Chess

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

Before Christmas I said I preferred to take my exercise sitting down. Though I was talking then about hobbies, I do occasionally get into something slightly more strenuous.

Occasionally is the operative word. My occasional involvement means I’m never likely to excel at the game of chess.

My father was top of the class at this game in Australia during the forties and fifties. There’s no evidence that he passed any of his skill on to me.

However, the historic game of chess, not yet overtaken in its supremacy as the real sport of kings by that newcomer on the local scene, Go, continues to draw me on.

Playing Go at a tournament
courtesy AvantaR

Incidentally, Go, though it obviously has the capacity to make the brain work very hard, isn’t as
colourful as chess. The large number of black and white pebbles, each shaped the same, can’t compare with the varying characteristics of chess pieces and their individual way of moving.

Chess players can exercise some imagination, quite apart from the moves themselves. Some computer versions of the game, however, don’t give the players’ imaginations a chance.

Friends of ours play ‘Battlechess’ on their computer. Personally I think it’s rather gross and should be given a R13 rating.

Pieces literally slaughter each other – holding up the game in the process. The swords are sharp and wound mortally. The King produces a gun to slay his opponents.

As the Soldiers move about the board in their armour, there are great clunking sounds by way of accompaniment. Even worse sounds accompany the death rattles of the losers.

Who needs Gulf Wars?

I prefer my own computer version, Chessmaster, whose only irritation is that it can’t take any of my pieces without saying in a smarmy fashion, ‘Gotcha!’ If I remove one of its pieces, it laments, ‘You got me..!

Playing with the sound off is one possibility, though the sulky silence starts to get to you.

Disheartening though it is, I’ve come to the conclusion I’m never going to be tops in chess. I’ve read book after book to try and pick up a few clues – and that’s all I do pick up. The flights of brilliance escape me.

The latest was How to Think Ahead in Chess. The greatest amount of thinking ahead I did was when I thought the opening chapter claimed I’d never again have an opponent wipe me off the board – especially with the four-move checkmate.

However, I found soon enough that I was only going to win if my opponent followed the book too – and my opponents don’t.

The only one I could get to play the game my way was the Chessmaster – and then I had to set him up.

Three years ago, in spite of my lack of skill, three friends and I formed a team to play in the the Otago Chess Club’s monthly Chess for Fun series. (Chess for Fun?)

Chess for Fun allows you to be as social as chess players are ever likely to be. Occasionally the players do speak to each other, but most nights the noisiest part of the evening is the heavy concentrated breathing.

And sometimes I win. The occasional win does the old moral a bit of good.

It’s needed to compensate for the effort of bringing the self-esteem up to scratch again after a devastating defeat – by a child who’s young enough to be your grandson.

Playing chess during the pandemic
courtesy Sasmirido

I still play Chess, mostly with my older son, but we play it online these days at chess.com, since we live in different towns. I have played chess with his older son, too, but it’s not a good idea. He breezes through the game as though I was hardly involved.

My comments about Go are possibly still relevant, though I know that its adherents swear by the enormous skill required to play it well. I recently read a thriller by Robert Goddard (One False Move) in which Go featured as a major plot point. In this case playing Go against a computer was the focus, and whether the character who regularly beat the computer was a genius or not. (Incidentally, it turned out I’d already read this book back in 2020, and had forgotten the storyline completely – it’s perhaps not one of Goddard’s best.)

 

User Pays

First published in Column 8 on the 30^th January, 1991. In spite of my last paragraph, it’s possible that my understanding of economics really is at fault – depending on which economist you trust. The ‘tip’ mentioned early on is/was the local City-owned rubbish dump, or landfill, as it's now more euphemistically called.

It seems our city councillors have a desire to follow in the Government’s footsteps with the user pays approach to life that’s bedevilled us in recent years.

Don’t get me wrong, I think user pays has its merits, as long as it’s applied fair and square. I won’t get on my hobby horse – today – about the unfairness of many user pays ideas that former government departments now take.

But let’s look at the way our city fathers have applied user pays principles to a couple of local matters.

Firstly, the tip. At a recent meeting, much to their amazement, the councillors found the tip hasn’t made the large amount of money they expected since they brought in the new user-pays-type charges.

I’m more amazed that piles of rubbish haven’t appeared in various bush areas round the city. In fact, I think Dunedinites have been very self-controlled in regard to rubbish.

I have seen a few people trying to drop large bags of refuse into the bins meant for ice-block papers outside shops, but nothing else.

Wherever it’s all going, it certainly isn’t pouring into the tip in droves the way it used to, much to the consternation of the councillors.

So what’s been the city’s reaction? Rather than being pleased that people are re-thinking their dumping habits, these worthies have decided to put up the charges!

Somehow or other it means that if people don’t use a service, then the answer is to charge more.

I should have guessed that would be the reaction. The Council has already been practicing this approach in another department for some years. I mean public transport.

People aren’t using the buses, says Councillor A. Put up the prices! says Councillor B.

Huh? says A, won’t that make them even less likely to use the buses? User pays, says B. (Through the nose, was it?)

Fewer people are using the buses, says Councillor A. Cancel some buses on all routes, says Councillor B.

What? asks A. Won’t that force people to bring more cars into town? Yes, says B, but then all those lovely parking meters we’ve littered over the landscape will get used. And the revenue from parking meters is much greater than the revenue from the buses.

Hang on a minute, you councillors. Let me make sure I understand what you’re saying. If a shopkeeper has wares he can’t sell, he puts the prices up. Is that it?

Of course he doesn’t – market forces will insist he puts the price down – or go out of business.

Well, how come that doesn’t work with businesses run by the city?

Wouldn’t it make sense to put the price of entry into the tip down, and encourage people to use it, rather than encourage them to tip stuff just anywhere, which is what’s going to happen soon?

And wouldn’t it make sense to put the price of bus fares down to the lowest possible level, add more buses, and thus encourage people not to use their cars? (Especially if we have a possible oil crisis?)

I went to an economics class a few years ago, and I know I was a bit slow at it. Sometimes, however, I wonder if the City Council and I work from totally different textbooks.

Landfill
Courtesy Colin Babb UK

Update in 2025. The tip is now an apparently successful commercial operation, but many other things have changed in terms of rubbish collection – most notably recycling. The City Council no longer runs the buses. For some reason the Regional Council does, and they don’t seem to be a lot more successful at the job than the local Council was.

Exclusive Interview

 A spoof piece published in the Dunedin Star Midweek, on 23^rd January, 1991. This wasn’t a Column 8 piece, but appeared on the third page of the newspaper under Community News.

 Exclusive Interview

Saddam Hussein in 2004
photo courtesy: jjron

 After his last ditch attempt to avert war by visiting Saddam Hussein, the United Nations Secretary-General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, came back suggesting Mr Hussein needed a psychiatrist.

Of course, in the States, everyone who’s anyone has their own highly paid analyst. Analysts so highly paid, no doubt, that they don’t have time for preliminary interviews these days, so they leave the initial questions to their juniors.

Some of the answers Mr Hussein might give are as follows:

Junior: Don’t you feel there’s something wrong with walking into your neighbour’s place and taking over his property?

SH: Nobody would have noticed if the Kuwaitis hadn’t complained. I blame them.

J: But what about taking so much of their property back to Iraq?

SH: What’s theirs is mine, and what’s mine is my own.

J: So you’d feel quite comfortable about someone coming and taking over your home, kicking you out, and taking most of your goods back to their place?

SH: We Arabs have always been more relaxed about property than you Westerners.

J: Didn’t you feel the sanctions were going to affect your own people?

SH: My dictionary says sanction means I am authorised to do what I please. I know of no other meaning.

J: With all these diplomats visiting you to speak about peace, did you really think you’d lose face by backing down?

SH: Who said anything about losing face? It’s losing all the stuff we took from our newest province that bothers me.

J: Many peace activists round the world have protested about their countries going to war…

SH: Give peace a chance, I say.

J: But you began all this business by invading another country.

SH: No, you have it all wrong – we needed a change. We were bored with invading Iran.

J: I’m told you see yourself as another Nebuchadnezzar.

SH: An illustrious forebear of mine.

J: You’re not afraid that you’ll wind up like him, eating grass for seven years, like a beast in the field?

SH: An ancient piece of Israeli propaganda.

J: Some people have said you’re another Hitler, and that if you’re allowed to do what you want, you’ll annex everything you can.

SH: A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

J: And others say the Palestinian question is just a red herring.

SH: Why bring the communists into this?

J: You seem very adept at evading the issue.

SH: Evading, invading – it’s all the same to me.

J: Don’t you feel concerned at leading thousands of your people into a war in which most of them might be killed?

SH: Yes, I find it difficult to sleep at night…

J: I knew it.

SH: …tossing and turning, trying to decide where to go after Kuwait.

J: After…?

SH: Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia…the world’s my oyster.

J: So dumb

SH: Who’s sane?

Sensitivity

 First published in Column 8 on the 5^th December, 1990. 

A piece that has dated, and yet is still up to date – for different reasons. The job scene has improved somewhat, but wages, for many people, aren’t enough to pay for their weekly outgoings. Those in power, and the wealthy, still have little conception of how the poorly paid live –I may not be that clear about it myself, since in recent years I’ve been blessed to have had enough to live on. In most cities we now have people sleeping in cars, and keeping their worldly goods in the same place. Some people live in tents in public parks. The homeless far outnumber the availability of beds in homeless accommodations.

And much more…

 If there’s an expression I hate it’s ‘dole bludgers.’ And during the course of the recent elections it was used again and again – often by the party that got in.

I’ll tell you in a minute why I hate it.

There may well be people who rip off the system. I used to work in an office where we occasionally saw people who did just that – and the office wasn’t Social Welfare.

But they were vastly in the minority.

And when I see thousands upon thousands of people out of work through politicians’ disagreements over economic policy, I know that only a small minority of them are likely to be so-called dole bludgers.

The rest are on the dole through no fault of their own and they’re the ones I get concerned about.

I’ve been on the dole myself, and fairly recently. A couple of years ago I had to resign from my position, for reasons which aren’t important here. Suffice to say, I couldn’t get another job as easily as I’d expected.

So I know what it’s like to wake up each morning with some expectancy, only to have your hopes dashed when you look at the minimal number of ads in the paper.

I know what it’s like to trot down to the Labour Department and see the pathetic number of jobs advertised on the board, and then, when you do find something possible, not even to get an interview, because you’re screened off by the department itself.

I know what it’s like to hear that there are plenty of jobs around – but they’re just not advertised. So you start calling on people. And a more demoralising process I can’t imagine.

And I know what it’s like to give up, with tears, and decide it isn’t worth it anymore – there just aren’t enough jobs to go round.

Towards the end of my months of unemployment a compassionate friend offered me a part-time job. Doing that gave me some hope again.

A few months later I was even more blessed to be offered a job which I really enjoy. But it took months for the feelings of insecurity to wear off.

I know that jobs like that don’t turn up for many people these days – I’m now one of the lucky ones.

So I get angry with those in the political arena who don’t really appreciate how much it costs to survive in our present society, not just financially, but emotionally.

I wrote to several politicians a year or so ago, when they had one of their perennial income hikes, and expressed concern that they were being given such a large raise when so many people in the country were suffering from unemployment.

The answer I received from one of them – he’s now the Prime Minister, I’m unhappy to say – was that if he’d paid attention to all the letters he’d received every time he got a raise, he’d still be living on an income of $8,000 a year.

The trouble is, when you’re living on an income vastly exceedingly $8,000 you quickly forget the desperation caused by not having enough to go round, and you’re quick to make blanket accusations about all those who have to live on the dole, like it or not.

The dole barely allows you to survive – just to pay the rent or mortgage may eat up nearly every cent you get.

So please, you politicians, let’s have a bit of sensitivity when it comes to referring to those who haven’t the [good] fortune to live in your shoes.

Some days in a column like this it’s difficult to be light-hearted.

Men out of work during the depression

 The figure of $8,000 mentioned by Mr Bolger would have been what he earned back in the 1970s when he was first in Parliament, I’d assume. The current Prime Minister earns half a million a year, which, surprisingly, is a pittance compared to what the CEO of Fonterra earns: just under six million per annum.

Things geographical

First published in Column 8 on the 28^th November, 1990

I can’t say the Public Notices section of the newspaper is one I usually pay much attention to. I should, of course, in case someone leaves me a substantial amount in their will.

However, on a recent lazy Saturday evening, a large notice by the NZ Geographic Board caught my eye, and not just because of the possible name changes to a couple of local beaches.

Browsing through this notice gave me more free entertainment than I’ve had in a long time. (Some would say I’m easily amused.)

It struck me that the Board appears to have difficulty with details. I suppose they have the excuse that they’re dealing with vast stretches of land. Thank goodness they don’t work on the remote reaches of Russia, or the Canadian prairies, or even the expansive Aussie outback.

After reading this public notice, I got the feeling someone gets easily muddled. Red Lagoon becomes Raupo Lagoon, and Raupo Lagoon becomes Red Lagoon. What?

As if to confirm our suspicions, we’re told that Belfry Peak is now to be called Steeple Peak because the name Belfry Peak was originally placed on the wrong one.

That’s the trouble when you have to do everything from behind a desk, with only a map to work on.

I guess it’s easy to confuse a steeple with a belfry. Still I haven’t seen any belfry-jacks lately, or bats in the steeple, have you?

This is only the beginning. We’re informed that the Board has decided that changing the spelling of one name will take effect from August 10, 1990.

Bit awkward when the notice doesn’t tell you that until October 26.

The South Auckland District has had a rash of fishing pool name changes.

Murphy’s Ruin becomes The Rip. Poor old Murphy. Seems as long as Murphy was the only one to fall in, no one else needed to worry. But because fishermen are a casual breed when it comes to risk-taking, they obviously needed to be warned that the pool wasn’t particular about who it swept away.

More puzzling is the change from The Whirlpool to The Straight. Unless nature’s been doing some restructuring, it seems a bit of a contradiction.

The once blandly named Cliff Pool has become Gordon Williams Pool. Seems like Gordon has commandeered the place.

Better than any of these, though, is the change from the Ladies’ Pool to Murray’s Mistake. (In lieu the ladies were allotted the Poplar Pool, now called Ladies’ Mile.)

Did Mr Murray dare to impinge upon the ladies’ private place of fishing?

It reminds me of a social error I made in England on an old-style train. At that time there were still special compartments reserved for ladies only.

Once, in my colonial ignorance, I attempted to enter one of these. The looks and hisses from the ladies were more than enough to convince me of my misdemeanour.

For me the Ladies’ Carriage had turned into Michael’s Mistake. Perhaps Mr Murray made a similar error.

 

Painting by Thomas Hemy entitled, The Wreck. 

There’s a fascinating news report about a shipwreck at Murray’s Mistake from 28^th July 1911. Murray’s Mistake is a headland in Canterbury, though it looks as if there may be more than one place of this name in New Zealand. 

 

Bits and Pieces

 First published in Column Eight on the 21^st November, 1990

 I intended this week to write about a certain international restaurant chain and its recent decision to stop using foam packaging in order to please its green customers.

However, by the time my wife had used here felt-tip censor’s pen there were more black holes in the article than in all the galaxies.

As if that wasn’t enough, two acquaintances told me my piece on How to read articles was mere burbling.

A schoolteacher, on the other hand, said he had to read it through twice to make sense of it. He said he seldom has to do that with anything in the newspaper. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

I guess all this comes under the category of reader-response, or friendly feedback.

Feedback was mostly why my wife’s felt-tip went so heavily to work. She didn’t feel we were in the position to face a libel suit from a company which boasts 11,000 restaurants world-wide.

(Of course, if anyone wishes to read the article, I’ll send them a copy for a small charge, say $25. That seems at least as valid an offer as a similar one by my forebear, George Burck.)

The other major piece of feedback I’ve had, since I’m on that subject, is the question of this column’s name. One or two people have asked why it’s called Column 8. (Well, one person has.)

I would have preferred to have had something like Crowl’s Cosy Corner, or Crowl’s Quiet Clippings, or Quaint Crowl Comments. As it happened, (fortunately, some of you may think), I was not given the choice.

Nor was I offered a choice of which portrait would be displayed in the top right corner. I am not actually bald or nearly-blind, as the photograph implies. However, to my dismay, people still recognise me from it.

Back to Column 8. It doesn’t get its name from being eight inches across the page from ‘THE Column.’ (I was born in the heady days before metrics were brought in, so if you want to know what that is in the new lingo, you’ll have to convert it yourself) – (20cm – Ed.)

Nor does it get its name from the fact that we have eight people in our family.

Nor, as far as my memory serves me, is it the eighth column to appear on this page.

It doesn’t refer in any sensible way to a rowing shell occupied by eight persons. Speaking of which, I was intrigued to find on the programme, Beyond 2000, that sporting scientists have discovered they can tell which people make the best rowers.

They experimented with a team of girls in Oz, and these kids took to the sport like ducks to water.

If only sports scientists had existed when I was a youth. I might not have wasted the better years of my life wondering what I was supposed to play.

I know it wasn’t rugby. I was so small I was always made hooker. But every time I got a knock, my nose bled all over the other players.

As for cricket, I was too short-sighted to see the ball coming.

Perhaps there really was some sport that would have suited me down to the ground. Then I might not have felt so out of the play in those sport-is-king days.

Too late. Back to column eight.

The title was the editor’s idea. The column is the eighth in the newspaper, if you count the seven on the first page. Pretty cryptic, huh?

 

Young rugby player looks as though he's broken his neck...

Of course, Column Eight, in consisting of the upper halves of two columns each week, was actually Column Eight and Nine. Bit too clunky a title, perhaps.

Unfortunately I don’t remember what George Burck’s offer was to the readers. He was the previous writer – and his column had a much more appropriate name (which I can’t now remember either).

What ‘THE Column’ was I have no idea. I doubt if it was called by that title – maybe I assumed everyone would know which particular column it was.

The ‘hooker,’ during the short time I played rugby, wasn’t one of the great hulking front row forwards of the present day, but a smaller person who could be lifted up and used as a kind of bat to kick the ball backwards or sidewards out to the bloke who passed it onto the backs. At least that’s how it appeared to me. I had very little idea of what the game was about.

Rugby players from 1904
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

A letter to the Editor in relation to this column:

Our columnist Mike Crowl doesn’t know it (yet) but from his comment today about his schooldays rugby I see that he has something in common with former MP Stan Rodger, and myself. Like Mike’s, my nose bled whenever it got a knock, usually about the first ruck, and soon my face, arms, and jersey were crimson. But it was able to turn this to considerable advantage as (a) it transformed my diminutive presence into a rather more fearsome-looking proposition, and (b) it discouraged all the opposition 14-year-olds who didn’t like blood from tackling me.

Stan Rodger had Mike’s other problem, short-sightedness. Stan and I were once in a King Edward Technical College team of substantial insignificance (none of your 1^st XV stuff here) and Stan’s value to the team lay more in his bulk than his speed – the latter of which he lacked to about the same degree as he did vision. A couple of us would be briefed each game to keep an eye on Stan and make sure he kept heading for where the play was, with the instruction to him of ‘when you get to the next ruck, fall on it.’ This usually had the effect of instantly moving the ruck about 10m towards the opponent’s goal line (or our own, depending on how well Stan had maintained his sense of direction.)

Stan’s other value came on the odd occasion that he found himself with the ball. He could build up quite a head of steam over 20m and be virtually unstoppable, and a try was usually ‘on’ as long as he had a couple of us on either side keeping him on target – rather like destroyer escorts flanking an aircraft carrier.

Sadly, I note that Stan never made it into the All Blacks. Perhaps it was his political aspirations that got in the way. Which all, of course, explains where the term ‘Sideline Stan’ really came from!

Penman.

 Penman, I think, was George Burck, the writer of the column that had appeared before Column 8 took over. 

On with the dance!

First published in Column Eight on the 7^th November 1990

 Some of the smaller historic occasions of 1990 passed by almost unnoticed in the hurly-burly of having had four Prime Ministers in a year.

The elections and the subsequent change of Government seemed to have chewed up everything else in their path. So it’s easy to overlook events that are important to a large number of people – even if there isn’t a politician in sight.

Down here in the real world, where people earn wages that are under $100,000 – considerably under! – there are other things to celebrate.

On Saturday night, at what I still think of as the Mayfair Theatre, I attended a performance in which something like 300 dancers of various ages went through their paces.

At one end of the scale there were the experienced performers who over the years have spent uncountable hours in practice.

Some of these ladies – there weren’t any men who’d lasted the distance – provided us with effortless classical movements that require graceful twisting and arching and standing on toes, all without the least sign of strain.

Others turned and leapt and bent and flipped in sharp, snappy modern movements, and made it all look so easy. If most of us were to try it, including yours truly, we’d be contorted after a couple of gyrations, and end up in traction.

They were exhilarating to watch.

And at the other end of the scale there were the littlies. Naturally whenever the tiniest of them appeared they caused a strange gushing sound to rise up out of the audience.

It wasn’t like the awful canned noise you hear on television comedies, where it seems as if the audience has been provided with an excessive amount of liquor before the show started. This was genuine pleasure from parents at watching the fairly disciplined efforts of their offspring as they did their best to look like real dancers.

I was going to say ballerinas, but that would exclude not only those whose skill is in modern dancing but also the three boys who took part in the show.

One of whom was my son. No, I didn’t make loud gushing noises every time he lifted his feet off the floor. But since I was in the second front row, and we could see each other, we did grin a lot.

So why was all this historic? This Dance Festival was the 30^th of its kind, which means that some of the teachers who had their pupils on display were once children in past performances themselves.

The man who initiated it all, because he was concerned that there was no outlet for the large amount of talent that existed back in 1960 – and still exists today – was Arthur Rackley.

Mr Rackley and his wife were on hand to present each of the teachers with Miss World-style sashes, and little gifts. After 30 years they’re still encouraging people to display their talents.

Not only their talents, but their professionalism. The old saying, the show must go on, was proved not once, but twice during the evening.

First we had a tiny ballerina flitting in and out amongst the rest – with a plaster cast on her arm.

And during a hectic modern dance, one young lady slipped and fell heavily to the floor.

For a painful moment it looked as though she’d leave the stage. Then she picked herself up, fought back the tears, and carried on dancing to the end, with the possibility of a broken arm.

Dancers from the Hathaway Academy of Ballet
photo courtesy of David Tribble

 

Yes, we really did have four Prime Ministers in 1990:

David Lange: Served as Prime Minister until August 8, 1989.

Geoffrey Palmer: Became Prime Minister on August 8, 1989, and served until September 4, 1990.

Mike Moore: Took office on September 4, 1990, and served until November 2, 1990.

Jim Bolger: Became Prime Minister on November 2, 1990, and served until December 8, 1997.

Photo from 2007 when it was called
the Westpac Mayfair. 

 

The Mayfair Theatre was a former picture theatre, beautifully decorated in the style that was usual to
picture theatres built in the first decade of the 20^th century. By the time I wrote this column it had had its name changed more than once as various organisations took over its running.

I had a long personal association with the place, being involved (as a pianist) in a number of operas, acting in several plays, and most illustriously (!) having my own musical produced there: Grimhilda! 

Hobbies

 First published in Column 8 on the 12.12.90

 When the Hillary Commission enthuses about getting up to Play Kiwi Sports I tend to remain in my seat. Sedentary occupations are more my style.

That’s not to say I’m lacking in energy. Several times I’ve taken up hobbies with a passion that swept aside everything in its path.

However, two things are a problem when it comes to me and hobbies: firstly my enthusiasm runs out. And secondly, usually faster, my money runs out.

I go like a bull at a gate into whatever hobby has taken my fancy, and for several weeks everything else gets low priority.

Food, I despise it. Fresh air, I haven’t got time for it. Company, who needs it?

And then I wake up one morning, and something seems to have gone out of life. The new day might be as bright as the last, but suddenly my hobby holds no joy for me.

Try as I might, all the weeks of super-charged energy dissipate. And the leftovers of my hobby litter the cupboards of my house.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that my money supply has run out about the same time.

My wife has a similar problem: ‘What shall I take up this year?’ she asks.

Since she’s a very practical person, and likes nothing better than using her hands to good effect, I suggest a variety of things I know will interest her.

Then she always ask the same question: ‘And where will I get the money?’

I had a stamp collecting binge once.

I dug out the elderly stamp album I’d acquired as a child expecting to find some rare and exceptionally valuable stamp had been sitting around waiting to be discovered. Instead I had to wade through page after page of Mao Tse-Tung and his revolutionaries almost obliterated by overprinting.

I’d loom and drool over expensive displays of stamps – then come home with the only one I could afford: a few cents worth of Ross Dependency.

Then there was my genealogy bit.

I filled pages of school note books with relatives’ names. I made an immense chart of ancestors courtesy of my mother’s memory, and foolishly let my daughter take it to school one day when they were doing family trees.

She left it on someone’s desk.

I searched back as far as I could without spending any cash, then came to the realisation that every birth certificate I’d need was going to cost me a fortune; all the relatives I wanted to trace had inconveniently died on the other side of the world.

A workmate proudly showed me his efforts in this direction. He had an album full of birth and death and marriage certificates and even some touched-up photos.

Over afternoon tea he told me how much he’d spent to gain a little bit of information. I don’t remember choking on my coffee but I think I might have dropped the remainder of my gingernut in it.

Unfortunately, the next generation already costs too much without spending any more on those dead and buried.

There must be some hobby I can afford.

I could collect pencils with trademarks on – I just can’t see the point.

 

USSR stamp notebook used by children in school to collect stamps
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Later, I did make some money out of stamp collecting by gradually selling off the newer items I’d bought at a bit of a profit.

And once the Internet came along, keeping a family tree was a much easier task than writing out large charts. With the help of a couple of cousins I managed to get a largish family tree online and this had elicited a number of enquiries over the years – not that I’ve often been able to help, but it’s usually brought some other information to light.

Crime-watching

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

 One policeman has recently been quoted as saying we shouldn’t tolerate foul language in public places. In his area they’re cracking down on people who speak obscenities in front of passers-by.

In line with current thinking that we all have to play our part in putting down crime, he recommended members of the public rebuke those who are openly foul-mouthed.

As a not-so-well-built and not-too-tall person, I’m a bit dubious about that.

You know what would happen if I went up to some great hulk who was swearing in the street and told him his language was not conducive to mental health?

He’d blast me with obscenities and profanities and lay me out flat.

It’s all very well saying we’ve got to play our part in reducing crime. When I see some of the replays of crims’ actions on programmes like Crimewatch, I’m glad I wasn’t on the spot.

For the moment I think I’ll stay cautious about approaching certain people to suggest they need to wash out their mouths with soap. Perhaps I just lack courage.

Courage is a quality that seems to arise when you least expect it. That couple in their eighties who beat off an intruder would no doubt have been the last ones to consider they had reserves of bravery. Perhaps it’s those hidden reserves the police are relying on.

I was driving through town on a Saturday night recently with a relative, Mrs F, when we saw three young men kicking someone on the ground. As we stopped at the lights, one of them gave a last kick – into the person’s face – before racing off.

My reaction was to drive on – in the story of the Good Samaritan, I’d probably have been classed as one of those who passed by on the other side.

Not so Mrs F. She told me to stop! I said I was already stopped, waiting for the lights. Next thing I knew, she was out of the car and racing over to the stationary figure.

I pulled into the kerb. Mrs F was down beside the man, seeing how he was. He wasn’t very good. His face was bleeding badly, like something out of a war movie.

Then we saw another figure by the wall, lying motionless. At first, on being instructed by Mrs F to see if he was all right, I thought he was dead.

However, he proved merely to be keeping out of harm’s way. Seems he’d also been kicked. When he finally got up and saw the extent of his father’s injuries, he opened his mouth and a flood of obscenities poured out.

Long-forgotten movie about a 
brave woman...

It certainly wasn’t the time to tell him to stop.

Mrs F, who doesn’t seem to get fazed by this sort of situation, yelled out to the taxi-drivers across the Exchange to call the police. She claimed later her knees were knocking but she didn’t have time to think about it.

Meantime she spent fifteen minutes calming the two guys down till the police arrived.

On another occasion she stood between two guys who were beating up a third outside a hotel and kept them at bay. Mrs F reckons it’s probably because she’s a woman that ruffians are less likely to have a go at her.

It’s probably because I’m a man that I think they’re more likely to have a go at me.

In the end I guess we don’t know how much courage we have until we really have to use it. Most of the time, for a lot of us, it’s easier to run the other way.

 

 How times change: nearly 25 years later and the country is so rife with crime and with angry humans (men and women) that it’s become very dangerous to get involved in street squabbles. What comes out of their mouths barely gets a look in. In fact, one brave man on a very public street in Auckland got himself killed trying to rescue a young woman from a violent man. When I was young, if a murder occurred anywhere in the country, there would be shock for days afterwards. Now it’s so commonplace it rarely gets a headline.

As for Mrs F. Well, I’ve no idea why I gave her a disguise. The lady in question was – and is - my wife, and on a number of occasions she has exercised bravery. Even today she’s still brave, though she’s a bit less liable to tackle big bruisers.

 

 

Recycling

 First published in Column 8, 20^th March, 1991

 In spite of all the green thinking infiltrating people’s brains I still feel we recyclers are in the minority.

I come from a recycling family: well, we’ve been into compost for generations. (Not quite literally, although there have been times when I’ve put on my gumboots to squelch unwilling plants and twigs down into the muck.)

Though compost is ingrained into our family’s consciousness, the gardener and I still disagree about what things can and can’t be put into it. She reckons orange peel has no place, nor tomato plants, or potato tops. I claim that once they’ve been chewed up and recycled by our myriad teams of slaters, springtails and worms they’ll do any piece of ground a power of good.

The gardener talks ominously about mould, however.

All that aside it’s taking a bit of time to get my kids into the recycling mode.

Till recently we had at least three places in our kitchen for no-longer-usables to go. Food scraps and leftovers went into the compost container; paper into the coal bin; and plastic into the rubbish. (Now that we’ve discovered both paper and plastic recycling outlets here in the city our kitchen has become even more complex.)

In spite of years of nagging and training – or should that be training and nagging? – the kids still throw apple cores and banana peels into the coal bin. This leaves a mess like black congealed custard.

They throw plastic into the compost bin, along with used Gladwrap – it’s got uneaten sandwiches in it, hasn’t it? I tell them the worms can’t hack it, but my concern about the worms hasn’t raised their environmental consciousness one iota.

Everything else, like empty baked bean tins and felt-tip pens with lost lids, ought to go into the rubbish bin. Do they? Of course not, they stay on the bench where they were last put, while everybody argues over who left them there.

When I see my family’s attitude to recycling – the gardener and I are the only ones who really take it to heart – I wonder how the general populace will go if in the future they have to separate various kinds of rubbish before tipping it.

I mean, if my kids can’t tell the difference between plastic and paper after years of hectoring, is it likely your average Joe will either? Can you visualise most of the population picking through their rubbish to separate out the plastic and the paper and the tin and the food scraps?

At least it would restore New Zealand to a classless society. Your nattily-suited Yuppies would be on a par with the tramps who pick their way through the rubbish bins in the Octagon.

So far the only interest any of my kids has shown in recycling has been in the collecting of aluminium cans. A couple of Sundays ago, the boys had a field day with the leftovers from the wine and cheese afternoon at Woodhaugh Gardens.

To give him credit, my older son has stated that he felt his motivation for collecting cans was not purely environmental. After all, he is getting cash for them.

I tell him his capitalist scruples are several cuts above another mercenary class of recyclers: American newshounds who pick their way through film stars’ rubbish bins – in search of scandals.

 

Yellow (recycling) bins ready for collection
Courtesy Bernard Spragg NZ

The ‘gardener’ was my mother, who lived with us for around twenty years. In the last decade we’ve been putting orange peel, tomato plants and potato tops into the compost with no ill effect.

Times have changed, of course. Now householders are expected to recycle all sorts of things. In many cities paper, cardboard, tin cans, plastic items etc go into a green bin, for collection; bottles go into their own separate box, food scraps into yet another bin and absolute rubbish into a red bin. Most of my kids now deal with this properly, but their own children…

And aluminium cans, which ceased to be cash-earners for kids sometime after this article was written and became part of the green recycling, are now back in favour as cash cows.

A letter from two school pupils appeared on the 26^th March 1991 in response to this column:

We read the ‘Column Eight’ article about recycling, in the Midweek, March 20. At Warrington school we have three rubbish bins. One is the tin bin – its rubbish goes to the skip. The second bin is called the paper bin – its rubbish goes to the incinerator. The third bin is called the compost bin – its rubbish goes to the hens. We have got eight hens, and if we put plastic or metal in their bin we know it would kill them. we know the incinerator won’t burn metal and if we burn plastic all the poisonous gases will affect the ozone layer. We think that Mike Crowl’s children should come to Warrington school so that they could get some practice with their rubbish skills so that his house rubbish goes in the right bin.

Ryan Beck and Jamie Davie

Door to Door

 First published in Column 8 on the 13^th March, 1991.

 ‘Good evening, I’m collecting for the Salvation Army.’ The man of the house holds the door open, laughs a lot, and waits while ‘Mum’ gets the money – out of her housekeeping.

An elderly widow uses my brief visit as an excuse to talk. She already has the money in its envelope. It’s only a matter of taking it down from its place on the kitchen mantelpiece near the teapot. That’s where all the envelopes go as they arrive in her letterbox.

She hasn’t seen anyone much all day, and the grounds are getting beyond her, and she’ll probably have to go into one of those awful ownership flats – what will she do with all the furniture?

One woman in her 50s opens the door and says, with an air of mystery: ‘I know you. You do something with your hands,’ she says. ‘I play the piano,’ I answer. ‘Ah! You teach the organ – one of those home organs – I can see you playing.’ ‘No, I don’t.’ It becomes difficult to get away. I move down the path. She follows.

Out of politeness, I say, ‘Perhaps I’ve seen you at your work. Where would that be?’ She becomes more mysterious still. ‘Here and there and everywhere..! Sometimes at the hospital. Have you been sick in the hospital?’ I haven’t, and I think I’m relieved.

Where houses have children they pour out on to the step with their evening meal still in their hands. In many places my visit is taken as an excuse to get out of bed. ‘Who is it, Daddy?’ ‘No one. Go back to bed!’

Cats complain they’ve had no attention all day. Dogs climb over me, threatening to eat me alive while their master or mistress vainly orders them to come inside.

For the most part I find people are ungrudgingly generous. It’s part of our cultural heritage to ‘give at the door.’ Once people know who I am, it’s rare to get a refusal. ‘I might need your help one day meself!’

Those who do refuse seem slightly embarrassed, as though it goes against some instinct. Unfortunately these are often the people who live in a house up a hill at the end of a long steep drive.

One man throws all his loose change into the bag, and goes to shut the door. Then he calls out, ‘Wait!’ He hurries inside again and brings back a jar full of coins. The whole lot is poured in. Suddenly the bag is very heavy.

Another man drops in a $100 note.

At one Kampuchean residence, the mother comes to the door. Great gales of laughter and foreign words. She runs from one room to another. I’m not sure if she’s understood what I’m there for yet. She is, it turns out, trying to find some money.

Three or four dark-haired children appear. Bigger sisters come out of the bedroom marked ‘Knock!’ and retreat again. Grandmother comes to give her opinion, and at long last the mother appears with her donation. ‘Sorry, no envelope!’ More laughter. Much discussion in Kampuchean.

I go to another Cambodian house. This area has become Refugee Street. A tough little 6-year-old comes to the door and asks, with an ordinary everyday Kiwi accent: ‘Whaddya want?’ I try to explain that I am collecting for the Salvation Army. It appears to mean nothing.

‘Is your Mum home?’ I ask. ‘I dunno.’ He vanishes. His big sister appears and does nothing but smile. Her bigger brother comes round the corner – puzzled. ‘Whaddya want?’ he echoes.

Finally their mother strolls up the path carrying the shopping. She doesn’t speak much English. The bigger brother asks me for a third time what I want and translates it into Kampuchean – with actions to match. The Sally Army becomes some group that puts people in wheelchairs. His mother understands enough: ‘Fifty cents okay?’

Salvation Army band members
'busking' for donations
courtesy Gerald England

This is a truly historic piece. No one collects at the door these days, nor are they expected to. In fact collectors would probably be unsafe, and would need to go in twos – that’s if anyone could be encouraged to do the job. The idea that you could turn up at the door and be greeted in a friendly way seems gone for good.

Collectors will occasionally turn up on street corners, but are more likely found outside – or inside – supermarkets and other large stores. Few people carry actual cash, but some will get extra change while in the shop and put it in your bucket on the way out. Many will ignore you altogether. Volunteers to do the collecting have become harder to find.

Most donations are now paid online, and it requires full-page ads in newspapers, or emails, or cold-call telephoning or advertising online to remind those donating. All of which must take a large chunk out of whatever is donated.  

Tradition!

 First published in Column 8 on the 1^st May 1991

 The Anglicans have been in the news lately, what with New Zealand doing its bit in favour of women bishops, and trad Englishmen getting uptight over the use of non-trad instruments, at the new archbishop’s enthroning.

I’m all for a bit of solemnity myself, particularly when it comes to ceremonies of some importance, such as weddings and coronations and, I suppose, enthronements.

My wife and I went to a wedding a while ago, and were amazed by the minister’s seemingly casual and off-hand approach to the whole thing, especially to the bride. I think if it had been my wife and I getting married, we might have gently reminded him of the seriousness of the nuptial state, all due respect to his position.

On the other hand I wasn’t bothered when my mate Kiri te Kanawa caused a bit of a stir at the wedding of one of the royal offspring. Her dress and hat were nothing less than sartorial versions of synthesisers and saxophones, about which there’s more below.

(I’d like to do an occasional bit of name-dropping in this column, but Kiri’s the only person of importance whose name I can honestly drop.)

Back to the archbishop’s enthronement. There was bound to be some controversy. He hasn’t exactly leaned on ceremony in any other area of his bishopric, and I don’t suppose this ‘burly football fan who enjoys a pint of beer’ (as one report has it) was likely to start at his archbishopising.

(Incidentally, his photograph doesn’t show a particularly burly person, just a rather chubby one – in a cherubic kind of way. And according to one less biased report I read, he and his wife find the quiet of the pub garden a reasonable place to pray. Try doing that in a New Zealand pub!)

News reports about the enthronement said trad musicians believed saxophones and synthesisers and Gospel music – instead of an organ and choristers – would destroy the solemn atmosphere inside the cathedral. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect from people who think church music reached its peak in Palestrina’s day (1524 to 1594, for those who have to know. AD, that is.)

Incidentally, traditionalists forget that the organ, the instrument supposedly always found in churches, is a relative newcome itself. There was a time when even earlier trad people threw up their hands in horror at the thought of such a noise in church.

It’s this excessive traditionalism that puts people off going to such churches. And in the end it turns those churches into museums. I rather think that’s exactly the kind of thing the new archbishop is out to avoid.

Churches that are no more than monuments exist all over the world. We even have the problem with beautiful old churches here in Dunedin. The congregation that had the vision to build the place dies off, leaving generations further down the track with the upkeep of a work of art, which is miserably cold in winter and impossible to heat.

In the end the place becomes little more than a tourist attraction and has to pay its way in a manner quite out of keeping with its original purpose.

God and the congregation have usually moved on long ago, and may well be found elsewhere playing music with ‘unsavoury associations,’ on guitars, synthesisers and saxophones.

As I said, I’m all for a reasonable solemnity, but I’m not into tradition. Trad people love to put a damper on anything that has the smell of life about it. And life is something that dear old George – I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me calling him by his first name -  has plenty of.

Westminster Abbey choir