methoozla's musings............

2003-08-11T16:38:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten until I received an email this morning, that last year, or perhaps the year earlier, I'd subscribed to the "Guiness World Records" letter.
This is their first newsletter for 2003, presumably because of a world-wide recession in record breaking achievements due to the war in Iraq, SARS, and Arnie Schwarzenegger ( he should have changed his name to "Smith").
The first record repoted in the newsletter concerned Augie. (Woof!)
I hope Kiwi fans are not disappointed to find that I wasn't referring to Weather Pundit. (Oh my goodness golly gee, there's that word again.)

2003-08-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

This is about bootstraps-pulling-up-by.
NooZild has been a welfare state since 1935. A heap of dosh has been thrown at single mums nurturing unwed pregnant daughters and terminally unemployed sons who are also recpients of hard earned (by a few others) tax-payer dollars. The pundits (lovely word pundits, it's from Sanscrit through Hindustani, y'know) are now saying these welfare policies (and there are now three and four generations of welfare recipients in some families) have bred sloth, excessive expectations, and addiction to the pokies. But there are exceptions to this sweeping generalisation - in this case not only by the daughter but perhaps more particularly by the mother, who set the standard for her children.

It's been hot in Britain. (Love the hat!).

"Nude sunbathers sprayed with weedkiller". Was the Council trying to get rid of the less pulchritudinous? ( Sorry, that's the best I can do. "Ya shoun't have bothered!", I hear you say? Ah well, perhaps you're right.)

2003-08-08T20:52:00.000-07:00

2003-08-08T15:43:00.000-07:00

A sign on a city building reads:-
Auckland Old Folks Ass
To some Kiwis, it may conjure up visions of a quadraped, equus onager, co-owned by a bunch of wrinklies. To a citizen of the U.S., probably something more fundamental.
The "Comments" link is working, but not counting. Please use it if you wish, unless you are a card-carrying member of an animal welfare group, or an inspector from the Society for the Prevention of Bad Jokes. I promise I will now check there, daily. (My thanks to Francis for drawing my attention to its malfunctioning.)

A medical doctor who was also a churchman has died in retirement in Auckland, after a life of doing good works in Fiji. He took a great interest in his garden and the last line of his memoirs states; -
"Nothing can shake my belief in two important things, namely compost and the Anglican Church, not necessarily in that order."
I wonder if the appointment of an admitted homosexual as Bishop of New Hampshire, U.S.A., will lead to the formation of a separate "Liberal" Anglican/Episcopalian Church worldwide.

What ramifications would that have for the reigning monarch (and her heir, the apparently liberal Prince Charles) as head of (British) Church of England?
Hmm - I think I'll have a cup of tea.

2003-07-29T18:22:00.000-07:00

He brought laughter to millions.

**********************

BOB HOPE

1903-2003

R.I.P.

I had constructed a more ambitious layout to honour the passing of an icon of the "g" generation ( "g" = "geriatric" of course). But despite my text editor displaying it without dissent, Blogger wouldn't have a bar of it. After much trial and a lot of error, checking for faulty tags etc, and with saddened heart, I gave up. As Robbie Burns sang after a dram or six of usquebaugh: "The best laid plans o' mice and men will to custard turn. Pass the bottle, mon!"... or words of like effect.

During WWll, when I was but a mere stripling, the Americans took over an Auckland radio station and cranked up its power for the Armed Forces' Radio Service. If the weather was favourable and the wind in the right direction, its signal could be heard in the hick town in which I then lived. My parents weren't interested in radio - my father preferred a book and my mother, as mothers did, stuck to her knitting. I would be allowed to take the radio to my bedroom and instead of learning Latin declensions, I'd have my head pressed to the speaker the better to hear the gags of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jerry Colonna; the very funny guy who's name I've forgotten for the moment, the one who played the violin very badly and who was Hope's (on air) bête noire ; George Burns & Gracie Allen, etc. Music-wise it was the Dorsey Brothers and a handsome young up'n-comer named Frank Sinatra; Artie Shaw, Glen Miller and his band(s), Gene Krupa and his drumming, Benny Goodman with his clarinet and his band, Harry James and his trumpet. Ziggy Elman and (Harry James?) doing a trumpet duel (sic) during the closing bars of 'Well, git it!' was so electrifying that every time I heard it I felt as if I was going to wet my pants.

OK, so this reads like a laundry list, but humour me me - I'm taking a hobble down memory lane, 60 years later. Vale, idols of my adolescence. You brought the world into my young and closeted life.

2003-07-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

Not a lot going on, really.
Some rellies, of the younger generation, called to see us on their way to the South Island after a Tropical Vacation (my, how they've aged since their wedding day, 30 years ago!). I sat between the two groups - males on one side talking men's talk, females on the other, boasting about their offspring (and offsprings' offspring.) I endeavoured from time to time to contribute to both conversations, hoping that I'd heard aright and wasn't saying something completely irrelevant to the topic. It does happen, y'know.
On Sunday I drove across town to visit Old School Buddy and his partner. OSB has had another small stroke and now sees two of everything We sat and drank tea and ate chocolate biscuits while comparing notes on Memorable Hospital Visits. I was awarded the trophy for my rendition of the Gastroscopical Saga. When I next visit them, it will be OSB's turn on the winner's podium. He had an MRI scan yesterday followed by consultations with not one, but two Speciatists - consecutively. Oh, the marvels of modern medicine.
OSB and his partner live out east while I live out west. My drive home in the late afternoon was into the low winter sun - not a pleasant journey, what with my rheumy eyes'n all.
Yesterday I went to the dentist.

2003-07-12T01:21:00.000-07:00

The nation is in shock - the long heralded blockbuster and drama-packed episode of Coronation St was split asunder and a half-hour episode of a DIY programme inserted - to ease the viewing audience's tension it is claimed, in-depth research having shown that the attention span of television audiences does not exceed 32 minutes (plus ad-breaks) - on a clear day, and with a following wind
I care neither a whit nor a jot. I lost interest in the thing when Ena Sharples was written out. (Television) life then lost all meaning ... until Ruth Fisher came along.

2003-07-04T16:11:00.000-07:00

A lovely read from Gordie in this morning's "Herald". He's right, the answer's bloody "two", as the "6 divided by 2" is not within brackets, as we were taught in the first half of last century! (This from a mathematical dunderhead who scraped through his University Entrance Exam in maths by the skin of his multplicand.)
If this is the way they teach maths these days, I can agree with G.McL. ... accuracy of expression has plumbed new depths of woolly-headedness.
And that's my six penn'orth this cold but calm and sunny Saturday morning after a night of thunder, lightning and torrential downpours. Now the weatherwoman says we're to get a very cold blast which is trundling up from the south.
How's it down there Petone-ites, and Mount Victorians, and Cantabrians?

2003-07-03T15:45:00.000-07:00

"Tis troooo -deer fart 50% less than cows.
I now realise Cook had an ulterior motive in witholding pea & ham soup from my diet during the early part of winter. She's relented and appreciative eructations (and that's not all) ensue.

2003-07-02T16:13:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed reading most of Garth George's column this morning (why is it called a "column" when it spreads sideways?) in which he reminisced about his heroes (and a few of mine co-incidentally) of bygone days. I liked the Paul Newman comment Garth quoted, "Getting old isn't for sissies". Y'can say that again, Bud.
Like Garth, I saw the movie "Cruel Sea" several times, read and re-read the book many, many times - I've probably still got my battered copy somewhere - and spent lots of happy hours fantasizing that I was on the bridge of a corvette like Compass Rose, rolling her guts out in mid-Atlantic swells, doggedly chasing up stragglers in the convoy - " Can't go any faster guv'nor, me boiler's clapped out". ("Compass Rose" is a little play on words, "Rose" not referring to a flower or a woman, but the markings around the circumference of the compass card. I just thought you'd like to know that.)
But G.G. spoiled a good read by ending the column with a snide comment about waking to today's reality " seeing a picture of a transsexual kissing a homosexual", etc. .
Good old Garth, he's a born-again Christian - they're the worst kind. But it's whatever gets you through the night, I guess - and Garth as a one-time serious alcoholic has had his share of long nights..

2003-06-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

I've just watched last week's episode of " Six Feet Under", the one in which the set of Turindot in the Funeral Parlour is featured and Nessun Dorma sung by a tenor who could almost be a castrato. Perhaps it's because of this different sound that I enjoyed that old warhorse of an aria so much - so different from the staple bravura rendition by Pavarotti and others. S.F.U. just gets better and better - dark, predictable, surprising and trite all in the same episode, which works for me and I love it.

2003-06-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, NewBlogger have stopped showing my recent archives. Perhaps these jewels are lying unnoticed in the vaults of the great Emperor Google. Francis mentioned when his page was changed over that his archives were missing, but I see they have reappeared. Perhaps one day soon a Lowly Minion will stumble over these paragons glistening forlornly in a beam of dusty sunlight and rush exitedly to the Emperor crying "Look! look! a magical treasure." And the Emperor greatly moved will command the Keeper of the Archives to restore these small treasures to their rightful place.
But, on the other hand, they may lie unseen forever, decaying slowly into dusty symbols. Then oblivion.
I'll email Blogger in the faint hope I will get a response. Otherwise - they're only words, and there's more where they came from.

2003-06-27T00:37:00.000-07:00

"All OK apart from a hiatus hernia", pronounced Dr Duodenum cheerfully as he hauled from my digestive tract a yard-and-a-half of garden hose to which a t.v. camera was attached. "Just keep on with palliative pills"
"Next!"
I had earlier chosen to have the anaesthetising throat spray without the sedative, and thus was free to:-
Drive a motor vehicle,
Operate machinery,
Make binding legal decisions,
for the rest of the day. I, in fact, did none of those things (unless using an electric toothbrush comes under one or other of those headings). But I did help grandson The Irrepressible S. with basic mathematical equations, which I barely understood 60 years ago. A case of the blind, etc.
The new edition of the New Collins Dictionary has been published. I'm not aware of the cachet of the New Collins, I'm a Concise Oxford man myself - but what do I know, I'm just a grinchly munter.

2003-06-25T00:17:00.000-07:00

About last October, Dr Scalpel had a Good Idea and wrote to the North Shore Hospital recommending me for gastroscopy, which I thought was a Good Idea (Not). The palliative pill he gave me in the meantime (Losec for the edification of those pharmacologically inclined) worked like a charm, water passed under bridges and I forgot about G.I (Not) until the other day when a cheery morning voice said over the phone, "hello and congratulations ... you've reached the top of the list. 8am Thursday 26th at our place. Be there!,"
"Um", says I, never at a loss for a pithy quip - or a quithy pip, for that matter. "Er, I'll have to confer with Dr Scalpel"
" Hurry up then, or we'll give ya place to summon else."
As (bad) luck would have it, it was not Dr S.'s morning on the golf-course and I was able to speak to him without delay.
Yes", he says, "you should. And ... sorry about that." (He's nice that way, always sugaring unpleasant news.)
As it's about three days' ride by arthritic camel to NSH, we have to leave home at about half past six to join the crawling multitudes heading to the salt-mines. The wonderfully detailed instructions I got in the mail - "nothing to eat or drink after midnight, etc", stressed that someone be available to drive me home after the 5-10 minute procedure ("and an hour's sleep before leaving the ward is recommended"), in case I have to be sedated to allow the garden hose to be shoved down my gullet.
(Imagine, if you will,
y.t. resplendent in backless hospital gown, spread-eagled on the bed, wrists and ankles tied to the bedposts, Nurse Gladys Emmanuel in full leather drag brandishing a loaded hypodermic syringe while cooing, "just a little prick!".)
Due to logistic imperatives too convoluted to go into here, Dutiful Daughter and her two offspring have arrived to spend the night. This inspired Cook to a rush of culinary activity, resulting in roast lamb, roasted potatoes, kumara, parsnips - the works. A bit like the Last Supper, except it's not for my benefit.
Grandson M. declined mint sauce, opting for Watties® tomato sauce - as usual.
Philistine.
Oh, and there's the likelihood of a frost out our way tomorrow morning. Ugh!

2003-06-22T00:11:00.000-07:00

"Tis the winter solstice, and tho' the sky is overcast, the temperature is comparatively mild. Despite my grizzling about the temperature, we haven't had a prolonged spell of really cold weather ... yet. The Old-Fashioned rose which usually blooms in early spring and has a second go in Autumn, but which it didn't do it this year, has a large bud. Poor thing probably doesn't know whether it's Autumn or Spring.
I lived in Wellington for a couple of years just before the war - World, part 2, that is. We lived in a hilly north-west suburb, in a typical Kiwi 1890's wooden villa with a corrugated iron roof. If it's still standing, it will have been tarted up and worth the thick end of NZ$600-700k. But I'm talking 1938-39 and it was then a "renter". We seldom used the living-room with its french-doors opening on to a verandah which ran two sides of the house, casement windows which rattled incessantly in Wellington's "southerly busters" and internally, wooden ceilings each with an ornate centre rose with fretwork to allow heat and gasses from the gas lamps to escape into the ceiling space. The gas-lamps had gone long since, but these "ventilators" remained through which warmth escaped, sucking in cold drafts through windows badly-fitting through 50 years of being slid up and down and from under doors, despite the rag-filled, snake-like draft stoppers. We spent most evenings in the big kitchen because it was warm. Cooking was done on a gas or electric stove - I don't remember which, but the old "Shacklock" coal range was extant and used for warmth and as an auxiliary method of heating water from its "wet-back" system. When the evening dishes were done my mother, who hated the cold, would open the oven door, drag her wicker chair close to the stove, pull her skirt demurely above her knees (ever so slightly) and put her slippered feet just inside the oven and knit until it was time for bed.
It snowed once in our suburb during our first winter , a great experience for this 11 year old who'd never seen snow and was not to see it again for another 15 years. You couldn't do anything with the snow - it froze as soon as it hit the ground, but it was snow! The instant my father's job ran out, when the Centennial Exhibition opened at the beginning of 1940, we packed up and high tailed it to a country town in the "winterless north." (tourist guide hype which didn't live up to its claims!).
I went back to Wellington in my early twenties to complete tertiary studies and stayed there for a large part of my adult life. When my father died, my mother overcame her loathing of Wellington's cold and came to live close to us. Her desire to spend "quality" time with her only grandchildren outweighed the advantages of warmer, northern climes.
I now have my mother's dislike of the cold. But I'm fortunate in having most of my grand-children nearby, the others live in Wellington, only a short distance from where I lived before the war. They, like I at their ages, have no objection to the wind and cold and their father, born in the north of England revels in it. "Proper weather, this!" he says.
Oh well, there's no accounting for taste, I guess.

2003-06-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

If you go here you'll see a Royal Personage exhibiting a common touch - and you can read that in which ever way you like. My thanks to Brainsluice.

It's National Soup Week, a clumsy way of advertising the soups of House of Wattie which, alas, is now the NooZilln arm of the ubiquitous Heinz empire.
I prefer the homemade stuff, but so far this winter the soup pot has not appeared on the stove, my nostrils have not been assailed, as they say, by the beguiling aroma of simmering ham hock.
I must have a word with Cook - or, as we're going to raid the supermarket later this morning, slip a hock into the trolley while she's making her choice of crumbed lamb shoulder chops. I mean, there's got to be some compensation for the cold, wind and rain hasn't there?

2003-06-17T02:42:00.000-07:00

In the middle 1930's I was very aware of "our" Royal Family. NZ's ties with "the old country" were still very strong and the the Royals were respected by all and revered by many - and rightly so, too. The head of King George V appeared on the stamps of the denomination common in our house, he wearing the uniform of Emperor of India with the funny pyramid-shaped hat with floppy white feathers attached. His consort was Queen Mary (born Princess May of Teck (Germany, but she was born in England!), christened Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes!!!) a gal of regal and ramrod bearing who'd been engaged to George's elder brother Eddy, Duke of Clarence and Heir Apparent. Eddy was a lad "of questionable sexuality who was said to frequent a male brothel on Cleveland Street". But he died of typhoid (some say syphilis) before the wedding and before the death of his father, King Edward VII, so May was "passed" to the next in line, the aforementioned George.
George and Mary's sons were frequently in the newspapers and weekly tabloids - David, Prince of Wales who was the "peoples prince" because he liked to visit the poor and needy during the Great Depression; "Bertie", Duke of York, a vanilla character who married the busty Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons of Glamis; Henry, Duke of Gloucester, a chinless wonder with a large moustache whom I never liked; and George, Duke of Kent who was handsome and always in the news due to his courtship and subsequent marriage to the very beautiful Princess Marina of Greece. These guys had a sister, the Princess Royal, who was married off to an English viscount much older than she and was, being a woman, of no interest to me as a pre-teen.
George V died and the Prince of Wales ascended the throne as King Edward VIII (which name was OK as it was one of his many christian names - royal protocol requiring that all the important "rellies" be kept happy). Edward became King while a bachelor and he did the unthinkable, on several counts. He fell in love with a commoner who was not only an American but also a divorcee, and to marry a divorcee was an absolute "no-no" for the King who was also head of the Church of England which forbade divorce. He chose Mrs Simpson over the Throne and abdicated in favour of Bertie who became King George VI ("George" being one of his many christian names and more "kingly" than "Albert". Come to think of it, we've never had a "King Albert"). Edward became the Duke of Windsor and lived abroad for the rest of his life with his wife, the former Mrs Simpson. George VI, with the help of his Queen, reigned as a loved and respected monarch for 16 years, until 1952; the Duke of Gloucester did an unmemorable term as Governor General of Australia, while the charming and handsome George, Duke of Kent was killed in an air crash in Scotland while serving in the Royal Air Force during WWII. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had no sons, only two daughters, one named Elizabeth the other, Margaret Rose.
Which brings us to today.
I was surprised to learn a couple of weeks ago that Geo VI and Mary had not four sons, but five - the youngest being Prince John, not an auspicious name for a prince - the previous famous " John" was he who usurped the throne during the absence of King Richard at the Crusades. King Dick felt obliged to go abroad and fight the Moors and other infidels . He lost. But his nasty brother Jack's shenanigans gave rise to the latter being forced to sign the "Magna Carta" which ensured, among other things, that the King's subjects be tried by a jury of their peers and were not to be subject to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment.
Young Prince John suffered from severe epileptic fits and when he was ten years old was shut away in a house close to the Royal residence at Sandringham until his death in 1919, four years later. The BBC have come up with one of their costume dramas, covering the life and times of Prince John (The Lost Prince) and part 1 was shown on TV on Sunday night. The settings, costumes and props were marvellous in their authenticity, but I felt the dialogue and story-line were clumsy and disjointed.
Since WWII Kiwis, myself included, have become more egalitarian, in fact I have little respect for the "Royals" apart from Queen Elizabeth II who I grew up with , so to speak, she being a few months older than I. But I'll watch part 2 next Sunday since I remember quite vividly the latter part of the reign of Prince John's parents George V, and Mary who after George's death became a reclusive Queen Mother, unlike her son's wife, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The former would never have acted in a way that would give rise to the remark attributed to her daughter-in-law, "please tell those queens partying in the kitchen that this old Queen wants her gin and tonic!"

2003-06-13T00:05:00.000-07:00

Speaking of crocodiles, as I did yesterday, the Herald column "Sideswipe" showed a photograph, which Blogger doesn't allow me to link to, of a pool in which the shadowy outlines of a croc. can be seen. Above the pool, attached to netting on a high fence is a sign reading: -
THOSE WHO THROW OBJECTS AT THE CROCODILES WILL BE ASKED TO RETRIEVE THEM.
Snappy threat, huh!

2003-06-11T13:56:00.000-07:00

It's almost the shortest day and Winter's beginning to bite. But the pink hibiscus is still blooming and spring jonquils are in full flower along the driveway. The early-flowering old-fashioned rose - a relic of an earlier garden, its roots almost buried under concrete - hasn't done it's usual second flowering. I've been pampering it recently, but it seems it performs better on neglect.
We paid several visits to the local council offices last week, in an effort to find a solution to the occasional storm-water problems we experience. I had a foray to that centre of bureaucracy ten years ago and was dealt with by a grumpy old fella who grudgingly gave me the information I needed. But in the meantime, winds of change have blown away the old guard and bright young people have taken charge. The three or four people we had contact with couldn't have been more polite and helpful, to the extent of being almost tearful when they were unable to find the drainage plans for our property. My faith in human nature is restored.
To attack the stormwater problem from another angle we've just installed an expensive system to stop leaves from the trees next door blocking the guttering and downpipes. The system, devised in Australia, guarantees protection from leaves, birds, and snakes. Snakes? - Kiwiland doesn't have snakes, for God's sake!
It seems that when our shaky isles parted from the mass of Gondwanaland a year or two back, reptiles such as snakes and crocodiles elected to stay in what has since become Australia - and the Aussies are welcome to them. It's said our fear of "dragons", etc is primal.
Hurrah! - I'm now free of sutures and sticking plaster, and can precipitate a fluttering of hearts among the "blue-rinses" at the pool next week, with my hairy torso and trendy black board-shorts. Pity about the paunch and spindly legs 'tho.
And now I'll take my coffee and toast and sit in a sunny chair while searching for the bright bits among all the doom and gloom in the newspaper.
Ah me! - another busy day in paradise.

2003-06-04T02:12:00.000-07:00

When Dr Scalpel said "come back Wednesday and we'll take the stiches out", what he meant was, "we'll taken every alternate stitch out ". So I still have embroidery holding both excisions together. Separately ... if you get my drift.
And I'm still bathing - when A. came in to wash my back this morning and grabbed the bottle of Ajax® I cringed and cried "No, no, a thousand times NO!. But she was merely preparing to clean the shower.
Whew!

2003-06-03T00:23:00.000-07:00

Life tonight takes on a whole new meaning. The new season of Six Feet Under begins Downunder.
Q. Will Ruth get it on with the Russian florist, whose name I have forgotten? Perhaps not, as he doesn't appear in the cast-list on the website. I peeked, y'see.

2003-06-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

So I haven't posted for five days. If, as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, I'll be through the gate and rattling Lucifer's door-knocker any tick of the clock.
But the excuse I'll use today is that there has been a rash of Medical Matters - a heavy cold with much coughing, sneezing, spluttering, watering eyes, the whole gol'darned bit (there's an interesting expression - I wonder how it arose?) interspersed with amputations of chunks of flesh from each shoulder by Dr Scalpel in an effort to rid me of a couple of basal-cell cancers.
"Come back on Sunday to have the dressings changed", he commanded.
So I duly appeared before Nurse Sunday and bared my chest, whereupon she ripped the plasters off, taking a large portion of chest hair as well.
"Just like having your chest waxed", she giggled.
I didn't.
"I'll just get Dr Sunday to look at those", she said.
Dr Sunday was unimpressed. "Looks like you might have a bit of infection in that one", he grunted. "I'd better give you some antibiotics".
"But I've just finished a course for my poisoned leg", I whined.
He deigned not to reply, instead thrusting upon me the prescription which spewed out of an H-P® peripheral before turning on his heel and summoning another patient from the Waiting Room.
"Next!"
New dressings were applied.
You'll keep them dry", said Nurse Sunday. "You're bathing instead of showering, I suppose?"
"Nope", I murmured. "I hate baths. And were saving power".
"If water gets in, bugs can get in", said Nurse Sunday sagely. "Choose between saving power and saving your arm', she added, melodramatically.
Well, you can't argue with that, I suppose.
So this morning, after much grumbling, fiddling with taps to get the temperature just right, etc I bathed for the first time in years. The only redeeming feature was A's washing my back. Now that was pleasant.
And it's back to the medical centre on Wednesday to have Dr Scalpel's embroidery removed.
Life's a bowl of materia medica ... or something like that.
Heard last night the "Queen" Symphony, a serious work in correct symphonic form for choir and full orchestra which incorporates best loved hits from the group of the same name. A nice gesture to honour a legend, but I'd rather have heard (and seen) Freddy Mercury and his band-mates doing the originals.

2003-05-26T16:52:00.000-07:00

It's been reported that the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, will retire from that post later this year. His place is likely to be taken by the present Treasurer, Peter Costello. A contender for the Treasury hot seat is tipped to be a worthy politician (is that an oxymoron ?) named Tony Abbott.
Which immediately raises the question ... Who's on first.

2003-05-25T17:51:00.000-07:00

The following appeared in the "Lost, Found, Strayed" columns of the Nelson Mail recently:-
"Goldfish, alive and well, Collins Rd area, brought home by cat"
A peripatetic Carassius auratus?
Or a vegetarian moggie perhaps.

Who knows?

2003-05-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

Nine reasons why I haven't posted for yonks: -

Lack of motivation
The power shortage
The "Sars" virus.
A dearth of "news"
Disgust with the perfidy of politicians
Disgust with the lack of balance in reporting by the media
Introversion
Introspection
Intransitivity (whatever that means)
Ennui.

The latter word is seldom used in the circles within which I rotate - and very small circles they are too at this time, due to a poisoned leg keeping me away from pool antics for three weeks, and the excision next Wednesday of a basal-cell cancer from my shoulder which will keep me out of the water for another three weeks or so. But, back to the topic. The word is French (of course), from the Latin in odio meaning "dislike" or "hatred". It's quite a stretch from "odium" to "boredom", but that's the way language develops, I'm told.

A fella writing in the paper the other day bemoaned the loss of the original meaning of the word "gay" and railed against the "language thieves" ( his term). He reckons it is the duty of newsreaders and those in similar positions to use the words "homosexual" and "lesbian" instead. But he is hoist by his own petard when he uses the word as a noun, as it was coined originally as an adjective to describe sexual feelings or actions between persons of the same sex, but (mis)useage over time has broadened its use. So that gent I say, "It's here, get over it!"

"Petard" (French again) comes from the root word meaning "flatulence", which covers all the above, so with that I'll say "Adieu" ,"Arrivederci", or just plain ...See ya!

2003-05-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

Aye, 'tis a lovely autumn morning out here in Auckland's Wild West. The sun shines surprisingly warmly; the pink hibiscus straggling through the enveloping branches of an adjacent shrub continues to bloom profusely. As does the little pink azalea in a pot on the patio - it seldom stops blooming . It seems to thrive on its ration of spent coffee grounds.
My heartfelt thanks to those patriotic, thoughtful souls who, having the electricity needs of the nation at heart, rain-danced around the foothills of the Southern Alps. But please, please don't stop! A lot more rain, and plentiful snow, is needed before we're back on track out of the woods and in the clear. ( Yeah, yeah, I know, I've been listening to too many politicians again. Sorry!)
The largest single consumer of electricity in NZ is the aluminium smelter at Tiwai Point. Bauxite shipped about 2,500 miles by bulk freighter from Weipa ( want a Crap Town? - go to Weipa!) on Australia's Cape York to the smelter, is turned into aluminium using electricity bought at a special rate. But ... no one has produced figures showing the net economic gain to the country from this use of an increasingly scarce power resource, most of the aluminium (and the profits on its sale) being re-exported.
It's time for morning tea. No freshly-baked cheese scones because of the current low-carb diet craze. Instead, thinly sliced salami and cheese on a Ryvita wafer. Very tasty. Washed down with Blackcurrant and Ginseng herbal tea, the water boiled by rubbing two politicians together.

See ya!

2003-05-01T19:24:00.000-07:00

Living under a stone as I do, I'm bemused by expressions such as "grunge" and "garage". I do wear flannel shirts, like now - as we speak - but foresook tatty jeans years ago. I do not have a garage but, while seated at my computer, I look into our carport. But, carport band lacks panache, I feel.

A local band has been making waves and opening fat chequebooks abroad. They're called "The Datsuns", apparently.
Um, what? ... who?
I wonder if their long hair is real, or like their names, pinned on before each performance.
I once stayed in a caravan park in a Brisbane inner suburb. I'd just bought my campervan - a nearly clapped-out VW Kombi - which wasn't ready for sleeping in so I rented an on-site caravan for the night. Among the multitude of signs on the Park's office window was one hand-written which stated that no long-haired males would be admitted (no kidding!). The manager was a typically aggressive Aussie red-neck who had probably been a corporal in the catering corps during the Korean War. I later stayed in a number of on-site caravns and cabins during my three year peregrination around northern parts of Oz, but that was the only occasion on which the spoons in the caravan were counted before I was allowed to recover my deposit.
Rilly, rilly weird!
Speaking of things martial, I notice in the Herald this morning that a young man, described as "karate king, Travis Butler", is off to Spain on a seven-month scholarship to train at one of the top karate clubs there. The article goes on to say "...(he) dropped other sports like swimming and rugby to devote his life to the marital art."
As one who has been invloved (more or less) for nigh on 50 years, I can attest to the practice it needs.

I had to check the date before continuing to read this piece in the paper. And no, it wasn't April Fools' Day. Damn! I can't provide the link to the article as the Herald search thingy couldn't find it. The headline reads ; -
"Machos (should that be with an "N"?) and Wimps Hold Key To Cosmos."

The summary reads; -
"Scientists cannot account for 90% of the universe, which they call dark matter.
Some believe this is made up of billions of particles we cannot see or feel, called Wimps ( weakly interacting massive particles).
They think Wimps occasionally collide with the nuclei of atoms.
British scientists are now searching for Wimps in a coalmine where the impacts are not swamped by other particle collisions, such as natural radiation."
( Machos = "massive astronomical compact halo objects" and are underweight failed stars, unrelated to Mexican chips.)
In addition to a large part of the universe being missing, gazillions have gone missing from the country's government superannuation fund investments. Hon. Minister of Moneybags and Legal Blood-sucking airily dismisses the losses as being due to Market Fluctuations. My own meagre investments have also lost value during the past couple of years. Seems I should have put my money into a Sure Thing. I quote from the Business Herald, being too lazy to reword the par: -

"Australia's largest brothel, Daily Planet, has become the world's first listed bordello, more than doubling it's share price in a day."
This when international share prices are dropping like lead balloons.

Could only happen in Oz, where 'tis rumoured they count the spoons before you're allowed to leave the airport departure lounge! Only kidding. (Gotta say that as the national sense of humour is by no means over-developed among our trans-Tasman cousins, despite Dame Edna and Norman Gunston. Oh, and John Clarke. Woops, sorry, he's a Kiwi.)

2003-04-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

There's a write-up in today's issue of the local community newspaper about swimmer grand-daughter's recent successes in the pool, and her sporting objectives. There's also a charming photo, showing her wearing her trademark wide grin while displaying the gold and silver medals she won at the recent National age-group Champs. Nice one, Snappertail! - the more so as, but for the prompt action of her mother (in a panic), she would have died in infancy from SIDS. C. also shone in the National Secondary (High) Schools' Water Polo Champs last week, on Friday scoring four goals at a cost of yet another black eye.

Eldest grand-daughter was also competing - for a different school. Her school couldn't field a girls' team in her age-group so L. was co-opted to play in a boys' team. She's below average in height and not a tom-boy, but her feistiness, tactical and ball throwing skills keep her in demand.

The counselling service is under way from the house in front, peopled by new age-looking women in Sensible Shoes (or sandals), their cars sporting bumper stickers proclaiming "Keep NZ GE free". The comings-and-goings are so quiet as to be almost surreptitious.

I'm not yearning for the return of the boy-racers and their molls, but they did add youth, vibrancy and colour to the scene.

I'm off now, to the boutique bakery to get one Melting Moment (the one with chocolate on the end, please), to be shared, half-and-half, with A. We're both on a "lo-carb" diet. It's the season for it, y'know. Oh, by the way, anyone out there know any good rain-dances? Our southern hydro lakes are critically depleted and we're on the edge of a major electricity shortage. Again.

2003-04-24T17:52:00.000-07:00

It's official - Kiwiland (aka Godzone) now has a population of 4 million (people). We also have 44 million sheep (which do not have a vote).
Please eat more lamb, buy more pure wool clothing (especially merino), affix to your walls and ceilings pure wool carpeting - warm in winter, cool in summer with excellent sound-proofing qualities. The perfect protection from Next-Doors' domestic wrangling and their kids' rap music.
We need the money, see? Oh, and while you're about it, some spare electricity won't go amiss either.
It's going to be a long, cold winter.
Brrrr!
It's official - a man's spatial perception abilities exceeds that of a woman's. Experts claim that giving women wider computer screens ... "will boost women's spatial orientation and 3D map-reading skills to match their male counterparts."
Even a Microsoft computer scientist (herself of the female persuasion) admits that "men are quicker to create a mental map of the environment and orient themselves within it."
I will not mention this to my youngest daughter who habitually reverses up our driveway at 20kph. A smack across the ears with a wet dishcloth does nothing for my ego. (Only kidding - her bark is worse than her bite. Takes after her father, so 'tis said).
In company with other developed countries (cute phrase) we have an obesity problem, especially among brown-faced children. South-Pacific Islanders (including Maori) are prone to obesity and the diabetes which accompanies it.
The suburb in which I live arose post-WWll, but pre-supermarket and shopping malls. A block containing about a dozen shops was provided to service the occupants of the large number of brick and tile boxes being built on the then traditional 1/4 acre sections, the former housing butcher, baker, candlestick ... you know how it goes. Most of these retail trades have passed into the realm of distant memory, the little shops have coalesced into a smaller number of larger ones in line with the changing demands of the populace. 75% of these shops are now fast-food outlets. We have the choice of three burger outlets and three Chinese. No Indian or Mexican (yet), alas.
Fries with that ... or rice?
A group of Concerned Health Professionals has suggested that legislation be passed to prohibit the sale of junk food with a 1 km radius of a school. There are two schools with combined rolls of about 1000 14 year-old and unders within that radius of our neighbouring shops. One wonders from which planet the aforementioned CHP's are speaking.
And speaking of obesity, I shared the water-walking lane at the pool with a youngish man whose departure from the water caused the tide-level to drop 3 inches. He was the the biggest fella I've ever seen in bathing trunks - tall, had no neck, and shoulders on him like an ox (make that 2 oxes/oxen). Though not Asian, and we have a raft of them around here, I think he may have been a Sumo wrestler. Although fairish-skinned, he spoke with the speech characteristics of a Maori. I wonder what health problems participants of such a sport create for themselves.
But ... it's whatever gets ya through the night, I guess.

2003-04-17T00:45:00.000-07:00

It appears I spelt "bungee-ing" wrongly in my last post. The word spelt thus refers to an extreme escapade by real men, hundreds of metres above the Colorado River and similar places. Otherwise the term is "bungy" and its participants wusses, tourists and Big Girls' Blouses. A leap from the Auckland Harbour Bridge puts one in the latter category. As I have to be steadied when standing on a chair to change a light bulb, I wonder what term is used for the category below BGB?
One wonders why that which is presented as "news" is done in a newspaper, when two-thirds of the latter comprises successive pages of advertisements for stuff which will shortly end up in already sorely-pressed landfills.
And while on the subject of news, the lead story on our premier channel at major prime-time concerned the sentence awarded by the Court to couple of people who kept pit-bull terriers for fighting. The item was accompanied by pictures and graphic description of the wounds suffered by the dogs. This while I was trying to enjoy lamb-steak and broccoli (no cheese sauce - cook didn't get around to it), roast potatoes and pumpkin - all of which was delicious once I had muted the tv. If this is an example of the new charter, they can shove it in their Magna.

2003-04-16T23:47:00.000-07:00

The population of NooZillun will hit 4 million at about 5.30pm (NZST) next Thursday.
Aren't statisticians marvellous? How ever do they do it.

2003-04-13T12:04:00.000-07:00

I'm quite open to new experiences (bungee-ing from the pod newly installed beneath the Auckland Harbour Bridge (@ $120 per leap) excepted. So when I heard whispers midst the tittle and tattle around the bazaars that Mozilla was a great little browser, I thought "why not?". I have not been disappointed - it meets my needs as well as does I.E. and downloads faster.
But I don't think I'll be venturing further into Open Source - at least, not for a while.
A sudden and very heavy downpour last night found some leaks which produced a sizable puddle in my room, the result of gutters and downpipes being blocked by fallen leaves. A further downside was the cleaning-up operation interrupting an excellent live broadcast of Mahler's Third Symphony, with the NZSO and our own Helen Medland and Scots College (boys) Choir. The upside was finding, while mopping up the water, my copy of Paul Davies' God and the New Physics which had fallen behind a bookcase and for which I'd been looking for yonks.
Now to find the time to re-read it.

This is yesterday's blog but, alas, Blogger.com was unreachable - even to ~~Mozzarella~~ Mozilla.

2003-04-10T17:05:00.000-07:00

Brad has seen, and approves of, Graham Norton. I must be the only bent person in the English-speaking world who hasn't watched it. The promos, trailers, whatever, put me off. But at that time of night, A. is taping one programme while switching between channels to keep up with her fave murder/hospital/police/ - need I go on? - while I sit in my room reading H.G Wells' "Short History of the World" or rearranging computer files.
For tv entertainment I'd rather watch Fawlty Towers. A minor (in NZ) channel recently acquired the rights and will start playing reruns immediately, despite it's only just having been rerun on a major channel. A veritable surfeit of Sibyl. Afficionados, like me, can speak the lines from memory.
A couple of days ago, I heard the inimitable Anna Russell dissert(?) upon Mozart's "Magic Flute", with (un)musical illustrations. Enjoyable, but I prefer her dissection of Wagner's "Ring Cycle" (sounds like a setting on the washing-machine, dunnit?), which is hilarious.
Due to my feeling a bit under the weather (as distinct from being under the doctor), I have missed the beginning of Purcell's "Dido and Aeneas (bugger!), playing on steam-radio as I peck, with Jessye Norman as Dido and Thomas Allen as Aeneas. Jessye N. is right now singing "When I am laid in earth", but despite her stature - physical and musical - she doesn't do it as well as Kathleen Ferrier. Oh dear no! Our (late) Kath brings tears to my eyes, she does.

2003-04-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

The good news from the Eye Repair Factory outweighed the bad.
"You're holding up well", said the Retinal Honcho, his ever present silver can of Diet Coke® at the ready. (He's American, you see, here on a three-year sabbatical from a Prestigious Seat of Learning.) "See ya in four months ... Next!"

No Pool Antics this morning. I awoke feeling I had been ten rounds with a Stagecoach bus.

Ho Hum.

2003-04-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

There's an autumnal crispness in the air this morning. Makes a change from the whir of helicopter and roar of Fokker Friendship as they liberally dowse the neighbourhood with sticky insecticide.
The property in front was invaded by minor miscreants on Saturday. The new tenant, being a community service organisation, is entitled to manual assistance from hoods-in-training paying their first debt to society by carring out Court-ordered community service on Saturdays. About twenty swarmed ( that really is too energetic a word) over the place from 8 am to 2pm weeding, painting, fence-building etc after which they piled into three vans and sat for a further hour - waiting for Godot , or Christmas, or a blessing from the Pope. Whatever.
One of their number moved so lethargically that I named him "Lightning". At one point he was carrying up the drive from the stack at the back of the house two six-foot palings for the new fence . But he must have been admonished by one of his mates ( probably the unofficial union delegate) as the next time I saw him, he and another were carrying one paling between them.
It seems that an opportunist from among the Periodic Detentionists returned that evening and took from the otherwise empty house, a microwave and a couple of other minor kitchen appliances. The new tenants have yet to learn the first rule of household security. Never leave keys under a potplant by the front door. I will have to give them a lecture on household security out here in the Wild West. All our windows have security locks, both front and back doors are deadlocked, the grounds - small as they are - lit by movement activated security lights and the whole finally protected by a remotely-monitored burglar alarm system. The family call our place "Fort Knox". But it's not paranoia - there's good reason for our precautions.
And now it's off to the Eye Repair Factory for a bunch of blindingly flash photos and the ensuing conflab with the Head Retina Honcho.

2003-04-04T23:45:00.000-08:00

A major NZ fising company has been awarded a licence to fish for Patagonian Toothfish. At US$15-20 per kilo I don't think I'll be seeing any wrapped in batter and surrounded by chipped potatoes glistening with salt.
Fish'n chips remain a staple fast food in NZ. ("takeaway" in these antipodean parts). We have, in the little row of shops next to us, no less than three outlets offering this traditionally newsprint-wrapped fare.
I enjoy an occasional feed of "greasies', as they are irreverently but all to frequently, aptly, called. But the batter must be crispy and cooked to a darkish golden brown. The local foundries offer a variable product, mostly thin slivers of fish liberally encased in a thick, off-white sludge. I reckon this is because the Asian proprietors have an inadequate understanding of a dish which is foreign to them. It takes a Britisher to cook decent fish and chips.
And that'll earn me a karate-chop next time I sidle past "Happy Snapper Takeaways" on my way to the corner post-box.

2003-04-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

Patience is sometimes rewarded. Blogger/Google seem to be getting their act together. For the past few months, when I've finished editing my blog and hit "Publish", I have been getting "Error # 504 ...apologies but we're fixing it" and so I've been unable to "View Page" before it's splattered across cyberspace. This morning, (after failing to get through to Blogger last night), I was greeted after hitting "Publish", by the sweet words "Transfer successful ... "View Page". However the page I was given to view was an earlier one. But, this is progress. After all, as they say on TV, "Good Things Take Time". (This latter expression and the link will have more relevance to those Kiwis who remain semi-conscious during TV ad-breaks. But it's an amusing read. Hey, any of you remember "Ches" N' "Dale"? Nah, s'pose not. You'd have to be as old as me - OK, I, if you're going to be pedantic).
Dick Frizzell absconded from advertising to become a painter (Fine Arts division). He also gave rise to a son, memorably named "Otis", who has achieved notoriety by becoming a high profile graffiti-ist around local bazaars, tattooist to the stars, doing youf-oriented radio & TV programmes with his high school buddy. Father and son collaborated in the (I think) current Auckland CowParade
I mention these bits of tittle-tattle as I feel I must make the most of my urge to write - while it lasts.
My scribblings were earlier disturbed by a knock on the door which, when opened, revealed a tall, willowy blond - 30ish - who wished to discuss with me the Scripture for the Day. I declined her invitation. Politely.
A., on returning from a forage in the adjacent boutique bakery (aka The Hot Bread Shop), announced that the area was saturated with missionaries. This on top of our being saturated earlier by anti- painted apple moth spray delivered from a perilously low-flying Fokker Friendship ( everybody duck!).
Oh, life's a whirl of ado here in the suburbs this sunny day, on the cusp of autumn.

2003-04-01T10:35:00.000-08:00

Peter Jackson has won the job of doing the umpteenth remake of King Kong.
The search is on for the next Fay Wray.
Helen Clark need not apply. The script calls for a soprano shriek, rather than a baritonal bellow.
And Jim's back doing the TV weather after a long absence. I was enjoying his return until he mentioned the "A" word.
The overnight temperature in Dunedin is predicted to be 1°. Up here in the Winterless (????) North it'll be a light-duvet 14°.

Winter draw(er)s on! (that hoary old pun never fails to make me giggle).

2003-03-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

It's not often I agree with Herald columnist Garth George. His comments are frequently coloured by the homophobic, religious fundamentalism he espouses. But I must agree with the argument he makes this morning.
I guess it's because we've both been around the block a coupla times - or so.
This article was also thought provoking (i.e. it reinforces my own views).
Now to hie me northwards to chase a seagull or two. The weather report has it raining, with 80 knot winds up there.

Mr Mate! Furl the t'gallants, batten down the hatches. If you please.

2003-03-25T17:34:00.000-08:00

I'm going to neither wave flags nor trample on them.
It seems the "Coalition of the Willing" (Jeez, who thinks these up?) has bought itself another Vietnam.
I wonder if Dubya, Blair & Cobber Howard have read and inwardly digested The Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
Saddam and his henchmen will be comfortably ensconced in bunkers deep below hospitals with enormous red crosses emblazoned on the their roofs.
The media super-powers - as much to be feared as the other sort - have abandoned objectivity.
Big Money is gearing up for contracts to rebuild Iraq. A bit like vultures around a beast in its death-throes.

Cynical? Yeah mate, that about nails it.

2003-03-23T21:10:00.000-08:00

The Muse has flown. The creative vacuum has been filled with ... "Um"
I am referred to as "His Grumpiness."
A four-day excursion to the beach cottage has been planned. Later in the week we're off to sand, surf, seagulls and sister-in-law. There will be a surfeit of chatter, a raft of " oo, isn't it awful" stories.
Oh well.

Noticed in the Herald this morning:-
"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy,the best golfer is a black guy, France is accusing the U.S. of arrogance and Germany doesn't want to go to war!"

Absolutely.

2003-03-18T21:23:00.000-08:00

The first page of the Herald to which I turn is the "
Letters to the Editor" section. I can be amused, or enightened, or irritated by the various points of view - some learned, some bulging with common-sense, some just plain looney. The quotation I saw there today struck me as being both timely and wise: -
"From the moral point of view, it is hard indeed to choose between great powers and small nations. All great powers behave like gangsters. And all small nations behave like prostitutes".
Emery Reeves.(sic)

2003-03-17T21:46:00.000-08:00

I'm listening at the moment to Wagner's "Prelude and Liebestod" from "Tristan und Isolde"
Due to distractions such as boating and being a "man-about-town" in those heady pre-transistor days of bachelorhood, music paid little part in my life (apart from dancing to), and "classical" music, zilch. In the first days of my marriage, while enjoying playing for the team in which 90% of the population played, I was reunited with a radio and the Concert Programme (or whatever it was called in those days) played over several nights T&I in its entirety. We'd go to bed after dinner and I'd wallow in the surging "harmonic tensions" .
I don't remember if each evening's performance influenced the quality of the ensuing sheet-rumpling .

Much water has flowed under the bridge since those days.

2003-03-16T20:30:00.000-08:00

Francis reckons he's an urban guy.

I am likewise. Many oldies retire from the city to a smaller town but I would feel suffocated. Although I don't want to be part of the "scene" (of any hue), I enjoy looking in from the outside from the comfort of my rocker. It's like a tonic for me, going at the weekend to an inner city park or to the Domain just to wander, looking at the trees and flowers, gazing out over the harbour at the ships and sailboats hemmed in as it were by the sprawling, dark green, squashed pyramid that is Rangitoto.

Or at night before going to bed, standing at the window on tip toe to look over tall shrubs which hem us in, to the muticoured glow of the lights of the city and the colour-lit spire of Sky Tower in the centre of my view.

Heaven couldn't be much better than this.

2003-03-15T17:05:00.000-08:00

With all the talk about Iraq and the deadline of 17th March, I had forgotten that date has a much more illustrious connection.
I cannot claim Irish ancestry despite my mother being born near Londonderry (as were 10 of her 11 siblings) of parents Scottish from way back.. My mother had a great fondness for Ireland and sort of claimed to be Irish - unlike the only one of her five sisters I knew, who was fiercely Scottish despite having lived the greater part of her long life here in NZ. "Being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse", she'd snort if someone dared to suggest she was Irish.
The boy racers and their molls have departed. The ensuing silence is sweet. One of my mother's Presbyterian homilies was "God helps those who helps themselves" so when we saw in the local suburban newspaper "House - wanted to rent (in our area) by community service organisation" we told our neighbouring landlord. The upshot ... a "victim support"-type outfit is moving in and will use the house during the day for their counselling service. My remark in jest to the Head Honchess that I hoped they weren't into Heavy Metal or Rap went over like a lead balloon. It seems that a reasonably quiet and restful ambience is needed for their activities, which will put a stop to grandsons S & M's inevitably noisy after school fights with water-filled balloons which usually extend up the shared driveway . They will just have to put up with the more restricted space in our back yard. We will benefit from not having noisy parties, loud exhausts early morning and late at night, and domestic brouhaha. Head Honchess claims to be a keen gardener and promises to clean up the garden herself, which will be another benefit. The previous owner was a very keen gardener and had a beautiful garden when he sold to the present owner 11 years ago. Since then a series of tenants have treated it with neglect and I have given up on trying to keep tidy the strips of garden either side of the driveway (their responsibity), dealing to only the most noxious weeds which threaten to infest our small garden.
I hope things will turn out the way we want them to and that we will be afforded peace and tranquility in which to spent our twilight years ( in the suburbs out here in the Wild West ? Ya must be bloody joking!).

To the O'Briens, Murphy's et al. - a joyously Guinness to you all'n all.

2003-03-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

"Composer of the Week" on the Concert Programme is Hector Berlioz, one of my (many!) favourite composers. The "expert" who gave the introductory talk asserted that Berlioz was the world's greatest composer of opera music but not the world's greatest opera composer - a fine distinction.
I particularly enjoy his "Romeo & Juliet" - a sort of choral symphony. Also near the top of my list is "Death of Cleopatra" described as a "lyric scene". I have two recordings of it, one being an early Janet Baker recording, the other featuring Jessye Norman which I prefer. Her rich soprano adds to the drama of the 23 minute peformance, especially in the last section marked rectitativo misurato. I keep the tissues handy.
In contrast, I listened on Sunday to a "live" performance of Mozart's "Abduction from the Harem" (Il Seraglio) in the Chevron Texaco Metropolitan Opera Season series. The performers were unknown to me, apart from the wonderful Kurt Moll singing the role of Osmin. James Levine conducted the performance at a cracking, but assured (of course), pace.
Perhaps the first operatic aria which really impressed me was "When a maiden takes your fancy" (Osmin's Act 1 aria) sung by our own Oscar Natzke. O.N. also sang a lot of lighter music and one song frequently requested on the weekly Sunday Request Sessions on steam radio was that epitome of blah, Ketelby's " In a Monastery Garden" Another was "The Cornish Floral Dance" - which, unlike "In a Monastery Garden" I still enjoy.
In the course of my wanderings around Queensland's north and central coast, I frequently got a locum job in Rockhampton. Accomodation wasn't provided by the Base Hospital so I stayed in the van at the Riverside Caravan Park. I had a "visitors' membership" of the public library which had the complete "Il Seraglio" on tape. One of my pleasures, after watching the always brilliant sunset (Australia's east coast has the most wonderful sunsets - something to do with the dust in the air) was to get wired for sound then retire to my bunk to listen to the taped performance. Hearing it now always reminds me of those pleasant and largely carefree times in Queensland. Eventually of course, my basically conservative nature demanded I "get a real life" and return to my family. But that's another story.
For those not into tossing the caber, or hurling there's the pastime of Punkin Chunkin. Unlike the worthy folks in Delaware, we in Godzone practice less war-like diversions, like gumboot throwing. ("Gumboots are known in other cultures as "wellington's" or "wellies" and are part of the Kiwi dairy famer's traditional garb). Taihape, the home of this annual event, is in the central North Island, almost exactly halfway between Wellington and Auckland and before air travel became commonplace was a major stop on the Main Trunk railway. If travelling on the Express ( a misnomer if ever there was!) train service, one clambered out of the train in the middle of the night and, bundled up in a heavy overcoat against below zero temperatures, rushed to the Refreshment Rooms (no Dining Car - we're talking prehistory here), fought one's way to the counter hoping to be served with a cup of tea and a railway pie before the weary cry "Aaaall abooooard!" The tea (or coffee, made with coffee essence), served in thick china cups was made with engine boiler water, complete with rust - or so it seemed - while the meat pie consisted mainly of gristle and dried up gravy wrapped in greasy pastry.
Taihape's other claim to international fame is in being the home of Fred Dagg. and his sons, named Trev, Trev, Trev and so on, to seven. I should explain that the Kiwi/Assie word "dag" means "a lock of wool clotted with dung on the hinder parts of a sheep; or an eccentric or noteworthy person" (from the C.O.D.)
The Fred Dagg character, in fact John Clarke's humour as a whole, doesn't translate well out of Australasian culture. Neither does it read as well as it sounds in J.C's persuasive drawl.
Grand-daughter C. (aged 14) swam in the National Age Group Swinming Championships last week, collecting a gold and two silver medals. In addition, she was one of eight finalists in three other events but was unplaced. We're very proud of her. There were 650 competitors from all over the country as well some from Australia, Fiji, New Caladonia , and one from the United States. Earlier "personal best" times qualified her for the National Open Championships to be held in two weeks. She'll be swimming against much older swimmers, including those trying to qualify for Commonwealth or Olympic Games' selection - I forget which. Her mother says, "God knows what'll come after the "Nationals". She, a solo mother, (not at the expense of the taxpayer) works day and night to provide for C. - and swimming is not a cheap sport - and for her son, the figitty and irrepressible S.
This has been a long blog because it's a combination of several drafts which have been languishing on my Desktop due to my suffering from a severe dose of procrastination. But I need the space so have had to complete the fiddly things like proofread, find links etc, etc. So here it is, and that's another job out of the way. Now for a lie down.

2003-03-10T14:25:00.000-08:00

There's been a dispute between two local telcos over a bill for $200,000. An arbitrator failed to find a resolution - next step, the courts. But the lateral thinking CEOs felt there had to be a better way than lining lawyers' pockets, so they finally settled the dispute ... by an arm-wrestling contest.

Best of three.

Case over.

Could Dubya and Saddam be up for that, I wonder?

2003-03-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

THE NATION MOURNS

Team New Zealand "A" have lost the America's Cup to team New Zealand "b", drawn to Europe by a Swiss magnet.
Yeah, yeah! A dreadful pun.
A symptom of senile decay ... just humour me, please.

2003-02-26T18:53:00.000-08:00

The World Cycling Championships have been held in Tasmania. (I'm referring to Penny-farthing cycles). Speeds of up to 65 mph were recorded.
Tasmania is not in NZ but dangles in isolation off the South-East coast of Australia. It is famous for being, amongst other things, the home of the Tasmanian Devil. Unlike other parts of Australia, Tasmania has a climate and flora similar to NZ.
Australia and New Zealand were earlier part of the same land mass known as Gondwanaland. However, NZers being genteel in nature, lacking the brashness of the dinkum Aussie, seceded from the greater land-mass and have been drifting east ever since (watch out Chile, here we come!).
At the time of the secession, some flora and fauna ignored the oft-given advice "Go West, Young Man!, and came east instead.
The NZ icon, the flightless kiwi, is related to the larger but equally flightless Australian emu and cassowary.
Another flightless bird, the NZ moa, was hunted by Maori to extinction. A reconstructed specimen stood for years (waiting for a #11 tram perhaps?) in the entrance foyer of the Dominion Farmers' Building which housed the Reserve Bank in Wellington's Featherston St. The Reserve Bank now operates from its own opulent pile, the lovely old Dom.Farmers' Building has probably given way to a glass-walled monstrosity and the moa shifted to I know not where.
And that's progress for ya!
No species related to the Tasmanian Devil migrated with the eastward drift. Suggestions that Prime Ministress Helen Clark is of that ilk are spurious, defamatory and in poor taste.

2003-02-23T18:53:00.000-08:00

The Listener containing the TV and radio programmes for next week lists a number of popular TV shows returning to our screens after the summer break.
It's been wall-to-wall Talking Heads recently, debating
President Geo.W.Bush
U.N.Arms Inpections
Michael somebody
President Geo.W.Bush
CouttsandButterworth.
After all the ponderous chatter, we deserve some serious TV but, alas, Six Feet Under isn't scheduled yet. .

2003-02-21T14:07:00.000-08:00

I have to share this quip by Billy Connolly which I think is very funny. Readers who've heard it before are not obliged to laugh, nor are those whose sensibilities are offended by jokes about prostitutes and Scotsmen.
"We're the only people in the world who watch pornography backwards just to see the hooker give the money back"
B.C. has just arrived in NZ to act with Tom Cuise in The Last Samurai.
He plays the part of an American soldier (with a thick Glaswegian accent??)
I guess one could say "that's the long and short of it."

2003-02-19T14:25:00.000-08:00

I awoke to the welcome sound of gentle rain - the first since Christmas. Not that we are experiencing drought conditions as in other parts of the country, but it makes a pleasant change from continuous sunshine.
One of my great pleasures is to sit in the lounge opposite the tv flickering away in the corner between a picture window and glass doors, and glance from the tv to the scene outside - our tiny back-yard (patio in the lingo of the 'burbs) enclosed totally by shrubs and small trees now shiny and lush with summer drizzle.
Reading the paper this morning has left me depressed - totally. Mystery ships steaming in ever-decreasing circles in the Indian Ocean but which will not, in contrast to the famed Wow-Wow bird, finally disappear up their own propeller shafts; the South Korean subway inferno; Pauline Hanson running for the NSW Upper House; the fourth race for the America's Cup which starts in a couple of hours. Team New Zealand, staring ignominy in the face has replaced the Kiwi strategist with a Frenchman!

I think I'll follow Tony Soprano's advice and gargle with Drano
.

2003-02-17T12:47:00.000-08:00

This fella claims: -
"Gays are the canaries of the creative economy."
A different slant on "giving the bird" .

2003-02-14T15:44:00.000-08:00

Saturday morning sloth.
Gordie has been read (curmugeonly comes to mind); Di (no, not the late, lamented) has been chuckled over.The first race for the America's Cup will be held this afternoon. TV broadcasts from Viaduct Harbour commenced at 9 am. The two competing yachts left for the race course at about 10 am, the Swiss challenger to a cacophony of alpine horns and cow-bells. The family Van Trapp sent their apologies. Somewhere in the background the sound of Dave Dobbin's "Loyal" was blaring. I could drink all this in but I'm not of the genus solanum tuberosa sofalorum ( O.K. I made the last bit up - it's been 60 years since I struggled with ablatives, and Hannibal and his elephants).
So, twixt now and 1pm when the action begins ("it's a lovely day out here on the Hauraki Gulf", will say the lead commentator - he always does), I will potter, an endeavour at which we of the geriatric persuasion become quickly adept.
Interesting word 'potter', which in this context has nothing to do with ceramics but is a "frequentative of dialect pote -'push' from Old English potian." (C.O.D.)
So there.
Disclaimer. Our country's extensive forest resources did not suffer in the construction of this flummery.

2003-02-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

Movers and shakers of today's world: -

George W.Bush
Osama bin Laden
~~Michael Jackson~~Tony Blair

Homer Simpson.
Names which will go down in history - for different reasons.

2003-02-10T15:42:00.000-08:00

TVOne is our country's major TV channel. Its news presentation set has been revamped, on-screen graphics re-designed. It all looks rather professional (i.e. Americanised)
But the immaculately dressed Him&Her are the same, as is what they spout: -
Her: "Leading the news ...
President George W. Bush says, 'Saddam, it's over!' "
Him: "Secretary Donald C Rumsfeld says, 'Saddam, it's over' "
Her: "Secretary Coe-lynn (it's 'kollin', dammit!) Powell says, 'Saddam, it's over' "
Here is a more enlighted look at this Iraqi business.

I like the quote from Talleyrand: -
'Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts'” .
Out of the mouths of babes: -
"Johann Bach wrote a great many musical compositions and had a large number of children. In between he practiced on an old spinster which he kept up in his attic. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Bach was the most famous composer in the world and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large."

" Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyonewas calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this."
Finally: -
"The nineteenth century was a time of a great many thoughts andinventions. People stopped reproducing by hand and started reproducing bymachine. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of a hundred men. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbits. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species. Madman Curie discovered the radio. And Karl Marx became one of the Marx Brothers."

2003-02-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

War with Iraq seems inevitable; World Cup cricket is in crisis; Michael Jackson's interview has been broadcast around the world.
Civilization is going to the dogs.
But, there's light at the end of the ~~tunnel~~ kennel.

2003-02-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

The Picasso tapestry Guernica which hangs outside the Security Council in the U.N. Headquarters, has been covered up.
Among several photos on the back page of the Herald is an excellent shot of a bunch of "Maori" kids doing a haka (a Maori war-dance) after getting out of the waka they'd paddled during yesterday's Waitangi Day celebrations. They were all over 10 years of age so they were entitled to paddle. Notable was the number of boys with hair less than black , one being almost blond with a fair skin. His surname could have been O'Neil. If one of my great-great-great grandparents had been Maori, I could call myself Maori, legally, and vote in a Maori parliamentary electorate.
Playing on the radio at the moment is Allegri's "Miserere". There's an interesting story involving Mozart attached to this ~~warhorse~~ show-pony.

2003-02-05T18:20:00.000-08:00

Scientific Australia mourns the loss (presumably) of eight spiders aboard Columbia. Arcane studies to determine whether spiders can spin webs in space have been jeopardised.
Our hearts bleed for Aussie arachnophiles.
My birth sign is Aquarius. One authoritative (?) astrologer says I should "colour hair on Friday for a longer-lasting colour and slower re growth."
To hell with that! Faster growth and lots more of it is what I need. But having been balding grey/white for many years I'd like to go back to my formerly luxuriant light brown. But not from a wig shop. Or out of a bottle.
misunderestimate tops the list of last year's new words, so 'tis said.
Today is Waitangi Day", NZ's national day and a public holiday. This topic is discussed eloquently here. That means I can have two lie-downs today, which I need as our boy-racer neighbours were restive and vocal last night, forcing me at midnight to find a quieter place to sleep. But they're good kids really, and it must be boring for them to be living "cheek-by-jowl" with a pair of old-age pensioners.

2003-01-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

Further to yesterday's comment about imminent war and terrorism, this was published in this morning's Herald: -
"A North Shore reader, lost in her car in (a southside suburb) in the middle of the day, pulled over to the curb to seek help. Seeing a lone woman on the footpath walking with a briefcase, the motorist bellowed, "Excuse me!" and was relieved when the pedestrian turned and came over to the car window. A true servant of the public, Helen Clark, Prime Minister and MP for the area, was more than happy to point our reader (in the right direction), repeating the instructions precisely, twice. Our reader was so taken aback by the PM's help that she didn't let on she knew who she was. Only later did she realise she hadn't offered Helen a ride to wherever it was she was walking. And only later did she think about the fact that no security people were to be seen".
This being the start of the new school year, some principals have given notice that they will clamp down on a trend for female students to wear skirts several sizes too large causing said garment to conform to the effect of gravity, thus baring the midriff à la some female pop-star (Britney Spears?, Kylie Minogue?. Ru Paul? - whoever)
A male grandson - the eldest - has affected this custom for several years, he being of the skateboarding faction and the high school he attends having no "school uniform". He eschews short pants in summer - even of the "cargo" style, in favour of frayed and concertina-ed jeans. It seems it's cool to sweat. His younger brother tried it for a while but the effort of continually pulling properly-fitting pants down and lurid satin boxers up became too much of an effort - not his style really. Tho' not a nerd, he's an all-round sensible guy.
A Herald columnist offers this light-hearted poem on a related topic: -
Little Bo-Tox Has lost her socks
And doesn't know where to find them.
Now her skin's smoothly sweet
They just slide off her feet
And her knickers keep slipping behind them.

2003-01-29T15:26:00.000-08:00

Last night's "music for dropping off to" included Salieri's "24 variations on La Folia di Spagna". Not a great work, but the tune is intriguing and seems to have been around Europe for ever. Lully reworked it in the 1670's and since then every musician/composer and his dog has had a go at it, a more recent one being Rachmaninov.
There'd be no show without Punch (now there's a hoary old expression) and Herr Bach worked it into his secular "Peasant Cantata" (Bauernkantate BWV 212). The work preceding it, BWV 211, is the "Coffee Cantata", a jolly bit of whimsy which gives the lie to Bach's being a stuffy, dour old Lutheran. I don't have either of those works but do have the "Hunting Cantata" BWV208, the first of his secular cantatas. The part of Pan is sung (on vinyl in mono) by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau while Endymion is sung by the sadly all too short lived Fritz Wunderlich.
On the reverse of this recording is Telemann's (no, not "please mister tellyman, telly my bananas"!) "Canary Cantata", sung by D.F-D., which is playing as I peck. The first verse (aria) goes: -.
"Woe is me, my little canary is dead. Who can I turn to? Who can I tell of my bitter sorrow?"
The final verse (recitative): -
"Take this tiny body and set it safe in the cool earth,
May its epitaph be:
Here lies a bird,
because of a devil,
How sweetly it sang!
It brought joy to all men!
Brutish cat, I am arranging for you a very sticky end.
The keeping of cage-birds was popular in my youth, but that phase passed - perhaps due to the war. My children and grandchildren are pet lovers but their interests don't extend to birds. Axolotls perhaps, but canaries ... nix!

The prospect of war against Iraq creeps closer. It would be foolish not to expect dreadful acts of terrorism to be carried out in the U.S and UK/Europe, despite anti-terrorism measures. Fanatic Islamic fundamentalists are in strategic locations, ready to unleash their agents of horror at a time of their choosing. This is a new and unspeakably terrifying form of warfare.

2003-01-28T22:23:00.000-08:00

Oh dear!, just as we Kiwis felt we were gaining in international eminence - Lord of the Rings, PM Helen Clark's Royal Tour of New Zealand and her guest appearance on a "top U.S. talk show" (don't ask me which one - it's all a mystery to me), along comes a faux pas which threatens our standing in the World of International Greatness.
It appears the submission to the Guiness Book of Records for inclusion as having the world's steepest street contained faulty calculations. GB of R were notified promptly but failed to take the appropriate remedial action. The error has now become public and it appears we may have to yield that lofty title to San Fransisco which claims to have two contenders for the honour.
I have been driven down the crookedest street at a cracking pace, the tour-guide ( who was very cute) negotiating the steep downhill zigs and zags with aplomb.
One truly thrilling experience.
I had other truly thrilling experiences during that visit to San Francisco (lovely city), but I'm reluctant to go into further detail, mindful of this being a "family show" - as the saying goes.

2003-01-25T20:41:00.000-08:00

Entertainment-wise, it seems that Whale Rider is to be the Next Big Thing to come out of Kiwiland. But, unlike LOTR, this production is almost entirely home-grown (the musical score was written by a woman who speaks with a slight Aussie accent - we don't mind the Aussie accent provided it doesn't come from the lips of footballers, cricketers or wheeler-dealers trying to buy our limping "national" airline).
Whale Rider, the novella, is a good read and up with the best of Witi Ihimaera's fictional works, I think. Nights in the Gardens of Spain, his "coming-out" novel, I find strained and unsatisfying - perhaps because it mirrors too closely my own experience at the time it was published. Much stronger is his other gay-themed novel "The Uncle's Story" which continues the theme of the stern, often cruel, patriarchy of the stereotypical Maori elder underlying The Matriach and, to an extent, Bulibasha:King of the Gypsies, two of his works I most enjoy.
Hollywood ( as in "glamour") is also in NZ at present. A super-mega-star (or is it mega-super-star? - these superlatives are beyond me). is making The Last Samurai using our lush Taranaki pastureland as a backdrop, while in the Deep South a female mega-star, whose name escapes me, is making a film using craggy Southland scenery as a backdrop.
It seems Shirley McLaine wants to start a campaign to have blockbuster-movies (are there other kinds these days?) made in the USA, to restore Hollywood to its former glory and place in the sun.
She's had a couple of Spiritual Insights too many, if you ask me.
We welcome these opportunities to earn U.S. dollars to help satisfy our demand for highly priced, big name U.S.designer clothing and footwear.
Made in China.

2003-01-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

2003-01-25T00:24:00.000-08:00

A few of days ago, I passed into my seventy-seventh year. A "surprise" birthday party happened at lunch-time with party hats and candles ( 7 + 6) atop a large "Lemington"-type cake, pink icing sprinkled with desiccated coconut, its two halves separated by a two-inch thick layer of whipped cream. Very decadent. The irrepressible grandson S. and his family gave me a garden ornament - a chain-saw carving of a tuatara , hewn from recycled native timber. Very attractive and greatly appreciated. It was accompanied by a greeting card - a sheet of A4 paper folded in half and tastefully illustrated by S. who had also composed a short poem which he neatly printed on the inside.How he managed to sit still long enough to produce it surprises me (and his mother, apparently).
The Maori words for that day are tino pai, meaning 'the best' (a nod towards Francis) .

2003-01-20T22:06:00.000-08:00

Christian (so-called) Fundamentalists have a lot to answer for.
While paddling around the 'net, I came across this site. I found his "coming-out" story very interesting - not so much for the content of the story, I've read many of those, some truly poignant, others quite upbeat and full of hope as this one is. But what appeals to me is the way in which it is written. The writer is articulate and able to describe his feelings with honesty and perception.
"Coming-out" as a gay person is another dimension of the "growing-up" which everyone has to endure - well, most of us. I don't remember my "growing-up" as being in any way traumatic and as for " coming out", that was a drama I was to face very much later. I didn't watch my own children grow-up, that happened while I was very busy with my own life and away from home a lot. But I'm very aware of my grandchildren, those aged 15 - 17, becoming independent and, in a sense, growing away from us. This saddens me as I'm very fond of them all - probably overly possessive - and very interested in their daily lives. I have to remind myself continually of how I felt as a teenager, reluctant to let my "elderly" parents into my life and irritated by their interest in my various teenage pursuits. I couldn't get away from home quickly enough. Like my father nearly fifty years earlier.
One's genes won't be denied.

2003-01-19T17:59:00.000-08:00

The Herald runs a daily column of "Corrections and Clarifications" in which journalistic errors are corrected.
A recent column contained the following: -
"A story about **** *****,(a child) contained some inaccuracies. The surgery to restore damaged nerve endings was in 2000, not last year. At birth, he weighed 5.78kg (12lb 12oz), not 12lb 9oz. During surgery last year muscle was taken from his back to repair his shoulder; his left arm nerves were not replaced. He can now load up his left hand, not his right as quoted (he has always had the use of his left hand), and his arm was not elevated permanently, only during the time it was in a cast"
It seems the little guy's name was spelt correctly.
"Your arteries are normal", murmured the messenger, a Very Junior Doctor, at the conclusion of my Arterial Adventure. VJD had assisted a Very Senior Doctor during the procedure, mopping his brow while marvelling at the skill of his Master's Manipulations. (I jest about the brow-mopping - the "lab" as it is called - was air-conditioned to about -4° celsius. "It's a bit chilly in there this morning", observed the nurse who comforted me while I was being held on a gurney in a holding pattern outside the door, waiting my turn.)
On getting the results I immediately discarded the medication I had been swallowing for a condition which didn't exist.The fatigue and lassitude I had been experiencing increasingly these past three months ( a known side effect of the medication) has now all but disappeared.
Modern medicines are not without their hazards.
But one doesn't easily get out of the clutches of the Medical System - I'm now awaiting an appointment for a Gastroscopy. So, I'm off to the pool in a few minutes to start rebuilding the strength which has dwindled in the interim, as they say.
The Queen is said to have owned 30 corgi dogs since she was given one for her eighteenth birthday.She owns four of the little ankle-biters (dogs, not kids) at present. It is said she bred a new breed of dog when one of her corgis was mated with a dachshund belonging to her late sister, Princess Margaret. Of the eight "Dorgis" produced, three survive. Their names ( as if anybody cares) are Brandy, Cider and Berry.
Crossing a Welsh corgi with a German dachshund is carrying the concept of European Union a bit far methinks ( if the pun may be excused).

2003-01-08T12:58:00.000-08:00

The lair of a Kiwi Loch Ness Monster (we've got a bunch of them) has been saved from the depredation of roadmakers. No palms were crossed with silver. What did the fella say about "opiate of the masses"?
I've just noticed in a "potted" history that Julius Caesar was "...stabbed to death in the toilets behind a theatre". Hmmm - I thought, erroneously it seems, that his murder was politically motivated.

Rules of Protestant Work Ethic.
Rule 1. Luxury is a Sin: Indulging in material goods leads to avarice. Frugality is a virtue. Sexuality is a perversion. ‘The making of riches is the virtue of temperence.’- (Scottish)Minister William Struther.

2003-01-06T17:13:00.000-08:00

Blogger ("now over one million registered users") is still being unreliable. For weeks I haven't been able to preview a post before signing out, - I have to wait a couple of days to view my latest post. Attempting to view by going to the page URL doesn't always give the desired result, at the moment either viewing the page via the URL or going through another blogroll produces an earlier blog. But what can one expect when when it's free (and now over one million users!).
Rain has set in and is predicted to continue until Monday. We go to the beach tomorrow to spend some time with our Wellington family who are up for their annual holiday. A. and I will stay in the bach next door - a haven from four noisy teenagers plus the irrepressible S. who at 12 is near enough to being a teenager. We come back on Monday so I can prepare for my all day from 8 am trip to Auckland's Cardiac Unit for an angiogram.
Whereas a few months ago I was swimming a dozen lengths of the pool with gusto (if a little breathless), even a short saunter up and down the road in the evening leaves me exhausted. I hope on Wednesday they find that the problem is minor and easily fixed.

However, I'm not thrilled at the thought of being laid low for a couple of days, the result of having a tube poked up my femoral artery from the groin into the chambers of the heart (sounds quite poetic!) so they can squirt dye which will show in the Xrays what's amiss. Also, there's a one in a thousand chance of arterial gunge, loosened by the tube being poked around, causing a heart attack or stroke. I had to sign a bit of paper acknowledging the risk. But it is also impressed upon victims that the specialist has weighed the odds and decided it's worth it. So, we shall see.

"Quick, Nurse, the screens!"

2003-01-04T11:17:00.000-08:00

A blog was constructed, lofty thoughts authored, apposite links incorporated. T's were crossed, i's dotted. Hot Dog was instructed to "Save" prior to sending to Blogger. H.D. in a fit of contrariness, swallowed it. An hour's work now resides in a text-editor's alimentary canal.
Bugger!

Within the expired missive lay a reference to Sarah Walker singing "Rule Britannia" at the conclusion of the Last Night of the (London) Proms. The link to "The Dress" takes one to another, "Letters" - correspondence between Ms (or is it "Dame"?) Sarah and other luminaries. Worth a look for a bit of a giggle.

But then that's life , too, isn't it?

2002-12-31T14:33:00.000-08:00

New Year Greetings!

May our lives in 2003 overflow with happiness and health.
Happy Birthday to all Capricornians, including daughter H., and grand-daughter K. now officially a teenager.
I'm an Aquarian. My horoscope says this morning:-
Your moods are set to fluctuate or your energy levels will waver. [Oh so right!] The lunar cycle is almost over so do not start new projects or make ambitious plans. You should tie up loose ends and rest.
Good advice. Tidying my room can wait until the lunar cycle is more auspicious and I've abandoned the hunt for the current issue of the Listener.

Wake me for lunch, please.

2002-12-28T15:27:00.000-08:00

Not a lot going on 'round here - it's the usual post-Xmas sleepy-time in the suburbs. Passing traffic is light, most folk are away on holiday. The local boutique bakery is closed for a fortnight and I've had to learn to bake savoury cheese scones for my morning tea - but not yet up to their standard I fear.
The N.Z. Listener is an excellent publication. It comes to my letter-box weekly (an annual subscription is a standing Xmas and birthday present from my family) and contains not only TV and radio programmes for the coming week, but some damn' fine writing at times. The latest issue contains a range of "travel" writing which I am enjoying - one such, by a 17 year-old girl, bringing a wee tear to my eye. It's written in the "first person" and the protagonist is lying on a beach reflecting on past years at secondary school and ruminating on what lies ahead after this, her final year. The piece closes: -
"One year from now I'll be free - then who knows? Travel? Work? Varsity? The possibilities are endless.
And France is much closer than it was on a grey Wellington day when two 15-year olds sat in a cafe and discussed perpetual motion, and movies, and America."
The little bit of emotion it brought on while reading it was caused by self-pity - and envy - I guess.
There's nothing now for me to look forward to, in the way there was when I was seventeen. Yes, I do look forward to each new day, but there's no "great adventure" - in a positive sense - to work towards.
Enough already. .
A full-page ad opposite the Listener's editorial bellows "are you feeling bloated? then goes on to quote a study which allegedly found that "Aloe promoted a more favourable balance of gastrointestinal symbiotic bacteria and decreased yeast populations". ... Wow!
To the question I can answer unhesitatingly, " Yes!

And there's still some Pavlova in the fridge which must be eaten before the whipped cream "goes off"!

2002-12-23T14:00:00.000-08:00

Music for Christmas Day is selected. Cook, ever the traditionalist, will play her usual tape, "20 Christmas Carols from St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle", while doing appropriate things to the roasting turkey and lamb. My end of the house will reverberate with the sonorous organ sounds of (from vinyl) J.S. Bach's "Canonic Variations: Vom Himmel hoch da komm' ich her...", the title translated as "From heaven above to earth I come". Microsoft's translation programme has it as "...of the sky highly, there come I ago" but you get the picture. Ascending and descending scale passages of the Trio in the first variation, played on the Keyboard, suggest the pealing of bells - although some say ... "but may also represent the flight of angels" (the "I" who comes "from heaven above" is an angel). The Chorale itself, played on the Pedal, is a grumble from 8ft pipes. The hymn-tune (and verses) was written by Martin Luther but Herr Bach borrowed it. It appears three times in his "Christmas Oratorio" (so the sleeve notes go), also in his "Seven Chorale Fuguettas for Organ". Old J.S. wrung the utmost from a good tune once he'd got hold of it.
I found this description of Czech Christmas customs interesting.
I was asked yesterday if I was looking forward to Christmas Day (a "have a nice day" sort of remark.) Being in curmudgeonly humour inspired by my dentist's cavalier and deceptive estimate of the cost of my recent dental coronation, I answered "No!" which wasn't quite what I meant. I've being "having" Christmas for the past ten days, ever since yule-tide purchases were made from the supermarket and the kitchen turned into a minefield. This state continues through balloon inflating, crepe-paper streamering, furniture shifting, silver polishing, until the zenith is reached - party hats donned, the turkey carved, Cabernet Merlot quaffed. Then it's gently down-hill until Twelfth Night or thereabouts when the last of the decorations are taken down and stored away until the middle of next December.
So for now:-
Merry Christmas!

Happy & Healthful New Year!

Peace on Earth!
(A vain hope I fear)

Goodwill to All Men!

(including - 'tho grudgingly - politicians, dentists, boy-racers and the fella who drives the garbage-gobbler which grinds and clanks in the nearby row of shops in the wee sma' hours, blighting silence and scattering sleep).

Alleluia!

2002-12-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

The statement which follows was made recently by the co-leader of the Green Party. The latter has no formal coalition with the Government but assists in running the country (don't ask me where) as another "propping-up party". The Green Party is so democratic that it has a leader from each of the principal genders. The other co-leader differs in his habitual need of a shave and in his affectation of lurid braces - to distance himself from the ditty "Donal, where's yer troosers?" ( to those from the New World, braces = suspenders).
Having digressed thus, I re-join the chase with her statement: -
" A review is useful if you've decided to hold the status quo and have a review. But if you've decided to change the status quo and allow something to happen that can't happen now and review it, in a year's time it may have happened.
I intend to reflect on this profundity during my post- Xmas (nod to Ancient Greece) dinner lie-down to see if I can work out wtf she's on about.
Of much greater clarity and perception is Diana Witchel's column in the Weekend Herald. I provide a link to her column for the convenience of any NZ resident who may stumble across this blog while looking for the Lotto results; to those not au fait with our petty political perfidies, it will be largely meaningless. Ms Witchel's writings in the Herald and the Listener tend to undermine my misogynistic view of life.

And a partridge in a pear-tree to all (including sundry).

2002-12-18T15:26:00.000-08:00

As if Xmas and Louis Vuitton/America's Cup derangement is not enough, LOTR:Two Towers delirium has hit us. Shots of personalities arriving for last night's NZ premiere in Wellington fill the back page of the Herald - Jonah Lomu resplendent in platform shoes (he's 6'5" in his socks, for God's sake!) and long leather coat. (In 1913 such a garment was called a "motoring coat" - I wonder if Jonah's is real leather. Just curious). The most alarming picture however is that of Prime Ministress Helen Clark hugging Elijah Wood (what's with all these Old Testament names, anyhow?); she as tall as he is short. Helen has Frodo in a bear hug any WWE ~~brawler~~ ~~thug~~ ~~actor~~ megastar would be proud of. She's forced Frodo's head back and to the side, like it's been welded to his shoulder.
He will probably spend Christmas in a neck-brace.

Rather fancy Meriadoc Brandybuck (love the name, too).

2002-12-18T00:34:00.000-08:00

The kitchen is awhirl with Christmas . Cakes and sweetmeats proliferate. A. drags weary bones from one recipe to the next. "Is it worth it?" I venture. "Of course it is - I enjoy it", comes the reply.
My mother had no great liking for food. A piece of bread and butter and a cup of very weak tea without milk suited her, and this lack of regard was reflected in her meals. Plain and not very tasty. My mother-in-law was the opposite and passed it on to her daughters, especially the eldest - my wife.
The first year we were married we volunteered to have "the family" for Christmas dinner - midday as was ( and is still) the tradition. We were eight, including both sets of parents and my mother-in-law's two unattached sisters, one of whom was old Auntie M., about eighty and barely 95 cents in the dollar due to a cranial misadventure in infancy (so 'twas alleged), standing five-feet nothing in her socks and weighing all of five stone (70 lbs) after a heavy meal. We sat around our new table, a sheet of coreboard I had sanded and "limed" by applying a thin coat of undercoat paint, wiping it off then applying several coats of clear varnish. I was able to buy from a place which sold a new innovation - kitset furniture - a set of metal legs which I screwed to the underside of the panel. This contrivance is still in use, being dragged, disassembled, out of storage and the legs screwed on again each Christmas Eve to supplement the factory-built dining table in use today, enabling about sixteen to be seated for the meal.
The meal was served and old Auntie M. munched her toothless way through turkey, ham, roast lamb, roast potatoes and kumara (sweet potatoes), dollops of rich, brown gravy, new season's peas freshly picked that morning from my father-in-law's garden. Then followed steaming Christmas pudding with brandy sauce (we're talking NZ mid-summer here!) with fruit salad topped by whipped cream and meringues to finish. At the meal's end we were sated. We sat around the debris and small talked. Eventually A. got up to clear the table. A look of dismay passed across Auntie M's face. In a loud, cracked voice she enquired disappointedly, "A!, aren't you going to cut the Christmas cake? My mother looked astonished, Auntie's sisters tittered disreetly behind their hands, while A. and I scuttled to the kitchen, there to roll about laughing.
Poor old Auntie M. didn't see another Christmas, but her memory is saluted at this time every year. Henceforth it became a ritual for me to exclaim at the end of the meal, when the plates are cleared and we toy with nuts and preserved ginger and fresh cherries, "Aren't you going to cut the cake?

That's the spirit of Christmas, I suppose.

2002-12-16T09:44:00.000-08:00

The Concert Programme of Radio Noo Zild announce a performance of Xmas Carols by the BBC Singers, including a rendition of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in Latin, to be perpetrated next Monday night commencing at 7 pm. I regret I will at that time be elsewhere. (anywhere but there!).

Rudolphus rubrinasus? Pshaw !

2002-12-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

Betty the Barmaid has pulled her last pint at the Rovers Return, after 33 years! It seems that the series producers were going to increase shooting schedules, so after 70 years behind the footlights and in front of the cameras, Betty Driver at age 82 reckoned she'd earned a bit of a lie-in in the mornings.
I haven't watched Coronation St for years, having become tired of the same situations endlessly reworked since the days of steam television when the three old crones - sharp-tongued Ena Sharples played by the wonderful Violet Carson, mousey Minnie Caldwell with her non sequiturs involving her cat "Bobbie" and Martha Longhurst, a hatched-faced harridan with a disposition to match - all drinking milk stout (whatever that is) in the "Snug" under the watchful eye of Annie Walker when she wasn't at a meeting of the "Lady Licensed Victuallers". At the same time as Betty the Barmaid departed, Bet Lynch, erstwhile "town bike" turned respectable Licensee of the "Rovers" before retiring from the series, decided to make a comeback but after a few months actress Julie Goodyear felt she couldn't cope with the stress of tiring days on the set and went back into semi-retirement .
I was going to watch the episode covering Betty's retirement and Bet's return but after a couple of minutes it palled and I wandered off and did something else.
It's often a let-down to return to the scenes of one's past. I'm frequently disappointed when watching an old film or TV show I'd looked forward to, only to find it out-dated and banal.
Some years ago I looked forward to revisiting a small seaside town where I'd lived for nearly seven years, gone to secondary school and started work. I learned to sail there and spent many, many happy hours messing about in boats ( and not only in the nautical sense - naughty, yes, but we won't go there today). When I went back thirty years later it was a different place, the magic of those adolescent memories had tarnished and it was just another country town by the sea.
'Tis truly said that many experiences are enjoyed more in retrospect than in having them again.

When in a mood more precious than pragmatic, I avoid writing the word "Xmas", in the belief that it's a modern shorthand which demeans the sanctity of the occasion. Behold, I now find that it originates from the Greek word for Christ, Xtos and came into vogue in Europe in the 1500's.(where ya been - under a brick?). So, to try it out - {and as it's early yet, I'll be back (d.v.)}

Merry Xmas!

2002-12-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

The ordeal by dental devices was completed in an hour and a half instead of the allotted 2 hours (no refunds given). I remarked that had I known before I'd had four or five crowns installed several years ago, that they wouldn't outlast me, I'd have had all my teeth out, for less expense. This caused the worthy toothwright to exclaim "Dentures are a disaster." He then grabbed my two upper incisors (the Bugs Bunny teeth) and wrenched them back and forth and sideways . "Look at that", he cried, his face glowing with satisfaction, "firm as a rock." You've got bones", (surprise, surprise) "good bones for teeth to hang on to. There's a price to pay for the quality of life y'know!"
I shrunk lower in the chair and meekly handed him my wallet from which he deftly extracted one thousand dollars, his eyes sparkling like sun off the chrome of a new Mercedes. "The replacement crown will be ready Friday week. Nurse! (he runs a lean operation), a half-hour appointment for this gentleman please."
It will be slim pickings on Christmas Day. Potato soup and mouldy crusts probly.

Jingle Bells!

2002-12-08T23:06:00.000-08:00

I'm still having a lie down. Well, that's today's excuse. I asked Google to look up an appropriate link but the best she could come up with was: -
"Today's Excuse - 316. I'd love to, but I'm colonically irrigating my tortoise. ... "

which I thought would lead to an interesting dissertation but I was thwarted. When opened, the page proved to be about little kids, puppies dying on the roadside, nightmares and animal abusers - someone's cock-up and not the sort of fare for a readership of erudite bloggers. So I'll lie down again and wait for tomorrow's two hour contemplation of the ceiling in my dentist's surgery while he takes an impression of the old crown, removes it, takes an impression of the stump which remains, fashions a temporary crown ..... oh, you know how it goes. All while my jaws are immobilised in the "wide-open" position with a brick, to prevent me from biting his fingers off.

"Open wide. Nearly finished!"

2002-12-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

Shhhh! - I'm having a lie down (subsection 1a1a.refers)

2002-12-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

I've had a flash of enlightenment! The reason for the epidemic of tongue-piercing among the young is the premature curtailment of breast-feeding.
No? ...oh well, back to the cage.

P.S. Anyone know where the "venoms" are - or shouldn't an old guy ask? Oh, "tongue", "venom", "snakes" ....duh, now I geddit! Another one for my thesaurus.

2002-12-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

Summer has come, and not before time - we're only three weeks from the longest day. Recently the temperature has struggled to get to 19°. The past couple of days it has shot to 28° in our suburb, with clear blue skies and a warm afternoon sea-breeze.
Yesterday I went to the Medical Centre to have the embroidery over my collar-bone unstitched. The Practice Nurse examined, under magnifying lamp, the doctor's handiwork of ten days earlier and breathed, "Lovely wound!, I'll go and get him", leaving me supine on the couch.
"We'll take out alternate stitches now, you can come back Wednesday and we'll take the rest out,"said the doctor.
"Can't", I said.
Thursday then ?"
"Nope".
"Then take them all out now", he grumbled to the nurse standing beside him with scissors and tweezers at the "ready", before stomping back to the patient he'd left in limbo.
"I'm sorry, I'll have to do it this way", the nurse said as she laid her torso diagonally across mine. If I had been younger and of different orientation I would have had difficulty suppressing my pleasure. But I was unmoved and endured the intimacy with equanimity.
"No more sunbathing now", she cautioned as levered me upright from the couch.
"Not bloody likely", I said, quoting an Eminent Man of English Letters* as I fled down the hallway.
So I've just now been sitting in a shady corner of the sundeck, sipping Lemon & Ginger Tea (from The House of Twining) reflecting on this morning's visit to the dentist and his off-hand remark "Crowns don't last forever y'know, I'll replace it next Tuesday".
"Freebie?", I enquire.
"Not bloody likely", quoth the toothwright.

Oh dear! Here we go again.

*No link, but here's the original -“Walk! Not bloody likely. I am going in a taxi” (Liza, in George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Pygmalion’, 1914)

2002-11-30T14:51:00.000-08:00

Today is World Aids Day, and I've just learned of - and signed up for - the Link & Think project.
In some ways, Aids has had only a small impact on my life - small because it involved only one of my close friends, but a significant one because he was a beautiful man with a big heart and outrageous sense of humour.
He entered my life at a time when I had left the family hearth and fled to what I hoped would be the security of a gay commune in northern New South Wales, there to escape my demons (I didn't escape them, the f***ers came with me!). We shared the same sleeping quarters but, to my regret now, never the same bed. My choice - he was too handsome, I unworthy (one of the demons) . Each morning I would look down from my mezzanine sleeping place at his lean, naked body, his gaunt face framed by curly dirty-blond hair and he'd give me a big grin and a facetious morning greeting. Then he'd be off with a whoop for his wash in the creek before disappearing for several hours to tend the garden or orchard for which he'd taken full responsibility. He'd return to scarf down the remnants of the previous night's meal which had been saved for him, while I kneaded dough for the bread I'd bake - a skill learnt from him - in a wood fired oven. No breadmaker ... no electricity!
He showed me how to make the transition from a confused, materially-minded middle-class family man in full mid-life crisis to one with a more balanced view on life . He showed by his example that serenity comes from being rather than having and accepting that it's not a perfect world anyway.
I later returned to my family to live my life in a different way and he returned to his family in Auckland to die. But the last months of his life were spent in a community of like-minded men, in a shelter for those terminally ill with AIDS. Even there his puckish humour couldn't be subdued. Occasionally serious, he told a spiritual comforter - a novice Franciscan - he wasn't afraid of Death, it was going to be another experience.
His given name was Graham, I have forgotten his surname. But only his mother called him that, to everyone else he was known by the names of his choice - Lemuel Waters.
I found this to be a sympathetic read.

2002-11-28T19:31:00.000-08:00

The country is going to hell in a handcart. Industrial action affects critical sections of the community. Alex asks , "don't people talk any more?" The short answer is no!, well not at an official level, anyway. An erudite discussion of this 21st century phenomenon is to be found here.
I had earlier planned to acquaint readers with a Disgraceful Act which occurs in Parliament viz; - the Associate Ministress of Dropped Stitches three-plying her trade in the Laugh Factory, er, I mean the Debating Chamber of the House. But I got tired and went for a lie-down instead. However the aforementioned disquisitor (no, it's not in the C.O.D., I made it up - French, from the Latin disquisitio. It will enter common usage soon, like "at the end of the day" and "dipshit". Personally, I prefer "fuckwit" to the latter. But I digress, and apologise for associating such crude contumely with the Elected Representatives of the Pipple) also touches on this peccadillo. It's all a bit silly really, objecting to a Minister knitting while in the Debating Chamber. One Very Senior Member of the Opposition said it was disgusting! - reminding him of old crones sitting knitting at the foot of the guillotine while watching heads roll into the basket. He'd obviously "BeenThinking", again.
Everyone knows laws are made not in the Debating Chamber but in committee rooms turgid with the aroma of spent coffee grounds and stale under-arm deodorant or over nosh at 2.30 am in the Green Parrot Caff'n Grill - or its latter-day successor.

Mistah Speakah!

2002-11-27T23:36:00.000-08:00

The music of Robert Schumann doesn't excite me greatly. I find it in general to be boring or inaccessible or both. Heresy to some, I know - but "... Dunno a lot about music, but I know what I like! " There are exceptions of course. and Carnival, for the piano, being one. I have heard the song-cycle Dichterliebe (A Poet's Love) performed a number of times, always sung by a male voice. Yesterday at the beach cottage, while gazing out over glassy, empty waters (where have all the seagulls gone?), sipping my morning coffee I heard it sung by a woman, in this case, Barbara Bonney and it was pleasure to listen to. I feel it suits the female voice admirably, and Ms Bonney invested it with a sweetness and lyricism I hadn't noticed before. The only parts that didn't seem to fit her voice were the obviously heroic verses. A new musical vista has been opened to me - I must read the libretto and listen more carefully next time I hear it.

The yacht-racing has started again, but has been bedevilled by too much wind, or not enough resulting in postponement or ultimately, cancellation for the day. Broadcasters struggle to amuse and educate the listeners until the races start or the day's matches are called off. This makes hard work for the commentators - and for those watching on tv. Yesterday during the postponement, our intepid "on the water" commentator Peter J. Montgomery, trying to fill the hiatus with useful information, announced in a voice trembling with contrived authority that "...until the weather settles down, the wind is pretty much up in the air". Marvellous! I must tuck that away in my my stock of nautical lore.

2002-11-24T22:24:00.000-08:00

There being another space in my "medical appointments diary" and the weather gurus promising a few fine days, I'll scoot up to the beach cottage tomorrow for a couple of days of gentle gardening and quiet solitude. There will be few around to intrude upon my privacy (hopefully). I enjoy the grandchildren and their parents popping in and spending time with their "olds", but I also enjoy occasional time out, alone.

I've been to the doctor today to let him have a look at his latest handiwork, done last Friday - the excision of a troublesome skin "cancer" on a collarbone. I now have a two-inch scar tied together by eleven neat stitches, a legacy to a blue-eyed, fair-skinned European who, over 70 years spent much too long in the sun.
"As ye sow, so shall ye reap", say the wiseacres .
"See ya again Monday", says Sawbones, "and I'll unpick the needlework."
.

Absolutely!

2002-11-22T00:31:00.000-08:00

On arriving at the beach house we were met, not unexpectedly, by a seige of in-laws. Many hands make light work, 'tis said, and the Hanging of the Drapes was concluded pronto . We celebrated around a large newsprint parcel of fish and chips. I rummaged in the back of a cupboard and found a bottle of cheap CabSavMerlot which was shared among three (red wine with fish & chips? As we say down here in the Antipodes, "No worries mate, we're not proud !".).
The following day, nephew-in-law who is living temporarily next door, took me to Gulf Harbour to see a power-boat, a copy of which he is having built. It's been a long time since I meandered around a marina, to look admiringly at the range of craft bobbing alongside numerous jetties or cradled tall and proud in the hauling-out area. Reminded me of Water Rat's remark in Wind in the Willows: -
"Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing- absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."
When I got home on Monday, I sat down at the computer to update myself on happenings, when, without ado, it rolled over and died. I took it the next day for repair, and the repair place being a few minutes drive from the Viaduct Basin, home to the America's Cup yachting syndicates, more posh eateries than one can poke a stick at, and berthing place for the many visiting super-yachts I tried my luck and found a spot in a nearby parking building ( there being no racing that day).
The air at the Basin hung heavily with the smell of chrome polish applied assiduously by bronzed and handsome young men (and women), the aroma of gourmet hamburgers (gourmet?) offered from stands strategically placed. On reaching Katana I knelt at the foot of the gangway, and after making the sign of the Crossed Anchors, enquired of the Oracle what future bounties I could expect. Immediately came a woosh of dirty water from Katana's bilges. I took this to be a sign or portent. (I jest, of course - it is a serious offence to discharge offensive material into the waters of the Basin, punishable by stringing from the yardarm before keel-hauling and walking the plank suspended above a maelstrom of ravenous crocodiles. Or a fine of $500.
Among the glitter of fibreglass, chrome and stainless steel, and exotic flags from around the globe, were two ships riding yardarm and truck above the rest - Søren Larsen, TV star whose home port has been Auckland for the past few years, and Amerigo Vespucci.
Real sailing ships.
Although built of steel and despite the packs of inflatable life-rafts fastened unobtrusively along her upperworks, Amerigo Vespucci has a real old-time look about her. Slung from at least one set of davits was an old-fashioned cutter with rowlocks in the top strake to take the oars weilded by melon-biceped, boulder-shouldered young men as an outlet for energy and competitive spirits pent up through hours in the on-board classrooms. The ornate decoration around the bow and Captain's balcony around the stern was made even more luxurious by gilding which would make a baroque drawing-room look dull by comparison. I wonder whether the young cadets aboard appreciate the sense of history and tradition among which they are learning to be competent mariners. It will come to them in their mature years, I guess.
There is an air of falseness about the Basin now, so different from the mid 1940's when I frequently took my lunchtime stroll there, stepping around coils of manilla hawser, fish nets and baskets, hoping to avoid droppings from swooping sqawking gulls (noticeably absent today) intent on getting a free feed from the many fishing trawlers which berthed there. On the seaward side of the basin were berthed at that time, a couple of forlorn-looking wooden minesweepers - wooden to facilitate the sweeping of magnetic mines - upperworks partly dismantled, one still with boilers and a funnel intact, producing steam which was piped I know not where.
History has not been dismissed entirely from the area. In what was built as a shed to store imports and exports, photographic records are pinned to the wall, artifacts safely stored in glass cases or beyond roped off areas ("Do not touch exhibits") in the Maritime Museum.
This has been a long - and self indulgent - blog, and while composing it I have revisited much"old times". I came across a poem the other day, written by a Kiwi Literary Lion. It goes: -
On Turning Seventy
I think it came to me in sleep
that when, at Anzac dawn parades,*
old soldiers weep
it's not (as they will say) for fallen comrades
but for their young selves full of sap and fire -
as distant now and lost in coils of time
as one the bullets of a half forgotten war
stopped in his prime.

(*NZ Day of Remembrance.)
I can give C.K. Stead five or six years, but yeah - I'll go with his insight.
But the poem which followed ("There's a message in there somewhere." - Neva Clarke McKenna) puts a different twist to the problem of old age. It's longer and centres around a bunch of geriatrics whooping it up at a luncheon place. The final verse goes:-
(All these people join)
...Our unruly bunch
Of eighty-year-olds
Who are having such fun
Before it's too late to have anything
At all.
I'll go with that, too.

Anyone for tennis?

2002-11-13T19:49:00.000-08:00

Our medical appointments diary is clear for the next few days (the optometrist has just delivered new spectacles with small frames to replace my 12-year old large framed ones which are passé, apparently, but the dentist is still reminding me that my 6-monthly scrub and hose-down is long overdue - he can wait). So we will go to the beach tomorrow for a few days - to the salt-laden air; the cry of the gull; the sparkle of sunlight on rippling blue water; the Hanging of the New Drapes.
It was reported yesterday, in type quivering with indignation, that Saddam Hussein used Whitney Houston's 1992 hit song I will always love you in his election campaign without her permission.
Another transgression by the Axis of Evil? (I wonder how many Hollywood screen writers Dubya employs to compose such epithets?)
However, a correspondent claimed today that it wasn't La Belle Whitney"s song but was written ( and is owned) by Dolly Parton. He concluded: -
"If it comes to a fight with Saddam, I'll put my money on Dolly."
Hmmm. A case, methinks, of Baghdad or bust.

2002-11-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

We have new neighbours - the absentee houseowner's teenaged son and two teenaged couples. I have nicknamed the son "Mother" - perhaps unkindly but not inappropriately,. He drives a shiny maroon Godzilla with customised everything and a modified exhaust system which makes a Kenworth rig sound like a contented kitten. A housemate drives a smaller car with a similarly modified exhaust system.
On Sunday I was pottering close to where housemate was tinkering and in an effort to dispel the perhaps justifiable impression that I was a thoroughly bad-tempered old bastard, asked him what size engine his car has. "It's 1600cc, a rear-engined MR2 Special Edition" he replied, his bejewelled lower lip quivering with pride. I politely feigned awe. Then I commented to his bare-midriffed girlfriend, even more heavily pierced and bejewelled and lying supine on the concrete sunning herself, that she risked getting her navel sunburnt. This seemed to break the ice - hitherto, if outside, they would huddle demurely on the back step and talk in hushed tones, but after my comment they hijinked with a hose, saturating each other to the accompaniment of much adolescent yahooing.
While I admire the MR2 couple's discipline in leaving the house promptly at 6.10 am most mornings, to return some 12-14 hours later, I don't appreciate my waking reveries being shattered by their car, barely two metres from my bedroom, running at fast-idle for 10 minutes before they depart.
Last night, they had a visitor - not an unusual occurrence - who arrived in an impressive black Z300 which looked like the car used in Knightrider, also with a modified exhaust. He departed about 11pm which was the signal for the other two cars to be started and reparked with much revving and manoevering, the resulting hubbub sounding like the Indianapolis 500 being held outside my window. I spent the next half hour trying to dispel un-Christian thoughts from my mind. Unfortunately that type of car can't be driven quietly.
There are other downsides to living where we do, but there are upsides, too. The house is well built and convenient, lies nicely to the sun yet is shelterd from the wind; warm in winter and cool in summer. There are trees around us and we can see hills to the west and to the east, get a glimpse of the central city skyline and Sky Tower. So I'll just have to accept that teenagers will be ... teenagers. Their alcohol intake seems moderate, they're polite when spoken to and seem aware they have new-found responsibilities. We've had neighbours before them who've been a greater worry.
These kids are presently basking in their freedom. But the gloss will dim, tensions will arise and some will leave. Perhaps they'll all leave and we'll have another lot of tenants move in alongside us to bring a different set of irritations. But ... that's life in the suburbs.

2002-11-10T21:47:00.000-08:00

Blogger is acting up rather more than somewhat. My last post, an hour ago, hasn't shown up. I'm hoping this will. *fingers crossed*
It didn't. Try again. Oh dear!

2002-11-10T20:33:00.000-08:00

The umpteenth performance of The Rocky Horror Show is about to be performed in Auckland.
It is perhaps little known that Richard O'Brien considers himself a Kiwi, having lived in NZ for twelve years in his youth.
After competing in a swim meet on Saturday, 14year-old grand-daughter C., a tall and willowy blonde-haired beauty, scored on Sunday morning her waterpolo club team's eight goals at the cost of a twice-bloodied nose. In the afternoon she went on to play waterpolo for her school .
And who said the female was the gentler sex?
The country is swept by El Nino gales. I hope since Wellington is bearing the brunt, that Simon and Alex are secure in their eyrie. Tomorrow we are promised a wintry blast the length of the country.(This is summer, dammit!) There'll be no start to the quarter-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup scheduled for tomorrow. Just as the pen is mightier than the sword so Larry Ellison and Paul Allen, snug in their respective floating hotels, must bend to Hughie's whim.
The discussion about "crossover" in music yesterday morning on the Concert Programme was intriguing but the illustrations became tedious. I mean, Medieval Baebes rending "Gaude ...Jerusalem"? - (I'm familiar with the work but unsure of the title - pity I can't hum-blog it - or perhaps not) Their breathy interpretation not only boggled the mind but upset the tummy.
However, despite an habitual reluctance to eat my words, I admit that Kiri te Kanawa singing Tim Finn's Bon Voyage was pleasantly listenable. I think Dame Kiri has got the message that singing popular music requires a quite different technique from that needed to sing Mozart, Canteloube, or Nuits d'Ete. The really low point in the programme was the Vienna Boys'Choir warbling the Beatles' "Love, Love, Love, totally destroying their six-century image. But I suppose it helps to pay the rent.
The strength of the vitriol poured on the perpetrations of the Baebes et al. by the programme's presenter not only secured his place on my Christmas card list but pushed it up a couple of notches in the hierachy
All things considered, if offered the choice between Leonard Bernstein conducting Mozart's Linz Symphony and Kennedy playing the Doors Concerto (concerto? ... hardly, dear) ... well, no contest really.

Dreary old fart! (yup, and unrepentant with it.)

2002-11-08T20:58:00.000-08:00

While living in Australia about fifteen years ago, I was asked by a young man of my acquaintance with an interest in languages whether Maori words had entered the NZ vocabulary. My answer was no - practically none. That situation has changed in the last five years or so with the upsurge in Maori activism and militancy. Language nests have been established to teach young Maori children their language and customs and Maori "culture", including some language is taught briefly in junior school. It can be taken as a subject in itself from high school onwards.
The first Maori words I learned about 70 years ago (without realising it) were kapai(= good") the brand name of a corn broom and taniwha, the brand name of a laundry soap which came in a long bars from which a slices would be cut to fit in the soap shaker to provide suds for washing dishes or to rub on the collars and cuffs of grimy shirts before putting in the clothes boiler (or "copper").
The word "taniwha" has sprung into prominence in the last few days as the result of transport progress colliding with Maori spiritual values. I've travelled that stretch of road many times without striking problems - or a taniwha. But it is obvious from the number of white crosses fixed to the fence between the road and the river that many others have, whether at the whim of a malevolent spirit or careless driving in foggy conditions and/or risky overtaking I'm not prepared to say. But I suspect the latter. ["hapu" =branch. "iwi"=tribe or subtribe. (more or less). "Tainui = a premier Maori tribe.]
The Jacques Loussier Trio have recorded Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks.
They needed have bothered. Bach? ... Yes definitely! Satie? ...Perhaps. The rest? ... Not really.
Tomorrow morning, the Concert Programme will present : -
"Fusion. An analysis of the recent upsurge in 'crossover' performances and a look at the hard questions about whether classical music is 'dumbing down' ".
If they don't agree with me that Kiri te Kanawa should stay away from "Porgy & Bess", that'll be another lot crossed off my Christmas card list.

2002-11-07T20:04:00.000-08:00

"Beauty Spot" following the 8am news on the Concert Programme this morning featured Pastourelle, one of "The Songs of the Auvergne", sung of course by Kiri te Kanawa who seems to have made this charming collection her own. Joseph Cantaloube, as a composer, became a bit of a "one hit wonder" by taking these engaging little folk songs and through skilful arrangement and orchestration turning them into gems for music lovers. They're sung in the language of the region, a dialect of Occitan which I'm surprised to learn is a significant language in that region (but then one learns something new every day, doesn't one?).
I also find that on one border of the Auvergne lies Beaujolais, from whence comes the bottled fun which many years ago was my introduction to red wine to which I have been partial ever since. This discovery was followed by the delights of Nuits St George and of course, Chateau Neuf du Pape. Choosing these wines was not snobbery or ostentation - "local" wines, from South Africa, Australia were of indifferent quality and the local stuff akin to equine urine. Today, our reds (and whites) are of excellent quality and with Christmas looming (47 shopping days away the paper shouts this morning) I'm looking forward to drinking two or three glasses of Cabernet Merlot, priced at about $20 per bottle.

Cheers!

2002-11-06T23:54:00.000-08:00

Cricket is a very British sport - or I should say, English sport (I can't believe it shares a common heritage with Tossing the Caber). As Britain colonised its dominions abroad, so the sport was introduced to the new colonials.
A game for gentlemen, it epitomised the ultimate in sportsmanship. "Well played, Sir!" and a genteel round of applause would greet a neatly played ball. Expressions relating to cricket entered the vocabulary. To do something less than honourable would be to invite the rebuke; - "That's hardly cricket!".
Today, most countries in the Commonwealth have regular tournaments amongst themselves with the exception of Canada. . The sport probably didn't take on there due to the Anglophobia of the French citizenry and the influence of ~~rounders~~ baseball from across the border. In the Pacific Islands a form of cricket called "Kilikiti" has been developed by the Islanders and is a combination, so it appears, of cricket and ~~rounders~~ baseball.

Cricket is well established in NZ and is the principal summer sport played and watched not only by males but by some women also. In fact I think our top women's cricket team is the world title-holder. Twelve-year old grandson M. is a devotee, aspiring to play for his country when he is old enough. He's in the district's "development squad" and goes to special training clinics from time to time. On Saturdays, while other kids are dressed in the regulation athletic singlet, cargo shorts and sneakers, M., struggling to top four foot six, emerges in blinding white shirt, neatly creased long white trousers and spotless white shoes - all soon to be bespoiled with grass stains, and when a bowler - as he usually is - a red stain alongside his groin from rubbing the bright red ball there before despatching it to the batsman - a ritual I fail to understand.
The season is advancing, early games are being played, seniors will soon start theirs. A tour through NZ by a hot overseas side is in the offing. But storm-clouds are gathering. Senior players, being those who get paid for their sporting (?) endeavours, are disgruntled rather more than somewhat. Not enough dosh etc, they say. There's mutterings that trophy-match games are in jeopardy, while the visiting side may decide not to come if circumstances are uncertain.
The fans' enjoyment of their summer diversion is threatened. .

Oh dear! (yawns).

2002-11-05T20:18:00.000-08:00

The "Bernstein Story" having concluded on the Concert Programme, a new series "Music Matters" (geddit?) is taking its place, the presenter being a Knowledgeable Local Person. In the first programme he autopsied, giving musical illustrations, the Bach Mass in B minor , reckoned to be "the greatest piece of music ever written" (piece? - half-marathon, more like!). He delved into its structure and background, examining the religious philosophy used by Bach in writing the libretto and the mathematical games he played with the structure of the music (Bach was an ardent amateur mathematician). The presenter lost me within three minutes, but the musical excerpts were pleasant to listen to , although the Mass in its entirety is not among my favourites ( I don't like hard work).
In complete contrast musically, the KLP last Sunday discussed his favourite "popular" singer - Mel Torme. I've been a bit of a fan of "The Golden Frog" since way back, not for his ballad-singing, which is a little on the schmaltzy side for my taste, but for his "scat-singing" which I find exciting. KLP ranked his scatting as second only to Ella Fitzgerald - this order is reversed in my book. KLP played from a recent concert given in NZ, Torme singing "Pick yourself up", . That performance was made more memorable by his accompanist, George Shearing, going off into Bach-inspired variations on the very catchy melody. KLP also interviewed Malcolm McNeil, local boy made good, whose early style was influenced by Mel Torme . As a singer of ballads, I think MM has more depth to his voice. It's great that although McNeil travels and records extensively overseas, he continues to make his home in Godzone. Christchurch boy makes good. (OK, another one!).
Next Sunday's talk , "Crossover", should be interesting. My bête noire
While on matters musical, the death is noted of Lonnie Donegan (who?), credited with starting the guitar craze in England. While by no means an admirer of "skiffle", I thought his song ..."Does your chewing-gum lose its flavour (On the bedpost overnight)" quite amusing at the time. "My old man's a dustman, He wears a dustman's* hat, etc" was pretty neat too.
* = garbage collector (or garbologist, as some would have it).
The death of Richard Harris, better appreciated as an actor than a singer it seems, is commented upon in this morning's paper.
I can't think how to finish this burble, so I'll fall back on the ubiquitous: -

Yeah ... well ... absolutely!

2002-11-04T13:50:00.000-08:00

Seen in this morning's Sideswipe column in the NZ Herald: -
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commision has concluded that a employer who had fired an employee for refusing to stop wearing an eyebrow ring at work was guilty of religious discrimination. It seems the employee is a member of the Oregon-based Church of Body Modification whose dogma states that piercings and tattoos "are essential to our spiritual salvation".

So there!

I wondered if I could wear a similar adornment. Probably not - I'd be sure to put a wing of my glasses through the ring then rip my eyebrow out when taking them off .

Ho Hum.

2002-11-03T20:55:00.000-08:00

Years ago, Wellingtonians became aware of a nightspot lurking in one of its seedier city streets. This place went under the name of "Purple Onion" and here one could drink "after hours" (no liquor could be sold legally after 6pm in those days), coffee
laced with spirits while watching an exotic danseuse perform on a miniscule stage. Upstairs, "ladies" would minister to the carnal needs of their clients. The police were tolerant of the joint's activities, despite the occasional ruckus when a surprised client discovered his attractive companion to be a fella (shock! horror!). One of those danseuse/masseuses then in transition from male to female is now a two term, hard-working and respected member of parliament. The owner of the establishment, a large and flamboyant transvestite named Carmen gradually gained a measure of respectability in the town, standing on one occasion as a mayoral candidate (she/he was unsuccessful). Now in her sixties, she has lived in Sydney, Australia in recent years but returns to Wellington on frequent visits.
Last Saturday night in Wellington she attended her first ever symphony concert, the occasion being the premiere performance of "Carmen Dances" by Jack Body, composed in homage to her as one of Wellington's icons. At the end of the performance the conductor, while still on-stage, pulled out his mobile phone and took a call from Carmen in the audience. I don't know what was said, but I guess it could have been "That sucked", but more likely, "Lovely, darling!" That concert-goers would accept music honouring a transvestite "madam" shows the degree of tolerance the public have learned over the past forty odd years.
This is in contrast to the attitude of the body organising the Gay Games in Sydney. A would-be Kiwi competitor who, dressed in athletic track-gear, I took to be unquestionably female was told by the rules body that she/he would have to compete in men's events despite having been taking feminising steroids and living as a woman over a lengthy period. It seems that tolerance has greater limitations within Gay Officialdom than among the concert-going public.

2002-11-01T00:24:00.000-08:00

Superstition still plays plays an important part in the Louis Vuitton yacht-racing series. Oracle beat One World yeaterday in a battle between the American billionaires. Oracle's tactician, Kiwi John Cutler, said that just before the pre-start manoevres they got a call from their weather boat to say a big seagull had just shat upon their catamaran. The Oracle team knew this would bring them luck and that's what it proved to do.
One World, who last night were second equal on the points table lost this morning to the French Le Defi Areva with no points on the table after 13 starts - though admittedly One World seemed to have a suffered a gear problem during the race as at one point they slowed significantly and weren't able to catch the French boat.
Not the sort of thing to do when the boss is in town - at least his ~~boat~~ ~~superyacht~~ young liner - is. At 300 feet it's too big to berth with the other superyachts and has to berth with the cruise liners.
Its owner is reputed to be worth an estimated US$25 billion.
Fifty-five years ago, before "inflation" had entered my vocabulary, I fantasised about becoming a "thousand-a-year man" i.e. earning a thousand pounds (two thousand NZ dollars in metric currency) a year. Fifteen years later I and many of my contemporaries were earning that. The word "billionaire" didn't enter the vocabulary until many years later.
I'm not envious of Mr Allen and I haven't the slightest interest in seeing his floating gin-palace. But I would like to see the Italian sailing ship presently in port.

2002-10-31T00:13:00.000-08:00

A columnist in this morning's Herald warns young Trick'nTreaters to avoid a certain street in a trendy suburb favoured by upwardly mobile vegetarians and others of like ilk. It seems that the street's residents have colluded to replace the "unhealthy" sweets traditionally offered during Halloweentide by nutritious sandwiches, raisins and stickers (stickers?).
The columnist concludes: -
"What next! A brussel sprout on a stick?"

Ha!