Life in the not so old girl yet

Back in late 2023 I published my fourth children's book, The Counterfeit Queen. It had taken some five years to write it, not because it was exceedingly difficult, but because of procrastination, self-doubt, and a busy life. And then, once published, it turned out to have the least number of sales of any of my books, though a number of free copies were passed around to family and friends. That way, at least. it had some readings: certainly more readings than sales. And it made its way in due course into my local library as well. 

But...disappointing. 

In late 2024, discouraged with the way the book had gone, I decided to do something positive in relation to it, and wrote eight piano pieces relating to some of the characters and scenes. To me these seemed a successful set of pieces: complex enough, but not to the degree that they didn't appeal in some measure on first hearing. 

A friend whom I play piano duets with nearly every week (and she and I have played some of the duets in local concerts, which has been very satisfying) has heard some of the music; her comment was: 'They're so inventive.' Once my head ceased to swell, I felt that all of the work on the book and the piano pieces, was justified. Something worthwhile had been created out of the whole mix. 

I've played some of the pieces for other people, in-house, but a few weeks back, after a friend's husband - as a surprise - bought her a baby grand for her birthday, they got a bit more visibility. (Though the piano was secondhand, it was still a substantial birthday present, and required some trickery in order to get it into the house without her knowing about its arrival.) 

The birthday girl had wanted a piano for some time in order to start playing again after a gap of many years. As a result of a conversation with her I offered to 'test-run' the piano, since she herself was a bit rusty keyboard-wise. So after a Bible Study at her and her husband's house one night I played her a couple of the Counterfeit Queen pieces, along with a piece I wrote a long time ago - back in the eighties in fact. 

Of course there were some other people at the study. I explained to the group the way the pieces had come about, thus giving away the 'secret' that I was a published author of children's books, something this group hadn't known. (I guess advertising myself as an author might increase sales - perhaps - but it's not something I tend to do.)

However, one of the people at the group was interested to read the books, and over the last couple of weeks has made her way through all four of them, to my surprise and delight. She's just texted me: I wanted to check out the Grimhilderness books to see if my granddaughter might like them, and I got hooked. They are wonderfully imaginative stories, with great characters and a timeless appeal. I'm sure she'll love them.

That's made my day. I suggested she might tell other grandmothers she knew as well (!) I'm also hoping to include some of them in a concert my duet friend and I are planning to do later this year. Maybe there's life in The Counterfeit Queen yet. 

The four books:

Grimhilda! a fantasy for children and their parents
The Mumbersons and the Blood Secret
The Disenchanted Wizard
The Counterfeit Queen

The bookaholic

 First published in Column 8 on the 5^th August, 1992

Some would say the worst ‘disease’ in the nation is alcoholism. Certainly it is prevalent, and the cause of much physical and mental damage.

However, there is another disease even more widespread, whose insidious effects on the population, though seemingly mild, are ravaging the nation. I talk of bookaholism.

Before I speak of symptoms, let me give you some statistics – conveniently culled from the latest Listener. New Zealanders spend $130 million on newspapers each year. In 1991 alone, local authority libraries (that’s not including private libraries) made 38 million issues, and held 8.5 million books.

I blame the libraries, in part, for their encouragement of bookaholism. Their casual attitude towards lending is evident in the lifestyle of every bookaholic you meet.

We know there are some people in the country who resist libraries, who are temperate in their  habits. And of course few babies read, although there were some supposedly enlightened people a few years ago trying to encourage the habit in mere infants.

But even if the libraries were all closed down, we’d be struggling with the enormity of the problem – bookaholics also buy books.

What is an average bookaholic like? Age doesn’t enter into it, though of course the older the bookaholic the more ingrained the habit. I know one man who as a child couldn’t sit down to a meal without a book in front of him. You can imagine his response now when his beleaguered wife tries to converse. ‘Hmmm?’

And gender is irrelevant. There are just as many woman bookaholics reading their Mills & Boons as men reading their car manuals.

Bookaholics are always desperate for something to read. They will read an ancient newspaper when lighting the fire, or pretend to do the crossword in an out-of-date magazine. Half-finished books with turned-over corners or with bookmarks made out of any scrap of paper (as long as it has print on it) litter their  homes.

Every room in the house has evidence of this malady. The lounge, with books flung down on (good grief, Stanton!) the television. The bedroom, with books hidden under the pillow. The kitchen, where the bookaholic will even read cookery books if the craving cannot otherwise be satisfied. The bathroom, where the soggy remains of a book will lie curled up inside a sodden towel. The toilet – yes, even the toilet. Here you will find books dumped on the cistern, flat on their face – only a few of the worst bookaholics will use blank toilet paper for bookmarks.

(I have known bookaholics in the loo bereft of print on paper who take to reading toilet roll wrappings. Inconceivable.)

Nothing is sacred. The bookaholic will put on a long playing record – they won’t have caught up with cassettes or CDs because their funds are never sufficient – and fail to listen to the music. Instead you will find them reading the sleeve, and even attempting to translate the German and French.

See them at the Regent Booksale: they bring their own boxes, and fill them to overflowing with Readers’ Digest Condensed Books.

See them in their lunch hours – at the library, or ‘browsing’ (as they call it) in their local (bookshop, that is). One bookaholic I knew works in a bookshop; what does he do in his free time? Browse.

I know the bookaholic isn’t guilty of bookish driving (though some have been known to read at the steering wheel), and he doesn’t beat up his wife or kids – more often he doesn’t notice them. But the drain on resources and the damage to the youth and flower of our nation is appalling.

Surely it is time for someone to adapt the 12 Steps and set up a BI (Bookaholics Innominate). Is there no one willing to stand up and turn us from a nation of bookworms into semi-illiterates?

 

My instinct on reading this piece after thirty plus years is that New Zealanders in 2026 would be reading a lot less than in 1992. But in fact they’re Bucking the Trend. The National Reading Survey shows that reading in NZ is up!

Juror #2

 Here be spoilers...

We watched Juror #2 last night on Netflix, and only discovered at the very end that it's the most recent movie directed by the extremely venerable Clint Eastwood. 

Now the expectancy over the last few years in regard to movies directed by Eastwood is that they will be more than satisfying in their presentation, and that the script will be thoughtful for the audience and generous to the actors. In other words, Eastwood's latter-day movies have usually been a must-see. 

Juror #2, however, is a surprise in the worst sense. The script has a thoroughly unfinished feeling to it, and leaves the actors with vast holes to fill that can't easily be filled. It starts (mostly) with what must be the most inadequately-founded trial we're likely to see in the movies. No one, but no one, seems to pick up on the fact that the evidence - mostly circumstantial and not at all convincing - is an insult to the audience's intelligence. The arrogant prosecutor (Toni Collette) doesn't even have to walk all over the defence (Chris Messina): he's given every opportunity to tear the case to shreds and, as scripted, fails to see any of the problems with the prosecutor's arguments. If you can call them arguments; most of what she provides are mere accusations against the accused. 

The accused himself (Night Agent's Gabriel Basso) is allowed to speak in his own defence and waffles on in a most unmannerly way about how he's now a changed man and that the man they see on a video arguing with his soon-to-be deceased girlfriend is a thing of the past. (But even their 'argument' is poorly scripted; the actors struggle to make it work.)

And things get worse: most of the stereotypical twelve jurors take what miniscule information they've been given as a watertight case and run with it. In fact their decision against the defendent would take about ten minutes if it wasn't for the fact that one of the jurors - coincidentally - was also a witness to the original argument and, as the audience quickly realises - probably committed a hit-and-run, killing the girl. The defendent's worst crime, on the other hand, was leaving his girlfriend to walk home in the pouring rain. 

Juror number 2 (Nicholas Hoult, who was Collette's son in About a Boy) had reasons not to confess to the hit-and-run, but not particularly compelling ones. As these reasons are eked out over the movie's length, we increasingly lose sympathy with him. Not only that, he had every reason not to be a juror in this case, if he'd only opened his mouth. Refusing to show his connection only sinks him into a deeper mess, and more lies, including to his wife, who of course is expecting a baby any day and really, really wants him home with her. Did I tell you that they'd lost twins a year before?

The only other juror to side with Hoult is played by J K Simmons. At one point he convinces Collette to change her mind, and do some more investigation - something she apparently hasn't in the least bothered with beforehand - she is, after all, running for some political role at the same time. (The police case is barely mentioned at any point, and appears to have been ticked off by them in a couple of minutes.) 

And then, unbelievably, in a scene we don't see, Hoult decides to go for a guilty verdict, which apparently changes the mind of the other jurors who'd started to look at a not guilty one. And suddenly the innocent man is sent to jail for life.

The whole thing ends for Hoult in a moment of ambiguity, apparently leaving his character in more of a mess than he started with. (We've long lost our sympathy with him, even though he appears to be the main character.) More likely the scriptwriter (Jonathan A. Abrams) got himself into a total tangle and couldn't find a way out. Perhaps Eastwood didn't have the time to help him. 

Kiefer Sutherland is also in the movie for a few brief scenes that really don't help the hero in any way, shifting from full support to giving up on the boy. Odd.  

Trinity College Marks Centenary

First published in the Dunedin Star Midweeker, July 19^th, 1992

How many musical or elocutional Kiwis over the years have entered a long, large room – usually with a piano in it – to front up to a person slowly writing over a desk? And when that person lifts their head and speaks, how many Kiwis have been stricken with inarticulation when confronted by those oh-so proper English tones?

The numbers are in the thousands.

This year marks the centenary of the first examinations in New Zealand by the Examiners of the Trinity College of Music. Those first exams were held in Christchurch, in 1892, but Dunedin wasn’t too far behind, setting up a centre four years later.

The Rev. William Hewitson was the first chairman, and the first secretary was Arthur Barth, a member of one of the two families within which the position has remained since.

In 1905 Mr Barth’s daughter, Beatrice, was appointed; 25 years later her sister, Irene, succeeded her, and held the reins for a formidable 31 years.

The secretaryship finally passed out of the hands of the Barths and into that of Niepers      . Miss Ellice Nieper took the job for five years before handing over to her sister Olive. And this Miss Nieper has been the ‘face’ of Trinity College to thousands of examinees ever since.

The local centre has gone on strongly over the 96 years, holding exams continuously in spite of the disturbance of two world wars. During World War II New Zealand had a resident examiner, Anderson Tyrer, who was instrumental in forming and conducting the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.

There was also a time when the centre was divided into several smaller pieces: for many years the Catholic schools held exams at their convents. A 1955 newspaper cutting in the minute book of the centre shows exam results from St Dominic’s, St Joseph’s, Holy Name and St Philomena’s. And down in the list of names of those having passed preparatory is some youngster called Michael Crowl.

Many better known names appear in the minute books: Prof Peter Platt, who frequently chaired the meetings; Walter Sinton, of Charles Begg and Co; and Margaret Lion, who in 1955 won the gold medal presented by that firm for the highest marks.

In 1963 we find Prof William Lovelock, the writer of many standard theory texts, speaking severe words to teachers and telling them they were to blame if their pupils received poor marks.

Yet another examiner, a Mr Johnson, complains of the cold approach of the students, and their lack of personality. Perhaps he failed to realise the effect of a person speaking ‘received’ English had on already nervous youngsters.

A rather more generous approach was taken by Miss Mary Tweedie, who made at least seven visits to the city, and who said that music students here were comparable to any in the world. She will still be remembered with affection by many musicians.

There have of course been other types of exam apart from practical music: I remember doing theory exams for three hours on cold Saturday mornings – and speech has long been examined.

To celebrate the centenary, a concert is to be held in the Glenroy Auditorium on Monday, July 20, at 7.30 pm. The artist will be Rae de Lisle, playing piano works by a variety of composers. Miss de Lisle is well-known throughout New Zealand, and also has an established career overseas.

The seating arrangements will be somewhat informal at the concert: seats will be placed around tables set out in the middle of the hall. Supper will be served at the conclusion of the performance.

Rev Hewitson

I’ve included this piece amongst the Column 8 articles, because not only was it published in the sibling paper of the Midweeker, it was full of well-known Dunedin personalities, some of whom I knew well, or had met on occasions.  

Prof Platt turned out to be, amongst others, an anonymous financial supporter of my going to London to study at the London Opera Centre. He and I had worked together on some of the Dunedin Opera Company’s productions. I remember Miss Tweedie being my examiner on at least one occasion, and Margaret Lion and I were both at one of the Summer Music Schools in Dunedin; she was streets ahead of me in confidence, and, most likely, in performance. Miss Olive Nieper was in charge of the Trinity College exams during my time of going through that system. It wasn’t her full-time job; from memory she worked in some secretarial capacity in an office in the centre of town. I had occasion to visit her there at least once.

Barbered

First published in Column 8 on the 29^th July, 1992

Some weeks are better than others for making you feel old – well, older, anyway.

This week I went to a barber for the first time in eighteen years, the very barber to whom I used to go when I was a callow youth. He’d lost more hair than I had, which was a sort of consolation – and shifted premises – but little else of the familiar going-to-the-barber routine had changed.

There was still the partnering of tobacco with male tonsure – even in these enlightened days you don’t see tobacco in the ladies’ hairdressers. There was the scent of men’s hair spray. There was the feeling of being like a bed being made as the cloth was swept around me and tucked in at the edges.

There were the large mirrors reflecting a blurred shape that to me looked much the same before and after. And as always, however careful the barber is, there was the rest-of-the-day-awareness inside your singlet of having been barbered.

The same old art of casual conversation was still practiced, an art for which I had no talent in my youth. Since I didn’t know anything about the ‘important’ topics of the day – rugby, politics and rugby, I used to think nothing I had to say could possibly be of interest to a relative stranger, and kept my mouth more closed than open.

This may have been frustrating for the barber, though I guess it would be more frustrating for a dentist. Why do dentists seem to expect just as much conversation from you as barbers? Maybe their meal times are like ours…

After some years of attempting to increase the intellectual level of what passes for conversation at our meal tables each night – ‘pass the salt; he’s flicking rice everywhere, Mum; she touched me; he’s taken all the butter’ – I know now that conversation can be made from any coming together of a couple of minds.

In fact, after the experience of our mealtimes, it was quite stimulating to sit in the barber’s chair and gradually work towards finding some mutual topics of interest.

I’m always more than pleasantly surprised to find that eventually a few snippets of thought (even amongst snipping of hair) will assemble themselves into a conversation. Often some unsuspected mutual ground, as there was in tis case, will once again surprise you as how small the world really is.

Having my hair cut was no longer the ordeal it used to be. (I might even get to like it, and go and find a barber every time I’ve had enough of ‘Is this green stuff really a vegetable?’)

(By the way, in case you suspect, because I haven’t been to a barber for eighteen years, that my hair grows remarkably slowly, and I’m due for a paragraph in the Guinness Book of Records, let me assure you it sprouts at the pace common to all personkind. My home-barber – the one I acquired at marriage – decided she needed a break.)

When you think about it, in my 18 years away from things tonsorial I’d actually gained hair (unlike the barber). Eighteen years ago I had no beard to trim. Intuitively, unlike some male friends of mine, I hadn’t tried to grow one until there was actually something to cover the chin.

My family has pleaded with me for some time now to cut off my beard, their excuse being that they’ve never seen me without it. But in this winter I’d be daft to take off any more hair.

I’ve already made a mental note never to venture near a barber’s during the frosty season, even if I end up looking like Albert Einstein after he’d discovered his relatives.

Mike as Uncle Andrew in The Magician's Nephew -
no beard but an 'orrible wig instead. 
The boy playing Digory is Josh Chignell. 

 The ‘blurred shape’ I refer to was me, unable to see what the barber had done due to my shortsightedness; glasses were always removed while having a haircut even though the barber would invariably ask what I thought of the cut.

I’ve had a second family barber/hairdresser for around thirty years – my eldest daughter, who was trained as a hairdresser. She and my wife take turns, as it were, to cut my hair.

I did take my beard off in Sept 1993, to surprise my wife who’d been in the UK visiting her family. And again, twelve years later (to the month) in order to play Uncle Andrew in an adaptation of The Magician’s Nephew, by C S Lewis (see photo above). In both case it was grown again pretty smartly.

Abuse

First published in Column 8 on the 22.7.1992

One of the side-benefits of feminism has been the exposing of a once much hidden area.

In just one day I came across the following –

A couple of articles in the newspaper Crosslink discussing sexual abuse by counsellors and ministers.  A radio documentary in which women talk about being sexually abused (in some cases by their fathers), and being freed from the memories that have bound them. A television film about a bigamist who gets his just desserts when his daughter, whom he sexually abused, murders him.

In the Listener, by contrast, a reviewer writes about a positive book, My Father and Me, in which sexual abuse isn’t an issue.

Some years ago we had a Telethon for victims of sexual abuse, and the claim was that this had happened to one in four female children. This figure was afterwards disputed, and the percentage is not thought to be so high. Be that as it may, there’s a dreadful corruption in the hearts of many men in this land.

To hear women speaking about the abuse they suffered as children, which they have subsequently buried away in their memories to such an extent that the episodes are virtually forgotten, ought to distress us greatly. The plight of the victims is horrifying: generations of men – these women are often talking about events that happened up to 40 years ago – have subjected their children or those of other people to this victimisation. We ought to cry out to God for mercy.

The sexual abuse isn’t all: the sense of power these men have over weaker beings is equally horrifying. Power tends to corrupt, Acton said, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The worst of this abuse is that men who being this malpractice seem neither to have pangs of guilt nor any awareness of the corruption in their hearts.

Some use the excuse that the victims might enjoy what happens. As the radio programme stated, the body may react with a certain degree of enjoyment, because the body enjoys touch. It’s made to react that way. But the victim ends up feeling betrayed not only by the person who is abusing (especially if it’s the father), but by the body itself. The very thing that’s suffering the abuse, seems in part to enjoy it.

Of course the repercussions with later normal sexual relations are not hard to envisage.

What causes men to shut their eyes to their wickedness? How do they live with it? do they feel in some warped way justified by their actions? Do they feel they have a ‘right’ (it certainly isn’t a God-given one, as the Book of Leviticus tells us) to have sexual relations with other members of their family besides their wives?

And where will it all end? Sometimes the abuser is brought to justice, forcing the victim to make public those acts of violence they would sooner not see proclaimed abroad.

Justice brings another quandary for the victim: if the abuser is the father, there’s a sense of betraying someone close to you, a person with whom you may have had some good times, the person who helped bring you into this world.

Cleaning out the corruption is never a pleasant process.

After all this ugliness, it was a relief to turn to My Father and Me. In spite of the reviewer wanting to make out a case for these fathers not always being ‘worthy of honour,’ the writers convey the fact that it’s possible to have a good relationship with a father. They show that there have been, and are, and always will be men who take the job seriously and know what it means.

They convey hope. So while much of the male garden is a tangle of weeds, here and there is a patch of roses.

Crosslink was a monthly publication jointly funded by the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand, which ran from March 1987 until April 2001. 

Gossip

First published in Column 8 on the 15.7.1992

The endless profiteering done by British newspapers in regard to the royal nit-picking may soon be curtailed. The British Government, no less, has told the media that it’s editorial freedom may be curbed by law if it continues to pry too far into people’s privacy. Censorship of the Press!

At present the British press regulates itself voluntarily. Obviously it doesn’t regulate itself enough.

This political intrusion produced a most amazing statement from newspaper editors. They said they were being made scapegoats for any problems the royals might have! (It was the royals’ fault for being royals.) If the editors hadn’t told all the details about possible royal rifts they would themselves have been censoring news.

This is the press that’s already bayed like dogs during the demise of one royal marriage. Is their greed for grubbiness so great? And are they too shortsighted to realise that when they’ve destroyed this prince’s marriage there won’t be much else to go for?

I was impressed to see on the cover of one women’s magazine the admission that they felt the media was very much to blame for what happened to Fergie and her husband.

What’s happened to the media? Why is there such a hatred of people in positions of power and authority and glamour?

In the past magazines gave you interesting details about people and their lives. The gossip in which they dealt, if any, was mostly mild. Now it’s mostly malicious, and frequently untruthful.

I guess it’s a sign of the times, a sign of the general hatred people have for one another, especially those people who are better off than most, or who’ve made it in the world.

We talk about the great New Zealand clobbering machine. But I don’t know why we single ourselves out as being clobberers – the Latin Europeans have been at it for decades, the Americans not far behind, and now the Brits are aiming to win the race.

There’s an ugliness about much of what’s now produced as ‘news.’ Truth and integrity appear to be irrelevant.

An example was the birth of Rod Stewart’s baby which was described in one magazine as ‘bizarre.’ A quick glance at the article shows’ that I have been bizarre in like manner on at least five occasions, since Rod’s bizarrity consisted of little more than his attending his child’s birth.

Katherine Hepburn was interviewed in Time magazine recently. Sorry, interviewed isn’t the word. the aggression of the actress exactly matched the aggression with which the article was written, by a seemingly disgruntled reporter who was put off by Miss Hepburn’s admittedly bad manners.

In fact, over two closely written pages we found out nothing about Miss Hepburn that was pleasant, positive or (to be honest) worth noting.

The article deserved burial long before it made the pages of a magazine that used to have a reputation for distinguished reporting.

There has always been gossip, and magazines aren’t doing anything new by having gossip columns or by reporting stories about people’s lives. What is new, however, is the overwhelming emphasis on half-truths, and the garbage that these spew forth.

What I object to, and what I believe the British Government is taking a serious line on, is the viciousness, the malice, the malignity, the spite and venom, and the plain lack of charitableness which is vented through both newspapers and magazines in that country.

Makes you glad that New Zealand still has newspapers and (some) magazines that are relatively civilised.

Of course, in line with everything else in the world, things have got far worse. New Zealand no longer has a media that can be said to be fully honest or to have integrity. During Covid, the media often led the way in terms of destroying people’s lives – especially those who fought against our Government’s own insistence that they were the ‘Source of Truth’ about everything to do with that plague. And the media continue to do so whenever there is anything said that’s contrary to their left wing mentality.

Since I wrote this column in 1992, things have gone down the tubes in Britain: justice has been undermined continually, the royals are frequently maligned (though admittedly some of them don’t help their situation), Charles’ marriage was destroyed, in part, by the gutter press, and Diana was hounded to death, virtually, by paparazzi.  

The Hepburn interview, incidentally, is just a puff piece, although not in Hepburn’s favour. It’s a kind of clever-clever article that aims to show how well the writer can write, to the detriment of the interviewee. While Hepburn is admittedly pretty rough with the writer, the latter gets her revenge all the way down. The writer was Margaret Carlson, though it was Time’s rule not to give by-lines to their writers at the time, and her name doesn’t appear on the article. She was the first female columnist for Time.

Doing Time Again

First published in Column 8 on the 8^th July, 1992

Last week I was writing on a rather amazing theory Stephen Hawking once proposed but later wisely abandoned. He said (in the simplest terms) if the Universe stopped expanding and began to contract, time would start running backwards. Somehow everything that had ever happened would be replayed in reverse.

The idea of reversal has some charming, but also some worrying, features.

People would shrink from old age to childhood until they were ready to re-enter the womb (ouch!) of someone who was officially younger than them. Death would no longer be the thing people feared, but birth. Undeath and unbirth…

Undeath would be a time for rejoicing – in fact, the joyous wakes of the Irish would at last make sense. At undeath all our separate parts, exploded or crushed or maimed or merely buried, would come together as though they’d never de-parted. The metaphysics of this aspect of reversal, not to mention the theological implications, are not only beyond comprehension but also the length of this column.

If hindsight (which would of course now be foresight) came with the package, we’d know how long we were going to be around for. But our sense of security would probably shatter when we discovered the process of unbirth.

The end of the line for all of us would be the equivalent of senility: gradual loss of intelligence and ability, lack of control over our bodies, and worst (?) of all, over the handling of our assets.

Who’d want to go from a wage to pocket money – (though I know that’s virtually what a lot of present-day people have done!). And talking of wages, in reversal we’d find ourselves each payday paying our bosses – after retailers had refunded our cash for the goodies we returned. We’d have real cause to think our wages were decreasing.

The process of reversal makes you wonder whether we’d be able to think differently, or whether even our thoughts would tortuously wend their way back whence they came. Locked into thought patterns as they became simpler seems at first sight a horror, but wouldn’t there be some advantages?

We’d go from complex emotional thoughts in our relationships to ones that were disarmingly simple. First loves lived over again. We’d gradually head back to the halcyon days of childhood when, for many of us, things were simple and uncomplicated, and responsibility unheard-of. Those who hankered for the good old days would have a chance to prove their worth, and might find themselves eating their words.

If we were forced without choice to play out everything we’d ever done, we’d see the consequences of our actions before we’d initiated them. Knowing how avoidable our actions were, would we regret what we knew we’d set in motion?

Would the Chinese begin to read their books forwards? Would frontchat hurt us as we played frontgammon? And would we dare to call certain sporting gentlemen, ‘backwards?’

The thought of re-doing my years in reverse is too tiring. The last ten days going the right way have been enough. There were two rehearsals, a son’s birthday party (which exhausted my wife), the same son’s dancing exam, two days of stocktaking, two dress rehearsals, and a concert.

Who’d have energy enough to go back and do all that in reverse, especially when you’d not long left your 50^th birthday behind? Or do I mean ‘in-front?’

There are some interesting ideas explored here, some of which F Scott Fitzgerald may have considered when he wrote The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Certainly, while the movie was interesting (more so the second time, I found) it didn’t really go into the true difficulties of life lived backwards, and I think, if it had explored more of the implications, it possibly would have been a horror movie rather than a romantic fantasy.

Time

First published in Column 8, on the 1^st July, 1992

Before I do Time (metaphorically speaking), I want to thank the person who sent me some recycling labels to use on my countless Inland Revenue envelopes. That was generous and inventive. And yes, I did receive more IRD material during the week, including a reply to a letter we wrote them in mid-May. Their reply merely said they would be replying to our letter as soon as possible…

Isn’t it odd that after you come across a word or a name that was previously unfamiliar, said word or name suddenly crops up all over. I bought two books in the Regent book sale, one on chess problems and one of crosswords. (The crossword craze is over in our house, by the way; we’re now talking to the kids again.)

A quick glance at the chess problem book turned up the name of a problem-maker, Samuel Loyd (yes, that is the correct spelling), of whom I’d never heard. And in the book on crosswords, who should appear as a puzzle-maker? Sam Loyd.

All this to introduce another doubling-up. I came across two very different articles on Stephen Hawking last week, one in Time magazine, and the other in a Wellington newspaper, which had reprinted an article from The Times. At first I thought they meant The Times of London, but a more careful reading of the material made me suspicious. Perhaps it’s the Taiwan Times.

The anonymous author of this article made the bold statement that Stephen Hawking’s book, A Brief History of Time (no, not of Time magazine, Stanton), had sold so many copies that every 1000^th person on the planet owns one.

Now, even a cursory bit of calculation makes than an awful lot of copies. Someone better informed can tell me whether we count the five billion people on this planet in US billions or UK. Anyway, according to Anon, there is a minimum of five million copies of the book in existence. Worse, there may be 5000 million. A Brief History of Time must therefore be well read by the Chinese. And I thought it was difficult enough in English.

After I’d read this article, and this wasn’t the only piece of folderol it came out with, I found what appeared to be a somewhat trued figure in Time magazine. They quoted 1.7 million copies, which sounds slightly more reliable, though it makes Mr Hawking anything but a pauper. No doubt his publishes hope his next book comes out quickly.

I mentioned some other folderol Anon had written. He/she says, for example: ‘Today we no longer look to religious leaders to say anything important about the world, yet the hunger for meaning hasn’t diminished.’ The inference was that we look instead to scientists.

Certainly when we have theologians of the ilk of Barbara Thiering we have cause to baulk at following their lead, but can we really class scientists as the new Truth Messiahs?

How often have you read with amazing the latest pronouncements by scientists? (Or at least by those who publicise them.) Sleeping on your right side drains the brain’s left hemisphere; cabbage causes cancer of the cartilage; excessive cuddling produces corns.

Mr Hawking himself has been the victim on at least two occasions of his own rashness, though in things much less corny than corns.

In 1985 he proclaimed that if the Universe stopped expanding and began to contract, time would start running backwards. Somehow everything that had ever happened would be played in reverse.

The implications of reversal are many and varied and I’m running out of space. Consequently I’ll depart from usual format and explore these implications in some depth next week.

Sequel here

The edition I remember having... 

Since this column was written back in 1992, the figures quoted are out of date. An article on Wikipedia claims there have been 25 million copies sold in 40 languages; this information was drawn from an article in Cosmos, written by Robin McKie and published in 2007. AI on Google initially disagreed, but on a second try it also came up with the 25 million figure but with 60 languages. I think it was quoting from the Wikipedia article…

So that leaves my estimate of how many copies were sold as being well short of the mark. But we are talking of an article from  fifteen years later.

Overboard

First published in the Column 8 on 24^th June, 1992

This week I want to talk about going overboard. That doesn’t mean my wife fell off the fishing vessel she once had her eye on, while hauling in her latest marlin, because she didn’t.

Rather I want to use the phrase, going overboard, in its other sense, of going to extremes. How it came to mean this I can’t understand, though maybe some more philologically-inclined person can. (That’s someone with a dictionary in the cranium.)

Perhaps the connection comes as follows: a person who goes overboard, ie, over the top, is an extremist. A person who has literally gone overboard is in extremis, ie, in dire straits (and not the Cook or Foveaux kind). I can’t confirm this theory, however, as my tame philologist is away hunting a snark.

To get back to the point. Going overboard is now a problem in many areas of life. I don’t wish to criticise the Inland Revenue Dept (certainly not when I’m expecting a tax rebate this year), but I feel lately that they’ve gone overboard. No longer will one piece of paper do; everything has to be sent twice, and on a different form. Thus I can expect to get a piece of mail from this department in my business post virtually every day.

One day next month’s PAYE pay-in form comes solo; on another day there will be a statement, stating I’ve paid my last payment. Always it will included a piece at the bottom on which to note other payments I may wish to make – if any. And always it will include an envelope, so I can send my ‘if any’ payments in. I now have a drawer full of unused IRD envelopes.

When I read the other day that some couple had received something like eleven pieces of mail from the Inland Revenue in one day, I didn’t even raise an eyebrow. Mail from the IRD has been going overboard for ages.

The electricity people have been going overboard too, (though not with surplus electricity). We have been bombarded with ads for a long time now telling us that energy-wise electricity is the only way to go. All those people who believed this propaganda will now be gnashing their teeth a little, methinks, especially since these same advertisers are trying to convince us to stop using the wretched stuff.

Don’t let it seep out through the plug! Five minute showers! (Obviously they don’t have a house full of teenagers.) Turn the thermostat down – what thermostat?

Most ridiculous of all, they tell us we should all snuggle into the same room, because it’s cosier. The only problem is, which room?

The one where The Fresh Prince of Bel airs himself, and Quantum leaps – neither of which I want to watch? The one with the word processor, which obviously the others don’t want to watch. Or the bedrooms, where the kids should be doing their homework? While it might improve their study habits, I’m not sure if we as parents could cope with the cute kitten, or hunk-abundant posters, or the strange mess in the corner that’s been dying for a week.

A few nights of that cosiness could induce the parents to go overboard. Let’s get real. We’ll just turn off all the heaters and wander around in the dark tripping over our blankets and dropping candle grease on the carpet.

Finally in this discussion of overboardness, during the week I misunderstood some news about Robert Maxwell. I thought I’d heard that he hadn’t drowned after all when he went overboard, but he’d turned up. (It’s amazing how the news is garbled when you’re trying to open the latest piece of literature from the IRD with the lights off.)

Imagination went wild: had Maxwell intended the scoop story of a lifetime? ‘Maxwell drowns, but later washed up alive!’ It was not to be. When Maxwell went overboard, he definitely missed the boat…

Robert Maxwell, photo courtesy:
Dutch National Archives

 

 

Cryptic

First Published in Column Eight on the 17^th June, 1992

During the summer holidays this year we got our teeth into the daily paper’s cryptic crosswords, and occasionally managed to complete a whole one before the next day’s paper arrived. Then they were abruptly discontinued.

Blow me down, we’d only got over the cold turkey shock and the crosswords were reinstated. Now my wife and I spend ‘quality time’ together (totally ignoring the kids, that is), trying to puzzle out the many-ways-interpretable clues that are provided.

The reason I mention cryptic crosswords is because an Australian theologian seems to have gone to her office one Monday morning and mixed up the notes for her latest book with the daily paper’s crossword.

Iin the course of solving the clues a revelatory light has dawned and she’s come to the harebrained conclusion that the Gospel writers spent all their time composing cryptic crosswords.

Dr Barbara Thiering reads the Gospels as though nothing means what it says. Thus Jesus never died on the cross; saints ain’t holy, merely celibate; being dead means being alive, but boycotted; and vinegar has become snake poison mixed with wine.

She even sees things no one else ever had a clue about: after Jesus survived the crucifixion, he was married twice, had three kids, and died of old age.

At first I thought she’d be better to give up theologic career and try her hand at producing cryptic crosswords. But I don’t think she’d succeed; when it comes to the truth I think she’s clueless.

Another person who seems to be good at understanding things no one else can see is the city council’s traffic engineer. According to him Dunedin drivers take longer to get used to changes than drivers in other parts of the country.

Mr Ward allegedly said: ‘Dunedin drivers were not used to having to give way to other traffic as they were seldom in that position themselves’ – whatever that means. I can only assume he and the reporter were concentrating on the cryptic crossword during the interview.

Well, I drive south down Andersons Bay Rd most mornings. When there is no signage to indicate that what was a traffic lane yesterday isn’t today, and that a roundabout has risen up overnight, and that we still give way to the right even though the road appears to run straight ahead, I think we deserve a bouquet not a brickbat.

Many Dunedin drivers are finding the shambling Roslyn shemozzle enough of a cryptic puzzle at the moment without the Andersons Bay random roundabout. Two in one month is enough to drive anyone to cross words.

In this survey of things puzzling, I have one last comment.

Up north in Gisborne, a place where they’re out to do something about crime, the police are publishing a monthly paper with the face of a local baddy prominently displayed.

Though I can’t say this would encourage me to go up to a crim in a public bar and tell him to hop it, having your photo plastered all over the town might, however, encourage aforesaid crim to make himself scarce, if he wanted a quiet life.

I see Dunedin’s police spokesman has wisely suggested we follow in Gisborne’s footsteps. Amazingly, someone opposes his view and claims photos will label the crim as a crim. That seems fair enough. After all, the biggest problems with half these guys is to get them to admit they’ve done wrong. Putting them in prison doesn’t do it, just keeps them out of the ordinary citizen’s hair for a while.

As a rule, recidivists – crims who see it as a career – haven’t been brought up with the idea that apologising is good, and reparation better. They want to carry on their life of crime without having to answer for anything.

I’m sick of the victims being the only ones who really suffer, and I’m sick of super-tolerant people saying the baddies shouldn’t be punished in any way, merely rehabilitated. Let them face up to what they are.

Now what’s the answer to ‘sees evil as good and good as evil’ in five letters, starting with f and ending with s…?

Courtesy LissaRhys 

Interestingly enough, there's an article on Barbara Thiering by Lloyd Geering, New Zealand's most famous heretic, himself not known for being impressed by the Gospels as entirely factual, which pulls her 'theology' to pieces.