Rubbish

 First published in Column 8, 25^th March, 1992

With all the discussion about the placement of a new tip, I can no longer avoid putting my oar in.

An occasional trip to the tip is good for the soul. The artist in me even finds a certain aesthetic pleasure in it.

Doesn’t the sight of countless seagulls swooping and swerving make your soul sing? I could sit and watch them for hours if it wasn’t for the smell. (You will have noticed, of course, that the latest generation of seagulls have evolved a small peg-shaped flap over their nostrils which enables them to go about their work at the tip without inhaling the odours.)

Don’t the car bodies heaped four and five-storeys high give you a feeling that man is still superior to the machine?

And best of all, isn’t there a marvellous sensation of off-loading when you toss heaps of rubbish into the pit and see it chewed and mangled by raging bulldozers? All your cares and woes and gripes discarded and forgotten. Wow!

I’m just fresh home from a trip out to Green Island and my only unpleasant memory of the journey was the feeling that my car’s suspension was suffering permanent seizure because of the pot-holey road. These holes brought back memories of a trip to Milford Sound, where avoiding the craters in the road was about as easy as missing rain drops in a storm.

As a result of casting all my cares upon the void, I now have a clean and tidy shed, having managed to overcome sentiment sufficiently to throw out all manner of things that survived last year’s clean-up. (But not yet the picture with the broken glass – from my childhood – of the QE II’s predecessor.)

Humans have an amazing desire to hang onto things that have outlived their usefulness, as though one day we’ll find a purpose for all manner of broken bits and pieces. Yes, I know there are times when we wish we’d kept that spare wheel to replace the one that’s just fallen off the kid’s trike, or even grandfather’s rusty hoe-head with the withered handle.

Attics and basements full of junk have a certain romance about them: they’re always the places where you’ll find the treasured antique that everyone else in the family has forgotten, or the secret diary, or the key to a strongbox containing untold wealth.

The trouble is these sort of antiques and diaries and keys always turn up in other people’s attics and basements. In our case the rubbish around our house threatens to overwhelm us, and devour all spare space.

Modern persons (that doesn’t have half the ring of ‘modern man’) have to decide what items are junk so that they can jettison them without fear.

Built-in obsolescence means things are constantly having to be replaced (toasters, for instance) and there’s an element in us (as well as the toasters) that hates throwing away something which only a few years ago we paid good money for.

Our collection of fading television tubes, spare vacuum cleaner hoses, chipped chisels, and worst of all, quarter-full paint can, will all survive barely a week after take our own last trip on this earth. There’s a certain irony that most of us wind up buried under the same kind of earth as our worn-out material possessions.

At least we rid ourselves of the material that’s clung to us during the course of our journey once and for all.

Without rubbish, smelly or aesthetic, man is born, and without it he will die.

I told you tips were good for the soul.

Landfill, Riverhead,West Auckland.New Zealand
Notice how tidy it is compared to tips of the past. 
Courtesy GPS 56Wikimedia Commons

I’m a bit amazed that decisions over the placement of a new tip were taking place when this was written, nearly 35 years ago, and the decision is still in the process.

I’m interested to read that also at this time, care bodies were being dumped at the tip. That hasn’t been the case for two or three decades.

In spite of my making it sound as though we were hoarders, in fact, we were a relatively tidy family. Far more junk went out that was kept. Thankfully.

Tips are no longer called tips in New Zealand: they’re now ‘land fill.’  

Unsafe sex

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th March, 1992

Though it’s more than a fortnight since I first saw it, a news photo has continued to haunt me. In the background a group of students wait to enrol; closer to the camera a girl is carrying a basket of condoms, to promote ‘safe’ sex.

Let’s get  real. There’s no such thing as safe sex. Sex is dangerous, and you’d better believe it. And no amount of condominiuming between couples will help. While the attitude is ‘I’m all right as long as I wear a condom’ we’re missing a dangerous truth in sexual behaviour.

We have this notion that somehow the world has now grown up because we talk loudly about sex in every place and at every moment. Many would have us believe that in the past no one ever mentioned the subject, and that consequently everyone was quite ignorant. Piffle. Humanity has managed sex just as well in the non-promiscuous  times as in the promiscuous. The big difference in the former was that marriages and families were more stable, and societies weren’t plagued by nonsense about sex at every turn.

I said sex was dangerous. You think I mean pregnancies. Sure, they’re part of the matter, but to look at the world’s attitude to pregnancies would take another column. I’m talking about other dangers, such as being under the delusion that a quick one-night stand is okay. You might get by without contracting Aids, as long as you wear your famous condom. But no condom will protect you from the consequences that the purveyors of ‘safe’ sex don’t talk about.

The problem isn’t really the wearing of the condom or the contracting of Aids. The problem is treating another human being – male or female, it makes no difference – as though they were there merely for the first person who came along to have their way with them. In the end everybody involved is prostituted. Safe sex is prostitution under another name, only the price isn’t usually in dollars.

We all look down on the world’s supposedly oldest profession, but hopping into bed with all and sundry isn’t the slightest bit different. We’ve believed the lie that adultery and affairs and one-night stands and sleeping around are all somehow better than rape and abuse and pornography and other evil sexual practices. In fact, any form of sex that uses others is evil. And any form of sex that takes place outside of a committee permanent relationship is already debased.

We’ve mocked the idea of commitment for so long now, few of us think it has any worth. No wonder people today – and it isn’t just the kids – find it isn’t worth the struggle to hold onto something valuable when the going gets rough. There’s no encouragement to do so. In fact, we’re lambasted from every corner with encouragements to give up what we’ve got and go find something else.

The trouble is the grass is green on the other side of the fence for only a little while. And it has to be mown just as often.

I’m  not even a partially raving royalist, but it sickens me the way much of the media seems hell-bent on destroying the marriage of Prince Charles and Diana. The assumption is that no one, from pauper to royal, has a hope of sticking together for long, so let’s take the lot down into the gutter as quickly as possible.

Forget all the crowing about ‘safe’ sex at every turn. I want to start crowing about Unsafe Sex; sex that debases; sex that hurts and causes emotional pain (not just the bobby-sox pain that occurs in soap operas but real cutting twisting pain); sex that leaves lives in a shambles from which the only escape may be death itself.

Sex is dangerous.

 

The following two letters to the editor were printed in response to this column; I don’t have a date for one of them, and I don’t know if there were more. These are the only two I managed to keep a copy of.

 Sir – I would like to record my support for the contribution of Mike Crowl in the March 18 edition of the Star Midweek. It takes courage to go against popular conceptions. His remarks are something that should have been said long ago, most certainly by those who have a much wider range of influence. My congratulations to Mike, keep up the good work. I hope the message will reach much further than the area covered by the Star Midweek.

S B Harlow.

 

26.4.1992

Sir – I wish to thank Mike Crowl for Column Eight ‘Safe Sex’ (Midweek 18/3/92). Few, in spans of years have tackled this subject of sex with such clarity, so soundly in such truth. Many readers, especially those among the young, may never before have had the opportunity to regard the matter in such a manner. Mike Crolw has given in a short space, plenty to think about. This article should be published far and wide.

Mary Wickliffe

 

Slaters (also known as woodlice)

First published in Column 8 on the 11^th March 1992

To avoid the atrophy of the brain as I grow older, I continue to ask questions. Thus I often puzzle as to why slaters climb walls, especially in the morning.

Some gardeners may not think the peculiarities of slaters are worth considering. However, to me the slater is a much-maligned creature, worthy of more attention than it usually receives.

I’ve always had a lot of time for the slater, although I know many gardeners regard them as a pest. I think this view is wrong. (Is it true that the Chinese intended eradicating slaters next?) Slaters are humble creatures, never making a show of themselves.

You will not find them, like spiders, insisting on putting their webs across doorways to catch your hair first thing in the morning. You won’t find them going crazy in the rain like worms and spreadeagling across pathways. Slaters prefer anonymity and humbly hide themselves under the nearest something, be it wood, rock, or even weed.

Perhaps their treatment as pests gives a partial answer to my question: Maybe slaters are being driven up the wall? Condemned to live in rotting wood, or compost, they may have little self-esteem.

How would you feel in their shoes, reader, supposing they wore any? Since they don’t, they must courageously clamber barefoot through your compost. A slater never knows when some burly black beetle will tread on his toes, or when he’ll slip in the slime left by a slug, or find the earth move under his feet as a worm power-drives his way past.

And think of the things slater’s feet get into – rotting apples, mouldy carrots, the unspeakable remains of things that have already passed onto a better compost pile.

My dictionary barely defines them under ‘slater’ – that word belongs officially to a person who puts slates on roofs. Slaters appear as an afterthought – ‘another name for the woodlouse.’

No wonder they’ve changed their name by deed poll. When you check out the woodlouse, the description is of any of the various small terrestrial isopod crustaceans having a flattened segmented body and occurring in damp habitats. (I thought dictionaries were supposed to explain words.) A crustacean is of the mainly aquatic class Crustacea, which includes the tortoise, lobster and water flea.

In spite of being related to magnificent creations like the tortoise and lobster the slaters’ family escutcheon doesn’t do them any good.

So why should slaters be the namesake of a man who puts slates on a roof? Is it their colour, or the design of their shells?

Perhaps some primitive and imaginative entrepreneur once considered slaters might have an ant-like potential for working together: he envisaged thousands of trained slaters lifting slates straight up the walls of the house. Perhaps slaters now climb walls because of some deep instinctive memory of what might have been. On the other hand, maybe they’re merely checking to see if the slates have been put on right.

I’m glad slaters are small. Knowing that they’re related to lobsters might inspire people with peculiar palates – the sort who delight in dropping lobsters into boiling hot water and seeing them sizzle - to attempt to fatten them up. If people can eat frogs’ legs, a hardly sizeable delicacy, why should they stop at slaters?

Meanwhile, I ponder on slaters’ penchant for heights, and marvel that any creature could drop the equivalent of a 50-storey fall (as the slaters sometimes do when I’m trying to redirect them) and survive.

 

A slater (Armadillidium vulgare)
courtesy Franco Folini, Wikimedia Commons 

Armadillidium vulgare. Hmm, the first part of their scientific name is impressive, although speaking it out loud, with its 'dillidium' in the middle is a bit like a children's nursery word. But 'vulgare' - how rude. There's nothing vulgar about the slater/woodlouse. Plainly those who named him had no real sense of his excellent purpose in the world. 

Progress

First published in Column 8 on the 4^th March, 1992

Put progress in the driving seat and she takes some curious turns. This week we bought a four-slice toaster to replace the old two-slice job. The latter had indicated it was on its last legs by burning the bread alive after refusing to pop it up.

However, once we’d unpacked the new four-slicer, and tried to toast in it, we found that the bread sat up above the top of the toaster by a good inch.

Now the bread we use isn’t abnormally-sized. When you purchased a toaster in the past you could assume you’d fit the bread into the machine and get the whole slice cooked. You don’t expect to carry a slice of bread around in your pocket to measure the depth of toasters.

Wouldn’t you think that a manufacturer would build this machine to take ordinary sliced bread? Maybe it’s a weight-watching plot to get us all to eat less bread. But there’s a problem with that: what do we do with the inch we have to cut off the top (or the bottom, depending on which way you choose to insert your bread)?

Toasters aren’t the only item to have missed the march of progress. I remember Katherine Whitehorn, the English columnist, saying that taps were no longer made merely to turn on and off. Instead of being consumer-friendly – as things usually were, long before computers arrived on the scene -they’d become designer-focused.

You know the sort I mean – you go to turn the top piece, and it swivels and swivels. Eventually you realise that the swivel motion is merely a pretty design – the tap only works when you press it down firmly. When pressed, these taps then emit a gush of water which you may or may not have time to get your hands under. And some stay stuck on: you have no way of knowing whether it will eventually turn off again by itself or whether you’re wasting gallons of hot water – and being unecological into the bargain.

Some public basins have foot controls. They’re very water-economical, since most of us take so long to discover how the tap works that we give up in disgust and leave our hands unhygienised.

I didn’t intend to talk about design progress, but about progress of a different sort. What caught my eye during the week was a snippet about dwarf-tossing, that mediaeval-sounding fad that recently took some European countries by storm.

Seemingly, just as we thought we were on the right bandwagon by expressing disgust that anyone should toss ‘people with a physical difference’ through the air, because it was an ‘intolerable attack on human dignity’ and an ‘exploitation of the handicapped,’ we find that at least one dwarf has campaigned to have the whole thing continued.

This man’s livelihood was being threatened by those who viewed the ‘sport’ with distaste and had banned it. His company, Fun Productions, was in danger of going bust.

Now wouldn’t you have thought that he’d been the person to ask in the first place as to how he felt about being used as a mini-caber? I mean, does a dwarf normally walk into a bar and find himself (in the process of being hoisted on to his bar stool) catapulted through the air by some burly fool? Or does he get the idea creatively, and decide, like any other entrepreneur, that this isn’t a bad way to make a living?

After all, there are rougher sports, such as rugby league. I think if I was a smaller person, and inclined for a bit of a thrill, I’d go for dwarf-tossing any time. (With knee, elbow and bum protectors of course.)

Rugby league seems to do nothing but bring out the violent in anyone with a bit of muscle. And there ain’t no inflated mattress to land on when someone forces you to the ground by pulling your shirt, your hair, your eyes, or any other loosehanging part of your anatomy.  

What a fine line we tread between deciding what’s best for other people and trampling on their rights.

 

Four-slice toaster, though not the one we own. 
Photo courtesy of SimonTrew, Wikimedia Commons

(2026) We bought a new four-slice toaster recently after our previous one gave up the ghost, and have had no end of trouble with it. Of course it comes with fancy gizmos, but doesn’t actually do the job it’s intended for. The side I normally use has been turned up to full throttle since not long after we got the thing, yet apparently it chooses to produce the ‘toasted’ bread at whatever heat it desires. So a piece put in straight after the toaster is started up will come out light, as though it’s barely seen the heat. The next piece is likely to make up for the lightness of the other and be cooked to death, or, if the toaster’s in a different mood, it will somehow bake the bread so that it’s nicely-coloured but hard to the point where it cracks and crumbles when you try to butter it. My wife normally uses the other half of the toaster, and her toast is mostly what you’d expect: toasted bread. A sexist toaster, apparently.

Since this column was written many public taps (as in restrooms) have no visible means of turning them on or off: you wave your hands around like an idiot, trying to get the thing to start, and then out of the blue it starts when you least expect it, and you still don’t know what caused it to do so. Nor how to turn it off again.

Meanings

First published in Column 8 on the 26th February, 1992

Words have a funny way of shifting meaning when used by differing groups. In a news report this week the liquor industry claimed it is a reputable body. ‘We are the peak organisation working with alcohol and drug addiction and treatment.’ Check out that word, ‘reputable.’

In the same report, the Television Commercials ApprovalBureau rebukes the claim that a certain television ad depicts that association of drinking with water sports, driving and sexual or social success. Check out that word, ‘association.’

In the ad a group of youths are headed for the surf, but it takes longer than expected because they have to push their non-starting car. And when they get there, the surf is sulky and low. Meanwhile, an energetic young lady sits on the top of the car getting a sun-tan – I presume. It’s an ad for beer.

Look again at the TCAB’s rebuttal. Okay, there are no water sports, because the surf ain’t up. Even the best surfies would find this water flat. Okay, there’s no driving, because they have to push their car. Okay, there’s no sexual success. The young lady in question (who legally should have been over 25 when the ad was made but was in fact 23) isn’t seen drinking, and remains aloof on the roof, one might say.

However, we don’t have to see people doing something to have a strong suspicion about what they might do. Isn’t that what the advertising campaign by the police is  based on? The possibility that the person wandering around your neighbour’s property might not be looking at the flowers? (Unless, of course, the flowers are poppies.)

It’s only an assumption, but presumably these people in the ad would have gone surfing if the surf had been up. I suppose in these days of meditation, they might have sat and gazed adoringly at the waters. Presumably if the car hadn’t refused to start, they would have driven it. Or did they feel the exercise gained was a source of exercise to them, and that their sweaty bodies would ultimately delight in a dip in the briny?

I don’t think the young lady would have stayed on the top of the car for long either. In that sun, melanoma would be round the corner, if she hadn’t turned into a fried egg first. As for the sexual angle, we can infer little – that’s a relief – except to say that the young lady in question is certainly not a shy, retiring wallflower!

The makers of the ad said they had complied within the letter of the law. Sure, but many things got away with in the name of the law’s letter still have the spirit of lawlessness about them.

In a society that increasingly condemns drunken driving, why are we advertising booze on television at all, where it has the potential to be advertised most potently?

(And, to go off at a slight tangent, why, if we hate drunken driving so much, do pubs by law have to have such large areas of parking space? Do you seriously mean to tell me that each person leaves the pub with a sober chauffeur?)

I don’t think the Government really says what it means when it comes to liquor. They’re like a mother telling a child it can’t have any more sweets before it goes to bed, then popping one into the freshly-toothpasted mouth as the lights go out.

The only thing about the new advertising is that it’s blatant, instead of covert, as before. There’s a pitiful modicum of honesty in that.

And when are we going to hear from the feminists on the subject of alcohol. It seems to me that beer is regarded in the advertising world as a man’s drink, to the point of sexism. One of the new spate of ads confirms that alcohol takes pride of place over relationships: one country gent is reeling off to another the worth of his Auckland (wow!) girlfriend. In the end he decides he’d sooner stay down South. Why? Because the beer is better.

This kind of advertising goes a long way to improving relationships between the sexes. I don’t think.

At the end of the column (as opposed to the day), it’s all a matter of the meaning you give to worlds. When the liquor industry says it’s the peak organisation working with alcohol, check out the word, ‘working.’

 ()()(()()()())()()

Regrettably I haven't been able to track this ad down online. 

 

Trillions

First published in Column 8 on the 12^th February, 1992

We used to have a discussion in our house (of the more heated sort) in which my son insisted there was such a figure as a centillion. He was right: the centillion is one of those numbers that needs hundreds of noughts to make its presence felt.

However, who needs centillions, when the mere fact of a trillion is enough to make me want to sit down, my legs all atremble. I read that the United States is 3.8 of these (and probably more) in debt. $3.8 trillion! That makes our balance of payments problems look quite piffling, doesn’t it?

A trillion is a million million in the States – their billion is only one thousand million, so I’m informed. Only. No wonder their debt goes up faster than everybody else’s. (If you’re in the UK and they start talking about debts of £3.8 trillion, run for cover: Over there a trillion is a million million million, or a number trailing 18 zeros.)

All this exposition of erudition (that is, showing off), is merely leading up to sharing some figures I came across recently. If you thought that the arguments last year over ministerial flowers and MPs’ lounge suites were either the height of trivia or pettiness, then take a gecko at some of the nonsense that’s helped put the US federal spending into trillions of debt.

I take these figures from a book recently published in the States called The Coming Economic Earthquake, by Larry Burkett. I can only assume Mr Burkett knows what he’s talking about, being a native of the country.

In the face of national collapse – there’s something we could show the Yanks a thing or two about – the federal government spent $49 million for a rock and roll museum. (That’s getting up towards $NZ150 million.) Plainly King Elvis still has the hearts of some Americans by the purse-strings.

Talking about hearts, they only spent a paltry $84,000 to study why people fall in love. That’s a leap from the sublime to the ridiculous. (Yeah, year, I know: a lover’s leap.) I’d be interested to bone up on some of the findings in this case. Hopefully they weren’t taken from television.

There people only fall in love, it seems, so that circumstances will get in their way and cause them temporary heartbreak until the last few moments of the episode’s half-hour are up. Of course, if it’s a soap, next week they’ll be forced to fall out of love almost as quickly, and probably reveal that they have some dim dark secret that hadn’t previously been known about by either actors or scriptwriters.

Back to US spending. $19 million to study whether belching by cows and other livestock harms the ozone hardly comes as a surprise, but $219,592 to teach college students how to watch television? I thought most American college students would be beyond this teaching.

Actually that’s a little unfair. If people I know are anything to go by, many of them need to be taught how to watch television. First lesson is to know where the off-button is – you’d be surprised how hard that off-button can be to find. They also need lessons in discernment. This would help them appreciate that the sitcom they’re now watching is exactly the same as the four other sitcoms they’ve viewed in the last two hours.

Of course, the Senate spent a good deal of money on itself, $6.5 million between the subway system and the beauty parlour. But my two favourites were the following: $500,000 to study the effects of cigarette smoking not on people, but on dogs, and, wait for it, $46,000 to determine how long it takes to cook breakfast eggs.

Doesn’t that make you feel as though New Zealand is partially sane?

 

‘Take a gecko’ seems to have been an expression I made up, or else it’s a piece of very outdated slang. Google doesn’t recognise it at all. I possibly meant ‘take a geek,’ which actually is a piece of slang meaning ‘have a look at,’ and has nothing to do with dealing in any way with a human nerd.

As for NZ being partially sane, perhaps they in 1992, but I frequently see tweets nowadays on X (was Twitter) telling us how much has been spent by Creative New Zealand on various arts applications. In 2020 the Taxpayers’ Union summarised a number of the applications that were funded – you can read about them here.

Incidentally, the US national debt is currently over $38 trillion.

Larry Burkett’s book has apparently stood the test of time: his predictions didn’t always reach their target as far as the year was concerned, but for the most part they have come about as he said they would.

Values

First published in Column 8, on the 19^th February, 1992

The week the national secretary of the Principals’ Federation of New Zealand, Mrs Marilyn Yeoman, was reportedly concerned that a certain morals kit intended for use in schools should be getting some funding.

Curiously, her main concern wasn’t about the fact that she’d never heard of it, but about two other things. Firstly, the kit promoted the teaching of ‘traditional values.’ Secondly, the federation hadn’t been involved in the production of the programme, and she questioned whether it was ‘religious education’ in disguise.

Quite honestly, I think her concern might have seemed more sincere if she’d queried why the kits had been such poor sellers – only 30 in 10 years. Are they badly written? Out of date?

But to query them because they may have been ‘religious education in disguise’ seems to me to be a bit of a red herring.

(Note that the ‘religion’ in question will no doubt be Christianity. Some people in education have a real hassle with it. When one of my kids was in kindergarten, I was told that the kids wouldn’t be singing carols at Christmas, because it might offend someone who didn’t have Christian views. Never mind that it might offend me not to have Christmas carols.)

The producers of the kit say the programme promotes the teaching of ‘basic universal values’ as honesty, decency, purity, trust, faithfulness and chastity. I don’t see those values held dear only the religious; in fact, every time we have another murder, or rape, or child abuse case, or spate of burglaries, or when we see the divorce figures for the year, I have a feeling most people deep down are concerned with those values.

Do you get up in the morning, grab your newspaper or flick on the radio in order to enjoy the reports of what devilment has been abroad in the past 12 hours? I don’t think so.

I think most of us feel outraged at the constant curse these things are to us, rather than revelling in them.

If I was Ms Yeoman I’d be glad of anything that promoted honesty, decency, purity, trust, faithfulness and chastity amongst our kids. After all precious little of the entertainment on the box or in the movies these days promotes these values.

Rather, Hollywood and the television moguls seem hell bent on promoting every sort of vice and perversion that’s going, over and above their unrestrained attitude to sex and violence.

So, I’m puzzled why a spokeswoman for a teaching association should feel threatened by a programme that encourages the very things that most of us want as the norm in our society.

Surely she doesn’t still hold the outdated theory that all children are born perfect and it’s society that comes along and upsets their equilibrium, turning them into naughty little creatures. Or that there are no moral absolutes, and we must take every situation as it comes along and then decide what’s right. I would have thought that kind of woolly thinking had gone the way of the dodo.

Anyone who’s ever brought up kids will know that there’s a struggle going on in them all the time, a conflict between wanting to do what’s right and winding up doing what’s wrong.

Maybe the Principals’ Federation needs to take this kit under its wing, rather than rejecting it. New Zealand’s kids can do with all the help they can get.

"The darkest corner of hell that is reserved for
those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis."
Courtesy: Hasanisawi, wikimedia commons

 Almost 36 years later and this column remains as valid as ever, particularly since our society has gone so far down the tubes in the meantime, basically by gradually eroding all sense of honesty, decency, purity, trust, faithfulness and chastity – and other values – and mocking those who try and keep to them. And yet, day after day in the newspaper (I no longer watch the TV version of the news) or online we have people who plainly do understand the morals on which our society is based, and rail against the way in which they are being undermined at every turn by people who ignore them.

I just came across a quote by G K Chesterton, on X (Twitter) which seems apt:

Public education has not produced an educated public...

Eradicate!

First published in Column 8 on the 22 January, 1992, and about as random in relation to the topic as I ever managed to be. 

A reader of today’s papers and a watcher of today’s news might be forgiven for thinking that the old proverb had been turned on its head – good news is no news.

Nevertheless there are occasional spots of good news amongst the bleak pages – and amongst the trivia that frequently passes for news on television.

For instance, I realised that Saturday’s Situation Vacant in the ODT took up four pages. I can’t be sure – since I’m only a columnist and not a journalist – but I don’t think there have been quite so many jobs advertised for some months. And I don’t think it’s just because the bigger ads took up more space.

A careful reading of the jobs advertised, however, does produce some surprises. I guess those who indulge in these professions know what they are, but doesn’t your imagination take great leaps forward at what an Abrasive Blaster might do, or a Car Detailer, or a Four-Colour Stripper?

The first sounds like he needs to read a couple of articles I’ve come across in Reader’s Digest, on dealing with anger and handling hassles.

Talking of great leaps forward, I see that the Chinese in Beijing have launched a patriotic campaign to eradicate flies. Details were not given in the report I came across, but no doubt they will go about it in their inimitable oriental fashion.

Apparently in 1958 Mao Tse Tung (that bureaucrat to end all bureaucrats) instructed his people to wage war on the birds that were stealing grain supplies. For hour after hour the ever-obedient people beat drums and metal bowls until the frightened birds dropped to the ground from sheer exhaustion.

Why the birds didn’t have enough sense to fly somewhere else for a while I don’t know. However, I’ve got more sympathy for the people. Banging drums for hours and hours on end sounds like the sort of work that only Ringo Starr or a toddler would endure with much joy. Haven’t we all had experience of one of our dear little darlings getting into the pot cupboard and turning it into a drum kit?

Just think if the characters in Alfred Hitchock’s movie The Birds had copied the Chinese example. The ending might have been quite different for several of them. (Incidentally, according to Halliwell, that doyen of film buffs, in at least one scene in this movie the birds proved their superiority over humans in a way the film-makers hadn’t intended. The birds were chasing a group of school children. The children cast shadows on the ground, but the birds didn’t!)

To get back to fly eradication: I’m curious as to the form of suppression the illustrious Chinese energy will take. Perhaps like Mr Myagi, that teacher of karate in The (tripartite) Karate Kid – yes, I know he was Japanese! – they will spend hours with a pair of chopsticks attempting to catch the flies on the wing. Since the Beijing citizens proclaim they are decimating the flies for the sake of hygiene, I suppose the chopsticks will be exterminated too.

Talking of karate, the wondrous summer weather brought out a group of karate-practicing men into the Queen’s Gardens last week. Their movements were marvellously disciplined, each stepping out in unison like long-legged birds fishing in a river.

Back to eradication. Perhaps there are more subtle oriental methods available, kept secret for thousands of years – or maybe a quick dash to the aerosol can will do the trick. However, if too many of these are used at once, couldn’t we have the possibility of a new ozone hole over the city of Beijing?

So what. here’s a chance for a new New Year’s export industry, if we get in fast. Send the people of Beijing some of the snuffing-out stuff that’s advertised on television, the stuff that ‘kills flies dead.’

Dead, as far as I know, is the only way anything is killed. Happy New Year!

Poster for the Four Pests Campaign, 1960
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The eradication of flies was part of the Four Pests Campaign, which had disastrous effects on the country of China. It took place quite some time before my article was written.

Christmas in crisis

 First published in Column 8 on the 18 December 1991

 Over the last few months I’ve been reading Charles Dickens’ novel, Great Expectations, for the second or third time. I’ve read it with enjoyment except for one thing: this version was abridged ‘for modern readers,’ and contained nothing but the main story.

All those marvellous characters and incidents that actually contribute nothing to the plot, but are there because Dickens couldn’t resist putting them in, were chopped out.

The editor hadn’t added any of her own words, but had made the decisions for us as to which sections were of lesser importance. Of course these inessential parts are a distraction from the main story – it can really get on perfectly well without them.

But when we’re reading the book as Dickens wrote it we find the superfluous bits greatly entertaining, even though the thrust of the story is often obscured for quite some time.

In fact, these extras can be so absorbing that the main story seems to intrude on our interest.

Christmas time is a bit like Dickens’ novel. We get so engrossed in all the extras that we forget the reason for celebrating.

We have reprints of sentimental editorials about Santa and the magic of Christmas. I, too, love the magic of Christmas.

We have retailing gone mad. Don’t misunderstand me – there’s nothing wrong with retailing and nothing wrong with the boost that Christmas gives.

We have celebrations, and make excuses for the biggest spend-ups and booze-ups in the year.

But none of these are the reason for Christmas.

The real story of Christmas is always about a child, and usually we see him surrounded by straw-filled mangers, and shepherds in their dads’ dressing gowns, and wise men with the glitter falling off their crowns, and angels in sewn-up sheets. But the story doesn’t end there.

I’ve spent many Christmases watching or being involved in one version or another of the birth part of the story, but few of these versions remind us that this child later died an ignominious death, or that he rose to life again. The church I went to last Sunday did remind us, and should be congratulated for it.

When babies are born it’s normally a time for celebration, and as they grow older, for birthday remembering, but only one baby has ever been born who grew up to be the person who could make a permanent difference to our lives.

It’s hard to explain why he’s so important, because so many people in our present society no longer want to hear.

However, the time of crisis we’re living in is forcing us as a nation to look again at what we’ve had and what we’ve lost. And I don’t just mean material things.

It isn’t just a matter of saying that at Christmas we should be remembering those who are worse off than us. We should be doing that throughout the year.

The truth of the matter is that many people in this country are worse off than they think – and they aren’t necessarily the people on benefits, or low wages. A person’s financial status counts for far less than his spiritual status, and a big number of people in New Zealand are in a far worse state spiritually than they are materially.

There was a catch-phrase a few years ago: Put Christ Back into Christmas. New Zealanders need to do more than that – they need to put Christ back into their lives.

 

Nativity scene in the St Viktor Church, Dülmen,
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany (2018)
Courtesy: Dietmar Rabich 

 

Intelligence

First published in Column 8 on the 4 December, 1991

Australians? Now, I know they’re crazy. (Just because I was born in Melbourne doesn’t make me an Australian – it really doesn’t. Prick me; do I not bleed Dunedin blood?)

In a place called Maryborough in Queensland the people are protecting possums. Because the poor little creatures are being enticed across a busy roadway by the smell of pizza and pancakes, the local council has decided to install reflectors on the trees so that the car headlights will warn the opossums not to cross the road.

(Why didn’t the possum cross the road you might ask. Because he’d seen the light?)

Seems a bit of a topsy-turvy idea to me. Ever since I can remember, opossums in New Zealand have been a pest. How come they aren’t in Oz? In fact, if this scenario had occurred here I think the local council would more likely have given a bonus to the restaurant owners whose fragrant delights waft across the road.

If Australia is that short of possums maybe there’s a possibility of a new export industry starting up. Let’s all get out there into the wilds, catch thousands of our furry little friends and ship them alive and well to Queensland.

Believe it or not, in the same edition of the paper in which I came across this exciting news about the vagaries of the Australian intelligence, I found an instance of New Zealanders using their brains.

Well-known author, Joy Cowley, and her husband, Terry Coles, the photographer, have offered two prizes, one of $600 and one of $400, to the person who catches the most possums. Plainly the opossums in Kenepuru Sound up in Marlborough are too smart to get themselves killed hopping across the road just because there’s a restaurant on the other side. Isn’t it remarkable than even our lower life forms have higher IQs than their Australian counterparts?

However, the Kenepuru possums multiply to such a degree that they’re described as a ‘plague.’ (I wanted to use some clever quote at this point, but the best I can come up with is: Of all the plagues with which mankind is cursed, a possum hammering on the roof is worst. With all due respect to Daniel Defoe.)

As a result of the prize offer, Kenepuru residents are all out to fill their freezers with their furry foes. The big question after the prize-giving, however, will be what Cowley and Coles intend doing with the freezers full of possums. Could it be they have in mind some further piece of NZ enterprise? Frozen Possum Pieces might be appearing in local supermarkets any day now.

However, just when it seems as if NZeders have it over their Aussie neighbours, we have reports from up north of some nonsense about hugging trees. (Seems like we South Islanders may have to secede from the North after all, if more of this loony kind of behaviour goes on.

I don’t know if I’d go as far as calling tree hugging ‘witchcraft,’ unless those encouraging the practice think they’re in some way getting in touch with the ‘spirits’ of the trees. New Age peculiarities are turning up behind every branch.

More to the point, does anyone think tree hugging contributes to (a) the education of our children, or (b) the way we present ourselves to our Aussie cousins as being more intelligent than they are?

If we carry on like this, all our efforts to prove our superior intelligence will be in vain.

Brushtail Possum in Queensland, Australia
Courtesy: Andrew Mercer (www.baldwhiteguy.co.nz)

Cowley’s husband, Terry Coles died in 2022, at the age of 92.

See also this story on a bridge built for the safety of possums - in Western Australia.

Disgruntled

 First published in Column 8 on 30^th October, 1991

I know I haven’t any statistics to prove it, but my gut feeling is that we’re the most overtaxed nation on the face of the earth – and still the tax-man longs for more.

Some while ago the Infernal Revenue Department wrote to columnists round the country hoping we’d say some nice things about this year’s tax forms.

I didn’t, first because I was putting off the awful day of filling in the tax return (even though it was helped into its more readable state by a couple of local ghost writers). Secondly, when I did fill out the form, I found I was loaded with paying back a phenomenal sum of money, due to the chopping, changing Family Support system.

That didn’t endear the tax department to me, or encourage me to give them the benefit of some free PR.

Nor do I feel so inclined today.

A week ago I went up to the dreaded fourth floor to pay another in the endless series of tax-takes our shop owes in the course of a year, and discovered, quite by accident, a little pamphlet outlining another piece of taxation.

You’d have thought there was already enough money flowing into the bottomless coffers of the Treasury.

Not so. At least, someone in the higher echelons of bureaucracy believes there isn’t.

This new tax, which will sneak into many people’s lives unnoticed, affects the interest you gain on any money you may have been able to stash away in the bank. ‘So what’s new?,’ you say. ‘We’ve been paying tax on interest in the bank for more than a year – have you only just noticed?’

There’s a new twist. Any interest on money I might have managed to save is presently being taxed at 24c in the dollar. (Let’s ignore the fact that I’m being taxed twice over for the privilege of earning money in the first place.)

From April next year, if I don’t inform the bank what my IRD number is, the bank will have to take 33c in the dollar off my interest.

No doubt the tax dept will tell everyone about this, but you can bet your boots any number of people will miss the news.

There’s more to come. My children, some of whom earn next to nothing per year for a variety of tiddly pom jobs, are already being taxed on the pittance of interest they gain. And because their earnings are so minuscule, Infernal Revenue keeps all that tax. How many parents bother to put in a return on their children’s behalf, in order to gain back the little difference? Very few, I’d guess.

Once it was thought criminal to tax children. Now, so that they won’t be taxed further, I have to apply for an IRD number for each of my children so they won’t lose another 9c in the dollar.

Have you ever heard of anything so pathetic?

Yes, I know it all seems small scale stuff. But why would the tax department be going ahead with such an increase unless they thought they were going to make some money out of it? perhaps this tax is to keep each of the Cabinet Ministers’ offices in flowers for a year.

Gloomy with tax thoughts, I noticed a book in a shop entitled Living on the Smell of an Oily Rag. Just what I need to cope with Ms Richardson’s heavy hand, I thought, even though it would set me back $9.95 to discover how to do it.

I skimmed through the pages to get the gist of the message, and soon found that the writer (as seems to be the case with all these books about making money), doesn’t actually in the same real world as me.

After checking out his/her ideas on a variety of cost-cutting methods, I realised we practiced most of them anyway. Unfortunately, the oily rag in our family is emaciated from overuse.

The ‘fourth floor’ referred to was where the public met the public face of the Internal Revenue Dept. It was literally around the corner from the shop I managed at the time. My uncle worked there for forty years, and retired young – no doubt due to all the large salaries tax workers received...(unlikely!)

The ghost writers I referred to were a couple of women who ran a business where they translated poorly produced Government documents into readable English – amongst other things. I applied to them for contract work at one stage, but there didn’t seem to be enough work to go round…

The book I mention, which was actually called Living Off the Smell of an Oily Rag, was written by Frank and Muriel Newman. Their website - https://www.oilyrag.co.nz/ - is still live, though doesn’t appear to have been added to since around 2019. The book itself (which had a sequel, I think) is now out of print, but you can see some information about it here.

Service

 First published in Column 8 on the 20^th of November, 1991

 Whoops! Even cautious columnists occasionally come a cropper.

After last week’s column I was bluntly reminded that the Presbyterians meeting together in Invercargill were not the Synod but the General Assembly. It was rather like calling the Government a regional council.

To change the subject. You’d think in these days of precarious employment, and businesses being on a knife edge, that anyone who wanted to survive the recession would consider pleasing the customer their top priority.

I’m a bit hot on this subject at the moment, because I’m reading A Passion for Excellence. This book repeats an age-old message in various disguises on every page – ‘the customer is always right.’

The matter isn’t so much that the customer is always right, but more that if we don’t see service to the customer as absolutely essential, we don’t see anything.

(Hands up all those who remember a time when there were creatures called Public Servants? Ten points to anyone who was actually served by them.)

Lots of businesses in Dunedin, and round the country, haven’t yet got this matter of service right. Service isn’t an American approach to business, it’s an approach that keeps you in business. In fact it’s the only approach.

On Friday evenings, if I haven’t had the energy in the morning to prepare something for my tea break, I go out for a meal.

My usual eatery has been one where the salad servings are so abundant they drop off the edge of the plate. I love their food, and their garlic dressing, but I never feel as though I’m very welcome there. (I’m not welcome at home either, after the garlic.) Perhaps I’m not a regular enough customer for them.

I’ve recently tried another café where the owner goes out of his way to find something quick and filling – and economical – and where he takes time to treat you as a person. Service in its best sense, in other words.

One evening, however, I tried a place where I won’t be going again. Service was definitely not on the menu.

Though there was no queue to think of – only two ladies waiting in front of me – it took five minutes to be acknowledged. The hold up? No potatoes in the Bain Marie. The young man serving was undecided whether to say potatoes were off, love, or to call his superior.

He did the latter. His superior was a girl in her twenties. She wasn’t very impressed at having to deal with the problem. She went out the back, and eventually returned with a potato that had been on a diet.

Then she turned her attention to me. Though I’d had ample time to read – and understand – the menu, she didn’t think I knew what I wanted. She tried to give me what she thought I’d asked for, implying I wasn’t quite with it.

The helping ultimately consisted of two fatty slices of ham on two bits of beef sharing the plate with three skimpy servings of salad. If you don’t get service to your customer right, at least give them decent helpings.

The lettuce was elderly, and sour; the beetroot slivers were tasteless, which was just as well since they were companions to two strawberries. The saddest part about it all was that this particular restaurant isn’t just geared to serving local yokels like me; it’s targeted towards tourists.

An episode like this is enough to put customers off for a considerable time. As the authors of A Passion for Excellence note, dissatisfied customers don’t go home and sulk alone. They warn all their friends.

 

A cafe in France - not the one I went to!
courtesy Velvet

Somewhat ironically, almost twenty years later I wound up working with the Presbyterians, which considerably improved my knowledge of who was who and what was what.

Political Words

This column was first published in Column 8, on the 13^th November, 1991

At the Presbyterian Synod in Invercargill the hierarchy voted to change the name of their church to Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand.

That was no great surprise, since certain leaders in this denomination have long been pushing for change.

However, this decision was made in opposition to what many of the people in their churches think. There’s a curious arrogance about some of the leadership here. Knowing that the majority of the people at the grassroots level didn’t want they change, they still went ahead with it.

I guess these ministers are just following in the footsteps of their namesakes in Wellington: Beehive ministers also have a tendency to ride roughshod over what the people think.

That’s the end of the name-changing matter. I feel about laughing when I read that the Presbyterian Moderator said his church now had to find a way to deal with the problem created by their name change. What problem? The fact that most members don’t support the new name.

It’s a bit like me saying to one of my kids: I know your name is George, and I know you’re quite happy being called George, but I’m going to call you Gordon from now on. I think I’d have to find a way to dela with the problem of George’s objections too.

There’s too much political mucking about with the language. By that I don’t mean it necessarily has anything to do with the Government, although they’re one of the most frequent culprits.

All manner of tautological circumlocutions arise through transient ideological worldviews (Wow!). In other words, people’s politics incite them to muddle about with the language. The language becomes a potent tool for their viewpoint, right or wrong. Shades of Marx and Mao Tse Tung.

Language doesn’t need the help of well-meaning individuals pronouncing debunkings of supposedly offensive words. (Did you know that Blacks in the US are now to be called African Americans?)

I could get myself into an awful lot of trouble here if I had a go at some of the more nonsensical excesses thrust upon us, so I’ll stick to some lesser hot potatoes.

My wife received a form in the post regarding The Card – the one that can’t make up its mind what it’s going to be called. The accompanying letter talked about partners being ‘someone with whom you are living in a relationship in the nature of marriage.’

These official forms no longer state husband or wife, or even spouse. The thing that makes me sick is that the bureaucrats are kow-towing to people who haven’t ever bothered to make the commitment of getting married.

Married people don’t have a choice about what they’re called – married or de facto we’re all lumped together as partners.

I cross out that dismal word on any such forms and put in what I am: Husband. ‘Partner’ implies a debasement of marriage.

I see it’s now being used in some magazines to mean any person with whom you may be living – males with males and females with females. Why do we have to have a blanket word for so many different relationships? If the ancient Hebrews could have four different words for the humble locust, why are humans impersonalised under one word – partners?

To finish up, though de-sexed words are now a bit of a dead issue, there is one that still niggles – actor for actress. For example, I do a double take when I read that ‘an actor called Meryl Streep played The French Lieutenant’s Woman.’  The use of actor in this instance clunks up the sense, and the sentence.

Meryl Streep is anything but masculine.

Let’s hope television doesn’t do a repeat of The Waltons. Confusion will have a field day when we read that Mrs Walton is played by the actor Michael Learned.

'Actor' Meryl Streep

I don’t now remember which ‘Card’ I was talking about. It’s probably long been surpassed by something else.

 There were also some letters about this Column.

 

20.11.91

Sir, When your columnist, Mike Crowl, has stopped falling about laughing (Midweek 13.11.91), he may like to make a resolve to check his facts in future and make sure he knows what he’s writing about. There was no Presbyterian Synod meeting in Invercargill; there is no hierarchy in the Presbyterian Church; the vote to change the name of the church was not made by ministers.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church met in Invercargill at which a decision was made by over 400 people, half of them lay people. Those people are appointed as commissioners, which means that they are not representative of other people’s opinions, but are trusted to vote responsibly out of their own convictions. I believe they did just that.

Mike Crowl claims that ‘there’s too much political mucking about with language.’ I claim that there is also too much mischief caused by journalists who can’t cope with language or with the need to check their sources. I think an apology is due.

Rev Neil Churcher

[Neil Churcher, whom I knew a little, has long passed away, and gone to a place where there is no voting, and where opinions are a different kettle of fish to those of the earthly variety. Yes, I got some names wrong, but the argument about using ‘Aotearoa’ with official names and as a name of the country continues on. The media in particular pushes ‘Aotearoa’ as the name of the country, when the majority of the people call it New Zealand.]

 

24.11.91

Sir, Mike Crowl has missed the point again. calling an actor an actor is emphasising the work a person does, not talking about whether they are a mummy or a daddy. Words like actress, tigress, usherette, etc carry connotations of less than or a smaller version of the original. Just plain boring old sexism once more. Yawn.

My Partner and I

[Whoever this writer was makes an odd claim that the female words carried connotations of ‘less than or smaller.’ I think this would be news to most people: usherettes and actresses aren’t noticeably smaller than ushers and actors; like all other humans, they vary in size. The words just help us to know what we’re talking about. And that’s surely more helpful than causing confusion. The following letter writer agreed.]

 

1.12.91

Sir, The latest fetish of changing perfectly acceptable and pleasant-sounding words such as ‘actress’ into ‘actor’ is a ridiculous innovation and I, for one, see red whenever I come across the stupidity. Contrary to the assertion of ‘My Partner and I,’ that a feminine ending designates [sic; I think it should be ‘denigrates’] the female person, this is sheer ignorance or else is a sign of a very bad inferiority complex. In my own understanding all the great actresses of our day share equal respect and applause as the male actors, if not more.

What is wrong with ‘lioness’ or the feminine version of any other animal. Plenty more are used and in many areas are practically important. What on earth is ‘demeaning’ about the feminisation of names?

I advise ‘My Partner and I’ never to go to France, where all nouns as well as living things are either masculine or feminine. To carry the idea to its absurd extremes, my name is Josephine. Should I sign myself Joseph?

J.L.

 

1.12.91

Sir, I am a female of the species and, unlike ‘My Partner and I’ (November 24), think it is a good idea to differentiate between male and female by title, instead of lumping everyone into a sort of genderless mishmash, as seems to be the boring trend these days.

It is often not only interesting but also important to know who is what. I would definitely want to know whether I was meeting a tiger, tigress (or tigrette?). It would also seem that, for some strange reason, anybody chairing a meeting must be sexless.

Pirouette.