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.

 

 

God takes notice...

 In one of the Psalms that King David wrote, he asks God: What’s so important about human beings that You take notice of them?

Why does God take notice of us? 

Each one of us is barely an atom in our own solar system. And our solar system itself, when compared to the vastness of the Milky Way, is like a blade of grass on the continent of Africa. 

When it comes to the Universe you’d think we’d count for nothing. So when we think of the immensity of God’s Being compared to us, why does He take any notice of us? 

We’re talking about the Creator of everything we know and a great deal more besides. How can a Being with a mind so vast as to create the Universe care in the least little bit for us? 

And yet His Word in the Bible says He does. He doesn’t just see us as nine billion bodies on a tiddly planet, each one indistinguishable from the other. He knows each of us personally. 

In Psalm 139 we’re told that God knows:

When we sit down or get up,

What we’re thinking about at any given time,

What we do in our daily lives. 

He knows what we’re going to say before we say it.

He knew us before we were born, while we were being formed in the womb.

He knows down to the micro-second how many days we will live on the earth.

He has so many thoughts about us that they vastly outnumber the sand. 

In other words, He cares enormously about each and every one of us. 

God, who is the centre of all things, cares about every moment of our lives. Let’s keep this in mind today, and thank Him for His great care and concern.

Courtesy Jamie MacPherson, Wikicommons 

 

Libraries

 First published in Column 8, on the 7^th August, 1991. This version is slightly altered from the original.

 During the recent Dunedin Competitions I sat in a large room I hadn’t been inside for years. I ran my eye over a quiet corner where I’d spent half my childhood reading books on film until I could tell you everyone who directed this and everyone who acted in that. The shelves from which I’d taken the books were still there, but their worn brown boards are now bare, apart from a couple of bland pot plants.

The room used to be part of the old library. Now I know I’m always going on about libraries, but I’ve got to talk about something in this column, and who wants to mention rugby league ever again?

Sitting there I recalled the days when I was a shining, morning-faced schoolboy, creeping up the stairs and into the room so that the harridan of a librarian wouldn’t see me. Not only did she insist on silence from schoolboys, we also had to remove our caps in her presence.

The New Zealand room ran off the main area. It was years before I summoned up the courage to sneak a look inside. When I was little, several of us nosey altar-boys snuck upstairs in the parish priest’s presbytery – and got caught. I had something of the same feeling about venturing amongst the New Zealand books.

In due course I came to know every nook and cranny in the larger room. One nook was the little listening cupboard under the stairs, where there wasn’t enough space to swing your satchel. When I became a working man I used to spend untold hours eating my lunch in that close little cockpit while discovering the library’s vast resources of recorded music.

No doubt the harridan would have bailed me out for dropping crumbs in her inner sanctum, but she well retired by then.

Every inch of the old library was utilised: on the landing outside the chief librarian’s office were housed the theatre magazines, including Plays and Players, which in those days used to contain complete playscripts. I can remember standing there, (cap in hand), shifting my weight from foot to foot, soaking up A Man for All Seasons.

Down on the next landing, which extended over the main entrance then, were what was viewable of the books A H Reed had collected. Because the area was so small, these treasures were squashed up into glass cases, hardly able to be seen properly.

The library had a summer feel about it. One impression is of sunlight pouring into the large back room on the ground floor. (The children’s library, on the other hand, which I discarded after I’d considered I’d read everything of interest, always seemed to be like the land of Narnia, in a permanent state of winter.)

Incidentally, that sense of sunlight is lacking in the new library, which has been designed under the quite reasonable philosophy that books and light don’t go together. Somehow they survived in the old place, including those in the harridan’s upper room with its vast skylight.

The old library had warmth too. The polished wood surroundings and staircases gleamed, and perhaps because the reading public and the books were all squashed together, everything seemed cosier.

Now I’m not saying anything against the new library. In fact, I remember its opening as if it were yesterday.

I worked then in the Civic Centre right next door, and could hardly contain myself waiting for ten o’clock. My ten minute tea break stretched to half an hour while I raced up and down the stairs – including those that proved to be off-limits – taking in the immense sense of space, exploring everything I could lay my eyes on, trying to identify old friends (books, that is). In fact I was amazed there were enough books to go round. Where had they all been hiding in the old place?

I appreciate the new library for its roominess. But when occasionally I dream of libraries, the books, like cats on windowsills, purr in the sun, my sandwiches revolve at 33.3 rpm and the harridan smiles.

 

Mary Ronnie and Ada Fache - two of the Chief Librarians
I remember from my youth and childhood. 

I’m very unfair in this column to the librarian I refer to here as ‘the harridan.’ Libraries were quiet places in her time, and schoolboys were known to be noisy – especially en masse. I think the lady in question would have been Ada Fache, but I’m not one hundred percent sure, and from the photo above she doesn't appear in the least to be a harridan. It may not have been the City Librarian anyway, but some other staff member.

The Children’s Library was in a separate building about three minutes’ walk away. It was housed in a two-storey terrace house, and if the main library was short of space, the Children’s Library had no idea what space was. There were books in every conceivable place, like an old secondhand bookshop that’s sold a good deal less than it’s acquired. And it was dark.

 

 

 

In my hands

 The longest Psalm in the Bible, Psalm 119, has 176 lines. In one verse after another it focuses on the way in which we should live, that is, according to the commandments and instructions of our Father God. 

But every so often there’s a line in this Psalm which seems puzzling, almost out of place. One such line is, My life is continually in my hands. 

In whose hands? You’d expect the writer to say my life is in God’s hands. But no, he writes: in my hands. 

How can that be? Surely one of the consistent statements of the Bible is that we should give our lives into God’s hands, not try and run our lives our own way. 

Even though God does allow us to live as though we had control of our lives, He doesn’t recommend it. Back in one of the first five books of the Bible, when the people of Israel were about to enter the Promised Land, their leader Joshua warned them about not going off in their own way, doing their own thing.

After explaining what will happen to them - both if they didn’t live according to God’s laws, and if they did - he says, Choose you this day whom you will serve.

Even though God brought them out of slavery in Egypt, they were still given a choice as to whether to follow Him. Their lives were in their hands.

It’s a decision we all have to make, on a daily basis. Are we going to do what we want – or what God wants? 

However, the line back in Psalm 119, doesn’t just consist of my life is continually in my hands. There’s a second line, a kind of answer to the first, which says, But I do not forget Your law. That is, of course, God’s law. 

So we might say My life is continually under my control, but I need to choose who I’m going to serve. Is it me and things I idolise, or is it the one true God?

A verse from Psalm 119

The budget

Unusually, the Editor of the Star Midweek gave me a little promo on the front page of the paper – or else he had a little gap to fill - and decided to introduce my column thus:

Mike Crowl in his Column 8 today writes about the budget; well, sort of writes about the budget; well, would you believe almost writes about the budge on…Page 2.

()()()()()()()()()

The budget

A friend asked me if I was writing about the budget. (I hadn’t thought about it.) Without waiting for a reply, he answered his own question: Well, I don’t suppose it’s all that funny, anyway.

So I’m half-heartedly writing about the budget which, funny or not, by the time you read this will have already banged or whimpered into our lives.

Firstly, I’m pleased to see from the Listener’s alternative budget that I’m not classed in the wealthy bracket anymore (in spite of the untold millions I earn from writing this column each week).

In fact, our size of family doesn’t even make it on to their charts. And it’s not because we have seventeen kids either.

I’d better explain. After my wife and I had our first child it became a standing joke between us that when anyone asked how many kids in total we were having, we’d say, seventeen. Even our Catholic friends turned pale.

We didn’t make it. Blame it on a lack of stamina, or too much writing of Columns Eight, or the high-chair falling apart, or running out of nappies - when it comes to a large family we hardly hit the mark.

There’s something to be said for a large family, though. (I haven’t been able to find out what it is, so I’ll carry on.) Older moviegoers will remember Clifton Webb as the indomitable father in the film, Cheaper by the Dozen. He claimed it was more economical to have a dozen kids and proved it time and again by fronting up to bemused shop-keepers and asking for discounts.

I didn’t see the film, but I did read the book. Practically all I can recall about it now was that the father, a time and motion study man, insisted it was speedier to do up his shirt buttons from the bottom, instead of the top. He would have made a successful politician, I think.

Oh, well, back to the budget. I see one of the economists in the Listener thinks we need more people in the country to make the economy work. I’ve held this same despised theory for years – although, like any economist worth his salt, I won’t be cornered about the details (and now Mr Birch is even coming round to my way of thinking).

Surely if more people come into the country (preferably with some ready cash) then there’ll be a need for more facilities and goods, and, in spite of what pessimists would say, more employment. New Zealand’s present immigration policy seems to be like a person who digs a moat round his castle then pulls up the drawbridge – and wonders why he feels cut off. No doubt some bureaucrats would say of the immigration policy that it’s all right here, but I can’t agree.

There’s probably an optimum figure at which things cease to work well, but at three and a half million I don’t think we’ve reached it. We’re already suffering in the South Island from an exodus north – why not open up some of our endless acres to the bodies standing shoulder to shoulder overseas? They’d be glad to have some personal space.

Oh well, back to the budget.

More people, more pollution, some would say. One scientist writes that because of pollution and jammed roads and motorway costs, bigger cities are now forcing drivers to leave their cars at home. People have to use public transport. It’ll come here, no doubt.

And built into that carless age we have a solution to unemployment. Everyone who’s anyone will have to take a bus, or a train – remember trains? Believe it or not, there’ll be buses going everywhere you want to go, instead of just where they think it’s economical.

Won’t that make the bus drivers glad? (They might celebrate by turning the lights back on in the buses so that when we’re travelling we can read again.)

I was going to get back to the budget, but unfortunately, having fewer pages to work with than our Ruthie, I seem to have run out of room.

 

Clifton Webb with some of his dozen children

This column probably shows why it was a good idea I never took up the role of an economist. Not that anyone asked me to. Since 1991 New Zealand’s population has increased to over five million, still no large number, since many cities in the world have the same population. And while we have a lot more cars, our roads are hardly jam-packed.

Unfortunately there has been a change in thinking about immigration, but not, I feel, a wise change. Instead of inviting people who had some money behind them, we’ve taken in a number of people who have nothing and who also bring their families with them – who have nothing – and we find them houses (somehow, even though houses are in short supply) – and we maintain them until they get on their feet. In spite of this, many immigrants prove to be practical and entrepreneurial citizens; a number do not, unfortunately.

As for stopping people bringing cars into cities, the powers that be eventually came up with a seemingly credible reason why we shouldn’t: climate change, and the damage cars’ emissions  was doing to the planet. So parking spaces are increasingly removed in cities, replaced by cycle lanes. Some cities are amenable to cycles, since their mostly flat. The city I lived in when this column was written was built on seven hills (supposedly) and cycling was only of value to people who stayed in the flat parts of the city, or who were excessively energetic.

 

 

Thankfulness

 My granddaughter recently texted me to say: I stop and think about how important it is to enjoy our time and be grateful for what I have, so I have been really focusing on just being present and thankful each day at the moment.

I responded with the question: who are you being grateful to?

Can we express gratitude without there being a recipient of our gratitude?

I’ve been intrigued to see ads appearing occasionally in the newspaper asking, ‘What are you thankful for?’ They show a man thinking about things he might be thankful about.

I was interested to know where these ads originated, and found that they come from The Thankfulness Project. This is run from a website called Be Great.

The Thankfulness Project focuses on mental health. Its aim is to help people get past their issues with themselves and look outwards.

The question I ask when I see the Thankfulness ads is the same one I asked my granddaughter. Can we actually be thankful without having someone to thank? It feels to me a bit like we’re thanking in a void, or just inside our own heads, as if we’d received a birthday present from our parents, took it outside and said to no one in particular, Thank you! Thank You!

I’m not sure that the parents would feel their gift was being acknowledged.

Being thankful is something that God’s Word, the Bible, continually encourages us to do. But unlike the Thankfulness Project, the Bible shows us who to be grateful to, that is, the One who made us, and who gives us everything in creation to enjoy.

In more than one place, the Bible says: Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, and his mercies towards us are ongoing and forever.

Stuart Townend, one of the best Christian hymn writers of today, wrote a song called, My Heart is Filled with Thankfulness. In the last stanza he writes:

My heart is filled with thankfulness
To Him who reigns above;
Whose wisdom is my perfect peace,
Whose every thought is love.

Just as the child should thank his or her parents for their gifts, so we should thank Our Heavenly Father for His many gifts to us. This is good not just for our mental health, but our spiritual health.

Stuart Townend, from the In Christ Alone UK tour.
Courtesy Getty Images

Being had on (having someone on...)

 First published in Column 8 on the 24^th July, 1991

 I recently overhead a conversation at the library – my second home.

‘We’re only having you on,’ the librarian said with some amusement, after having found she’d unintentionally convinced a lady that she’d have to pay a fee to join the library.

But the lady was oblivious to the joke – somehow it had passed her by.

I mention this not to condemn the librarian in any way – librarians are amongst my most helpful acquaintances – but to comment on the fact that it’s only in the last few years that I’ve understood how great a divide separates the two peoples of the world: those who appreciate being had on and those who don’t.

When I was a callow youth, I spent my first several months in London blissfully having everyone on in a typical Kiwi fashion. Only after a portly Welsh baritone came to me one day and told me that not everybody understood I was only joking did I reconsider how I put things.

To be quite honest, I was amazed. Everybody I’d gone to school with – or nearly – and certainly all my family regarded having other other people on as a normal part of human interaction.

And having people on is so ingrained I find it hard to stop. I’m addicted to it: I have to test everyone out. Some people click immediately. Others stare blankly, because what you’ve said to them is so blatantly silly they wonder why an apparently intelligent person could have opened his mouth and said it.

I can often tell from people’s body language what their reaction will be and that it would be wiser to leave them alone, but even then I’ll risk it.

Most New Zealanders can be had on, unless they’re in the midst of some trend that requires everything to be taken very seriously. Yuppies and Dinkies (double-income, no kids) possibly fall into this category, as do people who are having guilt trips about our ancestry.

In spite of what the Welshman said, many English people can be had on. My wife and her family are prime exponents of the art. The out-laws, as the rest of us call ourselves, vary somewhat in our ability to respond, from the reasonably aware like myself to those who adopt the cold fish approach.

I don’t find, however, that many Americans enjoy having the mickey taken out of them.

My theory about that is as follows: the English have been around so long they can afford to be had on; they’ve survived the Norman Conquest and Hitler and having their crisps mucked about with by the EEC.

The average New Zealander enjoys being had on because we’re still like a nation of kids, finding out how to pronounce each other’s language, and either overdoing it or doing it undone.

The Americans, however, have discovered that they now have culture with a capital C. After all, they invented some real art forms, like jazz and Westerns and the Simpsons, and people are beginning to release that they’re a force to be reckoned with. They’re out to save the world.

This makes them more likely to take themselves seriously. Someone coming along and trying to have you on, is just not on!

Here’s a totally irrelevant afterthought. Has anyone considered doing a thesis on the etymological roots of the phrase ‘to have on?’ I’m sure it’s a subject that would keep an otherwise unoccupied English major occupied for years.

 

The photo has little to do with my subject, but it's 
delightful to see Princess Anne enjoying herself. 
Courtesy: Ian Livesey

Since I wrote this thirty-four years ago, nothing’s changed. I’m as bad as ever at having people on, or kidding them, or taking the mickey out of them. Though I’ve never learned exactly what the mickey is…

 

 

 

Aliens

First published in Column 8 on the 17^th of July, 1991

One of the most difficult statements not of a third kind that I’ve closely encountered in the last week related to the 22^nd annual gathering of the Mutual UFO Network.

Stanton Friedman, a physicist, but plainly not a plain-speaking on, said, ‘Most people believe in UFOs, but most people believe that most people don’t believe in UFOs.’

Run that by me again, Stanton?

Visitors from out space have been the ‘in thing’ for several decades, helped along by Hollywood, television, a burgeoning sci-fi market, and people who either really have seen things from outer space or dreamed them up. People such as Debbie Toomey, who tells the story of being abducted by aliens back in 1983.

I’m not one to scoff at beliefs in UFOs. Modern physicists’ theories about the universe are far more incredible, anyway. Nor do I have any great trouble with there being a possibility of inhabited planets somewhere else in the immense reaches of space.

More to the point, I find it odd to think that aliens would be interested in visiting us. Would they really travel not just the length of our otherwise uninhabited solar system to find us, but billions of miles from their own home?

Encouraged by films such as Star Wars we have these marvellous ideas about the speed of space travel, what with time warps and skipping through light years. When it’s only a story, we don’t have to explain how mankind – or any other kind – is supposed to have developed skills sufficient to travel through the limitless reaches of space. (Anyway, most space stories are about something much less subtle altogether – cops and robbers.)

If aliens did turn up here, what would our reaction be? People would either tend to keep quiet about it, because the aliens were so out of the ordinary, or feel threatened by them. These two have been the staple of stories as widely different as ET and It Came From Outer Space. It’s what you’d expect.

To be honest I don’t think aliens would normally make their presence widely known – they’d only have to take one look at our planet to realise that we don’t treat anyone who smacks of ‘difference’ too well.

The most alien being ever known to have visited this world arrived in very unpublicised circumstances. During his stay he managed to keep out of the limelight as much as possible, even though his actions made that difficult. He often told people not to talk about what he’d done, and when they did anyway, he tended to retreat into the mountains.

Many of the top dogs felt exceedingly threatened by him: in fact, the ruler of the day tried to wipe him out within a year or two of his arrival and massacred a number of innocent babies in the attempt. Typical reactions towards an alien.

When he did come out in the open and explain his ‘mission,’ as you might call it, he had exactly the same response from people that alleged aliens still have.

Unfortunately, for the most part people didn’t want to hear his words, or believe what he had to say, and, as in so many alien stories, they attacked him and eventually killed him. This alien did something truly spectacular – he came back to life, and has had a major impact on the world and its inhabitants ever since.

Of course you have to believe the story.

What I find strange in all these current discussions of aliens is how so many people who find the story of Christ incredible can cheerfully swallow all manner of nonsense about anything else.

 

Poster from the 1953 movie It Came From Outer Space

A couple of quotes relating to Debbie Toomey – also known as Kathy (or Kathie) Davis. The sources are in the links at the beginning of each paragraph.

The argument Ufologists make about the physical reality of abduction experiences has been well expressed by Bruce Maccabee in a recent letter in the Bulletin of Anomalous Experience, a newsletter I publish for mental health professionals and others interested in abductions. Though Maccabee acknowledged that "to date most abduction experiences are not accompanied by evidence that could establish a physical reality, e.g., physical effects on the environment or even independent witnesses," he pointed out that some are:
Of particular interest are the abduction cases in which there is a continuum between the apparently objective experience of seeing a UFO (bright light or structured flying object) and the abduction experience itself. The case of Kathy Davis (Debbie Toomey) in Budd Hop kins' book Intruders is an excellent example. Physical phenomena recorded in the ground in her back yard (a sizeable area in which the grass was killed, the soil seemingly sterilized because grass didn't grow back for a long time) during the abduction experience, plus the recollections of other members of her family at the time provide a considerable amount of evidence that something "real and physical" (whatever that means!) occurred during the abduction. (Maccabee, 1992, p. 1)

and

In Intruders (1987), Hopkins provides the reason behind the tracking of humans. The book centres on the experiences of Kathie Davis, who claimed upwards of a dozen abduction experiences since childhood. During Davis’s experiences, the “Grays” performed repeated gynaecological examinations. Under hypnosis, Davis eventually recovered memories of the aliens impregnating her and subsequently removing the foetus. In a later encounter, the beings showed her the result of this experiment: a half-human, half-Gray daughter. She described the being as having big, blue eyes; pale skin; a tiny mouth; and a head that was larger than normal (p. 223). Based on Davis’s memories, Hopkins concluded that alien abductions are part of a long-term extraterrestrial breeding experiment.

Hopkins, B. (1987). Intruders: The incredible visitations at Copely Woods. New York: Ballantine. Hough, P. (1989).

 

A night to remember

 First published in Column 8 on 10^th July, 1991

Before Christmas I wrote that some of the city’s historic events get bypassed in the news. Today I’m under obligation to mention one such occasion, though perhaps it should have been forgotten – and quickly!

 As I’ve said previously, I accompany soloists in one of the town’s brass bands – in view of the following I won’t mention its name. One of the perks of the job is being invited to their annual dinner, this year held amongst dragon decorations in a Chinese restaurant.

At their annual dinners the various sections of the band each like to perform a little item. This year they were to do some lip-synching; in other words, pretending to play and sing along to a pre-recorded tape.

There were to be four judges for the evening, including, I found to my dismay, yours truly.

As judge I was supposed to give marks and make notes (read ‘rude comments’) about the performances. However, it isn’t easy to be witty between umpteen courses of a Chinese meal, the constant refrain of ‘it’s my birthday tomorrow’ from a slightly inebriated bandsman, and the spectacularly varied items. None of my uninspired judgements received an airing, for which I am grateful.

About midnight, when the waitresses were despairing of ever going home, the judges were summoned before the audience to speak. I was given a generous 48 seconds, but since public wit comes to me no easier than private, I gave them no more than a sentence – and I don’t mean life.

Now that I’m in the relaxed atmosphere of my word processor, I can say the items varied from the insane to the amazing to the ‘I’m only doing this because I have to, but I wish I was somewhere else.’

The baritones performed the perennial Along Came John. This enthusiastic pack of melodramatic hams were so boisterous you failed to notice their lack of synchronisation.

The second cornets mimed a song by the rock group, Queen. The energy level was over the top in this one, cardboard guitars and all, and the lead singer was almost as gross as the sound. The female guitarist seemed incapable of standing up or still. Nevertheless, whether supine or rampant, she continued to play her guitar.

The performance was rather surreal, really. By the time they finished it was hard to tell whether the antics of the actors aroused the screaming and shrieking on the soundtrack, or whether the latter was causing the painful gyrations of the performers. Either way it was a major assault on the senses.

Somewhat more refined was a performance of a piece by Diana Ross and the Supremes. Diana Ross was played by a gentleman with a wig definitely in need of a perm. (The wig, I mean.) A bit of electrolysis wouldn’t have gone amiss, either, on his/her moustache, or on all of the performers’ six hairy armpits.

Apart from these tonsorial matters the three artistes lip-synched excellently, the two back-up singers elegantly performing a complex choreography like up-market Hawaiian hula girls.

The most credible lip-synching came in the piece de resistance of the evening. It was also the only item in which the males managed to stay in male attire.

These gents performed Nessun Dorma with all the bravura of Signor Pavarotti and Co, and twice as much stress and body language, including constant deference to one another, and handkerchiefs to the brows. So strong was their performance, and so full of vocality, that it threatened to spill over onto the audience. I mention this because I was in the front row and the thought of three hulking tenors tumbling on you makes even the most equitable judge mindful of his mortality.

For better or worse, I lived to tell the tale.

 

French brass players clowning around in a street performance
courtesy: KimonBerlin

 The ‘baritones’ mentioned above are not singers but the bandsmen who play the instrument known as a ‘baritone,’ that is, in the middle range of the band.

A list-full

 First published in Column 8 on the 3^rd July, 1991. This is the original version of the column – a later rewrite for a now defunct revenue share site, Triond, appears elsewhere on this blog.

When the television series, The Story of English, was shown some time ago, I was so enthusiastic about it that I videoed it each week at a friend’s house – even though we didn’t even own a VCR. The series only confirmed what I think about the English language – that, like Muhammad Ali, it’s The Greatest.

However, in the course of much study over many years, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are some omissions in the language, even though it’s as ever-expanding as the Universe.

English lacks a number of what could be quite useful words, particularly in the suffix departments labelled ‘ful’ and ‘less.’

To get started, take the word ‘wrongful.’ We use this in relation to a person being unjustly arrested. Surely the word should be ‘wrongless.’ If you’ve done nothing wrong, then how can your arrest be described as wrong-full?

We think of certain kinds of marriage as ‘loveless.’ Why then don’t we call those marriages that last for 50 or 60 years – you know the Darby and Joan kind that get reported in the paper – as loveful? What about the person who wins several prizes at once in Lotto? Isn’t he luckful? (If ever I have occasion to possess a Lotto ticket, I can always be described by the more familiar ‘luckless.’)

And don’t we often wish that politicians were more speechless than speechful, letting us a truthful earful?

Isn’t it curious that we describe certain kinds of sunless rooms as airless, when in fact only a vacuum can be airless. All rooms are airful, though not all are sunful.

One of the most commonly used adjectives is ‘awful,’ which is a shortened form of what used to be a word of great strength: ‘awe-ful,’ meaning full of awe. It would be far more accurate to describe most awful things these days by the opposite adjective. We should be using that awkward little squashed down word, ‘awless.’

Turning to another awless area of life, dentists must  be pleased that we are toothful rather than toothless. Equally, chiropodists should be pleased with footful people – even if they are wearing footless tights or fingerless gloves. (Actually haven’t you thought how much more couth it would be to give someone a fingerful rather than a fistful? Though I’m usually pretty fistless when it comes to such occasions.)

I’m sure the peaceful would like to see a lot more hateless people around them, while most mothers would be grateful for willess children, rather than grateless and wilful ones. (When you use the word ‘willess,’ however, you can see why it’s never really made the grade.)

Actually I was being truthless when I said that I’d made a lengthy study of this matter. These endful curiosities first distracted me in the middle of listening one morning at church to an otherwise interesting sermon.

It was there that I saw we’ve managed to retain some twin words. Even in our less than Godful society we still have sinful and sinless, faithful and faithless, graceful and graceless, joyful and joyless, fearful and fearless.

How come all these kept their partners, when lustful has no lustless, or topless no topful, or bottomless no bottomful? (The mind boggles.)

I guess they were successful instead of successless.

P.S. I didn’t do all this on my own – my daughter helped me listfully.

 

Darby and Joan statue in the ward of Ancoats and Beswick, UK
courtesy Oliver Dixon

I don’t remember ever seeing the Story of English series again on those video recordings. No doubt by the time we got a VCR, they’d gone AWOL on us – or we'd unwittingly copied over them.

It occurs to me, now, that patients wearing footless tights would actually be helpful to a chiropodist, and the way I write about Darby and Joan marriages here makes it sound as though they're rare. But no longer: even my own marriage is into its 52nd year. 

In case the minds of American readers are boggling, they should note that the spellings are all British ones, as is normal in New Zealand, where this piece first appeared.

The value of creativity

 Some years ago I read Tom Wright’s Surprised by Hope, and found it a great book overall.   

One morning I was reading it in the bath and had a kind of ‘understanding’ about what he was saying.

He talks all the time about how Jesus’ Resurrection opens the door for us to be resurrected too, but not just that, it enables us to live in the new heaven and new earth that God will bring about in due course. There is hope both in the future and here in the now. The now suddenly has much greater importance than many Christians give it credit for. I knew this already, in a sense, because I’ve long been a believer in the fact that we will be resurrected and live in a home that is like this earth only much greater. We will truly be at home.

But something else hit me: over last few months I’d been ‘tidying up.’ Tidying up things like getting my favourite watch repaired, getting two pictures sorted out, one to be framed for the first time and another to be reframed. Tidying up my music, and thinking about printing out the drafts of two novels so I could do some real work on them, instead of letting them slide. Writing new music for another concert. Getting the computer fixed so that it worked properly. Having one of my daughters and her four-year-old son come to live with us long term, upstairs, filling the space in the house left after my mother’s death. 

I thought that perhaps I was doing all this because I had an unconscious premonition that I might not have long to live. Then it occurred to me (thanks to Mr Wright) that these are all things that show hope. I wasn’t doing all these because of gloom, or wanting to clean up things for an imminent death (even though that’s always a possibility), but because I had hope: the watch was worth fixing, the pictures were worth hanging, the computer was worth getting repaired and upgraded.

And it was wonderful that morning to have life in the house again, with a four-year-old banging and crashing around in the morning, because daylight saving hadn’t affected him yet! 

None of these things are ‘utterly’ important in any eternal terms – there are of course far more important things – but they were still important. 

The watch continued to convey meaning in itself because it was a particular gift from my wife.

The two pictures had special meaning for us: we’d bought one early in our marriage, as a couple. Only a few weeks before my revelation in the bath the picture had fallen off its hook in the middle of the night. It would have fallen on our heads if ‘by chance’ we hadn’t moved the bed to a different place in the room a week or two earlier.

The other picture was a detailed brass rubbing my wife did when she went to England with our oldest daughter. For many years it had been carefully rolled up to avoid creases. Now might be the time to show it in all its glory.

The creative things were important, not because they focused on me, I realised, but because they’re part of God’s output through me. He doesn't ‘use’ me as a channel: He’s given me the ability to create ‘on his behalf’ – to put it rather badly. 

Perhaps through Wright’s book, and through my own reflections, I was finally getting some sense of why I do creative things, and why they’re worth doing.