blocks of wood.
This is a game without obvious excitement. It is conducted in solemn reverence – a symposium, in fact. Dress these kids in togas and they could be classical Greek philosophers, dress them in overalls and they could be engineers testing a new structure or vehicle. They could be farmers at a fielday: kicking tyres, stroking chins, moving slowly but inexorably towards decision.
This pile of planks and off-cuts possesses an astonishing power. It has captivated the group for weeks and broken down barriers of shyness and isolation. The children have become a small society, exploring relationships, experimenting with control over their physical and social world.
As far as I am aware there are never any arguments or falling-outs. There are few rules and no winners or losers. The purpose of the game lies in the deep satisfaction of imaginative play.
As an adult and parent the Modest Air Symposium reinforces some simple but vital lessons about childhood. The best games are sometimes the most simple and least structured. The most improbable material can become a toy.
Above all, the Modest Air Symposium affirms childhood as an adult-free zone.
As parents we are guilty of over-organising our children’s lives. We drive them from one activity to another. We manage their recreation and friendships.
Perhaps we are spurred by media reports of children whose lives are blighted by parental neglect. But in wanting the best for our children we risk neglecting a vital part of their development – the time and space to explore the world through the society of children.
You may observe how positive that society can be by visiting my street for a few minutes on any evening and watching the Modest Air Symposium.
Saturday 10th March 2007
A small group of children gathers around the pile of wooden blocks and planks that forms a ramp on the footpath. One stoops to adjust the arrangement of timber.
Thirty metres along the footpath Hazel circles lazily on her bicycle, like an aircraft in a holding pattern. She is a blaze of red on the suburban street: red bicycle, red helmet, red school uniform.
There is a brief command from the group – a signal. Hazel turns, purposeful now, aims her bike at the heap of wood and pumps her legs on the pedals. The bike wobbles and straightens, accelerating. The children stand back, eyes fixed on the ramp.
Hazel hits the ramp hard, the bicycle lifts, clears the top of the pile and, for a perhaps a metre, is airborne, with Hazel standing tall and angled like a ski jumper, hands gripping the handlebars, eyes fixed on the end of the street.
The bicycle lands hard on its front wheel. Hazel pulls up in a skid, turns and pedals calmly back to the group which has gathered around the ramp again. There is a brief, subdued conversation and another child peels out of the group towards the take-off point.
This is the Modest Air Symposium, a small society of neighbourhood children whose wooden ramp has become a fixture on the footpath outside my house.
The game originates from the summer holidays when Nick, our 8 year old neighbour, found some off-cuts of timber and piled them up to make a small ramp for his bike. He tinkered with the size and shape of the ramp and gradually accumulated more pieces of timber to expand it.
For the first couple of weeks Nick played alone, as he usually does.
One evening Nick was away and the kids from across the road, who moved into the neighbourhood a few months ago, brought their bikes over to play on the ramp.
A few days later I noticed Nick and the neighbours were playing together on the ramp. By the following week they had been joined by two more children who live around the corner.
The group has remained constant. Every evening when I come home they are playing on the ramp with their bikes. Sometimes the ramp relocates to the other side of the street.
On the face of it the purpose of their game is to ‘get some air’. Snowboarders at Mt Hutt and skateboarders on the local half-pipe aspire to ‘big air’ – high, sustained periods of flight. Hazel’s work off the small wooden ramp qualifies as only ‘modest air,’ although I am sure it is no less exhilarating for all that.
But I notice the game has many more dimensions than the simple thrill of defying gravity for a second or two. Its main purpose seems to be a fascination with the technology of the ramp; moving and changing the wooden blocks for new effect.
Within this purpose there is a metaphysical dimension expressed in the demeanour of gravity and deep discourse among the children as they rearrange the blocks of wood.
This is a game without obvious excitement. It is conducted in solemn reverence – a symposium, in fact. Dress these kids in togas and they could be classical Greek philosophers, dress them in overalls and they could be engineers testing a new structure or vehicle. They could be farmers at a fielday: kicking tyres, stroking chins, moving slowly but inexorably towards decision.
This pile of planks and off-cuts possesses an astonishing power. It has captivated the group for weeks and broken down barriers of shyness and isolation. The children have become a small society, exploring relationships, experimenting with control over their physical and social world.
As far as I am aware there are never any arguments or falling-outs. There are few rules and no winners or losers. The purpose of the game lies in the deep satisfaction of imaginative play.
As an adult and parent the Modest Air Symposium reinforces some simple but vital lessons about childhood. The best games are sometimes the most simple and least structured. The most improbable material can become a toy.
Above all, the Modest Air Symposium affirms childhood as an adult-free zone.
As parents we are guilty of over-organising our children’s lives. We drive them from one activity to another. We manage their recreation and friendships.
Perhaps we are spurred by media reports of children whose lives are blighted by parental neglect. But in wanting the best for our children we risk neglecting a vital part of their development – the time and space to explore the world through the society of children.
You may observe how positive that society can be by visiting my street for a few minutes on any evening and watching the Modest Air Symposium.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
George Dubya Goes Ballistic
July 4th 2006
Gladys stamped into the kitchen , kicking off her gumboots and slamming the screen door. “Those thieving, blimmin’ rats have been at my eggs again!” she stormed. “If this goes on they’ll be stealing the chooks next. This can’t go on.”
Uncle Harry bent over the farming page and said nothing.
The recent cold weather had brought a swarm of rats into the hen house. Harry hated rats but he also resented the way the chooks claimed Gladys’s attention. She spent more time fussing over her white leghorns than Harry thought was healthy.
“Harry?” Gladys’s voice had an insistent edge. Harry sighed.
“All right, Glad. I’ll put some baits out.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Harry Clout! What if my chooks eat those baits? No, it’s shooting or traps for those vermin.”
“Sounds like a job for young Sam.”
The following day Harry was working in the toolshed when he was hit in the back of the neck with a jet of cold water. Startled, he spun round and slowly raised his hands above his head. Confronting him was a pocket-sized commando brandishing a pump-action water pistol. A BB gun was slung over one shoulder, a home-made bow and a quiver of toi-toi arrows over the other. His face was smeared with green paint, but it couldn’t conceal the broad grin or mop of unruly blond hair that flopped across his eyes.
“Sam, you little blighter! That’s a poor way to announce yourself.”
Sam was delighted. “That’s one-nil to me, Uncle Harry. Anyway, it’s the holidays. Mum told you I was coming for the week.”
Sam was Harry’s great-nephew; ten years old and skinny as a waif. Sam loved mucking around on the farm. His passion, however, as his get-up suggested, was hunting. Harry was very fond of him.
“We’ve got a special mission, Sam,” Harry lowered his head conspiratorially.
“Cool!!!” Sam’s eyes shone.
“Not cool, Sam. Nasty. Rats.”
“Tough customers, Uncle Harry?”
“Yep, and lots of them, Sam.”
“Then it’s a good thing I brought my secret weapon.”
Sam hitched a small pack off his back and hauled out a half-grown cat.
“Uncle Harry, meet George Dubya.”
George Dubya swung in mid-air, his paws swatting at Sam’s wrist. He was as scrawny and under-sized as Sam, a motley of black and brown with a long streak of ginger down his spine.
“I brought him to get some lessons from Tiger, Uncle Harry.”
“Well, we’d better introduce him to the old master.”
Harry picked up Sam’s pack and steered him towards the back door. “How come you called him George Dubya?”
“Oh, that was mum’s idea. I wanted to call him Osama.”
Tiger, Harry’s huge and ancient tom, was curled up in front of the fire. His fur was grey with age and patchy around his shoulders and neck where he bore the scars of many fights. Tiger ruled Hardtop Farm with an iron claw and a single gleaming eye – he’d lost the other to fireworks in his youth.
Sam dropped George Dubya on the carpet and stood back. The young cat reached a tentative paw towards Tiger’s tail. Tiger lay unmoving. George Dubya batted Tiger’s tail then wriggled his hind quarters and pounced. He never got far. With one flick of an enormous paw Tiger batted the small cat into the wood box. George Dubya crawled out, dazed, and tottered onto the hearth rug. Tiger cuffed him gently then licked his ear. With the pecking order established the two cats settled down to sleep.
After dinner Harry prepared for the rat hunt. Gladys was washing dishes. “For such a scrawny boy that young Sam certainly can eat.”
“Where is he?” Harry looked around.
At that moment Sam appeared. “Look what I’ve made,” he crowed. In his hand he carried a spear, fashioned from a long piece of dowling with a four inch nail stuck in the end. “Those rats won’t know what hit them.” He whooped with anticipation.
Harry found his .22 and they set out across the frozen yard. Tiger stalked behind, with George Dubya scampering at his tail.
In the henhouse the chooks huddled on their wooden perches, muttering in their sleep. The large shed stank of chicken droppings and sawdust. Harry shone his torch into the rafters where, for a moment, the beam of light was reflected in dozens of pairs of gleaming eyes. Then the rafters themselves seemed to spring to life as dozens of rats scurried away from the light.
“They’ll have made nests in the sarking,” Uncle Harry whispered to Sam. “We’ll get up there and root them out. Follow me.”
Harry crept past the sleeping chooks into the feed room. A flash of grey fur shot past as Tiger leapt into the loft, followed by the ginger streak of George Dubya.
Harry and Sam watched in the spotlight as Tiger stalked along a rafter then reached up high into a gap in the roof. Three or four large grey rats tumbled out. Tiger caught one in his teeth and flung it through the air. It hit a roof joist with a crack that broke its neck, its body tumbling through the rafters to the sawdust floor below.
“You take care,” Harry whispered to Sam. “Stay on these planks so you don’t end up down there like that rat.”
Harry crawled forward on his stomach, following the beam of his spotlight. The air was thick with dust. A rat dropped in front of him and he shot it with the .22.
He was lining up another when Sam yelped behind him. He spun the light around to see Sam on his knees, the spear raised high above his head. With a wild cry Sam flung the spear. It whistled past Harry’s nose and embedded itself in a rafter.
“For goodness sake, Sam! You could have taken my head off!”
“I got him! I got him, Uncle Harry!” Sam was bouncing excitedly on the narrow plank.
Harry shone the torchlight onto the spear. A large rat was caught, dead through the neck, fastened to the rafter by the point of the still-quivering spear.
“Geez, Sam. That’s impressive. Now lie down before you fall down.”
Up ahead the rats kept dropping as Tiger worked his away along the rafters. Harry shot two or three more and Sam winged one with his BB gun.
Suddenly there was a flurry in the far corner and a yowl of anger from Tiger. Harry shone his torch into the dust and saw Tiger wrestling with the biggest rat he’d ever seen. As he watched the rat bit Tiger on the neck. Tiger howled with pain and fled into the darkness.
With a scrabbling of claws a small fury with a ginger stripe shot past Harry and hurled itself at the monster rat.
George Dubya was launched into battle.
Harry and Sam watched in disbelief as the tiny cat clung to the enormous rat. They wrestled along the narrow rafter, tumbling in the dust until, with a yowl they dropped into the henhouse, landing in the middle of the sleeping chooks.
The hens erupted in an explosion of feathers and squawks. They flew panic-stricken into the rafters and feed troughs. They upset water buckets and wedged themselves into nesting boxes.
Through the chaos Harry kept the beam of his torch fixed on the momentous battle until the rat, rolling to his feet, shot out the door and into the night with George Dubya clinging desperately to his back.
With the hens awake there wasn’t much more Harry and Sam could do. They headed back to the house, Tiger in front sporting a bloody scratch on his shoulder.
“Should we search for George Dubya, Uncle Harry?” Sam’s voice was worried.
“He’ll give up when he’s had enough,” said Harry.
There was a sudden scream from the house. Rushing into the kitchen they saw Gladys staring, horrified, at the floor. There, under the table, was George Dubya, covered in blood and dirt, his fur torn and one ear practically chewed off. Beside him lay the long grey tail of the giant rat, torn off at its root.
“Oh, look at the poor little cat!” exclaimed Aunty Gladys, “he must have a terribly sore ear.”
“Never mind his ear,” chuckled Uncle Harry, “that rat must have a terribly sore backside.”
July 4th 2006
Gladys stamped into the kitchen , kicking off her gumboots and slamming the screen door. “Those thieving, blimmin’ rats have been at my eggs again!” she stormed. “If this goes on they’ll be stealing the chooks next. This can’t go on.”
Uncle Harry bent over the farming page and said nothing.
The recent cold weather had brought a swarm of rats into the hen house. Harry hated rats but he also resented the way the chooks claimed Gladys’s attention. She spent more time fussing over her white leghorns than Harry thought was healthy.
“Harry?” Gladys’s voice had an insistent edge. Harry sighed.
“All right, Glad. I’ll put some baits out.”
“You’ll do no such thing, Harry Clout! What if my chooks eat those baits? No, it’s shooting or traps for those vermin.”
“Sounds like a job for young Sam.”
The following day Harry was working in the toolshed when he was hit in the back of the neck with a jet of cold water. Startled, he spun round and slowly raised his hands above his head. Confronting him was a pocket-sized commando brandishing a pump-action water pistol. A BB gun was slung over one shoulder, a home-made bow and a quiver of toi-toi arrows over the other. His face was smeared with green paint, but it couldn’t conceal the broad grin or mop of unruly blond hair that flopped across his eyes.
“Sam, you little blighter! That’s a poor way to announce yourself.”
Sam was delighted. “That’s one-nil to me, Uncle Harry. Anyway, it’s the holidays. Mum told you I was coming for the week.”
Sam was Harry’s great-nephew; ten years old and skinny as a waif. Sam loved mucking around on the farm. His passion, however, as his get-up suggested, was hunting. Harry was very fond of him.
“We’ve got a special mission, Sam,” Harry lowered his head conspiratorially.
“Cool!!!” Sam’s eyes shone.
“Not cool, Sam. Nasty. Rats.”
“Tough customers, Uncle Harry?”
“Yep, and lots of them, Sam.”
“Then it’s a good thing I brought my secret weapon.”
Sam hitched a small pack off his back and hauled out a half-grown cat.
“Uncle Harry, meet George Dubya.”
George Dubya swung in mid-air, his paws swatting at Sam’s wrist. He was as scrawny and under-sized as Sam, a motley of black and brown with a long streak of ginger down his spine.
“I brought him to get some lessons from Tiger, Uncle Harry.”
“Well, we’d better introduce him to the old master.”
Harry picked up Sam’s pack and steered him towards the back door. “How come you called him George Dubya?”
“Oh, that was mum’s idea. I wanted to call him Osama.”
Tiger, Harry’s huge and ancient tom, was curled up in front of the fire. His fur was grey with age and patchy around his shoulders and neck where he bore the scars of many fights. Tiger ruled Hardtop Farm with an iron claw and a single gleaming eye – he’d lost the other to fireworks in his youth.
Sam dropped George Dubya on the carpet and stood back. The young cat reached a tentative paw towards Tiger’s tail. Tiger lay unmoving. George Dubya batted Tiger’s tail then wriggled his hind quarters and pounced. He never got far. With one flick of an enormous paw Tiger batted the small cat into the wood box. George Dubya crawled out, dazed, and tottered onto the hearth rug. Tiger cuffed him gently then licked his ear. With the pecking order established the two cats settled down to sleep.
After dinner Harry prepared for the rat hunt. Gladys was washing dishes. “For such a scrawny boy that young Sam certainly can eat.”
“Where is he?” Harry looked around.
At that moment Sam appeared. “Look what I’ve made,” he crowed. In his hand he carried a spear, fashioned from a long piece of dowling with a four inch nail stuck in the end. “Those rats won’t know what hit them.” He whooped with anticipation.
Harry found his .22 and they set out across the frozen yard. Tiger stalked behind, with George Dubya scampering at his tail.
In the henhouse the chooks huddled on their wooden perches, muttering in their sleep. The large shed stank of chicken droppings and sawdust. Harry shone his torch into the rafters where, for a moment, the beam of light was reflected in dozens of pairs of gleaming eyes. Then the rafters themselves seemed to spring to life as dozens of rats scurried away from the light.
“They’ll have made nests in the sarking,” Uncle Harry whispered to Sam. “We’ll get up there and root them out. Follow me.”
Harry crept past the sleeping chooks into the feed room. A flash of grey fur shot past as Tiger leapt into the loft, followed by the ginger streak of George Dubya.
Harry and Sam watched in the spotlight as Tiger stalked along a rafter then reached up high into a gap in the roof. Three or four large grey rats tumbled out. Tiger caught one in his teeth and flung it through the air. It hit a roof joist with a crack that broke its neck, its body tumbling through the rafters to the sawdust floor below.
“You take care,” Harry whispered to Sam. “Stay on these planks so you don’t end up down there like that rat.”
Harry crawled forward on his stomach, following the beam of his spotlight. The air was thick with dust. A rat dropped in front of him and he shot it with the .22.
He was lining up another when Sam yelped behind him. He spun the light around to see Sam on his knees, the spear raised high above his head. With a wild cry Sam flung the spear. It whistled past Harry’s nose and embedded itself in a rafter.
“For goodness sake, Sam! You could have taken my head off!”
“I got him! I got him, Uncle Harry!” Sam was bouncing excitedly on the narrow plank.
Harry shone the torchlight onto the spear. A large rat was caught, dead through the neck, fastened to the rafter by the point of the still-quivering spear.
“Geez, Sam. That’s impressive. Now lie down before you fall down.”
Up ahead the rats kept dropping as Tiger worked his away along the rafters. Harry shot two or three more and Sam winged one with his BB gun.
Suddenly there was a flurry in the far corner and a yowl of anger from Tiger. Harry shone his torch into the dust and saw Tiger wrestling with the biggest rat he’d ever seen. As he watched the rat bit Tiger on the neck. Tiger howled with pain and fled into the darkness.
With a scrabbling of claws a small fury with a ginger stripe shot past Harry and hurled itself at the monster rat.
George Dubya was launched into battle.
Harry and Sam watched in disbelief as the tiny cat clung to the enormous rat. They wrestled along the narrow rafter, tumbling in the dust until, with a yowl they dropped into the henhouse, landing in the middle of the sleeping chooks.
The hens erupted in an explosion of feathers and squawks. They flew panic-stricken into the rafters and feed troughs. They upset water buckets and wedged themselves into nesting boxes.
Through the chaos Harry kept the beam of his torch fixed on the momentous battle until the rat, rolling to his feet, shot out the door and into the night with George Dubya clinging desperately to his back.
With the hens awake there wasn’t much more Harry and Sam could do. They headed back to the house, Tiger in front sporting a bloody scratch on his shoulder.
“Should we search for George Dubya, Uncle Harry?” Sam’s voice was worried.
“He’ll give up when he’s had enough,” said Harry.
There was a sudden scream from the house. Rushing into the kitchen they saw Gladys staring, horrified, at the floor. There, under the table, was George Dubya, covered in blood and dirt, his fur torn and one ear practically chewed off. Beside him lay the long grey tail of the giant rat, torn off at its root.
“Oh, look at the poor little cat!” exclaimed Aunty Gladys, “he must have a terribly sore ear.”
“Never mind his ear,” chuckled Uncle Harry, “that rat must have a terribly sore backside.”
Conversations on a Wet Summer’s Day
January 13th 2007
Uncle Harry and his neighbour, Clayton Piles, were sitting in the implement shed watching the rain fall steadily from a slate-grey sky. A carton of beer lay open between them.
“Happy New Year, Harry,” offered Clayton, raising his can.
“Yep, Happy blimmin’ New Year,” replied Harry gloomily.
A fresh squall of rain sent small rivulets of water splashing through rust holes in the spouting of the old shed.
“They say it’s global warming that’s causing all this rain,” remarked Clayton.
“Global warming,” spat Harry, “I’ve never been so cold in January. Or so wet. See that paddock of grass seed over past the pines? I cut that a week and a half ago. I haven’t got near it since.”
“And I’m picking you haven’t had a lot of use out of that new irrigator.”
Harry sighed. “It’s funny, isn’t it. For years everybody’s been urging me to invest in irrigation. The moment I do, what happens? It rains for three months. I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars of rotor rainer rusting in the yard.”
“I see Gladys has found a use for it at least,” Clayton waved his beer can to where the irrigator was parked in the yard. It was hung with clothing, bed sheets and towels.
“Yep,” agreed Harry. “On the couple of fine days we’ve had she’s used it as a clothes line. She says it’s the biggest Hills Hoist in Canterbury. I was supposed to get that lot inside before the rain started. Gladys won’t be happy.”
“Is she not around?”
“She’s taken young Sam into town to get his ukulele fixed.”
Sam was Harry’s grand-nephew, a regular holiday visitor to Hardtop Farm and a bit of a handful.
“A ukulele,” Clayton laughed, “I didn’t know Sam was a musician.”
“He’s not a musician, he’s just highly strung,” retorted Harry. “The ukulele was a Christmas present. Actually, it could have been worse; his first choice was a set of bagpipes. Imagine the little tike blowing those around the house for three weeks.”
“And the ukulele’s broken, you say.”
Harry reached for another beer, looking sheepish. “Actually, that was my fault. I was doing a Jimi Hendrix impersonation and snapped a couple of strings.”
The two men sat in silence for a while, watching the rain. A couple of gulls swooped into the yard and Harry’s old dog, Rufus, growled at them from his kennel.
“Did you get any good Christmas presents yourself?” Harry asked.
“The usual stuff; socks, underwear, that sort of thing,” replied Clayton.
“Do you notice the labels on clothing are getting more outrageous, Clayton? Gladys gave me a pair of flash y-fronts with more tags on than a prize bull. To read them you’d think you were buying a new car, not just a pair of undies. The funniest one was the label that said, ‘warning: may contain traces of nuts.’ It put me right off wearing them, I can tell you.”
“I know what you mean, Harry. Joan gave me a pair of socks that claim they can turn me into a top athlete. There’s so much design and engineering built into them they’re even labelled ‘left’ and ‘right’. Apparently it’s crucial to get them onto the correct foot.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No way. According to the label, if I wear these socks correctly they’ll help me reach my personal goals. Actually, I’m wearing them now. I’ll show you.”
Clayton kicked off his gumboots. On his feet was a pair of new grey socks with the letters L and R stamped prominently on the ankle.
Harry peered at the socks. “Hang on, Clayton. You’ve got them on the wrong feet.”
Clayton looked at his feet and pondered for a moment. “Crikey, Harry, you’re right. No wonder I’ve been feeling unbalanced all day.”
“I noticed you were walking a bit strangely. I thought you must have been wearing some of those same undies as me.”
“It won’t have done my personal goals any good, having those socks on the wrong way around.”
Clayton bent over to change his socks.
“Speaking of goals,” said Harry, “did you make any New Year’s resolutions?”
“Oh, just the usual: drink a bit more, smoke a bit less, improve my work-life balance, you know the sort of thing. What about you?”
“Nuh, I gave it a miss this year. Gladys was pestering me to get a hobby. She even offered to buy me a ukulele so I could take up music like Sam. I told her I already have a hobby.”
“What’s that?”
“Farming. I mean, it’s got be a hobby, hasn’t it? We don’t do it to earn a living.”
“Not this year, anyway.”
A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back. Harry pulled the carton of beer closer and helped himself to another can.
“Actually, I have got a New Year’s resolution of sorts,” he remarked. “I reckon if I can survive young Sam’s visit I’ll have achieved something.”
“Hard work, is he?”
“He’s just a bit too keen, Clayton. Last week he offered to do some roguing. I said that was fine. Well, the little blighter decided it was more efficient to get the rogues with the ride-on lawnmower. By the time he’d finished my wheat paddock looked like a giant had scribbled all over it. Every weirdo in the district was out here looking at it and talking about crop circles. ‘Crop circles, be buggered’ I told them. ‘It’s more like crop doodles.’”
“And then there was the business with the water race, wasn’t there?”
“Don’t remind me,” groaned Harry. “I was joking when I said if the rain kept up we could start growing rice. The next morning I woke up to find he’d dammed the water race, flooded twenty acres of barley and was running around with a sack of rice he’d grabbed from the pantry.”
At that moment Harry’s old Ford Fairlane splashed into the yard.
“Speak of the devil,” grumbled Harry.
Sam shot out of the car. “Uncle Harry! Mr Piles!” he shouted, “guess what!”
“I can’t imagine,” said Clayton.
“They said my ukulele was stuffed. So Aunty Gladys got me this.”
With a flourish Sam pulled a large object from the car.
“Bagpipes,” groaned Harry.
“Yeah, bagpipes. I can’t wait to start playing them.”
January 13th 2007
Uncle Harry and his neighbour, Clayton Piles, were sitting in the implement shed watching the rain fall steadily from a slate-grey sky. A carton of beer lay open between them.
“Happy New Year, Harry,” offered Clayton, raising his can.
“Yep, Happy blimmin’ New Year,” replied Harry gloomily.
A fresh squall of rain sent small rivulets of water splashing through rust holes in the spouting of the old shed.
“They say it’s global warming that’s causing all this rain,” remarked Clayton.
“Global warming,” spat Harry, “I’ve never been so cold in January. Or so wet. See that paddock of grass seed over past the pines? I cut that a week and a half ago. I haven’t got near it since.”
“And I’m picking you haven’t had a lot of use out of that new irrigator.”
Harry sighed. “It’s funny, isn’t it. For years everybody’s been urging me to invest in irrigation. The moment I do, what happens? It rains for three months. I’ve got a hundred thousand dollars of rotor rainer rusting in the yard.”
“I see Gladys has found a use for it at least,” Clayton waved his beer can to where the irrigator was parked in the yard. It was hung with clothing, bed sheets and towels.
“Yep,” agreed Harry. “On the couple of fine days we’ve had she’s used it as a clothes line. She says it’s the biggest Hills Hoist in Canterbury. I was supposed to get that lot inside before the rain started. Gladys won’t be happy.”
“Is she not around?”
“She’s taken young Sam into town to get his ukulele fixed.”
Sam was Harry’s grand-nephew, a regular holiday visitor to Hardtop Farm and a bit of a handful.
“A ukulele,” Clayton laughed, “I didn’t know Sam was a musician.”
“He’s not a musician, he’s just highly strung,” retorted Harry. “The ukulele was a Christmas present. Actually, it could have been worse; his first choice was a set of bagpipes. Imagine the little tike blowing those around the house for three weeks.”
“And the ukulele’s broken, you say.”
Harry reached for another beer, looking sheepish. “Actually, that was my fault. I was doing a Jimi Hendrix impersonation and snapped a couple of strings.”
The two men sat in silence for a while, watching the rain. A couple of gulls swooped into the yard and Harry’s old dog, Rufus, growled at them from his kennel.
“Did you get any good Christmas presents yourself?” Harry asked.
“The usual stuff; socks, underwear, that sort of thing,” replied Clayton.
“Do you notice the labels on clothing are getting more outrageous, Clayton? Gladys gave me a pair of flash y-fronts with more tags on than a prize bull. To read them you’d think you were buying a new car, not just a pair of undies. The funniest one was the label that said, ‘warning: may contain traces of nuts.’ It put me right off wearing them, I can tell you.”
“I know what you mean, Harry. Joan gave me a pair of socks that claim they can turn me into a top athlete. There’s so much design and engineering built into them they’re even labelled ‘left’ and ‘right’. Apparently it’s crucial to get them onto the correct foot.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No way. According to the label, if I wear these socks correctly they’ll help me reach my personal goals. Actually, I’m wearing them now. I’ll show you.”
Clayton kicked off his gumboots. On his feet was a pair of new grey socks with the letters L and R stamped prominently on the ankle.
Harry peered at the socks. “Hang on, Clayton. You’ve got them on the wrong feet.”
Clayton looked at his feet and pondered for a moment. “Crikey, Harry, you’re right. No wonder I’ve been feeling unbalanced all day.”
“I noticed you were walking a bit strangely. I thought you must have been wearing some of those same undies as me.”
“It won’t have done my personal goals any good, having those socks on the wrong way around.”
Clayton bent over to change his socks.
“Speaking of goals,” said Harry, “did you make any New Year’s resolutions?”
“Oh, just the usual: drink a bit more, smoke a bit less, improve my work-life balance, you know the sort of thing. What about you?”
“Nuh, I gave it a miss this year. Gladys was pestering me to get a hobby. She even offered to buy me a ukulele so I could take up music like Sam. I told her I already have a hobby.”
“What’s that?”
“Farming. I mean, it’s got be a hobby, hasn’t it? We don’t do it to earn a living.”
“Not this year, anyway.”
A skiff of rain blew into the shed and the two men moved their chairs back. Harry pulled the carton of beer closer and helped himself to another can.
“Actually, I have got a New Year’s resolution of sorts,” he remarked. “I reckon if I can survive young Sam’s visit I’ll have achieved something.”
“Hard work, is he?”
“He’s just a bit too keen, Clayton. Last week he offered to do some roguing. I said that was fine. Well, the little blighter decided it was more efficient to get the rogues with the ride-on lawnmower. By the time he’d finished my wheat paddock looked like a giant had scribbled all over it. Every weirdo in the district was out here looking at it and talking about crop circles. ‘Crop circles, be buggered’ I told them. ‘It’s more like crop doodles.’”
“And then there was the business with the water race, wasn’t there?”
“Don’t remind me,” groaned Harry. “I was joking when I said if the rain kept up we could start growing rice. The next morning I woke up to find he’d dammed the water race, flooded twenty acres of barley and was running around with a sack of rice he’d grabbed from the pantry.”
At that moment Harry’s old Ford Fairlane splashed into the yard.
“Speak of the devil,” grumbled Harry.
Sam shot out of the car. “Uncle Harry! Mr Piles!” he shouted, “guess what!”
“I can’t imagine,” said Clayton.
“They said my ukulele was stuffed. So Aunty Gladys got me this.”
With a flourish Sam pulled a large object from the car.
“Bagpipes,” groaned Harry.
“Yeah, bagpipes. I can’t wait to start playing them.”
Baldie’s Big Idea
December 9th 2006
When Uncle Harry tripped over the electric fence and broke his leg life suddenly became more complicated.
“It’s the worst timing, Gladys. We’re drafting lambs on Wednesday and the shearers are due.”
Aunty Gladys was sympathetic. “Harry, I’d help out, except I’ve got the Christmas cakes to bake.”
“How many this year?” Harry hated the Christmas cakes. They drove a stake through the heart of December.
“Twenty five. That’ll raise $500 for the new church window.”
“Yeah, well don’t forget you’ll have the shearers to cook for too. They’ll want some pies.”
“Don’t worry, Harry. The pies are in the freezer.” Gladys was proud of her meat pies and the reputation they enjoyed among the shearing gangs.
Harry was quiet for a few moments, brooding on his leg and the Christmas cakes. Then Gladys spoke again. “You could get Baldwin to help out.”
“Baldie! He’d be about as useful as me with two broken legs. He knows nothing about lambs and woolsheds.”
“Well, Harry, I can’t think of anybody else. Baldwin’s your nephew. He’ll do it for you.”
Baldie jumped at the chance to spend a few days at Hardtop Farm, “just to get stuck into a few of Aunty Gladys’s meat pies.” The following day he turned up for the drafting. Harry propped himself in a corner of the yards and waved his crutches at the lambs. Rufus barked himself to a standstill.
Harry could see Baldie was unhappy and at morning tea he found out why.
“This is not a good arrangement, Uncle Harry.” Baldie waved his hand across the yards.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, you couldn’t invent a more stressful environment for an animal. You’re sending these lambs away totally freaked out. It’ll spoil the meat, you know.”
“Rubbish, Baldie. This is the way we always do it.”
“You can do better, Uncle Harry. Listen, there’s a guy in North Canterbury who raises pigs and he does all this stuff to keep them calm, and you know what? He gets top dollar every time. The meat’s so much better when the animal is relaxed.”
“What does he do?”
“Oh, just simple stuff like playing music and not pushing the animals too hard. He’s worked on the colour scheme of his yards and put a few posters around and such.”
“Sounds like rubbish to me, Baldie. It might work for pigs but lambs are different. They’re going to get freaked out whatever you do.”
“It works though, Uncle Harry. You should try it with the shearing. Y’know, tidy up the shed a bit.”
Harry grunted in reply.
“That’s a yes, then?” ventured Baldie.
“No it’s not. Let’s get these lambs finished.”
Early on Friday morning Jumbo the shearing contractor turned up with his gang. He’d heard Harry was on crutches so he’d brought along an extra rousy.
“Tell your missus that’ll be a couple more pies for lunch,” Jumbo laughed. “Righto, fellas, let’s get into it.”
They walked into the shearing shed and stopped in their tracks.
The inside of the shearing shed looked to Harry like a wild west saloon.
“Or a whorehouse,” muttered Jumbo.
Baldie was standing on top of a ladder hanging a large mirror ball from the rafters. The walls around the shed were draped with green fabric. Posters of national parks and the All Blacks festooned the rafters. On the shearing board were two large barber’s chairs. Strange Oriental music was playing and the air was thick with incense.
“Baldie, what the hell is this?” demanded Harry.
“Sshh! Keep your voice down, Uncle Harry, you’ll spoil the karma. This is low-stress shearing, remember? You want top dollar for your wool, don’t you?”
Jumbo edged up to Harry. “Are we shearing today, Harry, or having a fashion parade?”
Baldie dropped from the ladder and flicked a switch. Two spotlights lit up and the mirror ball turned, sending patterns of dappled light through the shed.
“Beautiful, eh? The sheep will think they’re grazing under a tree,” Baldie said proudly.
Jumbo opened his mouth to speak but Baldie cut him off. “Set up one of your handpieces and turn on the machine, Jumbo.”
Jumbo did. When he pulled the cord the handpiece leapt into life but there was no sound from the shearing machine. Looking up Harry saw that Baldie had covered the motors with soundproof boxes.
“Nice and quiet, Uncle Harry. Stops the sheep freaking out.”
“But what about these bloody chairs?” demanded Jumbo, “they’re in the way.”
“Ah, that’s for the sheep,” said Baldie, triumphantly. “I reckon they need a bit of comfort, just like in a barber shop. It’ll save your back, too.”
Harry could see his day’s shearing going down the road. “Baldie, get rid of those bloody chairs. The rest of the stuff will have to stay or we’ll lose too much time.”
“And that music can go too,” chimed in Jumbo. “We’re not shearing with that yoga crap.”
Baldie was unfazed. “No problem. What do you want instead? Spanish lutes or Brahms lullaby?”
They settled for the Eagles, unplugged.
Harry’s next shock was discovering there were no sheep in the shed, or the yards. “It’s all part of the plan,” said Baldie. “We’ll bring each one in from the paddock separately, just walk it quietly. And I’ve padded the sides of the holding pens and put a few flowers around.”
Harry sent Rufus out to bring in the first mob.
Slowly the shearing cranked into gear. Baldie was unbearable. Wool had to be skirted and pressed well out of sight of the sheep “in case of separation anxiety.” Shearers were not allowed to swear, or even talk around the sheep, unless it was to compliment them on the quality of their fleece or ask how their day was going.
Jumbo pulled Harry aside shortly before lunch. “Harry, if we didn’t have Gladys’s pies to look forward to we’d be out of here by now. This is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever come across.”
“I’ll send him over to get the lunch,” Harry replied, “and we can get rid of that mirror ball while he’s gone.”
Baldie was a long time getting the lunch and was dismayed to see some of his work undone when he returned. The shearers gratefully hung up their gear and descended on the lunch basket. Jumbo pulled out a plate of sandwiches. He looked hopefully for Aunty Gladys’s meat pies, but they were nowhere to be seen.
“Now that bloody does it!” Jumbo roared. “Harry, you said there’d be pies!”
“Ah, well that would be me,” ventured Baldie. “You see, Gladys had made lamb and mint pies and I thought it would upset the sheep to think we were eating their mates. So I whipped up some lettuce sandwiches instead.”
The shearers roared in dismay. Harry rushed to save the situation. “Where did you put the pies, Baldie, you idiot?”
“Actually, Uncle Harry, I gave them to Rufus.”
Harry thought fast. “Jumbo, hang on. We’ve lost the pies but what would you say to one of Gladys’s Christmas cakes?”
“You’d better hurry,” said Baldie. “She was loading up the car when I came over with the lunch.
Uncle Harry grabbed his crutches and hobbled out of the shed. From the loading ramp he could see Gladys driving out of the yard. He waved his crutches and shouted. Behind him he heard angry voices. Turning, he saw the shearers grab Baldie and drag him onto the board, obviously intending to give him a haircut for ruining their morning.
Harry opened his mouth to intervene but lost his balance and toppled off the loading ramp, landing hard on Rufus swallowing the last of the pies and breaking his other leg. He heard Baldie bellowing over the acoustic strains of Hotel California.
“There goes the karma,” thought Harry, and passed out.
December 9th 2006
When Uncle Harry tripped over the electric fence and broke his leg life suddenly became more complicated.
“It’s the worst timing, Gladys. We’re drafting lambs on Wednesday and the shearers are due.”
Aunty Gladys was sympathetic. “Harry, I’d help out, except I’ve got the Christmas cakes to bake.”
“How many this year?” Harry hated the Christmas cakes. They drove a stake through the heart of December.
“Twenty five. That’ll raise $500 for the new church window.”
“Yeah, well don’t forget you’ll have the shearers to cook for too. They’ll want some pies.”
“Don’t worry, Harry. The pies are in the freezer.” Gladys was proud of her meat pies and the reputation they enjoyed among the shearing gangs.
Harry was quiet for a few moments, brooding on his leg and the Christmas cakes. Then Gladys spoke again. “You could get Baldwin to help out.”
“Baldie! He’d be about as useful as me with two broken legs. He knows nothing about lambs and woolsheds.”
“Well, Harry, I can’t think of anybody else. Baldwin’s your nephew. He’ll do it for you.”
Baldie jumped at the chance to spend a few days at Hardtop Farm, “just to get stuck into a few of Aunty Gladys’s meat pies.” The following day he turned up for the drafting. Harry propped himself in a corner of the yards and waved his crutches at the lambs. Rufus barked himself to a standstill.
Harry could see Baldie was unhappy and at morning tea he found out why.
“This is not a good arrangement, Uncle Harry.” Baldie waved his hand across the yards.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Well, you couldn’t invent a more stressful environment for an animal. You’re sending these lambs away totally freaked out. It’ll spoil the meat, you know.”
“Rubbish, Baldie. This is the way we always do it.”
“You can do better, Uncle Harry. Listen, there’s a guy in North Canterbury who raises pigs and he does all this stuff to keep them calm, and you know what? He gets top dollar every time. The meat’s so much better when the animal is relaxed.”
“What does he do?”
“Oh, just simple stuff like playing music and not pushing the animals too hard. He’s worked on the colour scheme of his yards and put a few posters around and such.”
“Sounds like rubbish to me, Baldie. It might work for pigs but lambs are different. They’re going to get freaked out whatever you do.”
“It works though, Uncle Harry. You should try it with the shearing. Y’know, tidy up the shed a bit.”
Harry grunted in reply.
“That’s a yes, then?” ventured Baldie.
“No it’s not. Let’s get these lambs finished.”
Early on Friday morning Jumbo the shearing contractor turned up with his gang. He’d heard Harry was on crutches so he’d brought along an extra rousy.
“Tell your missus that’ll be a couple more pies for lunch,” Jumbo laughed. “Righto, fellas, let’s get into it.”
They walked into the shearing shed and stopped in their tracks.
The inside of the shearing shed looked to Harry like a wild west saloon.
“Or a whorehouse,” muttered Jumbo.
Baldie was standing on top of a ladder hanging a large mirror ball from the rafters. The walls around the shed were draped with green fabric. Posters of national parks and the All Blacks festooned the rafters. On the shearing board were two large barber’s chairs. Strange Oriental music was playing and the air was thick with incense.
“Baldie, what the hell is this?” demanded Harry.
“Sshh! Keep your voice down, Uncle Harry, you’ll spoil the karma. This is low-stress shearing, remember? You want top dollar for your wool, don’t you?”
Jumbo edged up to Harry. “Are we shearing today, Harry, or having a fashion parade?”
Baldie dropped from the ladder and flicked a switch. Two spotlights lit up and the mirror ball turned, sending patterns of dappled light through the shed.
“Beautiful, eh? The sheep will think they’re grazing under a tree,” Baldie said proudly.
Jumbo opened his mouth to speak but Baldie cut him off. “Set up one of your handpieces and turn on the machine, Jumbo.”
Jumbo did. When he pulled the cord the handpiece leapt into life but there was no sound from the shearing machine. Looking up Harry saw that Baldie had covered the motors with soundproof boxes.
“Nice and quiet, Uncle Harry. Stops the sheep freaking out.”
“But what about these bloody chairs?” demanded Jumbo, “they’re in the way.”
“Ah, that’s for the sheep,” said Baldie, triumphantly. “I reckon they need a bit of comfort, just like in a barber shop. It’ll save your back, too.”
Harry could see his day’s shearing going down the road. “Baldie, get rid of those bloody chairs. The rest of the stuff will have to stay or we’ll lose too much time.”
“And that music can go too,” chimed in Jumbo. “We’re not shearing with that yoga crap.”
Baldie was unfazed. “No problem. What do you want instead? Spanish lutes or Brahms lullaby?”
They settled for the Eagles, unplugged.
Harry’s next shock was discovering there were no sheep in the shed, or the yards. “It’s all part of the plan,” said Baldie. “We’ll bring each one in from the paddock separately, just walk it quietly. And I’ve padded the sides of the holding pens and put a few flowers around.”
Harry sent Rufus out to bring in the first mob.
Slowly the shearing cranked into gear. Baldie was unbearable. Wool had to be skirted and pressed well out of sight of the sheep “in case of separation anxiety.” Shearers were not allowed to swear, or even talk around the sheep, unless it was to compliment them on the quality of their fleece or ask how their day was going.
Jumbo pulled Harry aside shortly before lunch. “Harry, if we didn’t have Gladys’s pies to look forward to we’d be out of here by now. This is the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever come across.”
“I’ll send him over to get the lunch,” Harry replied, “and we can get rid of that mirror ball while he’s gone.”
Baldie was a long time getting the lunch and was dismayed to see some of his work undone when he returned. The shearers gratefully hung up their gear and descended on the lunch basket. Jumbo pulled out a plate of sandwiches. He looked hopefully for Aunty Gladys’s meat pies, but they were nowhere to be seen.
“Now that bloody does it!” Jumbo roared. “Harry, you said there’d be pies!”
“Ah, well that would be me,” ventured Baldie. “You see, Gladys had made lamb and mint pies and I thought it would upset the sheep to think we were eating their mates. So I whipped up some lettuce sandwiches instead.”
The shearers roared in dismay. Harry rushed to save the situation. “Where did you put the pies, Baldie, you idiot?”
“Actually, Uncle Harry, I gave them to Rufus.”
Harry thought fast. “Jumbo, hang on. We’ve lost the pies but what would you say to one of Gladys’s Christmas cakes?”
“You’d better hurry,” said Baldie. “She was loading up the car when I came over with the lunch.
Uncle Harry grabbed his crutches and hobbled out of the shed. From the loading ramp he could see Gladys driving out of the yard. He waved his crutches and shouted. Behind him he heard angry voices. Turning, he saw the shearers grab Baldie and drag him onto the board, obviously intending to give him a haircut for ruining their morning.
Harry opened his mouth to intervene but lost his balance and toppled off the loading ramp, landing hard on Rufus swallowing the last of the pies and breaking his other leg. He heard Baldie bellowing over the acoustic strains of Hotel California.
“There goes the karma,” thought Harry, and passed out.
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