Pornography

 First published in Column 8, on 23^rd October, 1991

Jenny Shipley can’t be anyone’s favourite person these days, but she reduced her demerits slightly in a recent speech to the National Council of Women.

Fed up with the soft approach to pornography, she said, ‘I make no apologies to those who believe they should be free to choose for themselves what they would view and read.’

She wants to put a Bill through Parliament that legally defines pornography, and freely admits she’s advocating legislative censorship.

Quite honestly, though I know something has to be done, I don’t know where she’ll start. The country is saturated with pornography, and it’s become so insidious we take it for granted.

When my uncle owned a dairy some years ago, he got himself into strife with the distributors because he wouldn’t sell any magazine flaunting naked bodies. How many shopkeepers would make a stand like that now? I only have to walk outside my house to the grocer’s next door to find advertisements of naked women adorning the pavement.

Is it coincidental that two of the most popular New Zealand plays of the last decade have contained frequent scenes of nudity? (Male, just for a change.)

Once it was uncommon to go to the movies and see nudity (apart from foreign movies, which spiced up their plots with naked bodies, whether they had anything to do with the story or not.) Now it’s the norm in almost anything we see not only at the movies but at home on TV.

Even on the news. Apart from the Nightline episode of lovers coupling, which at least took place after 10 pm, there was the report on the young women stripping at a pub in Wellington. This was shown during the tea hour in our house.

Worse than the young women’s behaviour was the bestial shouting by the male spectators, and the casual indifference of the pub owner. For him it was a way to make money. Lots of it.

That doesn’t bother you? Then perhaps the fact that videos with pornographic content are available in nearly all video outlets, and are often taken home and shown to children concerns you more.

Or maybe it doesn’t. It certainly didn’t concern somebody in charge at Washdyke, when children were freely able to watch pornographic videos stored on the school premises, without a single teacher being aware.

I think we’re so corrupted by pornography we barely fuss when it slaps us in the face. Things sexual corrode us, seeping into every area of our lives. It’s a form of idolatry, and some people can’t stop worshipping.

No wonder so many crimes in this country have a sexual content. Virtually every magazine we open has some article in it on the subject that was once taboo.

We’d like to think it’s because we’re more broadminded now, that we’re balancing out a time when people never talked about sex – supposedly.

We’d like to convince ourselves that it’s not psychologically good for us to be modest about the matter. Fat chance of being modest, in this day and age.

Humanity is notorious for swinging from one extreme to the other. Maybe Jenny Shipley’s aggressive attack on pornography heralds a return to some semblance of balance in the whole matter.

Maybe not. Either way, she’s got an uphill battle.

Jenny Shipley in 2013

 One of the plays mentioned above was probably Foreskin’s Lament. I don’t know now what the other would have been, unless it was Equus.

The Washdyke incident should have been a surprise, but since then any number of schools have been found to have pornographic material available, often on the computers the children can access. It makes the news, but doesn’t change the mentality of those in charge. And each morning, as I open the newspaper, I’m faced with yet another case of some male – including well-known ones – hoarding child pornography on their computer, often on their work computer.

Shipley’s legislative aim found some ground in the 1993 ‘Films, Videos and Publications Classification Bill.’  But of course, classifying material leaves it still freely available to those want to see it, whether they’re of a proper age or  not. And even though most streaming material these days shows classifications, it offers no way for children and younger people to avoid what is shown within the movie or TV series.

Sounds alive

First published in Column 8 on 16^th October, 1991

Even given the trend in newer movies to overlap speech and add all manner of extra noise, I’d been puzzled for a while as to why, when these same films appeared on television, I found the dialogue increasingly difficult to pick up.

Since I can be woken at night by one of my kids rustling the blankets three rooms away, I knew the problem wasn’t deafness.

Recently we went and watched the video version of My Left Foot at a friend’s house. Between telephone calls, children getting bored, and my youngest son re-enacting World War II behind the couch, hearing the dialogue was difficult.

But that wasn’t all. Many of the words seemed to get washed away in a muddy flood. Extreme concentration was required, and not only because the main character’s speech was so impeded.

Frustration finally forced us to invention: after reading about the fact that much of our television – including the videos we play – is actually being transmitted in stereo, my son and I decided to do a bit of electrical engineering.

We stuck a stereo cassette player that had seen better days on our television, wired it to the video via the connection we’d purchased for copying my brother-in-law’s trip-to-NZ videos, screwed the speakers to the wall and hey presto, instant stereo.

And if you’ve never tired it, have a go. (Of course you can have a go more ‘professionally’ than we did.) As they say in the ads, you’ll be amazed at the difference.

Sounds that never get a chance to be heard above the general racket of the average living room now make their presence felt, coming across crisp and clear.

Contrast our viewing of My Left Foot with the first film we saw after introducing stereo – Mississippi Burning, with Gene Hackman. We’d watched it with normal television sound; later we played the recording back in stereo.

Now thunder rumbled in the background – there’d been no hint of it before – in fact, you wondered why the sky was often overcast. As Hackman and Willem Dafoe crunched across the grass, every blade could be heard bending and crying out for mercy. When one of the baddies came home and (yuk!) beat up his wife, the smashing and crashing nearly splintered the set – the television set, I mean.

The experience took me back to those marvellous days when cinemas were first fitted with wide wide screens and stereophonic sound. In the Regent Theatre, with its sound system hidden amongst the Arabian Nights decorations, I remember watching Lawrence of Arabia while magical Maurice Jarre melodies swept across every seat in the cinema.

Every booming bass note, every tinkle of Siamese cymbals was audible in The King and I, along with Deborah Kerr’s heavy breathing after Shall We Dance. The opening sequence of West Side Story brought strange whistling noises out of each quarter of the auditorium as the camera floated eerily above the deserted streets.

Now I know my living room will never quite equal the magic of a spacious 1500-seat cinema with its ceiling full of twinkling stars. Nevertheless a vastly improved kind of sound these days accompanies our television viewing.

Even Marlon Brando, method-acting mumbling in his Godfather role, would have his every word heard.

Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif in Lawrence of Arabia

I’m interested to read about this amateur method of stereophonic sound that we ‘installed.’ I have no memory of it now, and it seems most unlikely that I had much to do with its invention, being a bear of little brains when it comes to such things. I imagine my number one son (who would have been eleven at the time) was the ‘inventor.’

These days, of course, things have got much worse rather than better. You’d think that modern televisions would have vastly better sound than they used to, but in fact the sound seems worse, and we’ve resorted to using a round boom speaker that (mostly) clarifies what’s being said on-screen. But better still is the presentation of movies and TV series (on Netflix at least) with sub-titles. We watch practically everything that way, and it’s only occasionally annoying.

In Retrospect

First published in Column 8 on the 9^th October, 1991

Today is something of an anniversary. I don’t suppose it will go down in history as being equivalent to Caesar crossing the Rubicon or Hannibal the Alps, but I thought I might make a little note of it.

Today marks the anniversary of the first Column 8. Forty-seven columns later (I had time off for good behaviour), I’m still surprised at how many usable ideas there are in the world. Or to put it another way, I’m surprised how an idea can be teased out to fill up the space allotted.

Because it’s an anniversary, I need to apologise for some errors. These are the ones I know about.

Early this year an elderly ex-serviceman rang up to say that I’d turned the name of the leader of the Iraqi nation back to front. I’d called him Mr Hussein, when, of course, he’s Mr Saddam. The same person went off on to a tangent to inform me that daylight saving isn’t the same as it used to be, and since daylight saving has just arrived, I’ll tell you what I learned.

New Zealand was originally only 11½ hours ahead of UK time. In 1926 we extended this to 12½ hours and then a couple of years later brought in summer time, which for some months of the year made us exactly 12 hours ahead. Still with me?

However, what was officially only daylight saving time became normal time in 1945 after four years of being emergency daylight saving. (Nature’s contribution to the war effort,  no doubt.)

Finally in 1974 (while I was out of the country) we had another change. We gained an extra hour in the summer, making us 13 hours ahead of GMT. (I tell my wife every year that rising an hour earlier affects me adversely for weeks, but in her inimitable fashion she scoffs.)

The other major mistake of my year was to confuse Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Someone sent me a letter via the Midweek on this, and I lost it two minutes after I read it. My apologies to the writer for not answering personally. Everyone knows that Art Garfunkel sang Bridge Over Troubled Water – don’t they?

I’ve had some interesting phone calls over the time I’ve been writing this column. One very nice lady rang to ask my advice about her rhododendrons – I must have appeared more knowledgeable than I am.

I tried to say in a later column that it’s necessary to read what I’ve said, not what you think I’ve said. Anyway, Column 8 is a not too subtle mix of fact and fiction. Supposedly in article writing these days that’s the trend.

After another column my wife received a phone call when I was out. An elderly lady was very concerned about the things I’d written on the English language, when I’d said there were words lacking in our vocabulary.

She said English was already difficult enough for foreigners to learn without adding yet more words.

Not everybody agrees, but I think English is not the world’s most difficult language to learn, or to spell.

Most European languages, for instance, have at least as many messy verbs. And long ago the English wisely rid themselves of all the cases – many nations still suffer from these, needing to know whether cats or dogs or wart hogs are masculine, feminine or neutered. If you can’t get that right, all your adjectives and verbs and various other grammatical bits go astray.

Mark Twain once translated the following directly from a German textbook:

Gretchen: Where is the turnip?

Wilhelm: She has gone to the kitchen.

Gretchen: Where is the accomplished and beautiful maiden?

Wilhelm: It has gone to the opera.

(Here’s to another year.)

see below

This piece goes to show how accessible I was as a columnist. Of course there were plenty of people who read the column who already knew where I lived, or knew my telephone number. But getting direct mail, or phone calls (perhaps they got the number from the phone book, which in those days was still a highly accurate publication) is something that probably wouldn’t happen any longer. People did occasionally write directly to the Midweek, but others obviously thought it more appropriate to approach me directly.

As for English spelling, I might have exaggerated a bit, but the language itself is a piece of cake compared to many in the world, which is presumably why it’s been so successful at exporting itself.

I don’t appear to have a copy of the column in which I discussed daylight saving, though I did rant on it elsewhere on my blog some years later. The photo attached above, however, has an interesting history, as shown below (inaccurately?) - courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Archives New Zealand.

A chorus of opinion from “eminent men” on the subject of daylight saving was in the spotlight on this day 24 October 1912.

When the S S Ruepehu set sail to New Zealand it was carrying 12 pamphlets on the English Daylight Saving Bill from the London High Commission. One of the intended recipients was MP T K Sidey who was introducing a similar bill into the New Zealand Parliament. The pamphlet, which set out the case for daylight saving, includes comments from everyone from the King of England to a Piccadilly shopkeeper. “Sunshine destroys germs and raises the vitality,” declared the Earl of Meath who was also chairman of the London Metropolitan Gardens. A London businessman had this to say of one of his book keepers, “a capable fellow” who had been “wasting away” with an undiagnosed illness: “Poor fellow his life has been lived without sunshine. We buried him five months later in the Highlands of Scotland!”

Despite this call to action New Zealand’s reaction to the pamphlet was muted. Daylight saving was not introduced here until 1927.

Shown here is the pamphlet from London

Memory

 First Published in Column 8, 2^nd October, 1991

Every so often I have a burst of enthusiasm about improving my memory.

Especially when someone named Andrew walks into my shop, someone I know reasonably well, and I call him Grahame.

To sidetrack for a moment. There must be something mystical about the name Grahame. When I worked at the DCC a few years ago, two staff members confidently called me Grahame at every meeting. Do I look like a Grahame? Perhaps. I have the sort of face that prevents me being called by my right name, since two other acquaintances call me David.

Enough of other people’s problems with memory, and back to my own.

I’ve several times got enthusiastic about those books that teach you how to remember peoples’ names by associating their faces with something absurd. I once read a Reader’s Digest which had condensed a whole book about memorisation into a three-page article. This snippet inspired me, though on inquiring at the library for a copy of the book, I was surprised to discover that some former borrower had ‘forgotten’ to bring it back.

Not to worry, there were plenty of other books available on the subject. Most agree that the basis for remembering people’s names is, as I said, to link a feature of their face with something absurd.

This is all very well. The difficulty is trying to manage this in the company of someone new. Conversing with a stranger is often difficult enough without simultaneously performing the mental juggling act of trying to find some oddity about their face.

Suppose you meet a Mrs Burton. You may note that her furrowed brow resembles Richard Burton in his later days. This may connect up in your brain cells to Welsh mountains or coalminer’s lanterned hats or How Green Was My Valley.

While you’re doing all this thinking, Mrs Burton is likely to suspect you’re either a rather distant conversationalist who hasn’t quite got it altogether – or that perhaps you’re on medication.

And six weeks later you may wonder why she looks started when you greet her as Mrs Green – or even Mrs Taylor.

Suppose when you meet Mr Brown he hasn’t a single outstanding feature about him? What will he think when you worriedly scan his features while failing to answer his questions? Or Mrs Schweigenhauser, whose name is not even re-pronounceable and produces a mental blank.

When you meet someone briefly at a gathering it can be well nigh impossible, unless you have the quick wit of a Goon Show scriptwriter, to pinpoint some feature quickly enough to help you out.

You know how it is: the host introduces you to someone, throws in a word or two about them, and then drags you off to meet someone else. Or else you’re introduced to a roomful of faces and the host says, ‘I’ll tell you all these people’s names.’ Then he helpfully adds, ‘Though you’ll forget them all, anyway.’

That’s really encouraging. Since people often don’t even introduce others by their first and last names any more, how do you hang hooks on to a succession of Georges, Bills and Freds, or even Angelas, Mays and Marys?

I know the system works, but my brain doesn’t seem fast enough to make it work when I need it. I know it works on memorising other things, because I’ve used it successfully. (I think I’ve used it successful...?)

Perhaps I’ll have to concentrate on the technique that was tried out on me recently. We met a new couple at church and the husband threw my name into every phrase he spoke.

However, I hope he’s better at this game than I am, and next time we meet he doesn’t say, ‘Hello, Grahame.’

 

Courtesy Predatorix

In recent years I’ve abandoned this involved technique and have spent a moment or two jotting down a new name in a specific list on my phone, with some short note about them. Sometimes I tell them what I’m doing. If I missed remembering the name straight off, I just ask them again. What’s the problem? They often fail to catch my name either, but at least one of us is trying to ensure that the next time we meet, their name is intact. And for the most part it works. And people respond well when they’re addressed by name. So many of us don’t bother once the initial meeting is over.  

Obsession!

 First published on Column 8 on 25^th Sept, 1991 

I spent the better part of a wet Saturday afternoon last weekend at the Computer Expo being held in the chandelier-lit Southern Cross Hotel.

Computers intrigue me, though not to the extent that I’ll discuss them from dawn to dusk. But there was a particular Point of Sale set-up on display which impressed me as being of possible value for my shop. In fact, so impressed was I that I lay awake till 2 am thinking about the possibilities.

Computers have this tendency to make me become obsessive.

(I might have been awake till two anyway. We had three extra boys in the house because of a birthday party, and it was only in the wee small hours that I finally managed to command them to stop talking, whispering, giggling and occasionally exploding in the room next to mine.)

The first computer I owned, a little hand-holdable PB100, bought for the budget-wrecking sum of $199, had the capacity to keep me awake until the stars packed it in and went back to bed. Especially when we went on holiday one Christmas.

In those days, after long hours at the beach, the kids were asleep by nine. I had ‘a little time’ to become better acquainted with my new toy.

The LCD screen was so small it could only display one line, and in that line there were only about 12 characters visible. By the early hours of the morning, I felt as though I had as many eyes as the average housefly.

The miniature keyboard was worse: after a session on it I had less use of my fingers than the Incredible Hulk would have had picking up a split tin of pins out of a shaggy pile carpet. You couldn’t type on it – put more than two fingers near it and you rendered it invisible.

But I couldn’t leave the computer alone. Only sheer exhaustion made me drop into bed, and even then my mind continued to solve problems set in motion, with frazzled brain cells wearing themselves out before their time and sending manic messages flickering across the cerebellum.

I can understand how inventors feel when they’ve stumbled across something undiscovered. The obsession with getting the thing right takes precedence over all social concerns and bodily needs, so that to the rest of the human race it seems as though they hardly belong on the planet.

Three years ago we bought a decent-sized computer, with a normal screen and keyboard. One of the first games we had was Emerald Mine, and in the month or so that it survived before the disk collapsed from almost permanent use, normal life ceased.

Everyone had their own score registered and an unofficial competition began to see who could get through the 90-odd (!) levels first. Meals were delayed, home-work undone, patterns of sleep disrupted.

My wife was one of the worst. The determined streak that comes with her side of the family carried her through countless obstacles and setbacks. Every so often (usually while I was getting the tea), there would be a heart-stopping cry of triumph as another level was conquered. There were more cries of anguish, however, as the computer conquered the player.

These days we’re wiser. We tackle games that don’t insist we die seventy times seven before we learn how to stay alive.

In our household obsession with things computerised is fortunately not a permanent problem. What might be is the loss of a large number of brain cells when, burning the midnight 30/40, my upper storey goes into overdrive.

PB100 - courtesy Tourdion

As for obsession with computers, my older son became so focused on the desktop model that he would type entire programmes into it from a library book, and would have to go back through pages if it turned out he’d made a mistake in the input. When the Internet arrived in its earliest stages, he would sit for up to an hour trying to get online while the modem wheezed and gurgled as it tried to connect. Usually this would be first thing in the morning before we were awake – and the computer was in our bedroom.

His brain cells didn’t collapse or disintegrate: instead he grew up to be a software developer with considerable skills.

The PB100 was very frustrating: if you made a mistake on it, you had to start all over from the beginning. Admittedly there were only a very limited number of bytes available on it – a piece of history on the Net says: ‘For programming, the built-in memory of 1 kB leaves 544 programming steps and 26 memories.’ Apparently you could by a pack that gave you an extra kilobyte of memory!

The 30/40 (actually 30w/40) referred to at the end is a make of engine oil produced in the 1990s.

 

Auctions

First published in Column 8 on the 11^th Sept 1991

If you want some free entertainment in these recessive days, leave your credit cards, cheque book and cash at home and go to an auction.

I recommend it to anyone who wants to relax and let the world go by, to keep the blood flowing at an even pace, and to avoid cluttering his/her brain with excess thoughts.

You’ll probably even be able to sit down and enjoy the show – until they sell the chair from underneath you.

I enjoy auctions for all sort of reasons – not least because I don’t have to buy anything, and no pushy salesman tries to make me.

But there’s far more to it than just being able to leave your worldly wealth at home.

The people who frequent auctions are a treat in themselves. Yes, you’ll get ordinary people, because those sort of people will sneak in anywhere, but for the most part, auction-going people are in a class of their own. And the classes are different at different sorts of auctions.

Some sample specimens.

You’ll always get the bargain hunters, who want lots of the items going, but who aren’t prepared to part out more than a little of their life savings. The result of these people participating must delight most auctioneers.

They’re always first in at the bidding, which immediately hikes up the price, and for a bit they’ll nod or flick their finger or wave their numbered bat. Then suddenly they’ll give up. They’ve reached their own personal reserve, you see, and the person bidding against them is left to pay far more than they thought the lot was really worth.

Occasionally the bargain-hunter will actually purchase something, and occasionally they’ll get caught with something they only half had their heart set on. Otherwise they’re merely in it for the thrill.

You’ll also see the dealers. It’s a bit like a social gathering for them.

They’re so well known to the auctioneers that they don’t even have to give their names: they just raise their eyebrows a little and the auctioneers know exactly what they mean.

Most of the time the dealers feign indifference to the whole proceedings, as though they’d sooner be back at the shop dusting off the stuff they haven’t been able to sell since 1965.

In another class are the collectors (you’ll find more of them at the antique auctions.) They’ll pretend that they’re not in the least interested in anything in the room, in case someone decides to bid against them.

As collectors they’re prepared to pay the earth for all manner of things that to you and me seem trivia, but naturally they don’t want to pay the earth.

When they’re eyes aren’t flickering over possible purchases, the collectors have a faraway look as though they were thinking about anything but where they’re at. In fact they’re considering whether the credit card can possible be squeezed a little further, or whether the increasingly less friendly bank manager will extend the overdraft.

And finally the auctioneer, that man of craft, who knows just when a bid can extend another $2 and when it can go $200. He’ll make an occasional joke, but not many, and he’ll never try to ‘sell’ anything.

But when two determined people bid against each other for the same lot, and raise its value far above what either of them would ever pay under any other circumstance, watch out for the twinkle in his eye.

Science fiction auction in Stockholm
courtesy Johan Jönsson (Julle)

 

 

Crime

First published in Column 8 on the 4^th September, 1991

 When armed robbery took place last week at our local pharmacy my family was at home only a block away. One of the robbers made his escape down a street only one away from where my kids were at school. I became rather unnerved at my wife’s phone calls to me at work relaying the latest news reports. Was it possible someone with a shotgun was still wandering the streets?

We found out later that the robbers must have left the area pretty smartly – and I guess in their shoes I would have done the same. All power, then, to the police for picking them up in Timaru – of all places – only a couple of days later. The police did a great job.

We’re constantly told that an abstract body, ‘the community,’ is not doing enough to stamp out crime. That irritates me. How exactly is the average suburbanite supposed to stop armed robberies?

And if the ‘community’ is to blame for the lack of concern when it comes to crime, what makes the television programme Crimewatch so effective? Isn’t that the community at work?

Anyway, the community shouldn’t be the prime fighter against crime – most of us haven’t the resources or skills or know-how to make a lot of difference. Surely policemen are still the best ones to do the job.

When the current Government promised 900 more policepersons I felt like cheering, because at this time in our history we are absolutely desperate for them.

But even 900 more bobbies are going to have a massive job. There’s more at work than just an increase in the number of criminals. Part of the matter is that hectic social forces contribute considerably to our problems. We aren’t the community we once were.

Unemployment and drugs have increased out of all proportion in the last few years, and are seedbeds for crime.

Major changes in our attitudes to life are also a problem. For better or worse, the fact that men and women’s rules are now so differently defined from the traditional bring tensions and violence in marriage. We may eventually work through this transition time (and be the better for it) but for the present, overworked women’s refuges prove families are suffering dreadfully from its onslaught.

There’s more. Things that used to be considered criminal by the vast majority have been taken on board as the ‘norm.’ Governments have elected to make them legal. Abortion, de facto marriages, adultery; and the way in which a criminal can be considered as a victim in the very crime he has initiated.

With such turned-around views we can never have our former more stable society.

Lastly, we’ve thrown religion out the window. I know New Zealand was never quite the Christian country it claimed to be, but the civilising effects of Christian attitudes kept many evil forces in check, for decades.

Now we’re so secular we think religion – especially Christianity – doesn’t matter. We don’t want to believe that it does.

The vast changes in the communist world are a lesson to us. Average people, we’re told, committed very few crimes during the communist years. That’s hardly surprising when just being alive could be crime enough to have you thrown in jail – or a mental institution. And anyway, the bosses committed such despicable horrors themselves that crime was virtually respectable.

Now a strange thing is taking place. With communism gasping its last breaths, untold number of people are returning to something communism could never quite destroy – their religion. Poland, Romania, and now Russia itself have shown there is an undeniable hunger for spiritual things.

I wonder how long New Zealand will have to suffer the strife of daily major crime before it, too, realises that throwing out God, and opting instead for a selfish, secular, uncompassionate and ultimately hopeless society is a major cause of our woes.

NZ Police Car, 2025

 

This was written over thirty years ago and there are no signs of crime decreasing. Nor is there much sign of the secular society realising that a community that makes man and woman its centre has little hope of improving. Without God, we are hopelessly stuck in our problems.

Adaptability

First published in Column 8 on the 21^st August, 1991

 [One of the few Columns to get an introduction from the editor: ‘If you are looking for a piano player, Mike Crowl is your man. Experienced with a variety of keyboards, he tells why he is so adaptable…on page 2.’ ]

 If you want an adaptable person, find a pianist.

Pianists acquire adaptability far more than any other kind of musicians because they work with a major disadvantage: they play an instrument that isn’t portable.

Yes, I know in these electronic days you can lug a piece of equipment round that when you plug it in pretends it’s a piano, but it ain’t. And I guess the day may come when musicians will arrive on your doorstep calling themselves pianists, while asking for a power-point.

Now that I’m on the subject of electronic pianos, I once performed at a country Gospel music festival in Cromwell. When we got there, after finding we were to play out in the open on the back of a couple of trucks – in a 30deg heatwave – they brought forth the piano. It had the distinction of being elderly.

When the bass player tuned to a bass note [on his instrument], he found he was in a different key to the saxophonist, who’d tuned to an octave above. (This may not have mattered. One country singer had each string on his guitar tuned to a different key. We decided not to accompany him.)

Anyway we had to abandon the piano, and I was offered a choice (choice?) of one of two assertive-looking synthesizers, both of which could supposedly produce a piano-like noise.

I had to play standing up – only Donny Osmond does that well – and my wrists were bent at right angles to my hands.

At first I thumped away with the rest of the Gospel crew and wondered why I couldn’t hear anything resembling a piano. Seems the sound man hadn’t plugged me in. Later in the day, just as we were about to start another bracket, the owner of the synth appeared and dismantled it while I was still trying to play.

I ask you: does a Steinway need plugging in, or is it likely someone will dismantle your Bechstein mid-performance?

You can see I don’t have much time for pretend pianos. But back to adaptability.

What other musician is expected to sit down at an instrument he’s never touched before and produce his best? More often that not, a pianist will find that the bass is heaver than he expects, or the treble more shrill, or the pedals too high, and he’ll have to spend most of the performance compensating.

That’s on the better instruments. I’ve played on ones that refused to give an inch. Each key was so sluggish it felt as though there was a lead weight strung on the hammer. Your fingers finished up stiff from the effort.

Some give more than an inch: in Milton, one piano decided it didn’t like the shape of my thumb and slammed the lid down on it. Like a real trouper I said to myself the show must go, but my smile was a little forced.

I’ve played on pianos where there was one note which refused to sound: usually right where you most needed it. At such times you sense the composer is in cahoots with the piano because he’s written the most effective part of the melody for that missing note. You scramble around trying to take the melody up or down an octave, hoping that nobody will notice what a hash you’re making of it all.

I once played in Ross, on the West Coast. We were supposed to go somewhere else [a few miles away], but they’d forgotten we were coming, so all 400 residents of Ross turned out to hear our travelling troupe perform the opera La bohème with eight soloists, no chorus, and a pianist.

The Ross piano had not just one note missing but several. And to add to my joys, a family of wasps danced to the jiggering of my piano-light. I spent the entire performance frantically substituting notes the piano could play for those it couldn’t, and trying to persuade the wasps not to sit on my pages and/or various visible parts of my anatomy.

Now do you see why I say, if you want an adaptable person, find a pianist?

The author playing for a rehearsal of Don Giovanni in 2016

The performance in Ross was part of a ‘piano tour’ put on by the New Zealand Opera Company. It was a much cut-down version of the opera, of course, and one or two people played more than one role. Still, all the big arias were there, along with some of the ensembles, and the cast were fully professional opera singers. We travelled around the South Island of New Zealand in a bus (which also carried our scenery) with a permanent bus driver, visiting a wide variety of smaller towns that would never see an opera performed live normally. And the stage manager did everything backstage: lighting, setting up the scenery (along with some help from the male singers – it often had to adapted to the size of the stage), and making sure everything kept going when something went wrong.

Once we’d finished our South Island tour, we worked our way through the North Island.

Incapacitated!

First published in Column 8 on the 28^th August, 1991

The Central Intelligence System is under attack!

The main air ducts to the outside world resound with continuous explosions. The two large video screens steam with condensation. And, if they’re not already in this state, it’s likely in the near future that the two loudspeakers will crackle and splutter until their sound ceases altogether. At present all noise is interrupted by a static-like coughing and choking.

Yes folks, it’s time for the Annual Cold.

For weeks I’ve worn the unmentionable long johns and weather the withering looks of my with-it kids – and kept their colds at bay. And mentioning the kids, for weeks I’ve avoided their germ-laden, cold-filled kisses and cuddles, all the while trying to maintain my normal fatherly relationship with them.

For weeks I’ve slid down the hill on unmelting ice in the vehicle that replaced my old Holden – in which I would have felt, if not actually been, safer – and avoided running into other traffic and into any colds.

Finally last week my resistance gave up the ghost and laid me flat on my back. For everything from the neck down it was work as usual. Only the section that keeps everything else in order – the head – was out of action.

(In fact, the glare from my word processor was too much to cope with. Thus this column is a first: dictated from my sickbed to my 10-year-old typist.)

Talking of heads, having a cold always brings to a head a point of contention in the battle of the sexes that my wife and I epitomise. She always asserts, in line with other wives to their equally beleaguered husbands, that I make a terrible fuss about having a cold. She says that when women have colds they have to grin and bear it. Women, she says, don’t have time to stop for colds. They certainly don’t have time to go to bed for a day and a half. She then proves her point by carrying on regardless when hit by the bug.

I maintain, along with the aforesaid beleaguered husbands, that men suffer far more than women when they have a cold. It’s a well known fact that men’s skins are thinner; surely that gives us less protection. Consequently we’re more afflicted when a cold strikes us.

This cuts no ice with my wife. Once I have a cold, she follows her normal policy of maintaining a polite distance and ignoring my cries for aid. I lie upon my sick bed. If I am not at death’s door, then I am in view of it.

I have found it to be a strange phenomenon that women always accuse men of making a fuss about being sick. Yet we gentlemen would seldom dare tell a woman who is sick that she’s not.

I have to say ‘seldom,’ otherwise my wife would point out that on one historic occasion I didn’t believe she was ill until she proved it by winding up in hospital.  

I was up in Hamilton recently, and spent time with a couple who have two teenage daughters. When the husband questions his health, as he has had good reason do so lately, the three females in his establishment tell him not to fuss so much. He hasn’t even got a son to back him up.

Perhaps all we men are looking for is a little sympathy, a little mollycoddling in our state of ill repose. Perhaps we  hope for a little more understanding from women, that in one area at least they’ll realise we’re the weaker sex.

As for the idea that men’s skin is thinner than women’s, it appears I was misinformed. In general, men’s skin is approximately 20% thicker than women’s, is tougher in texture, and though its thickness declines with age, it does so at a more even rate than women’s. On the other hand, women have a tendency to be more immune to common illnesses. ‘Women generally mount a more robust, innate and adaptive immune response against viral, bacterial, fungal, and parasitic infections,’ says Google’s AI, quoting, or paraphrasing some study on the Net. (We hope.)

It’s slightly puzzling to me why I referred to the machine I typed on as a word processor, both here and in two other columns: here and here. It was a computer; we’d debated about getting a word processor, when such things existed, and thankfully decided against what would have proved to be its limitations. (Thanks to my wife’s insistence, mostly.)

 

 

Phraseology

 First published in Column 8 on the 14^th August, 1991

 Back in 1981, a marvellous phrase was sprung on the nation by one Peter Thomas Mahon. He said, amongst other things, that some of the Erebus evidence was ‘an orchestrated litany of lies.’

Because the phrase so hit the mark, it perhaps had the seeds of self-destruction inherent in it. In fact, now that every writer and his brother uses it to describe all manner of things from a schoolboy fib to a prisoner’s plea, its value has plummeted further and further.

By rehashing a well-chosen phrase, those who abuse it merely emphasise their own poverty of expression. Isn’t it a pity some phrases that are so identified with a particular event can’t retain their individuality?

Mahon’s phrase isn’t the only case in point.

The as-yet-undefeated Saddam Hussein, (whom I managed to call Mr Hussein on a previous occasion when he is, as I was smartly informed, Mr Saddam), used a fearsome expression to describe the war that he’d decided he’d win. It was to be ‘the mother of all battles.’

Didn’t that send a shiver up and down your spine? Why it should, anymore than ‘an orchestrated litany of lies’ should have contained such forcefulness, is beyond the realms of explanation and off into the metaphysical.

(Run that by me again, Stanton?)

Now a curious thing evolved. After the battle, Mr Saddam’s phrases turned around and mocked him. Instead of the ‘mother of all battles’ that he intended, he received a sound thrashing – though not sound enough to knock him right off his pedestal. After that the phrase no longer chilled the bone; it merely made you laugh.

What on earth am I trying to get at here? Just this: before the budget (which I recently so succinctly discussed), dear Ruthie adapted the same chilling phrase to her own creation; only she initially used it tongue-in-cheek. (A fact which seems to have bypassed those critics who didn’t hear her saying the words on the telly.)

Unfortunately for Ruth, this now belittled phrase picked itself up again, and gave its new user a push in the moosh. This budget was in no way the mother of anything, unless mothers have become harsh creatures who don’t care about their kids.

Heinemann’s Dictionary of NZ Quotations has a couple of sentences from a man called William Yate, a chiropractic who wrote in 1835, ‘It is not true, as represented in a recent publication, that New Zealand mothers eat their own children. This is too horrible, even for them!’

Mr Yate my have been playing the ironic a little strongly here, but perhaps if he were alive today, he might adjust his words and say, ‘It is true that New Zealand mothers eat their own children. One has just done so!’

I didn’t intend to write about the wretched budget; it just kind of snuck in. But now that it’s here, let me add a little light matter to all this weightier stuff.

My budget-weary eyes brightened when I noticed in the Otago Daily Times business pages, the aptly named New York credit agency Standard and Poor giving its state-side opinion on our budget. (What is a credit agency anyway?)

The name Standard and Poor (who were they?) so tickled my fancy I’d like to suggest we adopt it to cover New Zealand’s up-and-coming non-rich classes. It’ll be appropriate, after all, because soon the only way most of us will have a hope of surviving will be on credit.

Judge Peter Mahon

 A typical Crowl piece that starts off with one idea and winds up somewhere else altogether.